Encounters With Europe by Indian Ocean States & America (1450–1550)

3 Maio 2018, 10:00 • Shiv Kumar Singh

Summary of the class--------------------Indian Ocean States: Reactions

• When Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut in 1498 he made a very poor impression with his simple gifts.
• Nonetheless, the Portuguese were determined to control the Indian Ocean trade
• Their superior ships and firepower gave them the ability to do so
• In order to assert their control, the Portuguese bombarded the Swahili city-states in 1505, captured the Indian port of Goa in 1510, and took Hormuz in 1515
• Extending their reach eastward, Portuguese forces captured Malacca in 1511 and set up a trading post at Macao in southern China in 1557
• The Portuguese used their control over the major ports to require that all spices be carried in Portuguese ships
• Also that all other ships purchase Portuguese passports and pay customs duties to the Portuguese
• Reactions to this Portuguese aggression varied
• The Mughal emperors took no action while
• The Ottomans resisted and were able at least to maintain superiority in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf
• Some smaller states cooperated with the Portuguese; others tried evasion and resistance.
• The Portuguese never gained complete control of the Indian Ocean trade
• They did dominate it enough to bring themselves considerable profit and to break the Italian city-states’ monopoly on pepper.

§  The America: -
While the Portuguese built a maritime trading empire in Africa and Asia, the Spanish built a territorial empire in the Americas

• The reasons for the difference are to be found in the isolation of Amerindian communities and their lack of resistance to Old World diseases.
• The Arawak were an agricultural people who mined and worked gold but did not trade it over long distances and had no iron
• Spanish wars killed tens of thousands of Arakaws and undermined their economy;
• By 1502, the remaining Arawak of Hispaniola were forced to serve as laborers for the Spanish
• What the Spanish did in the Antilles was an extension of Spanish actions against the Muslims in the previous centuries
• They defeated non-Christians and put them and their land under Christian control
• The actions of conquistadors in other parts of the Caribbean followed the same pattern
• On the mainland, Hernan Cortes relied on native allies, cavalry charges, steel swords, and cannon to defeat the forces of the Aztec Empire and capture the Tenochtitlan
• The conquest was also aided by the spread of smallpox among the Aztecs
• Similarly, Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire was made possible by:
• The prior spread of smallpox among the Inca population
• The dissatisfaction of the Inca Empire’s recently conquered peoples
• And by Spanish cannon and steel swords