The ECONOMICS of EMPIRE Building [AP World History Review—Unit 4 Topic 5]

how were Maritime Empires maintained and developed from 1450 to 1750 is a question you have never asked yourself but if you're an AP World you have to know the answer and baby that's what your boy heimler is here for so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked joint stock style well let's get to it now in case you yourself have never established a sprawling seab based Empire then you may not know that those sweet bippies don't come for free so let's begin by talking about the economic strategies that rulers of these Empires use

to consolidate and maintain their power first let me introduce you to the dominant economic system in Europe during this period namely mercantilism Now by definition merism is a state-driven economic system that emphasizes the buildup of mineral wealth by maintaining a favorable balance of trade and now let me say that again but with words you actually understand mercantilist economies saw the world's wealth kind of like a pie and the goal was to get the biggest piece of that juicy Pie as you could and because they defined wealth by minerals which is to say things like gold

and silver well then yeah there's only so much pie in the world and that further means that the bigger my slice of the pie gets the less there is for anyone else and that creates a profound competition it's kind of like when your 5-year-old cousin cuts a big old piece of pumpkin pie for himself after Thanksgiving dinner while the adults are in the other room sleeping off their turkey and in doing so that mercantilist punk Kyle has Consolidated limited resources for himself that everybody else sorely wants that is how mercantilist economies worked we want as

much gold and silver as we can get and that's it now in order to get a bigger piece of the pie mercantilist economy strove to maintain a favorable balance of trade which just means they wanted more exports than Imports and why because if they're exporting Goods what's coming in gold and silver but if they're importing Goods what's going out gold and silver so that means exports are King okay now I have as much fun as anyone talking about early modern economic systems but who cares well here's where I tell you that mercantilism was a powerful

motivation for establishing and growing Empires because among many other reasons once a colony was established it created a kind of closed Market to purchase exports from the Imperial parent country so more colonies means more people buying our crap and that means more mineral wealth coming back to popup so merism was a big factor in the development of Maritime Empires okay now the second economic strategy for for Empire building was the establishment of joint stock companies and I reckon I ought to Define that one too a joint stock company was a limited liability business often chartered

by the state which was funded by a group of investors so when I say limited liability what I mean is that investors could only lose the money that they invested in the business chartered by the state means that a government approved this business and in doing so often granted it trade monopolies in various regions and when I say that it was funded by a group you just need to understand that this was a big innovation in how businesses were funded which is to say they were privately funded not state funded okay definition unlocked but what

does this have to do with the expansion of Empire well in order for mercantilism to be an instrument of Imperial expansion the state and its Merchants had become intimately tied together in a kind of mutual interdependence the state used Merchants to expand its influence in far off lands while Merchants relied on the state to keep their interest and activity safe while granting them monopolies in various regions of trade and so joint stock companies became the main tool by which this Mutual Arrangement led to expanding Empires during this period now before we move on it's going

to help you to get familiar with at least one of these companies companes and so let me introduce you to the Dutch East India Company it was chartered in 162 by the Dutch State who subsequently granted the company a monopoly on trade in the Indian Ocean and as the Dutch edged out the Portuguese in that network two things happened first the company's investors became exceedingly rich or as we say here in the South they had enough money to Eat Fried Chicken all week and twice on Sunday second through the Dutch East India Company the Dutch

Imperial government was able to expand its power and influence across many places throughout the Indian Ocean now the French and the British also developed joint stock companies of their own for similar purposes namely trade and Imperial expansion and that not surprisingly led to a growing rivalry around the ptin which sometimes LED them to War as it did in the Anglo Dutch War but by way of contrast while the French British and Dutch were joint stocking their way to World Domination States like Spain and Portugal were mainly funding their trade and Imperial Ventures through the state

and that is one significant reason why their influence on the world stage was waning during this period okay we have the economic system of imperialism down so now let's turn the corner and consider changeing continuity in networks of exchange during this period and I'm in the mood to start with change so the big change in this period was the rise of the Atlantic system of trade which describes the movement of goods wealth and laborers between the eastern and western hemisphere obviously this whole network of exchange didn't exist until Spain sent Christopher Columbus sailing west but

once it was established oh my goodness was it significant in terms of goods exchange there were uh a lot but of a special importance was sugar Colonial plantations especially in the Caribbean specialized in the growth of sugar cane and without abundance of sugar prices began to decrease and demand for That Sweet goodness increased like mad over in Europe in terms of the transfer of wealth silver was King for example in modern day Bolivia the Spanish heavily exploited a massive silver mine in ptoi as well as mines in other colonies and that silver was transported back

to Spain and from there it was injected into the wider European economy and it was used to purchase goods from Asia which had a twofold effect first it satisfied the growing demand in China for silver which further developed the commercialization of their economy and second the goods it purchased in Asian markets like Silk and Porcelain and steel were then traded across the Atlantic system resulting in even more profits for those participating in in terms of Labor much of it was in the form of coerced labor and this one came in three forms some Imperial powers

like the Spanish attempted to force indigenous people in their colonial Holdings to work for them others like the British began by using indentured servant but nearly all Imperial Powers ended up majoring on enslaved Africans to do the work required to support and grow the burgeoning Atlantic economy and all of this was established and maintained by the global flow of silver and trade monopolies granted by heads of state to chartered companies usually joint stock companies in other words the Atlantic system turned European States into the political and geographical equivalent of that pie hogging Punk Kyle but

it wasn't all Chang my dear pupils there was significant continuity as well for example Regional markets across afro Eurasia continued to flourish and increase their reach during this period right at the same time what I mean is even though Europeans were increasingly dominating the Indian Ocean Network because of their Naval superiority both in ships and in Weaponry all the various Merchants who had always traded in this network from the Middle East all the way to Southeast Asia continued to trade and even benefited from The increased Merchant traffic and despite the growing European dominance on the

sea Overland routes like the Silk Roads were still almost entirely controlled by various Asian land based Powers most notably Ming China and then the Ching Dynasty after additionally peasant and Artisan labor continued and intensified during this time like I know we like to Major on the ships and the companies and the mercantilist pie grabs going on but most people in the world continued to work in the same ways that they always had peasants were mainly farmers and more to the point subsistence Farmers which means that they grew only what they needed to survive however with

the increasing demand for goods facilitated by new connections and global trade peasants produced more and more agricultural goods for distant markets for example as demand for cotton increased throughout Europe peasant farmers in South Asia increase their production for export and in many cases increase their standard of living to which I say noise Artisans on the other hand were skilled laborers who made Goods by hand and as European demand increased for goods like Silk clothing from China and rugs from the Middle East Artisans got busy increasing their production now you probably won't be surprised to hear

that all this increased connection around the world had some profound social effects and among the most profound were the effects of the African slave trade and I'll give you three first a significant effect of the African slave trade was a gender imbalance you see because much of the wealth to be gained in the Americas was driven by agriculture especially highly intensive agriculture like sugarcan production the vast majority of enslaved laborers purchased were men that leads us to our second social effect which was the changing of family structures now because many West African states were being

depleted of their male population that led to an increase in polygeny which is the practice of men marrying more than one woman and then a third social effect of the slave trade this time in the Americas was various expressions of cultural synthesis so enslaved Africans came from various States and cultures and spoke various languages but when they arrived in the Americas it only took about a generation for them to cease speaking their own languages and adopt Creole languages which just means mixed languages and in this case various Creole languages were developed as a synthesis of

European and African languages and in some cases indigenous languages and then finally we need to talk about how belief systems affect the Societies in this period and I'm going to give you one major illustration namely Spanish and Portuguese Christianity and South America now remember that these two states especially these two were not interested only in building Empires but also making sure everybody in the whole dang World worshiped Jesus himself and so both of them sent Catholic missionaries to the their colonies and in doing so use the church as an instrument to spread Christianity among the

indigenous peoples in this way European language and culture was introduced or in many cases imposed upon indigenous populations and because the church made prodigious use of the printing press these ideas spread rapidly throughout their colonial Holdings and their success rate on this was uh spotty at Best In some cases indigenous groups outwardly adopted Christianity but privately continued to practice their own religious beliefs and when this was discovered it was met with violent retaliation from Colonial authorities however I should say that there were some missionaries like the Ian priest Bome deas kasas who made great efforts

to protect indigenous Americans from the abuses of colonial authorities and for his part those efforts led to new legislation outlawing the enslavement of indigenous Americans and limiting the forms of coerced labor they could participate in and at the end of the day even though widespread conversion was their aim it was slow progress and that sluggishness led to a syncretic blending of Christianity and Native belief systems additionally enslaved Africans brought their native belief systems with them as well including Islam and even more blending occurred Okay click here to keep reviewing for unit four and click here

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