The Growth of States V - Rival colonial powers
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 25-05-18 21:19
View mindmap
- The Growth of States V - Rival colonial powers (according to Gerritsen and McFarlane)
- Joint-stock companies
- English operated under aegis of East India Company (EIC)
- Founded in 1600
- Built on principle of joint-stock organisation
- Funded by large number of merchants and investors
- Granted a monopoly over Asian trade
- Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)
- Joint-stock company that posed competition to both English and Portuguese
- Established in Amsterdam in 1602 to capitalise o growing trade in goods from Asia
- took advantage of existing trade networks
- made its money not just through import of Asian good into Europe but by muscling in on intra-Asian trade
- The West-Indische Campagnie
- founded in 1621
- held Dutch monopoly for trade with North and South America and with western Africa
- Came into direct conflict with Spanish expansion
- According to Jacobs
- A small investment of (Peruvian) silver brought to Asia could be used to purchase raw silks, exchanged in Japan for copper and gold, which was then used for purchase of Indian textiles, to pay for coveted cloves, mace and nutmeg bought in Moluccas, yielding vast profits in Netherlands
- Competition led to frequent and violent clashes in Asia
- With Dutch focusing mostly on islands in Indonesian archipelago and English gradually taking territory in India
- English operated under aegis of East India Company (EIC)
- English
- Established their first footholds in:
- Madras (Fort St George) in 1639
- Bombay (Mumbai) in 1661
- Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1702
- From ports, they traded in coffee and textiles
- Sent ships to China to acquire tea
- Also used Indian textiles to fund trade in African slaves that worked on Caribbean plantations
- English advance in India coincided with collapse of Mughal state
- Created power vacuum that East India Company slowly began to fill
- Their focus was not on transforming local cultures but on creating a structure to facilitate trade
- Created power vacuum that East India Company slowly began to fill
- Throughout C18th, English took over more of governmental functions, leading to establishment in 1773 of Bengal governor as governor-general of India
- Established their first footholds in:
- Americas
- French, Dutch and English were able to set up colonies in regions not occupied by Spanish colonists
- Frenchmen established permanent settlements in Canada and Lesser Antilles
- Subsequently turning, like English, to exploit absence of Spaniards from smaller Caribbean Islands and regions along eastern seaboard of North America
- Dutch
- Made temporary inroads into Brazil, until they dislodged by Portuguese and Brazilian arms in 1654
- While holding islands in Caribbean and North American settlement that English later turned into New York
- Dutch interest was more in trade than agrarian settlement and they were much less significant in Protestant colonisation of America than their neighbour and rival England
- England and the Americas
- English colonisation put down firm roots in early 1600s
- Following foundation of Jamestown in 1607, New England in 1620 and Barbados in 1625
- English gradually built up, between these distant points, an empire that was in most respects quite different from that of other European powers in Americas
- Compared to vast extent of Spain's possessions in American continents, Anglo-America was small
- Being confined to a few Caribbean islands and narrow ***** of eastern shores of north America
- Unlike Spaniards, who were drawn deep in American interior and backland in their search for native civilisations to conquer and precious metals to exploit
- English remained fundamentally maritime and rural people
- According to Elliott
- English found neither silver nor great Amerindian peasantries, and their colonies followed other models
- In North America
- Colonies established in New England were based largely on family farms
- Virginia and Maryland came to depend on tobacco plantations worked by indentured labour
- In Caribbean
- English colonies took another form
- they imitated sugar plantation powered by African slaves that had been pioneered by Portuguese in Brazil
- French and other Europeans did this too in Caribbean, thereby promoting tremendous growth of slave trade and drew West (and later East) Africa into web of European Atlantic commerce and was to ship millions of Africans across ocean, with great damage to African socieites that traders plundered for slaves
- they imitated sugar plantation powered by African slaves that had been pioneered by Portuguese in Brazil
- English colonies took another form
- Joint-stock companies
Comments
No comments have yet been made