The+World+Economy

World Economy



** The West's First Outreach: Maritime Power **

** MI: ** Europeans had become more aware of the outside world since the beginning of the twelfth century.


 * Knowledge gained during the Crusades and from contacts with the great Mongol Empire spurred interest.
 * European upper classes became used to imports, especially spices, brought from India and Southeast Asia to the Middle East by Arab vessels, and then carried to Europe by traders from Italian city-states.
 * The fall of the Mongol dynasty in China, the strength of the Ottoman Empire, lack of gold to pay for imports, and poor naval technology made efforts for change.
 * China became mysterious to Europeans belived the earth was flat

** New Technology: A Key to Power **

** MI: ** Technological improvements during the fifteenth century changed the equation and the urge for expansion was motivated.


 * Deep-draft, round-hulled ships were able to sail in the Atlantic’s waters, using and improving the compass, map-making and other navigational devices were improved.
 * Improved metalwork techniques allowed the vessels to carry armaments far superior to the weapons aboard ships of other societies.
 * The west formed a military advantage over the other civilizations as primarily through the sea.

** Portugal **** and Spain Lead the Pack **

** MI: ** Prince Henry the Navigator directed explorations motivated by Christian missionary zeal, the excitement of discovery, and a thirst for wealth.


 * From 1434, Portuguese vessels, searching for a route to India, traveled ever farther southward along the African coast. In 1488, they passed the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco da Gama reached India in 1497.
 * Many voyages followed. One, blown off course, reached Brazil. By 1514, the Portuguese had reached Indonesia and China.
 * Columbus reached the Americas in 1492, mistakenly calling their inhabitants Indians. Spain gained papal approval for its claims over most of Latin America; a later decision gave Brazil to Portugal.
 * Other expeditions brought the Spanish by Ferdinand Magellan began a Spanish voyage in 1519 that circumnavigated the globe. As a result, Spain claimed the Philippines.

** Northern European Expeditions **

** MI: ** In the sixteenth century, the exploratory initiative moved from the Portuguese and Spanish to strong northern European states—Britain, Holland, and France.


 * The British naval victory over Spain in 1588 left general ocean dominance to northern nations. The French first crossed the Atlantic in 1534 and soon established settlements in Canada.
 * The British reached North America in 1497, beginning colonization of its east coast during the seventeenth century. The Dutch also had holdings in the Americas.
 * England want to gain alot of influences, attention to north America, disease bagan to spread.
 * French, Dutch, and British traders received government-awarded monopolies of trade in the newly reached regions, such as the Dutch East India Company and British East India Company.

** Toward a World Economy **

** MI: ** Europe's new maritime activity had three major consequences for world history one being the Columbian exchange.


 * The creation of a new international pool for exchanges of food, diseases, and manufactured products.
 * The forming of a more inclusive world economy; and the opening of some parts of the world to Western colonization.
 * Many natives Americans died when exposed to Afro-Eurasian diseases giving the Europeans the opportunity to create their own culture.

** The Columbian Exchange of Disease and Food **

** MI: ** The extension of international interaction facilitated the spread of disease. Native Americans and Polynesians, lacking natural immunities to smallpox and measles, died in huge numbers.


 * In the Americas, Europeans forged new populations from their own peoples and through importation of African slaves. New World crops spread rapidly.
 * American corn and the potato became important in Europe; corn and the sweet potato similarly changed life in China and Africa. Major population increases resulted.
 * The use of tobacco, sugar, and coffee slowly became widespread in Europe.

** The West's Commercial Outreach **

** MI: ** Westerners because of their superior military might, dominated international trade, but they did not displace all rivals.


 * Asian shipping continued in Chinese and Japanese coastal waters.
 * Muslim traders predominated along the East African littoral, and the Turks were active in the Eastern Mediterranean.
 * Little inland territory was conquered in Africa or Asia; the Europeans sought secure harbors and built fortifications to protect their commerce and serve as contact places for inland traders.

** Imbalances in World Trade **

** MI: ** By the seventeenth century a new world economy, dominated by Europeans, had formed. Spain and Portugal briefly held leadership.


 * England, France, and Holland, the core nations, established more durable economic dominance. They expanded manufacturing operations to meet new market conditions.
 * The doctrines of mercantilism protected home markets and supported exports; tariff policies discouraged competition from colonies and foreign rivals.
 * Beyond Europe, areas became dependent participants in the world economy as producers and suppliers of low-cost raw materials; in return they received European manufactured items.
 * Africa entered this network by providing slaves as laborers.

** A System of International Inequality **

** MI: ** The rise of core and dependent economic zones became an enduring factor in world economic relationships.

** How Much World in the World Economy **
 * Some participants in the dependent regions had an opportunity for profit. African slave traders and rulers taxing the trade could become rich.
 * Merchants in Latin America satisfied regional food requirements. Many peasants in all regions remained untouched by international markets.
 * Merchants and landlords did not control their terms of trade; the wealth gained was expended on European imports and did not stimulate local manufacturing or general economic advance.
 * Dependence in the world economy helped form a coercive labor system.
 * The necessity for cheap products produced in the Americas resulted in exploitation of populations or use of slaves.

** MI: ** Huge world areas remained outside the world economy. They were not affected politically or economically by its structure, and until the eighteenth century did not greatly suffer from the missed opportunities for profit or technological advance.


 * East Asian civilizations did not need European products; they concentrated on consumption or regional commerce.
 * China was uninterested in international trading involvement and remained mainly outside the world economy until the end of the eighteenth century.
 * China was powerful enough to keep Europeans in check. Some limited trade was permitted in Portuguese Macao, and European desire for Chinese manufactured items made China the leading recipient of American silver.
 * In Japan, early openness to Europeans, in missionary activity and interest in military technology, quickly ended.
 * Most contacts were prohibited from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
 * Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, and Safavid Persia all allowed minimal trade with Europeans but concentrated on their own internal development

** The Expansionist Trend **

** MI: ** European dominance lead to a spread of new areas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

· British and French merchants strengthened their positions as the Mughal Empire began falling apart. Britain passed legislation designed to turn their holdings into dependent regions. · Tariffs blocked cottons from competing with British production. · India’s complex economy survived, but with a weakened international status. · Eastern Europe joined world economic activity by exporting grain, mainly produced by serfs working on large estates, from Prussia, Poland, and Russia, to the West.

** In depth: Causation of the west expansion **

Historians desiring to understand social change have to study causation. The many factors involved in any one case make precise answers impossible, but when sufficient data are available, high probability can be attained. Scholars looking for single-factor determinants use cultural, technological, economic or “great man” theories as explanations. All of the approaches raise as many questions as answers. The best understanding is reached through debate based on all efforts chosen as explanations.


 * 1) Cultural factors are the main movers to society conditions in terms of guidance and beliefs people usually react to different social changes in distant ways and purposes. They judge through the two societies of China and Rome respond differently to change in demographics and intellectuals because China is isolated compared to Rome being more open to new ideas by other people.
 * 2) The key causes of the West for expansion would be the individualism, religious freedom and wealth or land ownerships. People are willing to travel away and explore in it means economic advantage that had been worsened as a result of Black Death in Europe especially. Missionary spirits with efforts to expand their beliefs and their own cultures into other parts of the world would connect them to other beneficial needs in trade and agriculture.
 * 3) I don’t think they necessarily had been aware of the different opinions to doing expansion in the context that now or historians who really have the urge to find reasons while back then they were too preoccupied by those wants.


 * Pattern of expansion notes**




 * Motives and reasons for expansion**