Part Four: Empires and Encounters 1450 - 1750

The New World was closest to the Europeans sphere of influence. Especially the Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Dutch. The Spaniards motivations in particular could be summed up by one conquistador as: “We came here to serve God and king, and also to get rich. The Conquistadors used divide and conquer strategies to take over Mesoamerican civilizations. In the case of the Aztecs, the Spaniards simply allied themselves with subjugated peoples that were not so thrilled about their tributary relationships with the Aztecs. The Aztecs were somewhat akin to  ancient Greek city states in the makeup of their empire. Their technology was nowhere near on par with the Europeans. The native peoples had no wheels, iron, horses, pigs, cows, or even gunpowder. In the case of the Incans, the Spaniards exploited two rival brothers fighting for the throne.

While the Europeans brought their livestock and other aforementioned examples of their technology to the new world, it was a two-fold process within the Columbian Exchange. American crops such as corn, potatoes, and cassava would become the bedrock of poor Europeans diets. Nowhere more so, than Ireland where the Irish peasantry would later suffer from the Irish Potato Famine in the 19^th Century. In China corn, peanuts, and sweet potatoes supplemented rice and wheat and would soon account for 20% of the Chinese diet.

 

The Far East was too far from European influence for the most part during the early modern period.  Although, items such as gunpowder, porcelain and various technologies were integral in the evolution of western technologies. The Europeans participated in a three-fold triangle trade in which they traded raw metals for African slaves, and would then sell the slaves to buy spices from Asian trade consortiums in the Far East. About 90% of the native peoples of the Americas died mostly from European diseases that they had no immunities too, otherwise known by historians as “The Great Dying.” Many Europeans were perplexed prior to the Great Dying on how to annex land from native peoples for their own schemes. But when this large die-off occurred, some surmised that God wanted all these natives to die, so that Europeans could by divine right have their lands.

Europeans would have according to some historians, been significantly delayed in their industrial revolutions and rise in economic power had they not discovered and colonized the new world when they had. Their colonies provided Europe with the raw materials and commodities that jump-started their industrial revolution.

About the same time as Europeans were colonizing the Americas the Russians began expanding their empire into the central Asian step and across Siberia, especially to gain a monopoly on the fur trade. Unlike the Europeans in central and south America, the Russians rarely inter-bred with the peoples the subjugated. However, the Russians did attempt to “Russify” the local cultures they annexed by encouraging them to speak Russian and adopt Russian cultural norms. Most of these peoples were hunter-gatherer groups. Between 1500 – 1800 Russia extended her borders all the way to the Pacific, making it the largest country on Earth still today. In the 21^st Century Russians continue to be perplexed by the question of whether they are more European or Asian given that the Ural mountains acts as a natural divide between European and Asian cultures.