Hi, welcome back. Make yourself comfortable, because we're going to take a tour around the world of 1760. Just to give you a general overview of that world, I mentioned earlier it's dominated by these Eurasian land empires. Just pause for a moment. Think about what's happening here. For a 1000 years before the 1700s, Eurasia had been dominated by warrior horsemen. Organizing in large groups out of the pasture lands. Raiding on agricultural settlements. This is the age old traditional story. That basic dynamic really began to change in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s. Those settled communities began to get a real advantage. A big reason for that, which I'll get into in another presentation in a little more detail, is gun powder. Guns...a military revolution. And settled communities that could leverage the power of settled communities (i.e.taxes, building primitive industries) were better positioned to harness that technology and recruit and build gun powder armies. The empires that could pull together these gunpowder armies gained a decided advantage over the traditional nomadic horse warriors. And this is the result you see by 1700: those empires, which are really dynasties of horse warriors who have seized control of these communities and then are leveraging the power of the agricultural settlements inside them, have consolidated and created these far flung empires that you see on this map. So one huge factor: the consolidation of large land empires in Eurasia. Now, another huge factor: the discovery and opening up of the New World. Here's a map that gives you a sense of European world trade just after Columbus' discovery of the New World in 1492. Now contrast that with this map of world trading empires in 1770. Let's just zoom in on this a little bit more. You don't have to follow this in detail. All I want you to do is be able to contrast this with the previous map and just get a sense of the scale. [SOUND]. Now, let's dive into some particular regions. Probably the most powerful region in the whole world in 1760 was East Asia. The Ming Dynasty that had governed this part of East Asia and the agrarian settlements along the Yangtze River Valley and the Yellow River Valley [was] historically very strong. The Ming Empire actually built a powerful navy that made these historic voyages, in the early 1400s, all around the Indian Ocean. But then, on their return, the empire essentially decided to scrap this navy and wasn't much interested in expanding Chinese commerce beyond Southeast Asia. Why? Because their main focus was not on the ocean. Their main focus was on enemies and opportunities in the Eurasian hinterland. So for instance, although the Ming Dynasty is conducting a lot of trade in East and Southeast Asia, the dynasty is fixing its gaze northward to the northwest against the raiding horsemen, like the Mongols, that had overrun a preceding dynasty in the 1200s. In the 1600s, the Ming Dynasty itself falls to invasions from the north, from the Manchurians, from the Manchus, who create a new Qing Dynasty that will rule China from the 1640s to the early 1900s. The Qings co-opt the power and culture of the area under Ming rule, and indeed, the Qing Dynasty expands their domains significantly, especially out to the west. That's the main focus of their attention. And they really reached the height of their domain in the mid- 1700s, under the Qianlong emperor, who's pictured here as a young man. Interestingly, this portrait was done by a Western painter, an Italian who is visiting the Qing court. It's not helpful in some ways to think of the Qing Dynasty as quote: �China.� The Qing Dynasty was a vast agrarian empire. Its people spoke a variety of different languages. But there was a particular court culture, an ideal of civilization that the empire tried to spread to all its domains. There's a little trade going on in the middle 1700's at the very fringes of the empire. Some of those adventurous Europeans are establishing trading outposts; they called these outposts factories. Here's a factory in Canton circa oh, 1800. And really, the Western outpost consists of about what you'd see here: of buildings where the traders lived and where they conducted their business, with each little outpost marked by its national flag. This is at Canton in the south of what we now call �China.� Moving across the water a little bit to Japan. Japan also had a ruling dynasty, but here too there was a Western trading outpost, really one trading outpost, in Nagasaki, at the far southern end of the Japanese domains. In Nagasaki, in this Japanese print, you see the city and these Dutch ships. And indeed, all Western culture was known in Japan in this period as �Dutch culture� or �Dutch ideas.� If, in East Asia, the most powerful empire was the Qing; in South Asia, the powerful empire in the 1600s and much of the 1700s had been the Mogul Empire. The Moguls were Muslim invaders who had come in from the north, ruling over again a multilingual society. During the 1600s, the Moguls had penetrated far to the south, all the way to here. But during the 1700s, their domain begins to contract. There's a rise of a confederacy of Hindu princes, the Marathas, who enjoy a couple hundred years of expanding power. This map shows the way the Marathas were carving up pieces of the Mogul domain as it began to recede. Here you see the fragmentation of the former Mogul, or Mughal, domains. So let's pause and just reflect a little bit on the significance of what's going on in the Mogul or Mughal Empire in the middle of the 1700s. Because of the attacks that have come in from the north by conquerors like Nader Shah, they quickly recede, but what's left is a greatly weakened empire. Let's capture that sense of weakness in the middle of the 1700s just at the point in which the Europeans are going to be making their inroads. The Mughal domain now has really contracted by this period. To this area you see in here. All of this area in purple: these are under a variety of autonomous local rulers. The Hindu princes, the Marathas, have expanded their own area of control, but much of this is now broken up under a variety of local rulers and princelings. That fact is going to acquire world historical importance in the late 1700s. This map is just designed to give you a brief glimpse of India's economic structure in the mid-1700s. The only key point to take away from this map is a number of points for trade in some goods with the outside world along the coast. Relatively limited overland trunk roads, by which traditional commerce would travel. Most of the countryside, being oriented around local subsistence. In Southeast Asia, these European trading outposts were especially important. Mainly for things like spices. Spices are important because they're very light. And they have very high value per pound. These sailing ships of the 1600s, 1700s, couldn't carry very much. 50, 60, 70, 80 tons. But that's a lot of spices. One cargo of spices would almost literally be worth its weight in gold if they could get those spices to Northwest Europe. So you see these trading outposts and, indeed, trade wars fought among rival Europeans all through the Spice Islands here in Southeast Asia, another trading outpost scattered around the edges of the different East Asian domains. Still just toeholds. In Southwest Asia, very much the dominant empire is an empire created by a group of Turkic warrior chiefs, who establish a dynasty called the Ottoman Dynasty, ruling over their sprawling, multi-ethnic domain. This just gives you a sense of how large the Ottoman Empire had become. In the 1500s and 1600s, the Ottomans had hugely expanded their domains in Europe, in Central Asia, in Southwest Asia, as this map shows here. Fighting significant border wars with enemies in what used to be considered Ancient Persia and enemies in Europe. By the early 1700s, the balance of power is tipping. In 1683, the Ottomans besieged the city of Vienna, almost captured it. But by the early 1700s, European armies are doing a little better. They're driving back some of the Ottoman domains, as you see here in this map. And the Ottoman Empire is coming to terms in establishing a border with another ruling dynasty, established by warrior chieftains, the Safavid dynasty, in present day Iran. This map shows you the way the Safavid Dynasty was expanding its domains, and the rough border that they end up drawing after some battles with the Ottomans in the 1500s. Europe in the 1500s was a pretty complicated place. In fact, this map actually simplifies the picture of just how fragmented Europe was. The most coherent kingdom is that here in France, that here in England being another. The Austrian Habsburg Empire here. The Spanish Habsburg domains here, here, here. Also very, very important. And there's the rising power of the Russian Empire, over here. In fact, the 1600s and the 1700s will be an enormous period of growth and consolidation for the Russian Empire. An exceptionally important example of how one of these organized states is able to use the gunpowder revolution to subdue and take away the territories of the Central Asian nomadic tribes. Another important state development in Europe in the 1700s is the rise of a German-speaking state called Prussia. You see here in deep orange, the borders of the Prussian state at the beginning of the 1700s. It picks up a lot of territory here in Silesia after wars in the 1740s. More territory here by the early 1770s. But still, it's just one German state, an important one, among a great many of them. We can single out the Europeans in a lot of ways, but, one especially striking feature of the Europeans by the middle of the 1700s is just these far flung oceanic activities. Above all, the Europeans have now placed themselves at the center of an entire Atlantic world. This map shows you the organization of the domains of Spanish and Portuguese America in 1780. The map is a little bit deceptive, since it shows the claims of all these different vice royalties, but actually very little of this area is being populated by Europeans. Think about the Europeans as facing the Atlantic, populating thin stretches of territory along the coast, or in a few particularly lucrative areas inland, for example where there are mines; plus areas of settlement along the coast here in the Pacific, for those people who can make the voyage around the horn or get their supplies up to the Isthmus of Panama, where they can get back into the Atlantic world by that trade route. In this map of the colonization of the North American mainland, again it's really easy to exaggerate the degree of the colonization. In this area of English settlement, think about almost everyone being within 50 miles of the sea coast, except for a few river valleys penetrating a little bit inland. Think about the French settlement then, clustered along the St. Lawrence River, and a little bit along these lakes, down here at New Orleans. With just a few people beginning to penetrate the Mississippi Valley. Even here within the Spanish domains, these areas of purple almost exaggerate a little bit the scale of the settlement into these thinly populated areas, where Native American tribes still hold sway. In fact, now that some of these tribes have access to horses, they're establishing the kind of horse warrior raiding tribes, or even raiding empires, that were commonplace in Central Asia for so many centuries. Here's the map of perhaps the wealthiest place in the world, per capita, in 1760: the Caribbean. Its signature crop was sugar. It's so wealthy, you can even think about this as sort of the Persian Gulf of the 1700s. They have a near monopoly of the supply of sugar and things like rum that are made from sugar. It's relatively light. And of course, once Europe develops a sweet tooth, the demand for sugar is pretty substantial. This gives you a sense of the trade routes, the sugar, rum, coffee going out, coming back in, servants, manufactures, and slaves from Mexico, in particular, and other areas in South America. The colonies of the Atlantic world are basically two kinds. One kind are colonies of extraction. Places where you can build mines and extract silver, gold, other valuable minerals. Or where you can found plantations and extract wealth from natural resources: sugar, coffee, tobacco. The mines are worked by local inhabitants who are formally enslaved or practically enslaved. The plantations are usually worked by actual slaves, mainly Africans brought over in the millions, in the 1600s and in the 1700s, who can survive the hard labor in the fields. This map gives you a sense of the slave populations of these places. You can see where the dominant concentrations are of the slaves. By the year 1800, the North American numbers in Southern United States in 1800 are 848,000. You can see that that number is eclipsed by the numbers of slaves working in the Caribbean in the West Indies. In fact, the slave trade to the West Indies is much, much larger than these numbers imply because the death rate of the slaves working in the Caribbean and also in Brazil was much higher than the death rate of slaves working in the Southern United States. So let's take a look here at the continent of Africa. The birthplace of Homo sapiens is relatively thinly populated compared to other parts of the world. Traditional societies, with some of the population clustered along the coast, organized into tribes but in some cases more elaborate kingdoms: here in Ethiopia, here in West Africa, and in other places. Most African societies had been relatively insulated from a lot of contact with the outside world. Yes there had been some overland trade with the Muslim world in Northern Africa or in Southwest Asia, but not much. The interactions with the European Atlantic world, though, changed this. The slave trade is enormously lucrative for the slave traders of course, but also for those African kingdoms that can capture the slaves that the slave traders want to buy. This is an Arab Muslim outpost down here, but all of these are European trading outposts. The Europeans themselves were at the very thin edge of these places. Europeans who tried to go into the African interior would mostly die quickly from disease. So, what happens here is the Europeans set up these trading outposts, and then African kings or chiefs would launch raids, capture enemy peoples, bring these captives to the trading posts, and then sell them there for goods they desired. The impact of this, of course, on African social/economic/political development is significant. You increase the power of the kingdoms and the chiefs who were engaged in the trade and can acquire weapons or other things of value. It also creates terrible demographic and social turmoil in Africa from all these raids that are capturing millions of people out of the African population to sell into the Atlantic world. So, social upheaval, economic upheaval, and political changes as a result of this interaction with the Atlantic World, even though the Europeans themselves are still on the fringes of the African continent. So here's the heart of one of those sugar plantations that I have mentioned in the Caribbean: this is the sugar mill. The cane is being grown in the fields. Collected here. Brought into the sugar mill. You see over in the bottom left hand corner: the overseer of the plantation, his foremen. Practically everyone else in this picture will be slaves. The Atlantic world is then interacting with the European world, too. You can see the centers of economic activity. Some of it, the traditional heartland of the Mediterranean world. But a lot of it now are centers of economic activity here in Northwest Europe, some degree in Spain, but especially in England, invigorated by their interaction with this world of Atlantic commerce. This map gives you another way of visualizing the interaction between the traditional European world and the new Atlantic world. Some traditional centers of population, like Northern Italy, the Mediterranean world. But, you see how important Northwest Europe has become, how many of the population centers are clustered near the coast. Even in Spain, in addition to the imperial capital of Madrid, key cities now are places like Valencia and Seville. See all these trade interactions, depicted here, there's a lot going on. The arrows can exaggerate the scale of this. The value of the trade was enormous for the kings involved, because it's relatively small amounts of very high value goods that enriched key merchants and the connected people at court and the states that controlled the trading monopolies. And the Europeans are still really just touching the fringes of the places where they're setting up their trading outposts. But this sets the scene for things that are going to change the world even more in the coming 50 years. In effect, what this map shows you is a situation. The situation presents problems and opportunities. How those problems and opportunities got solved accumulate into what we can call a Commercial Revolution, and that's what I'm going to discuss next time. See you then.
