Alright, let's review everything you need to know about Unit 4 for AP World History, which is all about maritime empires from 1450 to 1750 and the juicy developments thereunto appertaining. So if you're ready to get them brain cows'milts, let's get to it. Okay, first let's talk about the causes of European expansion during this period, and we're going to make it nice and tidy and break it into three categories—technological, political, and economic. So the first cause of European exploration was European adoption and innovation of maritime technologies.
Now, this is kind of a big deal because prior to this period, Europe, as I've said before, was kind of like the butt bread in the loaf of world power. You know, everyone touches it, but nobody really wants it. But during this period, Europeans gained the knowledge and technology that facilitated their ascendancy on the world stage. First, they adopted some maritime technologies from the classical Greek, Islamic, and Asian worlds. For example, they adopted the magnetic compass, which was first developed in China.
And also, they adopted the astrolabe from ancient Greece and the Arab world, which helped sailors know their latitude. And they adopted the Latin sail, which was used by Arab merchants on the Indian Ocean, which enabled them to take wind on both sides and not just from behind. And really what you need to remember is that the remember here is that these adopted tools made it possible for Europeans to navigate on the seas and later take over everybody's craft. However, it wasn't all adoption of old technologies by Lord No, Europeans made innovations of their own, and here we need to focus on shipbuilding, and I'll give you one example. Behold the Portuguese Caravelle.
Now as we'll see in a moment, the Portuguese were the first movers in the Maritime Empire project, and this was their ship design. It was much smaller than the massive merchant ships like Chinese junks in the Indian Ocean, and that meant they were better able to navigate inland through rivers and shallow coastal areas. Additionally, they were fast, and once the Portuguese loaded cannons onto these sweet bippies, they had everything they needed to take over the Indian Ocean trade.
We could also talk about the Portuguese Carrack or the Dutch Flout, but you only need to know one example. But you also need to remember that European sailors improve their understanding of regional wind patterns, both in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. And if you're sailing, that's a Oh, and by the way, I should mention that this video is part of a larger resource called the AP World Heimler Review Guide, which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. It's got whole unit review videos like this one that are not here on YouTube, and then note guides to follow along, practice questions, practice exams, and answer keys for every dang bit of it.
It is the fastest way to study for your class and for your exam in May, so have a look. Okay, now the second cause of European imperial expansion was the growth of state power. You see, during this period, it's going to be important to understand that European monarchs were growing far more powerful than they had ever been before, and that was the at the expense of historically powerful groups like the nobility. And so with this centralization of power, monarchs now played a much more significant role in the economic decisions of their state.
And perhaps one of the most significant decisions had to do with inter-regional trade. You see, as Europe started emerging from the backwaters of world history, many folks, especially among the upper classes, started demanding spices from Asia and some other goods as well. But there was a big fat problem with that.
You remember all those land-based empires we met back in Unit 3? Well, they're still here during this period, and they happen to control the land-based trading routes over which those lovely spices were extradited. exchange.
And that meant by the time they got to Europe, the prices were jacked way up, and so even the fanciest of fancy pants Europeans were like, Butter my backside and call me a biscuit. What, did you make this pepper out of unicorn hooves or something? So that meant European states had a big incentive to find other routes, namely sea-based routes, to Asia which would allow them to trade on their own terms.
And then the third cause of European exploration was economic, and I've got two terms you need to know here. First, let me introduce you to mercantilism. Now mercantilism was a state-driven economic system that characterized these imperial European states during this period. And basically, Basically, what you need to know here is that mercantilist economics saw the world's wealth like a pie, and the goal was to get as much of that pie as possible. Now, the thing about pie is that there's only a fixed amount.
And since mercantilism measured wealth in gold and silver, then yeah, there's only so much of those minerals in the world. And so, in order to get the biggest piece of that pie, the state's main goal was to maintain a favorable balance of trade, which just means they organized their economies around exports and avoid imports as much as possible. And why? Well, if you're exporting goods, that means gold and silver are coming in. And if you're importing goods, that means gold and silver are going out.
Anyway, the point to remember here is that... that this system created a strong motivation for expanding empires through overseas colonization because once a colony was established it created a closed market for exports from the imperial country. In other words, in this arrangement, colonies existed only to enrich their imperial parents. And then the second economic tool of European expansion was the joint stock company. Now by definition a joint stock company was a limited liability business often chartered by the state that was funded by a group of private investors.
And what I mean by limited liability is that those investors who pooled their money to finance the exploration could only lose what they invested in. Or, you might say their liability was, uh, limited. And here's where I tell you that this whole sea-based empire building project could only be successful if the state and its merchants were tied together in mutual interdependence.
What I mean is, states relied on merchants to expand their influence in far-off lands, while merchants relied on states to grant them monopolies on various regions of trade. And it was joint stock companies that made this power and wealth hugfest work. But I should also mention that it's the states that primarily used this new kind of company that prospered during this period, and those that stuck with state-sponsored voyages like Spain and Portugal were gradually decreasing in power and influence.
Now, you should at least know one of these joint stock companies by name, and I reckon I'll introduce you to the Dutch East India Company, which you'll sometimes see abbreviated as the VOC. It was chartered by the Dutch state in 1602, and included in that charter was a monopoly on the Indian Ocean Trade. And as we'll see in a minute, the Dutch positively dominated the Indian Ocean Trade. The Indian Ocean, which expanded Dutch influence there and made the company's investors richer than a dwarvish miner in Middle Earth. That's such a nerdy joke, but I stand by it.
Anyway, both the British and the French developed their own joint stock companies as well, and that was one of the primary means by which they extended their influence also. And this fervor to insert themselves into the Indian Ocean created powerful rivalries among European states in order to ascend to that top spot. attacks on each other's trading ports and shifts and all kinds of fun stuff.
Okay, now that we understand the causes of the rise of sea-based empires, let's meet the main players. And for this we're going to need to rewind the clock a bit since all that mercantilism and joint stock company talk came after this. Anyway, the first European state to get its power pants on was Portugal thanks to the leadership of our boy Prince Henry the Navigator, who brought together sailors, mapmakers, and shipbuilders to figure out how to sail down the Atlantic coast of Africa.
And initially Portugal's interest lay in the gold trade in West Africa, but by the 1440s they had their eyes on entering the Indian Ocean. Now to that end they established what's known as a trading post empire around the coast of Africa and throughout the Indian Ocean. And this was a unique kind of empire. Like when we think of overseas empires, we tend to think of colonies. And you know, that's not wrong, we're going to get to that.
But colonies, in case you've never established one yourself and don't know, are expensive. So the Portuguese strategy was to simply set up bare bones trading posts, which they called factories and all these places which served to control trade throughout the region. And they were largely able to do this, if you'll recall from earlier, because of their fast ships, like the caravel and the carrack, which were loaded with cannons and can blow up any challengers quick, fast, and in a hurry. But that bare-bones trading post kind of empire was not how Spain did it, and I reckon we ought to sit with them for a spell. You see, by the time Spain started thinking about maritime expansion, Portugal already had control of the Indian Ocean routes.
And so the Spanish crown decided to sponsor Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic in search of a western route to the Spice Strait. And you probably know the story by now. Columbus Columbus sailed west and instead of finding a route to Southeast Asia, instead ran into two massive continents that no one in Europe had previously known about.
And side note, to the end of his life Columbus was like, I found a route to Asia. But it became pretty clear through voyages of other explorers that it was not in fact Asia. Oh he's crazy y'all.
Anyway, a Spanish voyage to the New World Multiply had established their claim to a vast world of colonization, not just the establishment of trading posts, and it marked the opening of the transatlantic trade which would eventually become even more prosperous than the Indian Ocean trade. This came to imply that the Spanish were uninterested in the Indian Ocean trade. No, they went ahead and set up their base of operations in the Philippines, but instead of setting up piddly trading posts, they went full colonial over the territory. And in order to establish and maintain control there, the Spanish used the same methods that they used over in the Americas, like tribute collecting and coerced labor.
And so to put it mildly, Portugal and Spain were getting all kinds of rich off this arrangement and And that is when other states looked at the pie and said, oh we gotta get us some of that. And I'll introduce you to the big three that rose up during this period. First was France, who sponsored westward expeditions in order to find a North Atlantic Sea route to Asia.
They also didn't find it, mainly because it doesn't exist, but they did establish a presence in Canada, which gave them access to the incredibly lucrative fur trade with indigenous peoples in the region. And the French Empire in the Americas was similar to the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, since their holdings were small and mainly focused on trade. And that's about the time that England came to the Imperial Party.
So after Queen Elizabeth I rose to power, and like a While a boss defeated Spain's attempts to invade England, she took advantage of Spain's weakness and started sponsoring exploration into the Americas. So she commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh with the venture and established England's first colony on Roanoke Island called Virginia. As it turns out, it was kind of a disaster and wouldn't begin to turn around until 1607 with the establishment of Jamestown in Virginia. And again, the British weren't just interested in the Americas.
They were for sure interested in chomping on the popsicle of power and the Indian Ocean too, and for them, India was the prize. But as it turned out, they lacked sufficient naval power to take over the subcontinent from the Mughals and had to be be content with establishing a few trading posts along the coast. But don't feel too bad for them, because later in the 18th century their naval power would be substantial and those trading posts would be transformed into full colonial rule in India. And then not to be out-imperialed by other states, the Dutch joined the party as well.
So it was during this period that the Dutch gained independence from Spain, and it wasn't long before they became the most prosperous state in Europe. And with all that newfound power and wealth, they sent their fancy flouts to challenge Spanish and Portuguese control over the Indian Ocean trade and, spoiler alert, the Dutch VOC very much came out on top. And while they also dabbled in colonizing the Americas, like here in New Amsterdam, it was mainly Dutch control of strategic locations throughout the Indian Ocean and their monopoly over the spice trade that increased their power and influence.
Okay, now let's focus on one of the most significant effects of this flurry of maritime empire building across the Atlantic, namely the Columbian Exchange. Now by definition, this refers to the transfer of new diseases, food, plants, and animals between the eastern and western hemispheres, and I'm going to give you some examples of each. But before I do, let me just emphasize that the Columbian Exchange refers to environmental phenomena, so don't get it confused with things like the triangular trade or anything like that.
So first let's consider the transfer of disease. But before I tell you what they are, you need to understand why this was such a big deal. You see, because folks throughout Afro-Eurasia had been in contact for millennia, they had developed immunities to diseases transferred among them.
However, because of the isolation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the diseases Europeans introduced were So first and foremost, Europeans introduced smallpox and measles into the indigenous populations of the Americas. They spread fast and were incredibly deadly. And as they spread through the Caribbean and Central America and then into South America, they cut some populations in half, and in some cases, it killed 90% of the peoples who were infected.
And then the third disease was malaria, which was carried by diseases that were not caused by the disease itself. vectors like mosquitoes. And all in all, while European states were growing exceedingly wealthy and powerful through their empires in the Americas, the introduction of these diseases meant that indigenous populations were devastated.
And it's no wonder why they refer to this as the Great Dying. Okay, now second, let's consider the transfer of food and plants, which had major effects on populations both in the New World and in the Old World. So European settlers brought wheat and olives and grapes, among many other things, which were staples of European diets.
And then eventually they also introduced African and Asian foods, like rice and bananas and sugar. And while indigenous Americans mostly maintained their traditional diets, they also incorporated some of these new foods which varied their diets and therefore slowly increased their lifespan. But going the other way, crops from the Americas like maize and potatoes were introduced to Europe, Africa, and Asia, and that contributed to healthier populations, which led to less longer lifespans, and the result was a population explosion after 1700. Additionally, the millions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly sent to the Americas introduced foods as well, including okra and rice. Now, as demand increased in Europe for these American crops, sprawling plantations were established in the Americas that focused on cash cropping. And what's cash cropping, says you?
Well, says I, it's a method of agriculture that focuses on growing crops, usually a single crop, primarily for export. So, for example, in the Caribbean, sugarcane was grown in a abundance with the work of enslaved African laborers and then exported to market in Europe and the Middle East. And third, let's consider the transfer of animals. Europeans introduced pigs and sheep and cattle to the Americas, but by far the most consequential animal was the horse.
Not only was the horse used for agricultural work, but it also enabled indigenous plains peoples to hunt buffalo far more effectively and thus better feed their populations. Okay, now by this point we've established that the global balance of power was beginning to shift towards European states who were busy establishing maritime empires throughout the world. But I hope you didn't think everybody was happy about this.
Don't be crazy. There were plenty of people who were happy about this. Plenty of examples of resistance, and I'm going to tell you about several of them. First there was resistance from some Asian states against the intrusion of Western powers in the Indian Ocean, and here let's meet Tokugawa Japan. Now Japan had just emerged from a real contentious period in their history and was experiencing some unity under a shogun from the Tokugawa clan.
And at first when the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Dutch came knocking on Japan's door, the shogun was relatively open to it because he was very interested in trading for gunpowder weapons which helped enormously with Japan's unification. But here's where I tell you that in addition to economics, one of the big motivations for European imperialism was the spread of Christianity. Christianity. And so by the second half of the 16th century, a growing number of Japanese people had converted to Christianity, and the Shogun began to perceive that development as a threat to the hard-won unification of Japan. And so the Shogun went ahead and booted all those Christian missionaries from Japan and suppressed this foreign Western religion, sometimes with brutality and violence.
And as a result, Japan almost completely isolated itself from the growing influence of European commerce in the Indian Ocean, only maintaining trade with the Dutch. And second, we can see resistance on the local level in European states themselves. And here I'm going to introduce you to the Fronde, which occurred in France. So I'm going to start with the Fronde.
In response to the newly adopted political doctrine of absolutism, which concentrated all political power under the monarch, a series of rebellions known as the Fronde occurred starting in 1648. And basically, in order to finance imperial expansion, several new edicts were passed that increased taxation among French subjects. And so the French nobility, whose power had been under threat from the growing power of the monarchy, got all kinds of fed up and led peasants in spontaneous rebellions that lasted for six years. But in the end, this resistance was crushed, and bonus, the monarchy increased in power even more.
And then third, we need to consider resistance from the enslaved. And here I'm going to introduce you to the maroon societies in the Caribbean and Brazil. So in most European colonies in the Americas, enslaved Africans were forced to labor on plantations.
But also in most of those colonies, small pockets of free blacks existed which were mainly made up of runaway slaves, and these were known as maroon societies. Now from all you know about European colonial power, it shouldn't surprise you to find out that imperial authorities were, uh, not fond of these communities. And so, for example, in Jamaica, colonial troops sought to crush these maroon societies, but the free blacks, led by a fiery woman called Queen Nanny, rebelled and fought back.
And so in a surprising turn of events, the colonial militia, the colonial militia, were forced to leave the country. militia could not find a way to win this battle and so they signed a treaty in 1738 recognizing the freedom of this community of imperial resistance. Now here's where I tell you that Europeans were not the only folks prospering as a result of their maritime empire frenzy and the expansion of networks of exchange. In fact, the expansion of maritime trading networks also fostered the growth of some African states who participated in them, thus connecting these states to the global economic linkages these networks represented.
And that's true even if the networks were becoming increasingly European centered. And I shouldn't surprise you if you've been with me since Unit 2. Remember that when we were talking about the Silk Roads and the Indian Ocean Network and the Trans- and Saharan routes, there were certain cities and states that grew in power and prosperity mainly because they were located in strategic points along those networks. And it's the same story here, and there are two examples you need to know specifically from Africa.
First is the Asante Empire here in West Africa. They were able to provide highly desired goods that European traders were after, things like gold and ivory and enslaved people. And that economic partnership made the Asante so rich that, as we say here in the South, them boys buy a new tractor every time they run out of gas. And that wealth further enabled the Asante to expand their military and consolidate political power over more and more of the region.
And second is the Kingdom of the Congo here in Southern Africa. They made strong diplomatic ties with the Portuguese and provided them with things like gold and copper and again, enslaved people. And interestingly, similar to the way some African leaders converted to Islam in the last period in order to facilitate trade with other Muslims, the King of the Congo converted to Christianity in order to facilitate trade with Christian states that were knocking on his door.
And although the economic relationship would later deteriorate, in the beginning it led to the expansion of the Congolese state's power. Okay, now let's turn the corner and talk about how both change and continuity occurred in networks of exchange during this period. And if that sounds about as boring as licking tree bark in order to guess the species, well, you're wrong. This is exciting. So let's start with the Indian Ocean Network.
The big change during this period, obviously, is the entrance in mass- massive power grabs of European states into this network. But even so, there was significant continuity as well. The Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, and Southeast Asian merchants who had been using this trade network for centuries before the arrival of the Europeans continued to use it even if they now had to dodge all those European cannonballs. In fact, European entrance into this trade network increased profits not only for Europeans, but also for many of these merchants who had always used the network for trade. Additionally, long-established merchants like the Gujaratis continued to make use of the Indian Ocean trade even while Europeans sought to dominate it.
The Gujaratis significantly increased the power and wealth of the Mughal Empire through their ongoing participation in the Indian Ocean trade. And it was precisely because of the continued power of folks like the Gujarati that the Portuguese never achieved full domination in the Indian Ocean. And then another significant continuity is that despite growing European dominance on the sea over land routes, the Gujaratis continued to dominate the Indian Ocean.
like the Silk Roads were still almost entirely controlled by various Asian land-based powers, most notably Ming China and then the Qing after it and the Ottoman Empire as well. Also, peasant and artisan labor continued and even intensified in many regions as demand for food and consumer goods increased as a result of multiplying trade connections. For example, as the demand for cotton increased throughout Europe, peasant farmers in South Asia increased their production for export and in many cases increased their standard of living.
And the same was true of silk production in China. Okay, now let's shift and talk about change and continuity in the West, although to be honest it was mostly change over here. And why? Well, unlike the Indian Ocean network, the opening of the Atlantic system of trade was completely new. Thanks Columbus!
And although Europeans would for sure grow wealthy and powerful in the Indian Ocean, it was the movement of goods, wealth, and laborers between the eastern and western hemispheres that made them stupid rich and powerful. In terms of goods, sugar was king. And to that end, colonial plantations in the Caribbean specialized in the growth of sugar cane, which was exported across the Atlantic to satisfy Europeans'growing demand for that sweet treat. In terms of wealth, silver was king.
The Spanish, when they weren't busy decimating entire indigenous populations with their nasty germs, got busy making money. mining silver in the Americas which was then transferred back to the royal coffers. And that had a big effect back in Europe. First, that silver was used to purchase luxury goods from China, which both satisfied the Chinese demand for silver and further developed the commercialization of their economy that we looked at back in Unit 1. Second, the goods that silver purchased were then traded on the Atlantic system, further enriching all who participated. And then regarding labor on the Atlantic system, much of it came from coerced labor, whether it was forced indigenous labor, indentured servitude, or African slavery.
And eventually it was enslaved Africans that made up the bulk of the imperial labor force in the Americas. Massive changes that occurred in the opening of the Atlantic system was maintained by the global flow of silver and trade monopolies granted by states to joint stock companies. You see how we're just tying everything together? Like it feels good, doesn't it? Oh, no?
Alright, let's just keep going. Now since I just mentioned labor, you're going to need to know some changes and continuities in labor systems as well. And first, let's start in the Americas. As I mentioned before, the economies established in the Americas by Europeans were largely based on agriculture and mining, which is to say they were all farmy-farmy over there.
And with that new arrangement, Europeans made use of both existing labor systems and introduced new ones. And so, the idea is that they were based on existing labor systems. system that was continued during this period was the Midas system. If you weren't sleeping through Unit 1, you'll remember that this system was developed and deployed by the Inca Empire and basically it amounted to requiring their subjects to provide labor on state projects for a certain number of days per year. So when the Spanish showed up and got their conquistador on, they went ahead and used the Midas system for their silver mining operations, which was dangerous and sometimes deadly work for the indigenous people forced into it.
And to be clear, the Midas system of the Spanish was not an exact copy of the Inca version. The Inca used this system for the good of their people, while the Spanish used it to force people to work in. private mind for the good of individuals and the Spanish state.
But despite some continuity, it was changes in labor systems in the Americas that arguably made the biggest impact, and there are four of these new labor systems you need to know. First was chattel slavery, which describes a kind of slavery in which the purchaser has total ownership over the enslaved person. Additionally, chattel slavery was race-based and hereditary.
And to be clear, slavery is not a new phenomenon that pops onto the scene fully formed out of nothing like Athena popping out of Zeus's head. Greek mythology joke. Nailed it. In the 1800s, the African slave trade was a regular feature of exchange.
change in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean networks and Trans-Saharan networks as well. And in those networks, enslavement was not race-based and enslaved people often assimilated into the cultures where they worked. But with the rise of chattel slavery in the Atlantic system, things, uh, changed.
First of all, because the main economic engine of imperial empires in the Americas was difficult agricultural work and mining, Europeans purchased male slaves two to one, which significantly impacted the demographics of various African states. Second, the size of the transatlantic slave trade was far more massive than its Indian Ocean and Mediterranean counterparts. Like over the course of about 350 years, over 12.5 million Africans were sold to plantation owners in the Americas. And then third and most distinctive was the racial component of the Atlantic slave system. In the Americas, slavery became identified with blackness, and that provided the justification for the brutality of slavery.
To be identified as black was to be less than human, and to be less than human meant that plantation owners could treat their workers with violence and keep a clear conscience, and they did both. And look, I am going to get to other new labor systems, but we need to dwell a little longer on the African slave trade because its significance was all out of proportion to the others that I'm going to mention. And so here I just want to mention three social effects of the growth of the African slave trade that you need to know.
The first effect was a profound gender imbalance, especially in West African states. Since men were preferred to women for the difficult agricultural work in the Americas, men were sold into slavery at a rate of 2 to 1. And that leads to the second societal effect, namely the changing of family structures. And the main manifestation of that was the...
rise of polygyny, which describes the phenomenon of men marrying more than one woman. And that's not hard to understand when you remember that in many places there were twice as many women as there were men. And then the third social effect was cultural synthesis that occurred in the Americas, and a good example here is the growing emergence of Creole languages in places like the Caribbean.
Caribbean, and Brazil. And Creole languages are basically mixed languages, and in this case various Creole tongues were developed as a synthesis of European and African languages and in some cases indigenous languages. Okay, now let's get back to the new labor systems that represented change in the Atlantic world, and we'll go faster through these. So second, there was indentured servitude, which describes an arrangement in which a laborer would sign a contract that bound them to a particular work for a period of time, usually seven years. And then at the end of the contract, they could go free and do whatever it is they wanted to do.
And we see this form of labor especially in the British colonies in North America, where many lower class workers in Great Britain signed indentures in order to find a job. finance their journey across the sea to the new world. And then the third new labor system comes to us from the Spanish, namely the encomienda system. The Spanish used this system to divide indigenous Americans among Spanish settlers who were then forced to provide labor for the Spanish in exchange for food and protection. That was a little like the feudalism that you learned about in Unit 1. But as the encomienda system declined, not least because of the widespread abuses that were taking place, the Spanish cooked up a fourth system of labor known as hacienda.
And technically speaking, hacienda is not a labor system, but we're going to put it here for simplicity. So in this system, indigenous laborers were forced to work on the fields of large plantations known as narcos. Not surprisingly, Haciendas and that amounted to a situation that was not much different than slavery.
There are some similarities between these two Spanish systems, but the main difference you should remember is this. Encomienda had nothing to do with land ownership and everything to do with controlling the indigenous population. Hacienda, on the other hand, centered on land ownership as the main vehicle for controlling the indigenous population.
Okay, now we also need to consider how all this contact between new and old worlds created the occasion for the change of belief systems, and here we're going to focus on Christianity and the Americas. Now, recall that in building these massive, honking sea-based empires, one of the main motives for the change of belief systems was to create a new world. motivations of states like Spain and Portugal was to get everyone everywhere to worship Jesus himself.
And so to that end, both states sent Catholic missionaries, many of whom were Jesuits, to their colonies in order to convert the indigenous people. And in that way, religion became a significant justification for the conquest of the Americas. Because hey, we all know that when Jesus said that he came to bring peace and not a sword, well, he didn't mean that. Anyway, through the efforts of these missionaries, there was much conversion, but it's not quite as tidy as that. In some cases, indigenous groups outwardly adopted Christianity but privately continued to practice their own religious beliefs.
And in some cases, when this was discovered, it was met with violent retaliation from colonial authorities. And ultimately the effect of all this was a religious syncretism that resulted in a blending of some Christian beliefs and practices with indigenous beliefs and practices. Additionally, indigenous African religions participated in the syncretism party too. For example, Vodun was a new faith that resulted from the blending of African animist beliefs with Christian doctrines and practices in the Americas.
And finally we need to talk about changing social hierarchies during this period. And I know what you're thinking. Oh, Heimler, you saved the best for last.
Dang straight I did. And so there are three categories of change in social hierarchies that you need to get to get cozy with, and I'm going to give you an example of each. First, you need to understand how states responded to ethnic and religious diversity, and here let's talk about the differing treatment of the Jews during this period.
In Spain and Portugal, you might recall that they were all about the Jesus. And since Spain had just completed the Reconquista, which expelled all Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, Christianity now reigned supreme. But there was still a minority of Jews living in the Kingdom, some of whom had converted to Christianity and some of whom had not.
And so, in order to remove the temptation for those converted Jews to convert back to Judaism, Spain went ahead and booted all the Jews from their land. And many of them sought refuge in Portugal. as it turned out, was becoming more politically intertwined with Spain, and so Portugal expelled the Jews as well. But on the other side of the spectrum, we have the treatment of Jews in the Ottoman Empire. So, hearing news of this expulsion, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II opened his empire to the displaced Jews, who then emigrated in droves.
And because of the relative tolerance of the Ottomans toward Jews, some of them rose to prominence in the Ottoman court, while others contributed to the economic and cultural environment. Okay, now the second category of change to social hierarchies was the rise of new political elites, and I'm going to give you two examples here. First in the Americas, the Spanish imposed this new social hierarchy.
hierarchy known as the Casta system in their colonial holdings. Essentially, this system organized colonial society into a series of ranks based on race and ancestry, and what level a person landed at really depended on how much Spanish blood they had running through their veins. And the important thing to remember here is that prior to the imposing of the Casta system, native peoples were part of a wide variety of linguistic and cultural groups.
But the Casta system erased much of that cultural complexity and ordered their society by the standards of a small minority of a Spanish elite. And another example here is the transition from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty in China. Now recall from Unit 3 that the Qing was established in the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing established by non-Chinese folks, namely the Manchu. In doing so, they reserved all the best bureaucratic positions in the empire for ethnically Manchu people to the exclusion of ethnically Han people. And finally, the third category of change in social hierarchies involved the struggles of existing elites in various states.
You see, elite members of various societies had always exerted significant influence on political and economic policies, but with the increasing power of monarchs, this influence began to wane. For example, let's consider the Russian boyars who made up the aristocratic landowning class in Russia, and they exerted great power in the administration of the empire for centuries. centuries.
But when the absolute is Peter the Great rose to power in Russia, he wanted to take all the power he could from those boyars and keep it for himself. And when the boyars opposed this curtailment of their power, Peter went ahead and abolished the rank of boyar and required anyone who wanted bureaucratic employment to serve the state directly. Well alright, if you're feeling saucy, you can click here and grab my AP World Heimler Review Guide, which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in math.
And you can click here to review all my other Unit 4 videos if you need some help on any particular topic. I appreciate you coming around, and I'll catch you on the flip-flop. Heimler out.