Exploration Zheng He 1 What were Chinas Maritime

Exploration

Zheng He 1. What were China’s Maritime accomplishments prior to 1450? 2. Who is Zheng He? What is the Star Fleet? 3. Why did the Ming Government end maritime exploration?

• The Santa Maria

Ideas to Explore. . . (no pun intended) 1. What were the motives for European Expansion? 2. What technological changes enable expansion? 3. Why were Portugal and Spain the early leaders of European Expansion?

Major Themes of Chapter 23 • Desire to explore • Technology of exploration • Joint-Stock companies and their rising power • Russia and the land based gunpowder empires • Columbian Exchange and its world altering changes

Status Quo circa 1450 • Chinese Economy is a dominant world power • Indian Ocean trade network is the most important in the world • Silk Roads trek the most valuable items on earth • The Byzantine Empire is on the brink of collapse to the Ottoman Turks • England France are locked in a century old war

Status Quo circa 1450 • Crusades had linked wealthy Europeans to spices from Asian markets and the Byzantine collapse shifted these trade routes. (think of oil) • Educated people knew the near exact circumference of the earth for 1700 years!* • The assumption was that there was one major body of water rapped around the ‘back’ of the globe!

Ptolemaic Map

What technological changes enable expansion? • Stern Rudder • Latitudinal Maps, why no longitude? • Triangular Lateen Sail • Magnetic Compass • Astrolabe • Cross Staff and Back Staff • Volto do Mar • Rudders and Star Charts

Reasons for Exploration • • 1. 2. 3. 4. Could Iraq (war torn), Chad (impoverished), or Bangladesh (unstable) in this year be able to mount a space program? Then what are the pre-conditions for exploration? Relative Peace Prosperity (wealthy investors) Skilled and educated workers Organizing tax-collecting government

NASA • Apply the four pre-conditions to the NASA Space Program. • First country on Mars? • Expense, technological expertise, education, willingness to take risks, and a large factor of the ‘unknown’

Portugal • Needed land suitable for cultivating cash crops • Needed to establish new trade routes outside of the Muslim control of Asian Markets • Desire to expand the influence of Christianity • EFFECT: Island east Atlantic Plantations are colonized

Portugal • The need to find a direct route to Asia was all consuming (remember think oil). • What factors drove the prices of precious goods up? • Collapse of Mongol and Byzantine Empires, spread of Bubonic Plague • With the Collapse, how could Asian goods get to European Markets?

Effect of Exploration • What is the major effect of the explorations of Portuguese and Spanish? •

• Break into a small group and rank the three most impacting trade items in each direction and why.

<-Cacafuego?

BEIC

VOC

Second Wave • Magellan and the Pacific • Spain, Mexico and the Philippines and the Manila Galleons • England the Northwest Passage • James Cook, last of the great explorers, great site cartographer

Trading Posts • ‘Footholds’ into trading regions where there is a lack of military resources and human numbers to impose rule in eastern and western hemispheres • Afonzo d’Alboquerque, forced merchant ships to dock and trade at fortified ports.

Major Trading Posts • • Melaka Batavia Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Macau Nagasaki Mozambique

Russia • Spread two directions: Central Asia and Northeastern Eurasia • Siberia and the importance of Fur. How can Fur be a trade item? • Russian frontiersmen • Spread of Eastern Orthodoxy a failure