July 24, 2012
Global History from the 15th Century (HS-242114)
Ron Davis: ID 483865
Events which occurred in the 1500s that began a new era in global connections are, Vasco da Gama sailed across the Arabian Sea and found a cosmopolitan society in Calicut in southern India. Da Gama’s expedition also opened the door to direct maritime trade between European and Asian peoples and helped to establish permanent links between the worlds’s various regions. Ming emperors sponsored expeditions that visited all parts of the Indian Ocean basin. Merchant and military vessels established an Ottoman presence throughout the Indian Ocean. Between 1400 and 1800, European mariners launched exploratory voyages to nearly all of the earth’s waters.
The three empires that I will trace are the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. The tools used to develop these colonies were much of the same, slavery, and decimation of the indigenous people establishing colonies through fear. Disease, mainly smallpox and other diseases ravaged native societies from Mexico to the eastern woodlands of North America. The Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese established cities throughout their territories. Like their compatriots in Europe, colonist preferred to live in cities even when they derived income from agricultural production of their landed estates, and they made every attempt to model their new cities along European lines. Portuguese colonist relied heavily on African slaves for forced labor and to harvest sugar cane.
The American Revolution, French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution had global importance and world consequences. America gained independence from British imperial rule through the American Revolution. Of significant importance was the formation of The Declaration of Independence, it declared “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” French revolutionary leaders’ repudiated existing society, often referred to as the ancien regime (“the old world order”), and sought to replace it with new political, social, and