Introduction to The Rise of the Colonial Empires (1450–1770)

The voyages of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) and other adventurers transformed relations between the civilizations of the world. As Columbus was traversing the Atlantic and stumbling upon the New World, Portuguese voyagers found a sea route to India by sailing down the African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope. The European nations, led by Spain and Portugal, began a quest for treasure and global expansion.

The peoples of the Americas, from small nomadic tribes to conquering empires such as the Inca and the Aztec, would all be profoundly affected by the encounter with the seafaring Europeans. The whites brought with them powerful weapons and virulent diseases, against which the indigenous Americans had no defense. The Spanish soon set up colonies throughout Central and South America, eager to convert the Native Americans to Christianity and to transmit wealth to Spain. They forced the natives to work on large plantations and in mines, but they required still more labor, so they began to import Africans, who were purchased in bondage from Portuguese slave traders. Many more African slaves came to Portugal’s American colony, Brazil, and to Dutch and British bases in the Western Hemisphere. The transatlantic slave trade formed a crucial link in the colonial system that enriched Europe, decimated Africa, and exploited the Americas.

European leaders followed the doctrine of mercantilism, which measured a nation’s strength by the amount of gold and other precious metals the nation accumulated in its treasury. Monarchs, struggling to increase their power over the landed nobility and the clergy, increasingly allied with the merchant middle class, whose activities generated new sources of wealth. Some monarchs underwrote the expeditions of discovery, as King Ferdinand II (1452–1516) and Queen Isabella I (1451–1504) of Spain sponsored those of Columbus, and furnished monopoly charters for colonial enterprises. Establishing colonies and controlling colonial trade produced abundant wealth, which monarchs used to build their military strength.

A great many rulers of the period, in Europe and elsewhere, governed with absolute power. Some proclaimed the divine right of kings, asserting that their power descended from God and that their subjects owed them unquestioning obedience. The outstanding example of an absolute ruler was France’s “Sun King,” Louis XIV (1638–1715), who reigned for an incredible seventy-two years. In England, however, the confrontation between the Parliament and the Stuart kings led to civil war. The antiroyalists were victorious and beheaded King Charles I (1600–1649). The British monarchy was restored eleven years later, but the Parliament retained many of the rights it had won. Later, the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) defended these actions, arguing that a government’s power is derived from the people it governs, not from God.

The Muslim world produced two of the most remarkable rulers of this era. The Ottoman Empire reached its apex during the reign of Süleyman I (c. 1494–1566), not only because of his military conquests in the Mediterranean and eastern Europe but also because of his achievements in the realms of justice, law, and finance. The Mughal emperor Akbar (1542–1605) subdued the entire Indian subcontinent and governed it with religious tolerance and a large, efficient bureaucracy that gained the support of the local nobility. Both these emperors left a lasting legacy as wise rulers who oversaw a golden age of culture and the arts.