Empires & Encounters, Strayer 13

12/5/2017

Allie Guerra

12/9/2017 08:55:25 am

MQ #1 - What enabled Europeans to carve out huge empires an ocean away from their homelands?

The countries on the Atlantic Rim (Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France) were closer to the Americas than Asian countries who wanted the land themselves. Atlantic winds coupled with the knowledge of them, ship building skills, sailing techniques, and map making innovation (based on Asian models) helped Europeans collect the land. They also had other advantages: they had good trading companies that transported both goods and people across the ocean. Their iron-working technologies, gunpowder weaponry, and horses also gave them the upper hand. Markets of the Indian Ocean were closed off to Europeans after the plague, and Europeans still had a desire for luxury goods, which prompted exploration. While they were in the Americas, there was a dispute over the Inca crown, which allowed Europeans to drop in and assert dominance. Their most significant advantage was their immunity to the disease that ravaged the Native American population when Europeans spread it through the Americas. Because of this immunity, after a few years, Europeans outnumbered the original people.

Please let me know if I need any more information or if something is irrelevant! Thanks :)

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 06:13:27 pm

Here's my answer:
1. Geography-Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France were all closer to the Americas than their Asian counterparts, making their journey less extensive.
2. Winds- Winds of the Atlantic blew steadily in one direction and were different from Monsoons, so eastern empires would have had a harder understanding these patterns.
3. Incentive- Indians, Chinese, and Muslims had no incentive to travel to the Americas because they had the enormously rich Indian Ocean Market.
4. After the Plague- The European population boosted, so they needed more land to account for the increase of people
5. Rivalries- Rulers were driven by the enduring rivalries between competing city states.
6. Different people would benefit from the move: merchants, nobles and commoners, missionaries, and persecuted minorities.
7. European states and trading allowed movement of people and resources.
8- technology allowed ease of transporting people and supplies.
9- ironwork, gunpowder, and horses were not paralleled in the Americas. so the Europeans had an upperhand when coming into contact with the Natives.
10- divisions between local societies allowed Europeans to ally with some states/enforce their rule.
11- Germs that Europeans were immune to came to the Americas where they destroyed the native population.

Allie Guerra

12/9/2017 09:27:00 am

MQ #2 - What large-scale transformations did European empires generate?

Because of disease and the "great dying," the population dramatically decreased and created a labor shortage and made room for immigrants - colonizing Europeans and enslaved Africans. Europeans and Africans alike brought their germs, their people, and their plants and animals to the colonies. Wheat, rice, sugarcane, crapes, fruits and vegetables, and weeds all came to America and modified the environment and allowed the European and way of life to be reflected on the land. They also brought animals: horses, pigs, cattle, goats, and sheep which revolutionized the area and made possible ranching economies. Native American lives were changed greatly by horse as they turned from settled farming peoples to hunt bison on horseback. Because of the emphasis on the hunt, the women now had a much smaller role in society.

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 06:42:14 pm

Here's what I got again:
1. European empire building caused the collapse of native american population/societies.
2. Indigenous, European, and African American peoples created new societies in the Americas.
3. Europeans and Africans brought plants: Wheat, rice, sugarcane, and grapes changed the landscape of America and facilitated the coming of Americans unique diet.
4. Europeans and Africans brought animals: Horses, pigs, cattle goats, and sheep multiplied because of no natural predators. This enabled ranching economies and the coming of cowboy culture. Horses changed societies like the Pawnee who abandoned their field to hunt bison on horseback.
5. corn, peanuts, and sweet potatoes supplemented China's population growth.
6. corn, cassava, peanuts, offset population drain during the slave trade in Africa.
3-6= Columbian exchange- the most consequential exchange of plants and animals to this point in human history, and it remade the biological environment of the planet.
7.the Columbian exchange produced an interacting Atlantic world connecting four continents.
8. The need for workers on plantations for sugar, cotton, and tobacco created a lasting link among Africa, Europe, and the Americas, while spreading Africans throughout the Western Hemisphere.
9. Information from the Americas went to Europe and shook up conventional understanding of the world. This contributed to a revolutionary new way of thinking=scientific revolution.
10. Wealth extracted from colonies allowed the Europeans their industrial revolution.

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 06:48:06 pm

oh I forgot about women's roles declining as a male dominated warrior societies became popular.
the colonies in America housed Europe's growing population and were extensions for European civilization
the Americas facilitated a shift in Global balance of power, which is now why previous western Europeans are central on the world stage.

Josie Nunn

12/10/2017 09:03:19 am

I'll see if I can contribute for once.

MQ3:
Part 1: What was the economic foundation of colonial rule in Mexico and Peru?
- Commercial agricultural, and in silver and gold mining
- Legal system called Encomienda, the Spanish Crown granted a few Spanish settlers a number of native people who would give them labor, gold, or agricultural produce and to whom they owed "protection" and instruction on the Christian faith
Part 2: How did it shape the kinds of societies that arose there?
- At the top of the hierarchy where male Spanish settlers
- politically, they saw themselves as residents of a Spanish kingdom, not just an expansion of Spain
- Spaniards born in the Americas (creoles) wanted to protect their privileges from newcomers and resented the claim of superiority of those born is Spain (peninsulares, Spanish settlers)
- Spanish women shared racial privileges, but not gender wise, they were unable to hold public office and seen as needing male protection
- the mestizo (mixed-race) population were initially the product of Spanish men and Indian women because of the lack of Spanish women
- Native Americans were at the bottom of the hierarchy. After being traumatized by "the great dying" they went through gross abuse and exploitation as a primary labor force for the mines and Spanish estates and required to pay tribute to their Spanish overlords
- Locally, Native American men had some autonomy and traditional markets operated normally
- Andean and Mayan women continued to leave property to their female decendants

Tell me if I'm missing anything or if something is irrelevant!

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 07:04:58 pm

So I found this great student power point online that answers a lot of these questions, and this is the answer I got from that power point (not sure if these answers cover every answer to this question, but they are the same ones I got).
1. The economic foundation of colonial rule lay in commercial agriculture and mining for silver and gold, both based on forced labor and wage labor by indigenous populations.
2. On this economic base, replicating something of the Spanish class hierarchy while accommodating the racially and culturally different Indians and Africans as well as growing numbers of racially mixed people. Spaniards (either peninsulares or creoles), mestizos (mixed with Spanish blood), and Indians constituted the three distinct social groups in what had been Inca and Aztec empires. Africans and freemen were less numerous in this area than in other American land.
3. The society was dominated by Europeans, but with a rather more fluid and culturally blended society than in the racially rigid colonies of North America. Mestizos saw some social mobility.

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 07:07:41 pm

Josie, I am not sure your last two points directly correlate with the commercial agricultural economy of Mexico and Peru. They seem to me to be exceptions rather than effects of the economy.

Alison Wang

12/10/2017 10:53:31 am

MQ 6: What motivated Russian empire building?

- security against pastoral peoples who had frequently raided them
- demand for the pelts of fur-bearing animals
- increasing the power of the Russian state
- bringing Christianity, civilization, and enlightenment to native Siberians (savages)
- agricultural settlement

This is a pretty short answer so if anyone has anything to add please do!

Eleena Sherman

12/10/2017 10:56:53 am

I tried to take a look at MQ#8, but I'm not sure if I got everything for it. Is there anything I need to add?

MQ#8: What were the major features of Chinese empire building in the early modern era?
1. empire building was driven by security concerns to keep safe from raids of nomads, rather than economic need
2. Did not seek to assimilate local people into chinese culture --> respected different cultures of region
3. Empire expanded territory of China and added important minority of non-Chinese people to population

Izze Chavez

12/10/2017 07:19:24 pm

MQ4: How did the plantation societies of Brazil and the Caribbean differ from those of southern colonies in British North America?
1. In NA there was less racial mixing and less acceptance of the offspring of such unions and had no place for them in the society.
2. Slavery itself differed in America because it was less harsh, which allowed for African-Americans to reproduce; this was never possible in Brazil or the Caribbean due to the awful conditions their slaves were in. In the mid-1800's, almost all NA slaves had been born in the New world.
3. In Brazil and the Caribbean, substantially more slaves were set free, and these free slaves/mulattoes were allowed many more opportunities than in NA.
4. Ideas of race differed in these different places. In NA, if there was any trace of black in your lineage, you would be considered "black". In the Caribbean and Brazil, mixed raced people were put in to mixed race categories rather than in "black". In these places, color was not the only determining factor of social status; the perception of color changed with the educational or economic standing of individuals.

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 03:15:05 pm

MQ5: What distinguished the British settler colonies from their counterparts in Latin America?
1.British came from a rapidly changing society with conflicts between Catholics and protestants, emergence of the merchant class, and parliament, in contrast to the Spanish who came from a generally sedentary culture of Catholicism, semi-feudalism, and authoritarianism.
2. Colonies from Britain wanted to escape Europe, not recreate it like the Spaniards wanted to.
3. The availability of land, the climate of NA, and the outsider status of the British made it harder for social hierarchies to give rise like in they had in Spanish territories, where dependent laborers and large rural estates facilitated social hierarchies.
4. British rulers were far more numerous than in their Spanish counterparts.
5. Disease ravaged the native populations and was never replenished like the land of the Aztecs or Incas.
6. Slaves were not as needed in British America because of the agricultural societies that sustained themselves (the owners worked on their own land).
7. These colonies were made up of purely colonists, not like that of the mixing that occurred in Latin America.
8. The protestants of Britain didn't spread Christianity like the Catholics of Spanish colonies did. Church and state were not as closely related in NA then in Latin america.
9. Protestants encouraged the reading of the bible for oneself, so a large majority of colonists became literate, which did not happen in Latin America where 3 centuries of church education rendered 95% of the pop. illiterate.
10. Britain had no elaborate bureaucracy that held Latin America and Spanish rule together.
11. Because of NA's climate, availability of land, and outsider status, many British colonies set up their own economic and political systems. They did not rely on slaves because they worked themselves, and they did not rely on Britain because they set up their own locally-governed administrations. They had elected colonial assemblies and disliked the colonial royal governors sent to administer their affairs.

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 03:22:07 pm

MQ5: What motivated Russian Empire building?
1. Russian expansion into the SOuth and East was driven by security issues; the pastoral people of these lands frequesntly raided the heartland of Russia and sold their people into slavery.
2. Nomads in Siberia had access to "soft Gold" or animal fur/pelts, to expansion to these places was driven by economic incentive.
3. Also, defending Russian, enhancing the power and clout of the Russian state both politically and economically, bringing Christianity, civilization, and enlightenment to the nomadic people were incentives for expansion.

izze chavez

12/11/2017 04:28:29 pm

this is MQ6

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 04:26:34 pm

MQ6: How did the Russian Empire transform the life of its conquered people and of the Russian homeland itself?
Conquered People Had to:
1. Comply with granting loyalty to Russian leaders
2. Pay tribute, often times fur in the case of Siberia.
3. Undergo the population loss once an epidemic was introduced into the population, especially in the case of Siberia where the occupants had little interaction with such large-scale disease.
4. Live with the constant pressure to convert to Christianity.
5. Encounter the loss of hunting ground as agricultural Russians conquered pastoral lands. This disrupted local economies and made this local populations dependent on Russian markets.
6. Deal with the increasing population of Russians (7000000 by 1720 in Siberia)
7. Adopt Russian language
8. intermarry which, along with rape and prostitution, resulted in mixed peoples largely referred to as "Russians".

Effects on Russians:
1. Russians diminished as a result of diffusion of the larger Russian population into nomad's land.
2. wealth of expansive empire was facilitated through the products produced from the nomadic territory, which made this empire a major player in Europe.
3. Due to interaction between Russians and Eastern Europe, Russians became known as backwards which Peter the Great tried to remedy. Russians were to shave their beards and wear European style clothing.
4.The Empire, because it encompassed so many different peoples and its changing of itself, cause identity crises among its population.
5. Because of Russia's vastness it became highly militarized and its autocratic rule became highly popularized; these kept the conquered lands in check.

izze chavez

12/11/2017 04:27:14 pm

under point 6 in its 700,000

izze chavez

12/11/2017 04:29:23 pm

this is MQ7 oooooppppppsss

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 04:38:54 pm

MQ8: What were the major features of Chinese empire building in the early modern era?
1. Chinese empire building vastly enlarged the territorial size of China and brought a number of non-Chinese people into the kingdom.
2. An 80 year military effort to unite all the conquered regions and to provide security took place; security was a major concern for the Chinese, so the conquered to offset their fear.
3. conquered areas were ruled separately than china using the Court of Colonial Affairs.
4. The Chinese made active use of local notables.
5. The Chinese did not assimilate other cultures, rather they respected them, the Mongolian, Tibetan, and Muslim cultures.

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 04:58:34 pm

MQ9: How did Mughal attitudes and policies towards Hindus change from the time of Akbar to that of Aurangzeb?
Akbar:
1.recognized Hindu majority
2. Built Hindu temples
3. softened restrictions against Hindu women
4. Religiously and culturally tolerant
5. made Mughal empire more cosmopolitan
6. blended culture and acceptance different of cultures took place
7. faced opposition from Muslim peoples
8. removed the Jizya
9. restrained the more militant Islamic ulama
10. discouraged sati
Aurangzeb:
1. imposed Islamic supremacy
2. had Hindu temples and monuments destroyed
3. forced dancing women to marry or leave the empire
4. Had religious and cultural restrictions on Hindu's.
5. Fracturing of mughal empire because the restrictions caused uproars within the Hindu people.
6. Hindus were not allowed to dance, gamble, prostitute, drink, or do narcotics.
7. faced opposition from the Hindu people
8. reimposed the Jizya
9. posted "censors of public morals" to large cities to enforce Islamic law.
10. forbade sati.

Izze Chavez

12/11/2017 05:08:23 pm

MQ10: In what ways was the Ottoman empire important for Europe in the early modern era?
1. The ottoman empire represented a military threat to Europe.
2. Within the Balkan society, the religious tolerance demonstrated by the Ottoman empire impressed officials.
3. The ottoman empire offered fewer restrictions than previous christian rulers had on their own people (lighter taxes, had autonomy, men were assimilated into elite without converting to Islam)
4. Devshirme was implemented which took young christian boys from their families to be part of the military, where they usually converted to Islam.
5. The empire was an important trading partner.

Bingham

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Empires & Encounters, Strayer 13

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