- Spanish and Portuguese both made efforts to get involved in Indian Ocean commerce
- Motivation from Asian spices and competing states
A Portuguese Empire of Commerce
- Portuguese did not have sufficient goods for trade so they took to piracy
- Forcibly obtained bases at key locations on trade routes
- Created trading post empire to control trade not territories of populations
- Gradually assimilated to Asian trade
- Many Portuguese settled in Asian and African trade posts
Spain and the Philippines
- First to challenge the Portuguese monopoly on Asian spice trade
- Established trading post in Philippines
- Philippines had no sole authority, separated into chiefdoms
- Spanish gained full colonial rule
- Launched large missionary efforts
The East India Companies
- Early 17th century, the Dutch and the English muscle out the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean using military and economic strengths
- The British and Dutch governments gave their trading companies power to make war and govern conquered peoples
- Dutch focused on Indonesia while the English focused on India
- British were less financed and less sophisticated
- 3 major establishments on land
Asians and Asian Commerce
- European trade is less significant and European political control is much less significant
- To the large powers of Asia-Mughal India, China and Japan-Europeans showered no threat and were minor parts of the overall economy
- In India large families dominate the buying and selling of European products
- South East Asian ports were dominated by the spice trade
No comments:
Post a Comment