Sea-Based EMPIRES ESTABLISHED [AP World History Review—Unit 4 Topic 4]

Summary

European states built maritime empires to pursue “Gold, God, and Glory”: wealth, Christian conversion, and international power. Their expansion changed trade and labor systems, but it did not erase existing networks or local agency.

European Maritime Empires

• Portugal established a trading-post empire around Africa and across the Indian Ocean. Using heavily armed ships, the Portuguese sought not merely to join trade but to control it by force.
• Spain established colonies in the Philippines and applied colonial practices similar to those it used in the Americas, including tribute, taxation, and coerced labor.
• The Dutch used ships and methods similar to Portugal’s to challenge Portuguese dominance in Indian Ocean trade. Later, they turned trading posts in Indonesia into colonial rule.
• Britain initially lacked the military strength to seize India from the Mughal Empire, so it established coastal trading posts. In the 18th century, those posts gradually developed into colonial rule.

European expansion did not end older Indian Ocean trade. Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian merchants continued to use the network, and some—including Gujarati merchants—became wealthier through increased trade.

Resistance and Responses in Asia

• Tokugawa Japan initially allowed some European trade, but the shogun came to view Christianity as a threat to Japan’s recent political unity. Japan expelled Christian missionaries and suppressed Christianity, sometimes violently.
• Ming China sought to direct maritime commerce through the Chinese state. After a period of isolationist trade policies, Portuguese traders who entered China in the early 1500s were eventually expelled. These policies limited China’s participation as European influence in Indian Ocean trade grew.

African States and Trade

• The Asante Empire traded gold, ivory, and enslaved people with Portugal and later Britain. This commerce increased Asante wealth and military strength, helping the empire expand and resist British colonization for a long time.
• The Kingdom of Kongo built strong diplomatic and commercial ties with Portugal, which sought gold, copper, and enslaved people. The king and many nobles converted to Christianity in connection with these ties. Although the relationship later deteriorated, trade had enriched the kingdom.

Labor Systems in the Americas

European colonial economies relied on agriculture and used both existing systems and new forms of labor:

• Mita: The Spanish adapted the Inca system requiring subjects to provide labor for a set number of days. They used it especially to obtain workers for silver mines.
• Race-based chattel slavery: Enslaved Africans were transported in large numbers to work, especially on plantations. They were treated as property, and enslavement was hereditary, passing to their children.
• Indentured servitude: Workers signed contracts committing themselves to labor—often for about seven years—in exchange for passage to the colonies. Once the contract ended, they could go free.
• Encomienda: The Spanish compelled Indigenous people to provide labor in exchange for food and protection. The system controlled and exploited Indigenous populations and was similar in practice to slavery.
• Hacienda: Large estates owned by Spanish elites used coerced Indigenous labor to produce crops for export. The video distinguishes this system from encomienda by emphasizing the hacienda’s focus on agricultural production and export.

Continuity and Change in Slavery

The enslavement and trade of Africans predated the maritime empires. Enslaved Africans were already part of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trade networks. In the Islamic world, many worked as domestic servants; women and girls were in particularly high demand, and some enslaved people held military or political positions.

The Atlantic system brought major changes:

• It expanded on a much larger scale: the video states that over roughly 350 years, more than 12.5 million Africans were sold to plantation owners in the Americas.
• Plantation labor increased demand for male captives. Europeans purchased enslaved men at about twice the rate of women, affecting the demographics of African societies.
• Slavery in the Americas became strongly associated with Blackness. Racist beliefs were used to justify the system’s violence and the treatment of enslaved people as less than human.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Heimler, the narrator and presenter from Heimler’s History. No other speakers are featured.