3.1: The Atlantic World at 1500

The European Context

Similar to empires we have been looking at in Asia and Africa, European society during the 1400s was hierarchical. Ten percent of the population occupied the top of the pyramid and controlled most of the wealth as well as local and national government. Additionally, there was no clear distinction between church and state or religious and secular. Europeans sought to spread Christianity while Jews and Muslims were perceived as immoral infidels. Education and health controlled by the church which also owned property and loaned money. Eastern Europe was mostly made up of Eastern Orthodox Christians while Roman Catholic Christians populated western Europe.

For the most part, Europe was diverse and composed of independent city-states, counties, duchies, principalities, and larger monarchies. Although there was a great deal of diversity, the different governments shared certain characteristics. They were governed by customary and written laws that placed limitations on the actions of individuals and their governments. Additionally, most governments had some form of legislative assembly which were composed of elected officials who approved of laws and taxes. In England there was the House of Commons, in France there was the Estates-General and different regions of Spain and Portugal had a Cortes.

Overall, kings were becoming more powerful over local elites and aristocrats as the cost of war increased. With a technology shift in warfare, Europeans no longer used the knights with armor and archers but used cannons and hand guns. Local elites and aristocrats could not afford to mass produce these more expensive gunpowder weapons. However, European kings and queens had a permanent and substantial tax base to fund military expansion.

Europeans were experiencing prosperity and sought from Asia spices, fine cotton and silk cloth, and porcelain. However, the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and Muslims then blocked direct trade with the east, because they controlled land routes and access to seaports in the Indian ocean. As a result, European merchants had to go through Muslim intermediaries to obtain these goods. Additionally, only the Venetians were allowed to trade in the Ottoman lands. Therefore, prices were very high for Asian luxuries. To more and more Europeans, circumnavigation of the globe was seen as a solution. Additionally, Europeans did not have much to trade, and there was a constant outflow of precious metals from Europe to India and China. Sub-Saharan Africa had gold, but Europeans had to trade with Muslims in northern Africa to get it.

By the late 1400s, Europeans had the technology to expand. Elites were reading ancient works in geography, science, and astronomy mostly in Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. The printing press allowed for these works to circulate. European sailors also got the magnetic compass from the Muslims and used an astrolabe to determine latitude or north-south position. Northern Europe had the single square sail while southern Europe used two or three triangular lateen sails. The square sail worked best when the wind was blowing from behind but could not sail against the wind. The lateen sail worked best against the winds. New ships blended both.

Iberia

The Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages was divided into three major Christian kingdoms: Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. The nation of Spain did not exist. However, Castile and Aragon united in 1469 when King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile married. Nevertheless, there was no national government administration in Spain. The monarchs depended on thousands of municipal governments called cabildos to enforce laws and collect taxes.

There has historically a great deal of conflict between the Catholics of Spain and Muslims. The Muslim Moors invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and conquered it within seven years. However, it took seven hundred years for the Spanish Catholics to regain it. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople revived the crusading enthusiasm of the Christians throughout Europe. The Pope called on Christians to resume the Reconquista or Catholic reconquest in the 1450s. Iberia was devoid of political unity, but a common Catholic faith was a means of bringing everyone together. After the Catholics took full control of Iberia in 1492, Jews and Muslims were forced to convert, leave, or die.

The Reconquista had major political effects on Spain. Under Ferdinand and Isabella, nobles lost political power but gained large estates called haciendas. A tiny elite controlled 95% of the land in Castile. In the 1480s, the Castilian crown appointed corregidores who were its representatives in the cabildos of Castille. The wars militarized society, and by the end of the 1400s, the Iberian Peninsula was the best equipped of all European countries for overseas expansion.

Western Africa and the Kingdom of the Kongo

Portugal led the way in exploring the coast of west Africa and the eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean. Portuguese nobles did not have easy adjacent frontier land to occupy. It could only expand with ships rather than horses. So, the Portuguese had nowhere to go but westward into the Atlantic. Portugal was well placed geographically to undertake African exploration and possessed considerable maritime experience. By the late 1400s, Iberian sailors became familiar and comfortable navigating in the eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean. The area in the map located the box in Figure 3.1.1 shows the Atlantic World which Western Europeans were exploring during the 1400s and 1500s. This area includes western Africa, western Europe, and the Americas.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Atlantic World, Modification of work “World map blank shorelines” by Maciej Jaros, Wikimedia Commons, Rice University, Open Stax, in the Public Domain

In sub-Saharan Africa as in the Middle east, the Muslim barrier stood between European merchants and the wealth they hoped to gain from direct trade. Beginning in the 1400s, the Portuguese established trading posts along the coast south of the Sahara where they traded with local rulers. European goods included horses, saddles, stirrups, cloth, caps, hats, wine, wheat, salt, lead, iron, copper, and brass. In return, Europeans wanted gold and slaves. The Spanish and the Portuguese colonized the Atlantic Islands. The Spanish seized the Canary Islands while the Portuguese took over the Madeira Islands, the Azores, and Cape Verde Islands. Europeans wanted gold and silver, but cash crops were also incredibly valuable. These were crops that could only be grown in the tropics. Such crops were more valuable than wheat or corn, because these products could not be produced in most of Europe which was too cold. Cash crops include cotton, rice, indigo, sugar, coffee, cacao, and tobacco. The Iberians produced sugar on these islands using African slave labor that they purchased along the west coast of Africa. Sugar became the most profitable cash crop. Africans had immunities to tropical diseases, and cash crop producers earned enough money to be able to afford large numbers of slaves. African leaders were willing to trade but would not allow Europeans to dominate them, and they had the strength to resist attempts at conquest. Europeans could not survive long in sub-Saharan Africa which hosted tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.

Portugal increasingly traded with the Kingdom of the Kongo in western Africa for slaves. This kingdom had fertile soil and was initially built on prosperous family farming. The region itself was center of iron and steel production. The Kingdom of the Kongo became the dominant power on the west coast of Africa by 1500. It controlled an area larger than Portugal and had roughly half a million subjects. This kingdom was well known for its heavy infantry made up of skilled soldiers who fought with swords and used large shields. King Alfonso I (1506-1543) converted to Catholicism and then spread the religion. Under his rule, many Kongo elites went to Europe for education, and when they returned, these elites opened schools. The schools then produced graduates who served teachers themselves. By the early 1500s, the Kingdom of the Kongo had network of schools throughout the country. In the long run, however, the slave trade destabilized the Kingdom of the Kongo as elites fought one another for captives to sell.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus’s promise to find a sea route to Asia interested European monarchs like Ferdinand and Isabella who wanted to trade directly with east Asia. The expedition was inexpensive, and Columbus arrived in the Caribbean on October 12, 1492. He returned to Europe with a few captive Taino natives and some gold. Columbus then returned to the Caribbean in 1493 and according to his diaries brought “seeds and cuttings for the planting of wheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, radishes, salad greens, grape vines, sugar cane, and fruit stones for the founding of orchards.” The Spanish then built sugar mills in the Caribbean in 1515 with technicians from the Canaries and African slaves.

Review Questions

• Why did Europe feel the need to expand? What role did Portugal’s exploration of the African coast play in this expansion?
• How did race-based slavery become a major part of Atlantic World economy?