Welcome back, History 1122, the second half
of Western Civ.
We’re going to talk about European exploration
here at some length.
We talked about Columbus, in detail, we talked
about his pitch and the maps he used and the
Columbian Exchange.
I want to look in a little more detail at
this fundamental shift in not only Western
Civilization but in world history as well
as the Europeans begin to venture out across
the Atlantic and then the Indian and Pacific
Oceans, and establish little Europes around
the world.
So let’s talk about context first.
Globalization, this is really the beginning
of it.
We’ve seen East and West meet before, the
Silk Roads linking China to the Mediterranean,
Alexander linking Greek culture to Persia.
We can see it with the Mongols unifying good
portions of Eurasia creating a vast circuit
of trade and travel.
But here, this is true globalization in the
sense that the entire Atlantic Basin is now
going to be tied together in this vast circuit
of trade and then the efforts will be made
– successfully – to reach the Pacific,
and all the way to the Far East.
Another context – In 1453, the Muslims overrun
Constantinople.
What had been a Christian city for centuries
is now a Muslim capitol, and of course, it’s
now called Istanbul.
After this, trade between Christian Europe
and the East tends to diminish severely.
I think we mentioned the Muslim middlemen
a few lectures ago, the rise of these Islamic
kingdoms of the Middle Ages, the Ottoman Empire,
the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire,
which prohibits trade and of course, is one
of the reasons that Columbus decided to sail
west to go east, to avoid these Islamic kingdoms.
So these are some big contexts, some significances
– Neo, new, Europes are established around
the world and in various temperate zones,
both in the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and
otherwise.
And of course, we have the dispersal or the
dissemination of Christianity and western
culture around the world as well.
I think it’s important to note that Columbus
set in motion forces that he could not possibly
have grasped.
Let's face it, Columbus went to his grave
believing that he was scooting along the periphery
of Asia and China, never believing that he
had discovered a quote/unquote New World.
So with Columbus and then those European explorers
who followed him, think of them as sort of
the vanguard of European civilization, bringing
technology; Christianity; disease; domesticated
plants and animals; etcetera, etcetera; and
taking it throughout the world.
So here again, western civilization tends
to merge with world history.
Upon returning to Spain after that first trip,
that first voyage, Columbus wrote a letter
for the court, for the king and queen.
This letter, because of the invention of the
printing press about a half century before,
this letter became rapidly disseminated throughout
Europe and it became sort of a founding document
of European exploration.
Columbus was very optimistic in this letter,
discussing precious metals; Christian converts;
just a variety of things that he’d found
in the New World.
So this letter becomes a sort of a best seller
and is an inspiration to other explorers.
News of Columbus’ discoveries spread throughout
Europe as a result of the printing press.
The pope issues a papal bull that grants Spain
all land discovered by Columbus, and of course,
he does this in part for the spread of Christianity
and of course, for the discovery of gold.
Shortly thereafter, the Treaty of Tordesillas
will be created dividing these new discoveries
between Spain to the west and Portugal to
the east.
This line will be moved so that Portugal can
lay claim to its colonies in Brazil.
And of course, you have to also realize that
once the Europeans, after Columbus, realize
that they can grow commodity crops in the
New World and make fortunes from these crops,
that there has to be a vast labor force to
do this, and since the indigenous people are
in large part wiped out, Africans now become
the laboring force in the form of slaves.
So let’s think about factors here in European
expansion.
These ancient maps are rebirthed during the
Renaissance and Europeans are getting a look
at these world maps from antiquity.
There are travel accounts that are made available.
We’ve talked about Polo at some length.
We talked about Sir John Mandeville.
There’s a letter written by a legendary
character, Prester John, whose location continues
to sort of shift about from Central Asia to
Ethiopia.
Prester John was perceived in the European
minds as a potential Christian ally against
the Muslims.
There is an Italian merchant community that’s
familiar with China.
Again, we go back to Polo.
We have better technology, better maps, better
compasses, astrolabes so that we can negotiate,
of course, the Mongol trade circuit still
exists in the memory of many people, and in
addition, another factor for European expansion
is the old ideology of the Crusades.
The Crusades led Western Christian noblemen
to go to the Middle East to reclaim the holy
sites there for Christianity.
Again, this is another example of East and
West comingling.
Now what I want to do for the rest of the
semester is talk about three historians and
their arguments regarding European expansion
- the first is Alfred Crosby’s book, Ecological
Imperialism – if you go to graduate school
in history there’s an excellent chance you’ll
read this book.
It’s very interesting.
His argument, in brief, is that little Europes
are not going to be scattered around the world
in these temperate zones where European culture
can flourish, like Australia or Argentina
or New Zealand and other places.
So I’m just going to sort of briefly go
through Crosby’s argument here to give you
some sense of this book.
He says that Europeans live in large numbers
and in national units from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, both north and south of the equator.
He says that these Europeans establish ‘neo’
or new Europes in lands that are thousands
of miles from Europe itself.
He points out that Australia’s population
is almost entirely European, as the aborigines
have been destroyed; New Zealand, too, a mostly
European population.
He talks about the fact that the vast majority
of the population of the Western Hemisphere
is European in origin, especially in North
America.
He talks about the fact that Uruguay and Argentina
are nearly a hundred percent of European descent.
And then he asks – What do these little
Europes, these new Europes have in common?
Well, he says they export very large quantities
of food.
Keep this in mind.
Where are these neo-Europes?
Well we mentioned a couple of places.
Geographically they’re scattered, but they
are in similar latitudes.
They are located in the temperate zones, north
and south; so they have similar climates.
This is interesting, the regions that today
export more foodstuffs of European preference
– that is grains and meats – five hundred
years ago had no wheat, no barley, no rye,
cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, whatsoever.
Again, Europeans took their culture with them,
took their domesticated plants and animals
with them and then recreated these European
cultures around the world.
Crosby points out that the Americas were,
in prehistory, as rich in large animals as
the Old World, but this is true is Australia
and New Zealand as well, but most of these
large land animals in the Western Hemisphere
and in the Southern Hemisphere had been wiped
out at the end of the Pleistocene Era about
thirteen thousand years ago.
This is the end of the Ice Age, the last Ice
Age.
It’s believed, of course, that Homo sapiens
having arrived at these distant places – the
Western Hemisphere, Australia, New Zealand,
South America – wiped out the large mammals
for food and clothing.
So you have mass extinctions here at the end
of the Pleistocene.
Crosby points out something else that’s
interesting.
He says that in Eurasia Homo sapiens and these
large mammals had lived in close proximity
for many, many centuries and the animals had
learned how to avoid humans and understood
the danger that humans posed.
He makes the argument that in these places
where humans migrated much later – Australia,
New Zealand, the Western Hemisphere – that
the extinction events occurred because the
animals had not had time to learn the danger
that man posed.
So these animals are hunted down and slaughtered
in great numbers and eliminated.
So this is sometimes called the Pleistocene
megafauna extinction.
Pleistocene referring to the end of the last
Ice Age, mega – large, fauna referring to
animals, and extinction; it coincides with
human migration, so you can draw your own
conclusions.
So that’s Alfred Crosby’s argument.
It’s very provocative and it has great explanatory
power.
I want to spend a few moments talking about
a much more popular book, one you may have
even read.
It was on the best-seller list.
This is Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs,
and Steel.
His argument – in brief – is that Europeans
had distinct advantages in spreading little
Europes around the world.
He asked the basic question – Why do the
Europeans reach out and conquer the lands
of North America and South America, instead
of vice versa?
Diamond starts with a comparison of the societies,
Old World and New World, in 1492.
He says that the largest population replacement
of the last thirteen thousand years has been
the one resulting from the recent collision
of the Old World with the New World, and then
the dramatic shift in population to the New
World.
He says in Eurasia there were advantages because
of the domesticated animals providing energy,
food, clothing, etcetera; so there’s an
enormous set of differences here between the
Old World and the New World with regard to
what’s available for domestication, plants
and animals.
Diamond reiterates the argument that the Pleistocene
extinction gave the Eurasians and Europeans,
gave them a great advantage over the societies
of the Western Hemisphere, and makes the point,
speculative point, that had Homo sapiens not
wiped out the large mammals of the Western
Hemisphere, that things might have been quite
different in history.
Diamond also points out that the Americas
had two empires, the Aztecs and the Incas,
which resembled European empires in size and
sophistication and diversity of religions,
but these were the only two really large states
in the Western Hemisphere, the only two capable
really of making war on a large scale or having
the capital and the manpower to create grand
architecture.
He points out that in Europe, Diamond says,
well you have Spain and Portugal, England
and France, Holland, Sweden and Denmark, all
capable of creating and sustaining large-scale
colonial enterprises.
He said in the rest of the Western Hemisphere
besides the Aztecs and the Inca you have societies
organized on a much smaller level, tribal
basis, small bands of people working together.
He also points out, Diamond points out that
the Eurasians had literacy.
They could read and write and this will give
them a great advantage.
Their bureaucracies were much more sophisticated
than that of the New World.
Writing empowers European societies by facilitating
political administration, economic exchanges.
Writing, of course, motivates people to go
out and discover these new worlds, seeking
fame and wealth.
So Eurasian societies enjoyed big advantages
over Native American societies in food production
and in deadly pathogens and technology – including
metallurgy, organization, and writing, on
and on and on.
This is at the core of Diamond’s argument.
Diamond also makes the argument that in Eurasia,
geographically Eurasia is oriented east and
west so that plants and animals can move across
this vast land mass and remain in a similar
climate zone.
He says, look at the New World, or look at
the Western Hemisphere, where the geography
is oriented north and south, and that as animals
try to move north and south they encounter
many different climate zones, which inhibits
their movement.
So this is another factor.
Now finally, our last book here.
This is a recent book.
It’s called, A Brief History of Humankind;
it’s by Yuval Harari, I believe a professor
in Jerusalem.
His argument – to put it briefly – is
that European curiosity and the admittance
of ignorance was the key to European expansion
and dominance.
He says that both European scientist and conqueror
began by admitting ignorance, by simply saying
that they don’t know, they don’t what
makes this work, they don’t know what’s
out there, and therefore they both felt compelled,
both scientist and explorer, to go and make
these discoveries, to find out about the New
World hoping this knowledge would make them
masters of the world.
You might remember when Napoleon invaded Egypt
in 1798, he not only took his army with him
but he took a couple of hundred scholars with
him as well.
They founded an entirely new discipline, Egyptology,
made important contributions to religion and
linguistics, botany.
In 1831, the Royal Navy sent the Beagle to
do some mapmaking in southern South America,
the Falkland Islands, and the Galapagos Islands,
and of course, Charles Darwin accompanied
this ship, and the results of this are a paradigm
shift in human history, the emergence of natural
selection over creationism.
We see the Europeans begin to make makes and
begin to acknowledge blank spaces, places
that they do not know what is there.
We see them using their imagination trying
to fill in these blank spaces at times.
So Harari makes the argument that these empty
maps are sort of a psychological breakthrough
for Europeans, a clear admission that they
were ignorant of large parts of the world,
and ignorance, of course in this case, spurs
the initiative to go find out what the world
consists of.
Harari says for thousands of years not only
the greatest thinkers and scholars, but also
the infallible scriptures, had known only
Europe; Africa; and Asia.
How could all the experts have been wrong?
How could the Bible have missed half the world?
Harari makes an interesting point here about
Amerigo Vespucci, who we’ve already talked
about, the Italian sailor who sailed down
the Atlantic coastline of Brazil at the turn
of the fifteenth century.
He says, and I quote – There’s poetic
justice in the fact that a quarter of the
world and two of its seven continents were
named by Martin Waldseemüller, who we talked
about in our discussion of Columbus’ maps,
that he named them Amerigo in honor of Amerigo
Vespucci, who unlike Columbus, came back to
Europe and said – Look, we thought we knew
what was out there, but we do not, we’re
in for some big surprises here.
The first big surprise, that those are not
the Indies, that has to be a continent because
a river the size of the Amazon could not be
borne of an island, it had to be borne of
a continent.
So I want you to think of the European Age
of Exploration and the scientific revolution
running parallel, hand in hand.
And once these new lands are established,
there’s great competition between the Europeans
to reach them, to establish authority over
them, to colonize them.
This requires rapid acquisition of knowledge
in just a wide variety of areas.
So the Age of Exploration and scientific revolution
are running hand in hand.
You have to gather enormous new data about
geography, about climate, plants and animals,
languages, cultures, on and on and on, and
again, the old sources of authority are of
little use here – the Bible has nothing
to say about any of this.
So you can see how western civilization is
rapidly becoming more and more sophisticated
and expanding worldwide so that western civ
becomes, in part, world history at the same
time.
Thank you.
