Expansion and overtaking increased during this time period. The creation of gunpowder, cannon, and gunships helped build new fortresses and fortified cities capable of defending against gunpowder artillery

• Statecraft: Old and New Techniques of Technology

  • Nation-states emerged

  • Political and Administrative centralization became more sophisticated and led to a higher degree of state consolidation and efficiency. Features of a modern government became more common

  • State-building techniques included architectural displays, and religious authority

  • Many states depended on bureaucratic elites

  • Some governments started a parliamentary systems

  • The nations of Europe started to create empires

• Empire-Building- The Age Of Exploration and Colonization

  • The nations of Europe started to explore, discover and mapped major oceans and landmasses

  • Europe eventually became the planet’s dominant civilization

  • Many parts of the world remained under European control

• Motivation and Capabilities

  • Europe’s primary motivation for exploration was economic

  • Europe wanted direct access to goods such as silk and spices

  • Europe explored further using the astrolabe, compass, and the sternpost rudder

  • Europeans were developing stable sailing ships

  • Europeans depended on gunpowder weaponry for faster and easier colonization

  • Europeans invented galleons and gunships for greater firepower quantity

• The Iberian Wave: Portugal and Spain

  • The first European nations to systematically explore the wider Atlantic world were Portugal and Spain, on the Iberian peninsula

  • Around 1410 Prince Henry the Navigator started Portugal’s exploration efforts

  • Portugal reached the southern tip of Africa and named it the Cape of Good Hope because it was an important step to India

  • The Italian captain Christopher Columbus started his voyage in 1492

  • The lines of demarcation declared which parts of the New World would be given to Portugal, and which to Spain

  • Portugal and Spain formed maritime empires in the New World

    • maritime empires: which overseas colonies were fully under their control

  • Mainlands fell into the hands of conquistadors: generals who bought huge parts of North and South America under Spanish control

  • Conquests were completed due to military advantages such as horses and gunpowder weapons

  • Spain’s and Portugal’s successes in the Columbian Exchange were measles and smallpox. The diseases killed indigenous Americans in massive numbers

  • Mining was important to Spanish and Portuguese explorers

  • They collected cash crops from plantation monoculture, the most important being sugarcane

  • New Spain was ruled by a viceroyalty: “in place of the king”

  • Colonial economic activity was run by the House Of Trade

  • Spanish and Portugal colonization led to coerced labor

  • The Spanish wanted to enslave American natives by the encomienda system but the system was deemed inhumane by the Catholic clergy

  • Instead they used the mitt’s system, and relied heavily on African slaves, which led to the rapid rise of the Atlantic slave trade

• Thee Northern Wave: The French, Dutch and English

  • Other European nations began to explore and colonize, France, the Dutch Republic, and England

  • They wanted to use a Northeast or Northwest Passage to ex[;pre

  • They discovered rich fishing and whaling grounds

  • In 1620, France created the Company of New France in North America

  • France and England had the French and Indian Wars in which England took Canada from France

  • This led to the Seven Years’ War

  • Dutch explorers disrupted Spanish trade and attached their ports

  • Dutch created the Dutch East India Company

  • In 1670, England created the Hudson’s Bay Company which intruded into Canada and French colonies

  • The English relied on coerced labor, indentured servitude, and The Atlantic Slave Trade for labor

  • In 1600, England created the British East India Company to manage economic and military relations with Southeast Asia

• Russia in Siberia and America

  • The Russian government set the Bering Expedition to explore the waters separating Siberia from North America

  • The fur trade stimulated the Russian settlement

  • Native Siberians were subjected to the coerced-labor system known as yasak: paying tribute and hunting fur bearing animals for Russians

• Major States and Empires

  Europe had become the world’s most powerful region

• Europe

  • Most parts of Europe became nation-states and were politically and administratively centralized

  • Europe followed two forms of monarchy: absolutism and parliamentarism

  • Absolutism followed the divine right: monarchs reign by the will of God

  • Serfdom eventually disappeared from Europe, except for Russia

  • Parliamentarism: The ruler governed with a lawmaking body appointed by the aristocracy or elected by some or all of the people

• The Middle East

  • Ottoman and Safavid states are gunpowder empires because of their ,assert of weaponry and effective use of it

  • Ruled by the circle of justice ideology

  • Devised the devshirme system: recruiting civil servants and elite troops

  • Used a musketeer infantry system known as janissaries: ensalving sons of Christian families and placing them in positions of civil servitude

  • Used the millet system: sorted and administered non-Muslims according to religious categories

  • Unbelievers paid jizya, or tax

• Africa

  • A long term European presence was established

  • Effects of the Atlantic slave trade were still being endured

  • West Africa had the most powerful states

  • The Ashanti kingdom leaders sold gold and slaves to Europeans in exchange for gunpowder and muskets

  • Omani arabs stood upto Portuguese rule in East Africa

• East Asia

  • Zheng He led global exploration

  • Influx of silver led to inflation and economic breakdown

  • Agricultural yields decreased, soil worsened, population grew, and famines occurred regularly

  • The new Qing dynasty emerged

  • China sold high amounts of tea, silk and porcelain but allowed few imports due to the policy of trade protection

  • Rulers came to power from the mandate of heaven

  • Japan was ruled by shoguns, but the emperor took control

  • Japan was reunified by warlords and harsh social stratification

  • Japan continued to follow the Confucian ideology

• South Asia

  • The Mughal Empire was established in India

  • It was considered a gunpowder empire

  • The economy thrived due to a cotton trade

  • Akbar The Great bought the peak of the Mughal Empire

  • He attempted to outlaw sati

  • His grandson Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal

  • Bombay, now Mumbai was ceded to the British East India Company

• The Americas

  • Both continents fell under European control

• War and State Rivalries

  • Eurasian states experienced military revolution: nations fully incorporated gunpowder weaponry into their way of war

  • Europe was separated under Catholic-Protestant religious wars

  • Ottoman-European conflict

  • 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Turks