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Grandpa's US Colonial History to 1800
By Terrence Hagen Abbott Press
Copyright © 2013Terrence Hagen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4582-0773-9
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Background for Exploration & Discovery
In this chapter we will learn that the discovery of the Americas (North and South) didn't "just happen". It was the result of years of the growth and expansion of European civilization. During the Middle Ages Europe was extending its' political power and commerce to all parts of the world as the knowledge of science and geography expanded. The eventual discovery of the Americas was the most significant step in the overall expansion of European culture. This activity set the stage for discovery and if Christopher Columbus had not discovered the Americas, someone else would have eventually done so.
We will study each of the major world events which led to the age of exploration and discovery, such as:
• The Crusades from 1095-1291
• The Renaissance from the 14th Century through the 17th Century
• The rise of absolute Monarchs and their Nation States
• The expansion of World-wide Commerce and Mercantilism
• A Growing Geographic Curiosity
A. THE CRUSADES
In the year 1095, Christians, led by Pope Urban II, sought to control the Holy Land and Palestine from the Moslem Turks in what became known as the "First Crusade". Over the next 200 years, Western Europe launched six more Crusades with the unintended consequences of those Crusades creating an interaction with the more advanced Moslem and Byzantine Civilizations.
Despite some initial successes, the Crusades failed to establish a permanent Christian presence in Palestine. Another unintended consequence was the expansion of world trade by creating a market, in Europe, for those eastern civilization products, such as, spices, sugar, silk, rugs, paper, glassware, and precious stones. This profitable trade became the monopoly of:
• Asian middle-men who brought eastern goods by overland· caravan to eastern Mediterranean ports, especially Alexandria and Constantinople.
• Italian merchants from city-states such as Genoa and Venice· who shipped their products from the eastern Mediterranean region to Western Europe.
Because of the many middle-men, each adding to the cost of the goods, eastern goods remained high-priced luxuries. Meanwhile, the Italian city-states grew prosperous. But, it became difficult and expensive for Europe to obtain Asiatic goods. Merchants began looking for better and more economic ways to obtain them but had to overcome the following obstacles:
• 1. The goods were expensive after being transported over long· and difficult routes.
• 2. The shortage of gold in Europe and the absence of demand· in the east for European goods made it difficult for Europe to pay for Asiatic imports or exchange goods for them.
In spite of the obstacles, Europeans were eager for the commodities of Asia.
B. THE RENAISSANCE
By definition, "renaissance" means "rebirth or revival". The Renaissance was a period of growing intellectual interest by western Europeans in the worldly aspects of civilization. Scholars of this period emphasized reason, questioned authority, and pursued free inquiry. They focused their interest in the Byzantine and Moslem civilizations as well as the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
The center of the Renaissance was in the Italian city-sates because:
1. Italy had been a center of the Greek-Roman cultures.
2. Italians were in close contact with the advanced Byzantine and Moslems worlds.
3. There were many wealthy Italian merchants with considerable interest in and exposure to literature, science, and the arts.
During the middle-ages, western Europeans traveled little and such travel was mainly over land by foot or horse or along the Atlantic and/ or Mediterranean coasts in small ships. The geographic knowledge of western Europeans was limited to Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia. When the Renaissance focused attention on scientific matters, Europeans wanted to know more about the world's size, shape, and cultures.
In order to reach distant lands by water, they drew precise maps, built faster and safer ships, and achieved greater accuracy in using the compass to determine direction and in using the astrolabe to determine latitude. By the 15th century, educated Europeans accepted the belief, held by ancient Greeks, that the world was not flat but round.
C. THE RISE OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHS & NATION STATES
During the middle-ages, most Kings exercised minimal power, ruling only their immediate royal domains and had little control over their Feudal Lords who held most of the land. Near the end of the middle-ages the Kings began to extend their authority over the Lords and eventually became absolute Monarchs. Royal power was strengthened by:
1. The Crusades and other wars which killed many Feudal Lords.
2. The rising merchant or middle class which supported the King to insure the protection of their property and trade.
3. The growing spirit of nationalism in which the King was considered the symbol of national unity.
Since the Kings protected domestic and foreign commerce, the merchants lent money and willingly paid taxes to them and thereby enabled the Monarchs to gain power at the expense of the nobility. As these nation-states became strong, their Kings tried to gain advantages for their own nations over the others in a contest to dominate territory and trade.
In western Europe, Monarchs sought to unite peoples of a common nationality and developed unified national states, such as England, France, Portugal and Spain, all created by the end of the 15th century.
The most significant result of the growing national states and their need for increased commercial trade was the encouragement of voyages of discovery because:
1. Nation-states possessed sufficient wealth to finance such voyages.
2. The absolute Monarchs desired colonial empires to increase their national wealth, power and prestige.
3. The middle-class wanted increased trade and the benefits it provided.
4. Portugal and Spain sought to diminish the monopoly of the Italian city-states by seeking an all-water route to Asia and took the lead in sponsoring such discovery voyages.
D. EXPANSION OF WORLD-WIDE COMMERCE & MERCANTILISM
World commerce was built on new methods of financing, such as the use of borrowed capital, with interest, the use of money as vehicle of exchange, and the creation of banks. The world began to see significant growth in the volume and variety of goods traded. These long- developing changes were soon followed by a shift in the eventual commercial supremacy of Western Europe over Italy. The expansion of commerce was an essential element in the background of discovery.
The term, "mercantilism" referred to an economic philosophy underlying early European colonial policy. It referred to the objective of a nation increasing its wealth through a favorable "balance of trade" which meant that a nation should sell more than it purchased, thus creating a surplus in its treasury.
As the name suggests, merchants were key to the successful implementation of this theory and policy. Merchants would sell products to foreign nations and also purchase items to be sold within their own country. The goal was to gain wealth at the expense of other nations and the ideal was to become economically self-sufficient by minimizing imports, which cost money, and maximizing exports which would add revenues to
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Excerpted from Grandpa's US Colonial History to 1800 by Terrence Hagen. Copyright © 2013 by Terrence Hagen. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press.
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