Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [135]
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CHAPTER 14
Europe and the World: New Encounters, 1500–1800
A 1536 Mercator projection map showing the route of Ferdinand Magellan’s first circumnavigation of the world
© Everett Collection
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CHAPTER OUTLINE AND FOCUS QUESTIONS
On the Brink of a New World
Why did Europeans begin to embark on voyages of discovery and expansion at the end of the fifteenth century?
New Horizons: The Portuguese and Spanish Empires
How did Portugal and Spain acquire their overseas empires, and how did their empires differ?
New Rivals on the World Stage
How did the arrival of the Dutch, British, and French on the world scene in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries affect Africa, India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan? What were the main features of the African slave trade, and what effects did it have on Africa?
The Impact of European Expansion
How did European expansion affect both the conquerors and the conquered?
Toward a World Economy
What was mercantilism, and what was its relationship to colonial empires?
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CRITICAL THINKING
What was the relationship between European overseas expansion and political, economic, and social developments in Europe?
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WHILE MANY EUROPEANS were occupied with the problems of dynastic expansion and religious reform, others were taking voyages that propelled Europeans far beyond the medieval walls in which they had been enclosed for almost a thousand years. One of these adventurers was the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Convinced that he could find a sea passage to Asia through America, Magellan persuaded the king of Spain to finance an exploratory voyage. On August 10, 1519, Magellan set sail on the Atlantic with five ships and a Spanish crew of 277 men. After a stormy and difficult crossing of the Atlantic, Magellan’s fleet moved down the coast of South America, searching for the elusive strait that would take him through. His Spanish ship captains thought he was crazy: “The fool is obsessed with his search for a strait,” one remarked. “On the flame of his ambition he will crucify us all.” At last, in October 1520, he found it, passing through a narrow waterway (later named the Strait of Magellan) and emerging into an unknown ocean that he called the Pacific Sea. Magellan reckoned that it would then be a short distance to the Spice Islands of the East, but he was badly mistaken. Week after week, he and his crew sailed on across the Pacific as their food supplies dwindled. According to one account, “When their last biscuit had gone, they scraped the maggots out of the casks, mashed them and served them as gruel. They made cakes out of sawdust soaked with the urine of rats—the rats themselves, as delicacies, had long since been hunted to extinction.” At last they reached the islands that would later be called the Philippines (after King Philip II of Spain), where Magellan met his death at the hands of the natives. Although only one of his original fleet of five ships survived and returned to Spain, Magellan is still remembered as the first person to circumnavigate the world.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, European adventurers like Magellan had begun launching small fleets into the vast reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. They were hardly aware that they were beginning a new era, not only for Europe, but for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas as well. Nevertheless, the voyages of these Europeans marked the beginning of a process that led to radical changes in the political, economic, and cultural life of the entire world.
Between 1500 and 1800, European power engulfed the