Europe Overseas and the Commercial Revolution, 1415 to 1648

This is Unit Sixteen of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the commercial revolution, from Spain's castas and the price revolution to Amsterdam's exchange and the Atlantic slave trade, with the five procedures the exam tests on Europe overseas. Part one ended with Las Casas and the New Laws. Carry the same idea through this part: from the ships to the counting-house. Silver went east from Potosi and raised every price in Europe, then passed on through Spain toward India and China. Spain sorted its subjects into castas, and sugar in Brazil and the Caribbean demanded labor that the Atlantic slave trade supplied. And the wealth did not stay with Spain. Kings still thought wealth was a fixed pie of land and bullion, and Spain was mercantilism's type; but in Amsterdam merchants despised by nobles built exchanges and banks, chartered the VOC as a joint-stock company with a fleet, took Portugal's posts, and invented the bubble. By sixteen forty-eight the center had moved from Venice to Amsterdam, and from bullion to shares. By the end you will be able to describe castas, prices, mercantilism and the nobilities. To describe Amsterdam. To tell sugar and the North. To sequence, map, classify, read two authors, and sort statements. And to state the chain.

Four entries on society, prices and the fixed pie: rank by birthplace and blood, silver's inflation, mercantilism's assumptions, and two nobilities that despised merchants.

A hierarchy by birthplace and blood.

WC1 1516 Peninsulares, Criollos, Mestizos: Colonial Society

Spanish-born peninsulares held the top offices over criollos born in the colonies; mestizos of mixed descent, mulatos, Indians and enslaved Africans ranked below in the castas, a hierarchy by birthplace and blood. The anchor's judgment on the demographic catastrophe is carried as the record. Creole resentment of peninsulares is a later story; the ranks are this unit's.

Silver in, prices up.

WC1 1517 The Price Revolution: Silver and Sixteenth-Century Inflation

American silver, arriving through Spain, raised prices across Europe through the sixteenth century, the witness's inflation, hurting wage-earners and landlords on fixed rents and helping merchants and debtors, while the silver passed on through Spain toward India and China. The course calls it the price revolution; the name is the course's, and the mechanism is the anchor's and the witness's.

Wealth as land and bullion, and nothing made by trade.

WC1 1518 Mercantilism: Wealth as a Fixed Pie

Mercantilism held that wealth was finite, land and bullion, so a kingdom grew richer only by seizing territory, running trade surpluses to draw in metal, and holding colonies for raw materials, with the crown overseeing all of it; trade was thought to make nothing and bankers were despised. Spain was the type. Mercantilism describes a mindset, not a single law, and a procedure later in this lecture sorts its statements.

Sword, robe, and contempt for merchants.

WC1 1519 Nobles of the Sword, Nobles of the Robe, and Despised Merchants

By the seventeenth century nobles split into nobles of the sword, heirs of warriors, and nobles of the robe, appointed or purchased, titles sold for revenue making the second kind. Both were landowners rather than fighters, and both despised merchants as parasites on Christian order, the new nobles most contemptuous, the anchor says. Parasites is the nobles' word, not the course's.

Three entries on Amsterdam: the Dutch as Europe's middlemen and bankers, the company that sold shares in itself rather than a voyage, and the bulb worth half a mansion.

Trade as a lifeline during a revolt.

WC1 1520 The Dutch as Middlemen and Bankers

During their revolt the Dutch made trade their lifeline, shipping Russian timber, English cloth and German wine as Europe's middlemen and bankers, with formal currency exchange and a stock market in Amsterdam, the exchange and bank by name being disclosures. The Netherlands replaced northern Italy as trade's heart. Rembrandt's golden age lies after sixteen forty-eight, named only as direction.

Shares in a company, not a voyage.

WC1 1521 The VOC, 1602: Shares, Monopoly, Force

In sixteen oh two Dutch merchants chartered the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, the anchor's first corporation, with a legal monopoly on the East Indies trade: joint stock, shares in a company rather than a voyage. It pushed out rivals by force and paid the anchor's thirty percent dividends, and half of Europe's merchant ships were Dutch by sixteen twenty, the anchor says.

Value from what buyers will pay.

WC1 1522 Tulip Mania, 1636 to 1637: The First Speculative Bubble

Tulip bulbs became traded commodities in the sixteen twenties; the anchor's five thousand guilders for one bulb in sixteen twenty-five was half a mansion. In the winter of sixteen thirty-six bulbs changed hands ten times a day, and the crash came in sixteen thirty-seven, value coming from what buyers would pay. The tulip craze rests on the anchor alone.

Two entries on sugar and the North: plantations that turned a trade begun in the fourteen forties into the largest forced migration in history, and three small colonies beside Spanish America.

Plantations, and the labor they demanded.

WC1 1523 Sugar and the Beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Sugar needed plantations and labor, and enslaved Africans replaced dying Native Americans. The Atlantic trade began in the sixteenth century, the asiento on the witness, and grew with Caribbean sugar in the seventeenth, the anchor's twelve to fifteen million carried, most to Brazil and the Caribbean, and the Middle Passage killing the anchor's million. The anchor's first racial slavery claim is its own.

Tobacco, furs, and a flight from the Anglican state.

WC1 1524 Jamestown, Quebec, Plymouth: North America Before 1650

Jamestown, founded in sixteen oh seven, nearly died before tobacco saved it. Champlain founded Quebec in sixteen oh eight for furs. Puritans landed at Plymouth in sixteen twenty and settled Massachusetts Bay from sixteen thirty, fleeing the Anglican state, small and poor beside Spanish America until the eighteenth century. The anchor's sixteen twenties is imprecise; the witness dates both.

Five procedures: two spines of voyages merged, a line and two routes on the map, five kinds of exchange by direction, Columbus read against Las Casas, and statements sorted by whether wealth is fixed.

Two spines, merged.

WC1 1525 Sequencing the Voyages, 1488 to 1522

Portuguese and Spanish tracks interleave, so build two spines. Portugal: Dias fourteen eighty-eight, da Gama fourteen ninety-eight, Cabral fifteen hundred. Spain: Columbus fourteen ninety-two, Tordesillas fourteen ninety-four, Magellan fifteen nineteen to twenty-two, Cortes fifteen nineteen to twenty-one, Pizarro fifteen thirty-one to thirty-three. Merged: Dias four years before Columbus; Columbus two years before Tordesillas; Tordesillas four before da Gama's arrival; Cabral two after da Gama; Magellan sails the year Cortes lands; Tenochtitlan falls one year before Elcano returns; Pizarro a decade later; Potosi in fifteen forty-five. Tordesillas was signed before anyone knew what lay west of the line, so it precedes Brazil and the Pacific, and da Gama's arrival is fourteen ninety-eight on the witness though he sailed in ninety-seven.

The line first, then the routes.

WC1 1526 Reading a Map of Tordesillas and the Two Sea Routes

Read the line first: everything east of Tordesillas to Portugal, everything west to Spain, with Brazil the exception that proves the line's position. Then the routes: Portugal south around Africa to India, Spain west across the Atlantic and, after Magellan, the Pacific. A line through the Atlantic with Brazil's bulge on its eastern side is Tordesillas. A route hugging Africa to the Cape with forts marked is Portugal's, Goa and Malacca among them. A route from Seville to the Caribbean and on to Mexico and Peru is Spain's. A route from Acapulco to the Philippines is the Manila galleon, a witness name, carrying silver to China. A Dutch route around the Cape after sixteen oh two follows Portugal's and takes its posts. The pope's first line of fourteen ninety-three ran nearer the Azores, and only the second line gives Portugal Brazil.

Which direction, and what effect.

WC1 1527 Classifying an Exchange: Crop, Animal, Disease, Metal, Person

Ask which direction and what effect. Crops both ways, enriching diets. Animals mostly west, transforming work and war. Disease mostly west, emptying populations. Metal east, inflating prices. People west by force, building plantations. A tuber from the Andes that fed Ireland is a crop, eastward. A herd animal that gave Plains peoples mobility is the horse, westward. A fever killing nine in ten in a valley with no exposure is disease, westward. Bars through Seville raising bread prices in Germany are metal, eastward. Captives sold under a crown contract to a sugar planter are people, westward, the asiento. Sugar went west as a crop and came back east as the product of enslaved labor, so it belongs in two columns, and tobacco likewise. Classify by the first crossing, note the return, and keep the anchor's judgment on the whole as attributed.

Who writes, for whom, and what they want you to conclude.

WC1 1528 Reading Columbus's Letter and Las Casas Against Each Other

For each author ask who writes, for whom, and what the writer wants the reader to conclude. Columbus's letter of fourteen ninety-three and Las Casas's account of the conquest, both read in translation from Fordham's Modern History Sourcebook, are the pair. Columbus writes to the Spanish court to justify his voyage: the islands are rich, the people gentle and easily converted, gold is near; he wants funding and a title, and he assumes the land is the crown's, the people are subjects to be made Christian, and wealth measures success. Las Casas writes to the crown a half-century later to end the encomienda: the Spaniards have destroyed whole peoples by cruelty; he wants law reformed, and he assumes the Indians are rational souls, the crown is responsible for them, and the methods, not the fact, of conquest are the sin. What they share is Spanish sovereignty and Christian mission; they differ on treatment. Las Casas is a critic of cruelty within empire, not of empire, and he rests on the witness texts.

Fixed, or growable.

WC1 1529 Mercantilist or Commercial? Sorting Statements

Ask one question: does the statement treat wealth as fixed or as growable. Fixed, drawn in by surplus and colony, is mercantilist. Growable, made by exchange and reinvested, is commercial, what the anchor calls early capitalism. A kingdom that imports more than it exports bleeds its treasure: mercantilist. A company paying dividends from spice profits and selling shares to fund more ships: commercial. Colonies exist to supply raw materials and take the mother country's goods: mercantilist. A bulb worth what the next buyer will pay: commercial. Bankers make nothing and live on others' wealth: mercantilist, the noble's contempt. A crown running its colonial trade directly, Spain, is mercantilist in form even while its silver feeds commercial markets elsewhere. The two outlooks overlapped for two centuries, and the anchor says mercantilism worked well enough; the Dutch and English were moving toward the second while Spain stayed.

One capstone entry: the two chapters told from the ships to the counting-house, ending in Amsterdam.

Portugal south, Spain west, Amsterdam at the end.

WC1 1530 How the Atlantic Reordered Europe's Wealth by 1648

The exam's questions on exploration and on economic change belong to one story, and the anchor's two chapters tell it from the ships to the counting-house. Portugal went first and south: Henry's captains down Africa, Dias round the Cape in fourteen eighty-eight, da Gama to India in fourteen ninety-eight, and a sea empire of forts and cannon that took the spice trade from the Venetians and Arabs without taking any land. Spain went west: Columbus in fourteen ninety-two by miscalculation, Tordesillas in fourteen ninety-four dividing the globe, Magellan's ship home in fifteen twenty-two, and then the conquests, Cortes with allies and smallpox at Tenochtitlan in fifteen twenty-one, Pizarro in a civil war at Cajamarca. What crossed decided everything: disease went west and killed most of the hemisphere; crops went both ways; silver went east from Potosi after fifteen forty-five and raised every price in Europe, then passed on through Spain toward India and China. Spain ruled what it took by viceroys, encomienda and hacienda, argued with itself through Las Casas and the New Laws, and sorted its subjects into castas, while sugar demanded labor and the Atlantic slave trade, begun in the sixteenth century, grew in the seventeenth into the largest forced migration in history. And the wealth did not stay with Spain. Kings still thought wealth a fixed pie of land and bullion, mercantilism, with Spain its type; but in Amsterdam merchants despised by nobles built exchanges and banks, chartered the VOC in sixteen oh two as a joint-stock company with a monopoly and a fleet, took Portugal's posts, and by sixteen thirty-seven had even invented the bubble. By sixteen forty-eight the center of Europe's economy had moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, from Venice to Amsterdam, and from bullion to shares. The exam does not ask whether the Atlantic made Europe rich or the Americas poor, and the course says both happened without a verdict; it asks who rounded the Cape, what Tordesillas did, what the Exchange carried, why the conquest succeeded, what the mita was, what mercantilism assumed, what the VOC was. The anchor's figures are attributed, its dates corrected on the witness, Las Casas and the New Laws come from the witness, and the names the course cannot source are disclosures, not lessons.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe castas ranked by birthplace and blood, silver raising every price, mercantilism's fixed pie with Spain as its type, and nobles of sword and robe calling merchants parasites. You can describe the Dutch as middlemen and bankers, the VOC of sixteen oh two selling shares in a company, and a bulb worth half a mansion crashing in sixteen thirty-seven. You can tell sugar turning the slave trade into the largest forced migration, and Jamestown, Quebec and Plymouth small beside Spanish America. You can merge two spines of voyages, read the line and the routes, classify an exchange by direction and effect, read Columbus and Las Casas for what they share, and sort statements by whether wealth is fixed. And you can state the chain from Venice to Amsterdam and from bullion to shares, which is this unit's one idea. Unit seventeen opens on the wars that the Peace of Augsburg left unsettled, and on the science that changed how Europe read the sky.