The effect of Columbus’ discovery of the New World, or more
properly, the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Santo Domingo today) was
transformative politically and economically for Spain and ultimately
Europe. He actually didn’t return until
March of 1493. Rumors and speculation of
large amounts of gold, he only brought back a few traces on the initial voyage,
spurred interest in financing of direct colonization. He captured and brought
back some natives, who were seen as an exotic and alien race devoid of any
value than as exploitive sources of local knowledge of resources, gold and
other valuables and as labor source.
This inaugurated the era of overseas exploration and colonialism
that dominated the era of the modern world ever since. Columbus actually had Portuguese
experience, even though he had grown in the port city of Genoa in Italy, he
gained the bulk of his experience in Portugal.
He was married to one of Prince Henry the Navigator’s captains and who
as a governor of the Portuguese colony of Madeira. The couple lived there on that island for a
while and he must have had a very thorough knowledge of the island and
Portuguese influence and contacts with the West Coast of Africa. There is a lot of good speculative evidence
that these Portuguese mariners had been exploring various parts of the middle
Atlantic, and possibly may have reached Brazil, but not fully announced
it.
Altogether he made four voyages, 1492, 1493, 1948 and 1502
completing his tour of the de Gulf of Mexico.
It was Columbus who coined the phrase new world or mondo novo.
Asia and Latin America.
Once Europeans reached the mainland of Central and South America
they also began expanding into the Indian Ocean and toward the Pacific. Almost
immediately competition between Spain and Portugal came to a confrontation that
had to be settled by a Papal decree as intermediary, who drew the Treaty of
Tordesillas in 1494 that divided east and western South America between
Portugal and Spain. Spain was the victor
of course.
The plantation system became a necessary implement of colonization,
because disease, starvation and outright working and beating and killing
depleted the native populations. The
answer was to import slaves in large numbers from Africa.
On the mainland of Central America, the Spanish encountered the
Aztecs a strong centralized government and city state that had an empire throughout
central Mexico. When in 1519 Hernando
Cortes (1485-1547) led a group of 600 men and several hundred horses to the Mexican
coast he made allies among the Tlaxcalan and other native peoples who opposed
Aztecs. Many joined because of the threat of bombardment by Corte4s. Cortes gained
more allies from among the Aztecs enemies after a long battle took Tenochtitlan
from the weakened Aztec forces. He fought Aztec armies until 1521 when he had
taken permanent control of the whole empire.
He shipped Aztec art back to Europe – admired by Albrecht Durer.
Ten years later Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire. He was already rich from his settlement in
Panama City. He captured the Incan
leader Atahualpa 1500 – 1503 and killed thousands of Incas. Now the Incans at the time were under strain
their powerful ruler Huayna Capac ruled 1493 to 1525 had recently died in a
plague which explains part of the main problem of resistance. Atuahualpa paid a
huge ransom for release but the Spanish killed him anyway and Pizarro founded the
city of Lima, Peru’s capital. Pizarro
would later be killed by another Spanish rival for the governorship
But it was the discovery of silver mines that transformed this
conquest into an economic system of persistent robbery and exploitation.
The
global economy spurred by the introduction of bullion and wares and commodities
from the New World, the Americas an d Asia provided new outlets for European
goods. It also brought the so-called
Columbian exchange. Tomatoes, corn, bell
peppers, rum and spices. Disease and
livestock to the New World. Trade of
products with the New World reached up the rivers of Europe and particularly
the Lowlands of the Scheldt River.
Antwerp by now had 100,000 people.
In 1609 Hugo Grotius published his treatise on the freedom of the seas
in 1609, subtitled: Freedom of the
Seas: The Right Which Belongs to the
Dutch to Take Part in the East India Trade.
There were threats of rivalry, between Portugal and the Dutch over the
East Indies Sea, and we shall see that the Dutch eventually rival and gain
precedence in Japan over the Portuguese.
Price
Revolution and Depression:
The
rise in population and economic boom of the 16th century brought a
considerable rise in prices, particularly in the last decades of the century
(Merriman 170). Between 1500 and 1600 a
pound of mutton cost as much as a whole sheep used to. Between 1500 and 1600 the price of wheat rose
by 425 percent in England, 650 percent in France, and 400 percent in
Poland. Prices rose dramatically even
before the arrival of silver form Latin America, a cause of continued inflation
during the second half of the century.
Cost of living far outdistanced wage increases as real income fell for
ordinary people. This created problems
for landless laborers and wage earners, the poor and small and poor
nobles. The price revolution caused many
to blame greedy landlords, greedy merchants, hoarders of grain etc.
This
all resulted in a long depression following the economic expansions of the early-mid
16th century. Various
economic crises had appeared by the 1570s when the entire city of Antwerp
became bankrupt. This also showed in a relative
decline of Mediterranean trade, symbolized by end of Venetian supremacy by
1600. All of this came to a major crisis,
the Thirty Years War 1618 to 1648 that disrupted trade and manufacturing.
International trade fell of dramatically.
Spaniards had exhausted many gold and silver mines of Latin America,
disrupting the money supply. Yet, ports
such as Amsterdam, Hamburg and Liverpool grew with expansions of Atlantic
trading system.
No
country symbolized the rise and fall of riches and gains and losses from the
new Atlantic economy than Spain. The sponsorship
of Columbus’ discovery of 1492 and the conquest of the last of the Muslim
principality of Granada, ushered in a moment of supreme Spanish hegemony that
lasted through most of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella’s descendant,
Charles V (r. 1519-1558).
During
the first years of Spanish colonial period, Mexican gold helped finance the next
wave of conquest. In 1545 Spaniards discovered the rich silver mines of Potosi
in Peru and now in Bolivia. A year later
they uncovered more significant deposits in Mexico. Convoys from the port of Aria in northern Chile
brought back the silver and allowed for payment of slaves to be bought in
Africa.
Initially
the Castilian economy developed rapidly.
The wool trade formed the basis of the Castilian export economy. The mining of sliver lead iron and merculry
alsto developed in Spain as well.
Spanish royal revenue came from peasant obligations owed on royal domains
as well as from taxes on commerce and manufacturing and import and export
taxes. Payment from the Church for collecting tithes the ecclesiastical tax of
10 percent of revenue. The crown imposed
protectionist measures against foreign goods and banned export of gold and silver.
Charles
V reign as emperor only briefly resided in Catalonia and rarely visited it. He preferred to stay in Madrid. In 1520 he left Spain for his campaigns in Italy
and later in Tunis. He was confronted by
a revolt of the Comuneros urban communities in Toldedo. This spread to other towns in northern
Castile. Royal forces burned the town of
Medina del Campo in north central Castile in August 1520, and the young king
switched tactics. He suspended supplementary
tax collections and agreed not to appoint any more foreigners to office in
Spain. When uprisings continued Charles’
army gradually restored order, brutally executing leaders of the
rebellion.
He
also arranged the marriage of his son Philip; to the English princess Mary
Tudor of England in 1554. He formally abdicated as Holy Roman emperor in 1558 dividing
the Habsburg domain between his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand. Philip II ruled (1556-1598) and inherited
Spain, the Netherlands and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Ferdinand (I
ruled 1558-1564 was elected Holy Roman emperor, and inherited the Habsburg
ancestral domains, Austria, and Italy.
No comments:
Post a Comment