Questions Flashcards
What enabled Europeans to carve out huge empires an ocean away from their homelands?
- Europeans were much closer to the Americas than were their potential Asian competitors.
- Europeans were powerfully motivated after 1200 to gain access to the world of Eurasian commerce.
- Groups within European society, including competing monarchs, merchants, impoverished nobles and commoners, Christian missionaries, and persecuted minorities all had strong, if different, motivations for participating in empire building.
- European states and trading companies enabled the effective mobilization of both human and material resources.
- Disease in the Americas; they had immunities and outnumbered native populations
- They were motivated to gain wealth and find a new home
What large-scale transformations did the European empires generate?
- European empire building caused the demographic collapse of Native American societies and led to labor shortages.
- Combinations of indigenous, European, and African peoples created entirely new societies in the Americas.
- Large-scale exchanges of plants and animals (horse, pig) transformed the crops and animals raised both in the Americas and in the Eastern Hemisphere.
- The silver mines of Mexico and Peru fueled both transatlantic and transpacific commerce.
- The need for plantation workers and the sugar and cotton trade created a lasting link among Africa, Europe, and the Americas, while scattering peoples of African origins throughout the Western Hemisphere.
What was the economic foundation of colonial rule in Mexico and Peru? How did it shape the kinds of societies that arose there?
The economic foundation of colonial rule in Mexico and Peru was commercial agriculture and the mining of silver and gold. There was forced and wage labor by native Americans. This economic base created a distinct social order similar to the Spanish class hierarchy while accommodating racially and culturally different Indians and Africans as well as racially mixed people. Whites dominated society.
How did the plantation societies of Brazil and the Caribbean differ from those of southern colonies in British North America?
- In North America, there was less racial mixing and less willingness to recognize the offspring of such unions and accord them a place in society.
- Slavery in North America was different, being perhaps less harsh there than in the sugar colonies.
- By 1750, slaves in the United States had become self-reproducing, and a century later almost all North American slaves had been born in the New World. That was never the case in Brazil and the Caribbean.
- Many more slaves were voluntarily set free by their owners in Brazil than was ever the case in North America,
- In North America, any African ancestry, no matter how small or distant, made a person “black”; not in Brazil, Moreover, color was only one criterion of class status in Brazil, and the perception of color changed with the educational or economic standing of individuals.
What distinguished the British settler colonies of North America from their counterparts in Latin America?
- Many of the British settlers sought to escape aspects of an old European society rather than to recreate it.
- The British colonies were almost pure settler colonies, without the racial mixing that was so prominent in Spanish and Portuguese territories.
- A largely Protestant England was far less interested in spreading Christianity among the remaining native peoples
- British colonies developed greater mass literacy and traditions of local self-government and vigorously contested the prerogatives of royal governors sent to administer their affairs.
What motivated Russian empire building?
- Fear of the Mongols drove the Russians to conquer the vast siberian plain.
- Russian expansion into Siberia was driven by demand on the world market for the pelts of fur-bearing animals, although later some agricultural settlement took place. The motivations of defending Russian frontiers, enhancing the power of the Russian state,
- The Russians were also motivated by bringing Christianity and attempted conversion of the native Siberians
How did the Russian empire transform the life of its conquered people and of the Russian homeland itself?
- In terms of its conquered people, conquest meant the taking of an oath of loyalty to the Russian ruler; the payment of tribute
- Devastating epidemics
- Intermittent pressure to convert to Christianity;
- The loss of hunting grounds and pasturelands to Russian agricultural settlers, which disrupted the local economy and left local populations dependent on Russian markets.
- The Empire made Russia a highly militarized state and reinforced the highly autocratic character of the Russian state.
What were the major features of Chinese empire building in the early modern era?
1.Chinese empire building vastly enlarged the territorial size of China and brought a number of non-Chinese people into the kingdom.
2.It was driven largely by security concerns.
Conquered regions in central Eurasia were administered separately from the rest of China.
3.Chinese officials generally did not seek to assimilate local people into Chinese culture and showed considerable respect for the Mongolian, Tibetan, and Muslim cultures of the region.
How did Mughal attitudes and policies toward Hindus change from the time of Akbar to that of Aurangzeb?
The Mughal attitudes and policies toward Hindus went through a great change from the time of Akbar to that of Aurangzeb. During the time of Akbar, laws were tried to be made more secular. Also, there was a policy that imposed toleration and limited the power of the Ulama. Also, the tax on Non-Muslims (Jizya) was removed. During the time of the Akbar, a House of Worship was constructed and used for discussions between many different religious people. During the time of Aurangzeb, the Mughal attitudes and policies shifted a bit. For example, they imposed Islamic supremacy and had a very high tax (Jizya), which was used to support wars and expansions.
In what ways was the Ottoman Empire important for Europe in the early modern era?
- The Ottoman Empire represented a military threat to Europe.
- It impressed some European intellectuals because of its religious tolerance.
- It occasionally allied with France against their common enemy of Habsburg Austria.
- The empire was an important trading partner as they controlled access to Eastern goods
