Europe Overseas and the Commercial Revolution, 1415 to 1648

This is Unit Sixteen of Western Civilization One, part one of two: Europe overseas, from the caravel and the compass to Spain's silver and the laws it argued over. Unit fifteen closed on a Europe divided by confession. Carry one idea through this unit. The anchor tells exploration and economic change as one story, from the ships to the counting-house. Portugal went first and south, down Africa, round the Cape, to India, and built a sea empire of forts and cannon without taking land. Spain went west by miscalculation, divided the globe at Tordesillas, and then conquered two empires with allies and smallpox. What crossed decided everything: disease went west and emptied a hemisphere, crops went both ways, and silver went east and raised every price in Europe. Part two follows the silver to Amsterdam, where merchants despised by nobles built the counting-house. By the end you will be able to name the means and the motives. To tell Portugal's route east. To tell Spain's route west. To describe the exchange and the conquests. And to describe silver, viceroys, encomienda and Las Casas.

Two entries on means and motives: the instruments that made the open Atlantic sailable, and the spices, gold and crusading habit that sent ships into it.

Out into the wind system, not along the coast.

WC1 1501 Caravel, Compass, Astrolabe: What Made Ocean Sailing Possible

By about fourteen hundred Europeans had the caravel, small and oceangoing with lateen and square sails, the magnetic compass, the astrolabe for latitude, and coastal charts, instruments borrowed from the Arab world and China. Sailing out into the Atlantic wind system, not along the coast, was the practical key. Technology enabled the voyages; motive sent them, and the next entry gives it.

Around the middlemen, with the crusade aboard.

WC1 1502 Why Sail West or South: Spices, Gold, Crusade

Europeans wanted a direct route to Asian spices and silk around Muslim and Venetian middlemen, and gold. The Reconquest's crusading habit went to sea with them, the anchor says, profit and religion together as in the crusades. The frame of middlemen is the anchor's, and historians revise it. Neither motive explains the voyages alone.

Three entries on Portugal east: Henry's captains and the first Atlantic slave cargoes, Dias and da Gama, and a sea empire of forts that took no land.

Down the coast, for gold and then for people.

WC1 1503 Henry the Navigator and the African Coast

Prince Henry, thirteen ninety-four to fourteen sixty, sent captains down Africa's coast and settled Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde, seeking gold and then enslaved Africans, the first Atlantic cargoes in the fourteen forties by the anchor's date. The school at Sagres is a tradition historians doubt, attributed. The slave trade begins here, a century before the Caribbean.

The Cape, then India.

WC1 1504 Dias 1488, da Gama 1497: Portugal Reaches India

Dias rounded the Cape in fourteen eighty-eight. Vasco da Gama reached India in fourteen ninety-eight, the witness's date for arrival where the anchor dates the voyage from fourteen ninety-seven, and his cargo repaid the voyage many times over, the anchor's multiple attributed. Cabral claimed Brazil in fifteen hundred. Portugal went east; learn the direction before the names.

Forts and cannon, not territory.

WC1 1505 The Portuguese Sea Empire: Forts, Cannon, Monopoly

Portugal built fortified trading posts, Goa, Malacca and Hormuz among them, and enforced a monopoly on the sea route to Europe with cannon-armed ships against merchants who had never armed theirs. The Indian Ocean's own trade continued around them. A network, not an empire of land, and part two shows who took it.

Three entries on Spain west: Columbus's miscalculation, the line of Tordesillas, and the circumnavigation that Magellan began and Elcano finished.

Wrong about the size, not the shape.

WC1 1506 Columbus, 1492: The Miscalculation That Found a Hemisphere

Columbus, a Genoese refused by Portugal, misjudged the earth's size, not its shape, which educated Europeans knew was round. In fourteen ninety-two Isabella sent him with three ships and about ninety men; he reached the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola and believed it was Asia, and across four voyages was recalled in chains. Indians is his error, and his brutality as governor is the record.

Oceans partitioned before they were crossed.

WC1 1507 Tordesillas, 1494: Dividing the Globe

The Treaty of Tordesillas in fourteen ninety-four moved a papal line about eleven hundred miles west of Cape Verde, the anchor's figure: Portugal east, Spain west, which gave Portugal Brazil, two Catholic kingdoms partitioning oceans neither had crossed. Vespucci's accounts named America. The line explains Brazil's language; learn it for the map.

One ship home, without its captain.

WC1 1508 Magellan and Elcano, 1519 to 1522

Magellan's expedition left in fifteen nineteen, found the strait, crossed the Pacific, and lost him in the Philippines; Elcano brought one ship home in fifteen twenty-two, the first circumnavigation, proving the earth's size and the ocean's width. Elcano rests on the anchor, since the witness names Magellan alone. Magellan did not complete the voyage; say Elcano.

Four entries on exchange and conquest: what crossed each way, why epidemic decided everything, Cortes at Tenochtitlan, and Pizarro amid an Inca civil war.

Crops enriched both worlds; disease emptied one.

WC1 1509 The Columbian Exchange: Crops, Animals, and Disease

The Columbian Exchange ran both ways: maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cacao and tobacco to the Old World; wheat, sugar, horses, cattle, pigs and sheep to the New. Disease was the decisive transfer, smallpox, measles and influenza against peoples without immunity. The anchor lists coffee oddly, and the course omits it. Crops enriched both worlds; disease emptied one.

Armies of hundreds beat empires that were dying.

WC1 1510 The Great Dying: Why Epidemic Decided the Conquest

The anchor puts mortality in the Americas at about ninety percent over the century after contact, one estimate among several, attributed. The conquest's speed depended on it: armies of hundreds beat empires because the empires were dying, smallpox in Tenochtitlan during the siege. The figure is contested; the catastrophe is not.

Allies and smallpox, not Spanish numbers.

WC1 1511 Cortes and the Fall of Tenochtitlan, 1519 to 1521

Cortes landed in fifteen nineteen with the anchor's four hundred fifty men and fifteen horses, took Malinche as interpreter, allied with the Tlaxcalans, witness-named subjects of the Aztecs, seized Moctezuma, and after siege and smallpox took Tenochtitlan in August fifteen twenty-one; the anchor's fifteen twenty-two is recorded. Alliance and epidemic, not Spanish numbers, explain it.

A civil war, a room of gold, an execution.

WC1 1512 Pizarro, Atahualpa, and the End of the Inca

Pizarro reached Peru in fifteen thirty-one amid an Inca civil war, seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca, took a room of gold as ransom, and executed him; the empire fell by fifteen thirty-three, the witness's date. Civil war did for Peru what alliance did for Mexico. Conquistadors were private adventurers under royal license, owing the crown a fifth.

Three entries on silver and New Spain: Potosi and the labor draft that mined it, viceroys with encomienda and hacienda, and the Dominican who denounced the conquest.

A mountain of silver, mined by a draft.

WC1 1513 Potosi, the Mita, and the Silver Flood

Silver flowed from Potosi from fifteen forty-five, mined by the mita, the Andean labor draft turned to the mines, with mercury and mortality. Silver made Spain's century and drove inflation across Europe, the price revolution by the course's name, which the anchor describes unnamed. The mita is witnessed thirty-two times; Potosi by spelling is not.

Labor by grant, land by estate.

WC1 1514 Governing New Spain: Viceroys, Encomienda, Hacienda

Viceroys ruled New Spain and Peru for the crown. The encomienda granted Indian labor and tribute with a duty of protection and conversion, and was abused; the hacienda, the landed estate, followed. A pope in fifteen thirty-seven declared Indians rational beings capable of conversion, the bull's name a course disclosure. Encomienda is labor and hacienda is land; the exam tests the pair.

A former encomendero denounces the conquest.

WC1 1515 Las Casas, the New Laws, and Valladolid

Bartolome de Las Casas, a Dominican who had held an encomienda, denounced the conquest's cruelty; the New Laws of fifteen forty-two curbed the encomienda on paper, and colonists resisted; at Valladolid he debated whether Indians could be enslaved, his opponent's name a course disclosure. This entry rests on the witness texts; the anchor omits Las Casas.

Look at what you can now do. You can name the caravel, compass and astrolabe, and the spices, gold and crusading habit that sent them out into the wind. You can tell Henry's captains and the first slave cargoes of the fourteen forties, Dias in fourteen eighty-eight, da Gama in fourteen ninety-eight, and a sea empire of forts that took no land. You can tell Columbus wrong about the size in fourteen ninety-two, Tordesillas dividing oceans in fourteen ninety-four, and Elcano's one ship home in fifteen twenty-two. You can describe crops both ways and disease one way, the Great Dying that let hundreds beat empires, Cortes with allies and smallpox, and Pizarro in a civil war. And you can describe Potosi and the mita, viceroys with encomienda for labor and hacienda for land, and Las Casas and the New Laws. Part two follows the silver east through the price revolution to Amsterdam, and the sugar that built the slave trade.