State Building, Expansion, and Conflict, 1450-1750 Flashcards
Nation-states
● Political units with relatively fixd borders
● A sense of national unity
● Populations were large
● Homogeneous in terms of language and ethnicity
Political and administrative centralization
● Became more sophisticated
● led to a higher degree of state organization and efficiency
● Features of modern government (bureaucracies, admiralties, general staffs, treasures, and state banks) were more commonplace
● Rulers devised more reliable and more efficient means to collect taxes and conscript soldiers
● Allowed European monarchs to abandon medieval feudalism
State-building techniques
● Included impressive displays of arhitecture and art
● Regimes contineud to rely on religious concepts to legitimate their authority
- Putting ethnic nad religious groups firmly under their control but kept them economically productive
Bureaucratic elites
● Staff administrations htat were growing larger and more modern
Caravel
● Nimble, three-masted ship used extensively by Portuguese
● Able to carry lots of weight
- Put cannons on the ships
Iberian peninsula
● Portugal and Spain
Prince Henry the Navigator
● Encouraged Portugal’s exploring efforts
● Created a school to train navigaotrs and collect knowledge
Bartholomeu Diaz
● Reached the southern tip of Africa in 1488
● The rulers of Portugal named the Cape of Good Hope
- Recognizing this as an important step on the way to India
Vasco da Gama
● FIrst European to reach India by sea
Christopher Columbus
● Proposed to sail west to reach the Far East
● Reached the Caribbean in October 1492
Lines of demarcation
● Spain and Portugal agreed to in 1493-1494
● The pope gave jurisdiction over most of SouthAmerica and all of North America to the Spanish while the Portuguese recieved Brazail and Africa in 1529
Ferdinand Magellan
● A Portuguese mariner sailing on behalf of Spain
● Leader of the first-ever circumnavigation of the globe
Trading-post empire
● Established by Portuguese
● Many outposts along the trading route
Maritime empires
● Overseas colonies fully under their control
● Established in the New World
- Portugal moved into Brazil
- Spain built up power in the Caribbean, using islands such as Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola
Conquistadors
● Generals who brought huge parts of North and South America under Spanish control
Juan Ponce de Leon
● Florida fell to him in 1513
Hernan Cortes
● From 1519 to 1521, he waged an effective and brutal camaign against the Aztecs, and the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan became the headquarters for all of New Spain
● Mesoamerica nad most of what is now the US Southwest fell to the Spanish
Francisco Pizarro
● Destroyed the mightly Incan empire
Mining
● Especially for silver near Mexico City and at Potosi
Plantation monoculture
● With sugarcane the most prized and most labor-intensive cash crop
Viceroyalty
● New Spain was placed under government control in 1535
● “In place of the king”
House of Trade
● All colonial economic activity was run by the House of Trade in Seville
Coerced labor
● A direct economic consequence of Spanish and Portuguese colonization in the New World
● Encomienda, mit’a system and slaves
Encomienda system
● Spanish attempted to enslave American natives
● Worked badly and was judged to oinhumane by Catholic clergy
● Abolished in the 1540s