australian colonial history
meg dillon
© Meg Dillon 2008
Australian Colonial History
Western Civilisation
Session 8
8

Colonization 1500 – 1970

Introduction to Colonization issues:

Definition : Various European nations explored, conquered, settled and exploited large area of the world outside Europe. • Main phases of colonization [Imperialism] o 1500 – 1600 Power of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers and colonizers (Show 12 min video) o Also Dutch French English from 1600 to 1750 o European expansion since 1750 (show 45 min video of English in India) o WW1 and the interwar period 1913 – 1939 o Post WW2 decolonization In this session we will only look at the early colonization efforts of the Portuguese and Spanish and then the long colonization of the Caribbean and India by the English. More time is needed to look at Dutch and French efforts and the later grab for Africa in the early twentieth century, followed by the decolonization processes and their aftermaths.

Three key factors pushed Europe into starting exploration

• 1380 – 1500. Oriental land routes for trade terminated in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt where Venetian and Genoese galleys would purchase and collect goods for sale in Europe while offering European goods for sale to the land merchants returning home. Venice had monopoly in spice trade, luxury fabrics etc. o Pack trains would transport goods up the Rhone valley o Flanders galleys to France, England, Holland etc. o Land routes other than these gradually closed. • Europe short of cash despite the Italian world banks of the Bardi and Medici. Gold came from central Africa by caravan from Upper Volta. Largely a barter economy existed for many people. • Technological improvements made exploration more possible. o 1400s ship building designs improved allowing ships more room for cargo. Galleys were superseded by caravels, then three masted carracks with rounded hulls & square rigging which were able to cope with ocean winds outside the calmer Mediterranean sea. o Navigational instruments improved: primitive compass borrowed from the East. The astrolobe known since Roman times came into use again. o New maps invented showing harbor entrances and coast lines: portolanic maps

1.

Portuguese and Spanish 1500 – 1600

1494 Columbus’s first voyage resulted in the Portuguese and Spanish partitioning the world by an imaginary north/south line near the Cape Verde islands , known as the Treaty of Tordesillas. East of Cape Verde Islands was Portuguese and [ India, East Indies, Brazil] they operated in the East for nearly 100 years without competition. West, the Americas, was available for Spain. Show Video Spanish and Portugese colonizations : Khan Academy, 12 minutes. Discussion of the following points:

Portuguese Empire.

• Did not settle lands but was a commercial operation with a series of fortifications and posts strategically suited to trade. Relied on allisnces with natives and used native sepoy troops to keep the peace. o Goa, Malacca,Hormuz in Iran for the Persian Gulf, Thailand and Ming Dynasty China. Also Japan. • Not as profitable as the Crown hoped. It was a royal monopoly but all types of subjects traded for personal profit illegally reducing the crown’s profits. • Treatment of Indigenous people: Historians are divided about this issue. Some believe the introduction of Catholicism was minimal. o Indigenous people treated as inferiors o Settlements in Brazil were organized as capitanias and governed under feudal conditions. Huge abuses were possible before the Portuguese government changed the system. o In general more research needs to be done to explore this issue further in Brazil. • 1580 Phillip of Spain seized the Portuguese throne which had fallen vacant. Spain’s European enemies took the opportunity of appropriating parts of Portugal’s overseas Empire, especially Dutch, French and English who quickly claimed places after the Cape Horn route had been discovered.

Spanish Empire:

• Spain settled West of the Line and explored parts of the Americas. Eg West Indian islands, Panama, Peru and Central America [Nicoragua, Mexico etc] Peru, Bolivia Chile Argentina, Columbia etc. • Spanish conquered Aztecs of Mexico with the aid of indigenous allies. Spanish seized the rich gold and silver mined there. • Explored parts of southern areas of USA but ignored them as nothing of values was found there. • Spanish occupation very profitable as they discovered and exported huge quantities of gold and silver back to Europe. Despite this Spanish rulers remained mostly in debt due to the large numbers of local wars that Spain fought in Europe. Even so, more money was raised through taxation in Spain, rather than bullion taken from their colonies. • Spanish ruled in these areas for 300 years, all lands being part of the King’s estates. • Viceroys governed the various colonial areas aided by large numbers of bureaucrats.

Social issues:

• Spanish colonies were highly stratified. American born Spaniards resented Spanish control. Below them were the mestizo – mixed race offspring of Europeans and Indians. Indians and black slaves were lower again in social scale. • Spain tried to solve the Indian issues by creating the encomienda, a system of feudal-type arrangements where Spanish proprietors of land were supposed to care for them, but in fact enslaved of treated them badly causing Dominican friars to work for its abolition. • Diseases reduced their population in several generations and they were replaced by black slaves and the mestizo population which grew in numbers. Slavery and feudalism always create abuses and cruelties. Although some historians argue the Spanish settlement of the Americas was less brutal than previously thought, this argument has to be treated with caution.

Changes in Europe:

Colonization strategies brought many changes to Europe, while denuding the colonies of wealth and power. • Commercial revolution through stimulus from large quantities of bullion now circulating. Money economy was created superceding the old barter economy. • Trade profits enjoyed by the Italians and Hansiatic League declined and replaced by those of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French. • Innovations in financial management appeared largely pioneered by the Dutch, but quickly embraced by the English in the seventeenth century. These increased the capital available for merchants to trade with the colonies - joint stock companies, exchange banks that managed bills of exchange and a stock exchange. The creation of a national debt funded by bonds sold to the public was also a key in providing a government with cheap loans that would be securely repaid. Dutch financial innovations • Mercantile Theory was developed that argued that true wealth consisted of precious metals and proposed ways of merchants and government interactions. • New foods and beverages: coffee, chocolate, potato, tea, cotton, sugar spices controlled by the Dutch and others. • Literature explored the New World themes eg Utopia, Tamberlaine, Gullivers Travels.etc. Often fanciful. • Astronomy was revolutionized by the discovery of the Southern Skies. • Map making continued to be vastly improved.

English expansion

Two major abuses: Slave Trade and reduction of the indigenous populations:

Slave Trade • Has died out in Europe but revived by Portuguese in 1442 when they enslaved the berbers. They populated most of their overseas possessions with slaves • By 1502 Slaves were introduced by Spanish to their American colonies as the Indian population declined. Mestizo population flourished and held the need for slave workers in check to some extent. • Portuguese introduced slavery to Brazil up til 1775. • West Indian islands colonized by English, French, Dutch and Danes. o Manual labour fist performed by poor whites, indentured, on contract,convicts. In englang some unemployed vagrants were shipped out too. • John Hawkins, an Englishman, ran his first slaving expedition and sold them in the Spanish Indies. • Black slaves were used in Virginia by 1625. Various English joint stock companies were given royal approval to enter the slave trade 1663 – 1755. Jamaica was the biggest user of slaves 610,00 between 1700 – 1786. About 150 British ships sailed from British ports yearly with total cargoes of 40,000 slaves. England became the biggest commercial dealer in the transatlantic slave trade. • Very little opposition until William Wilberforce led a long campaign in England resulting in the trade ceasing in England in 1807 and later, in 1834, in most of the British Empire, after Britain allocated the huge sum of between £20 million and £50 million to compensate Caribbean slave owners for releasing their slaves. British slaves in the Carribean Indigenous populations were sometimes wiped out or decimated in two or three generations after contact with Europeans. European diseases were one of the main causes, although warfare, policies of extermination, famine, cruelty and forced labor all contributed to their demise.

The English in India

Play Video Britains colonization of the world 45 mins Discuss the following ideas raised in the video. 1. How did economic reforms in England give it the chance to fight successful wars with France and take over all French colonies in the Caribbean, North America and Canada? 2. Were the English able to stay so long in India due to the pseudo government of the continent by the East India Company that conducted diplomacy, fought local wars and maintained an army of 100,000 Indian sepoys? 3. England enriched and India impoverished: In what ways did the occupation of India destabilize that continent and create famines and poverty for the average Indian worker?

Want to find out more?

Texts:

1. Encyclopedia Britannica, Comprehensive overview 1500 – C21st. Colonization E. Britannica 2. WIKI Colonization General overview, long reading list. Check how it differs from Britannica. Colonization E. Wiki 3. Theorists of Colonization. Stanford E. Philosophy 4. The CASE AGAINST COLONIZATION The Conversation written by academics & journalists. Uni of Toronto. Author Joseph McQuade, post doctoral fellow.

Videos:

1. Spain & Portugal & global economy Khan Academy 11 minutes. This video recommended and used in our session. 2. The European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. Lecture 60 mins Colonization in asia and Africa. Recommended viewing. 3. Motives for English colonization 100 years after the Portuguese and Spanish. 10 minutes. 4. Start of the slave system in the Americas. 7 minutes. Economeria system. Slave trade and colonization. 5. How Britain made the Modern World. 48 mins British production. Britains colonization of the world. This video recommended and used in our session.
8
australian colonial history
meg dillon
© Meg Dillon 2008
Australian Colonial History
Western Civilisation
Presenter Meg Dillon
Session 8

Colonization 1500 – 1970

Introduction to Colonization issues:

Definition : Various European nations explored, conquered, settled and exploited large area of the world outside Europe. • Main phases of colonization [Imperialism] o 1500 – 1600 Power of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers and colonizers (Show 12 min video) o Also Dutch French English from 1600 to 1750 o European expansion since 1750 (show 45 min video of English in India) o WW1 and the interwar period 1913 – 1939 o Post WW2 decolonization In this session we will only look at the early colonization efforts of the Portuguese and Spanish and then the long colonization of the Caribbean and India by the English. More time is needed to look at Dutch and French efforts and the later grab for Africa in the early twentieth century, followed by the decolonization processes and their aftermaths.

Three key factors pushed Europe into

starting exploration

• 1380 – 1500. Oriental land routes for trade terminated in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt where Venetian and Genoese galleys would purchase and collect goods for sale in Europe while offering European goods for sale to the land merchants returning home. Venice had monopoly in spice trade, luxury fabrics etc. o Pack trains would transport goods up the Rhone valley o Flanders galleys to France, England, Holland etc. o Land routes other than these gradually closed. • Europe short of cash despite the Italian world banks of the Bardi and Medici. Gold came from central Africa by caravan from Upper Volta. Largely a barter economy existed for many people. • Technological improvements made exploration more possible. o 1400s ship building designs improved allowing ships more room for cargo. Galleys were superseded by caravels, then three masted carracks with rounded hulls & square rigging which were able to cope with ocean winds outside the calmer Mediterranean sea. o Navigational instruments improved: primitive compass borrowed from the East. The astrolobe known since Roman times came into use again. o New maps invented showing harbor entrances and coast lines: portolanic maps

1.

Portuguese and Spanish 1500 – 1600

1494 Columbus’s first voyage resulted in the Portuguese and Spanish partitioning the world by an imaginary north/south line near the Cape Verde islands , known as the Treaty of Tordesillas. East of Cape Verde Islands was Portuguese and [ India, East Indies, Brazil] they operated in the East for nearly 100 years without competition. West, the Americas, was available for Spain. Show Video Spanish and Portugese colonizations : Khan Academy, 12 minutes. Discussion of the following points:

Portuguese Empire.

• Did not settle lands but was a commercial operation with a series of fortifications and posts strategically suited to trade. Relied on allisnces with natives and used native sepoy troops to keep the peace. o Goa, Malacca,Hormuz in Iran for the Persian Gulf, Thailand and Ming Dynasty China. Also Japan. • Not as profitable as the Crown hoped. It was a royal monopoly but all types of subjects traded for personal profit illegally reducing the crown’s profits. • Treatment of Indigenous people: Historians are divided about this issue. Some believe the introduction of Catholicism was minimal. o Indigenous people treated as inferiors o Settlements in Brazil were organized as capitanias and governed under feudal conditions. Huge abuses were possible before the Portuguese government changed the system. o In general more research needs to be done to explore this issue further in Brazil. • 1580 Phillip of Spain seized the Portuguese throne which had fallen vacant. Spain’s European enemies took the opportunity of appropriating parts of Portugal’s overseas Empire, especially Dutch, French and English who quickly claimed places after the Cape Horn route had been discovered.

Spanish Empire:

• Spain settled West of the Line and explored parts of the Americas. Eg West Indian islands, Panama, Peru and Central America [Nicoragua, Mexico etc] Peru, Bolivia Chile Argentina, Columbia etc. • Spanish conquered Aztecs of Mexico with the aid of indigenous allies. Spanish seized the rich gold and silver mined there. • Explored parts of southern areas of USA but ignored them as nothing of values was found there. • Spanish occupation very profitable as they discovered and exported huge quantities of gold and silver back to Europe. Despite this Spanish rulers remained mostly in debt due to the large numbers of local wars that Spain fought in Europe. Even so, more money was raised through taxation in Spain, rather than bullion taken from their colonies. • Spanish ruled in these areas for 300 years, all lands being part of the King’s estates. • Viceroys governed the various colonial areas aided by large numbers of bureaucrats.

Social issues:

• Spanish colonies were highly stratified. American born Spaniards resented Spanish control. Below them were the mestizo – mixed race offspring of Europeans and Indians. Indians and black slaves were lower again in social scale. • Spain tried to solve the Indian issues by creating the encomienda, a system of feudal-type arrangements where Spanish proprietors of land were supposed to care for them, but in fact enslaved of treated them badly causing Dominican friars to work for its abolition. • Diseases reduced their population in several generations and they were replaced by black slaves and the mestizo population which grew in numbers. Slavery and feudalism always create abuses and cruelties. Although some historians argue the Spanish settlement of the Americas was less brutal than previously thought, this argument has to be treated with caution.

Changes in Europe:

Colonization strategies brought many changes to Europe, while denuding the colonies of wealth and power. • Commercial revolution through stimulus from large quantities of bullion now circulating. Money economy was created superceding the old barter economy. • Trade profits enjoyed by the Italians and Hansiatic League declined and replaced by those of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French. • Innovations in financial management appeared largely pioneered by the Dutch, but quickly embraced by the English in the seventeenth century. These increased the capital available for merchants to trade with the colonies - joint stock companies, exchange banks that managed bills of exchange and a stock exchange. The creation of a national debt funded by bonds sold to the public was also a key in providing a government with cheap loans that would be securely repaid. Dutch financial innovations • Mercantile Theory was developed that argued that true wealth consisted of precious metals and proposed ways of merchants and government interactions. • New foods and beverages: coffee, chocolate, potato, tea, cotton, sugar spices controlled by the Dutch and others. • Literature explored the New World themes eg Utopia, Tamberlaine, Gullivers Travels.etc. Often fanciful. • Astronomy was revolutionized by the discovery of the Southern Skies. • Map making continued to be vastly improved.

English expansion

Two major abuses: Slave Trade and reduction of the indi-

genous populations:

Slave Trade • Has died out in Europe but revived by Portuguese in 1442 when they enslaved the berbers. They populated most of their overseas possessions with slaves • By 1502 Slaves were introduced by Spanish to their American colonies as the Indian population declined. Mestizo population flourished and held the need for slave workers in check to some extent. • Portuguese introduced slavery to Brazil up til 1775. • West Indian islands colonized by English, French, Dutch and Danes. o Manual labour fist performed by poor whites, indentured, on contract,convicts. In englang some unemployed vagrants were shipped out too. • John Hawkins, an Englishman, ran his first slaving expedition and sold them in the Spanish Indies. • Black slaves were used in Virginia by 1625. Various English joint stock companies were given royal approval to enter the slave trade 1663 – 1755. Jamaica was the biggest user of slaves 610,00 between 1700 – 1786. About 150 British ships sailed from British ports yearly with total cargoes of 40,000 slaves. England became the biggest commercial dealer in the transatlantic slave trade. • Very little opposition until William Wilberforce led a long campaign in England resulting in the trade ceasing in England in 1807 and later, in 1834, in most of the British Empire, after Britain allocated the huge sum of between £20 million and £50 million to compensate Caribbean slave owners for releasing their slaves. British slaves in the Carribean Indigenous populations were sometimes wiped out or decimated in two or three generations after contact with Europeans. European diseases were one of the main causes, although warfare, policies of extermination, famine, cruelty and forced labor all contributed to their demise.

The English in India

Play Video Britains colonization of the world 45 mins Discuss the following ideas raised in the video. 1. How did economic reforms in England give it the chance to fight successful wars with France and take over all French colonies in the Caribbean, North America and Canada? 2. Were the English able to stay so long in India due to the pseudo government of the continent by the East India Company that conducted diplomacy, fought local wars and maintained an army of 100,000 Indian sepoys? 3. England enriched and India impoverished: In what ways did the occupation of India destabilize that continent and create famines and poverty for the average Indian worker?

Want to find out more?

Texts:

1. Encyclopedia Britannica, Comprehensive overview 1500 – C21st. Colonization E. Britannica 2. WIKI Colonization General overview, long reading list. Check how it differs from Britannica. Colonization E. Wiki 3. Theorists of Colonization. Stanford E. Philosophy 4. The CASE AGAINST COLONIZATION The Conversation written by academics & journalists. Uni of Toronto. Author Joseph McQuade, post doctoral fellow.

Videos:

1. Spain & Portugal & global economy Khan Academy 11 minutes. This video recommended and used in our session. 2. The European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. Lecture 60 mins Colonization in asia and Africa. Recommended viewing. 3. Motives for English colonization 100 years after the Portuguese and Spanish. 10 minutes. 4. Start of the slave system in the Americas. 7 minutes. Economeria system. Slave trade and colonization. 5. How Britain made the Modern World. 48 mins British production. Britains colonization of the world. This video recommended and used in our session.