Chapter 13: Political Transformations, Empires and Encounters (Week 2)

January 16, 2018

(1450-1750)

I found this chapter very interesting because empires are not seen much today, so it was very fun to read about how things were back then. Building empires was a very competitive global process that we see in the years of 1450-1700.

This timeline of events on page 555 of our textbook is really helpful to understand the order of the colonizations:

Colonial Empires in the Americas:

For the colonial empires in the Americas, the Inca and Aztec empires were really the first ones but were later taken over by more powerful empires that formed such as the Portuguese, British, French, and the Dutch. As these empires quickly formed, major change began and tradition as well as old societies were no longer seen. I could see how this would be very frustrating for the Native people. The Europeans believed that the societies they encountered were considered “old world” and that they needed to be transformed into a “new world”. To me, it is very disheartening to read about how aggressive these takeovers were. Instead of coming in and conquering, they created a completely new society and changed everything that the Natives knew. Not only did these conquered countries daily lives change, but they also began to produce and create mix races.

British colonies that settled in North America were very different than their counterparts in Latin America. Unlike their Spanish counterparts, the British outnumbered the Natives by more than half. At this time most of the colonies were European, and numbers of the Native people began to decrease due to fighting and harmful diseases brought over by the Europeans. First they were taken over and now they are extremely outnumbered and very close to becoming extinct as a whole. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies were prospering at this time and the British and French were struggling with the North American colony. In my opinion, these colonial empires that formed, ended up dividing the entire world and causing more harm than good.

Russian Emperical Expansion in Siberia:

During the same time as all of this, Russian empirical expansion was happening in Siberia. Russia was focused on expanding its territories because they lacked security and were determined to gain it back by creating a huge empire. They took over the Mongol Empire completely and even sold many to slavery. Russia saw Siberia as an advantage because they would receive much more opportunity. They admired their many animals and gold which could be sold or traded. This new powerful Russian Empire was built during the years of 1500 and 1800.

The map on page 574 in our textbook shows the expansion of the Russian Empire:

Comparing the Colonial Empires in America and the Russian Empire in Siberia:

Just like the colonial empires in the Americas, the Russians also outnumbered the natives by a lot. This led to the Siberian population to only be 30% of Siberia. What was different about these two empirical expansions is that the empire in the Americas later pushed the Native people into reservations to be isolated, but the Russian empire did not do that so the Siberians lost a lot of culture after this takeover. What is also different about the two is that the Western Europeans did not have any plan of taking over the Americas to gain power, they had just ran into the land while exploring the Atlantic Ocean. Whereas the Russians were power hungry and looking for places to takeover to gain territory and products to help improve their economy.

Today in class we wrote down a chart to help us remember what countries went where and what their impact was on these countries so I thought it would be helpful to add it to my class blog:

	South America/Spanish	Brazil/Caribbean	North America
Who Came?	The Spanish came	The Portuguese came	The British came
Intent to stay?	No, temporary exploration	No, temporary exploration	Yes, intended to stay/relocate
Products that drove the economy:	Silver	Sugar	Plantations
Who did the work?	The Native People	The Native people (slaves)	Native people & African slaves
Demographic Impact	Many named racially mixed group	Named mixed race groups	Little acceptance for mixing of groups