Part 1. Europe, England and the New World. Chapter 1. Europe at the Dawn of the Modern
Era. Until the close of the Middle Ages at the end of the 15th century, the Americas
remained outside the ken of Western civilization. The Americas had been discovered and settled
as many as 10,000 years before by tribes crossing over from Asia on what was then a land bridge
across the Bering Strait. By the late 15th century, one million of these American Indians
lived north of Mexico alone in diverse cultures and tribes scattered throughout the continent.
As recently as the end of the 10th century, Norsemen, the great seamen of Scandinavia,
Spread across the North Atlantic and planted a settlement in Greenland.
From there, the Viking Leif Erikson explored and settled Vinland, somewhere on the northeast
coast of North America, about the year AD 1000.
Norse objects dating from the mid-14th century have been found in North Central America.
But these sporadic contacts made no imprint on history, for the New World had not yet
have been brought into any continuing economic or social relation with the Western world.
Hence, its existence was not even known beyond the narrow circle of those few who, like the
Norsemen, had actually been there.
The same holds true for the possibility that French fishermen were already making use of
the abundantly stocked waters off Newfoundland by the late 15th century.
In neither case was Europe really made cognizant of the new lands.
Western Europe during the early Middle Ages was a stagnant and war-torn region burdened
by feudalism, a hierarchical rule based on assumed and conquered land titles and on the
virtual enslavement of the peasantry who worked as serfs in support of the ruling caste.
A great revival during the 11th century inaugurating the High Middle Ages was based upon the rise
of trade between Italian towns that had remained relatively free of feudal restrictions and
the commercial centers of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The revival of industry and trade and the concomitant growth in living standards provided
the necessary economic base for a flowering of learning and culture.
The emerging commercial capitalism and growing civilizations soon developed most intensively
in the city-states of northern Italy, the centers of the vital Mediterranean trade with
the East.
It was this international trade that began to break up the isolated, local self-sufficiency
at subsistence levels that had characterized feudal Western Europe.
The local feudal manner could no longer be a stagnant, self-sufficient agricultural and
domestic industry unit if it wished to purchase the products of the Middle East and especially
of the Orient.
The Orient furnished luxury goods of all kinds, silks, damasks, jewels, dyes, tropical fruits,
But its great contribution was spices, the preeminent commodity in Mediterranean trade.
Spices not only enhanced the taste of food, but also preserved it.
For in those days, before refrigeration, spices were the only way to preserve food for any
length of time.
Their oriental commodities were produced in China, India, Ceylon, or the East Indies,
and transported by Muslim merchants, Indian and Arab, to the ports of the Middle East
and the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean where Northern Italian merchants took over
to transport the goods to Western Europe. Sales were then made, often by German merchants,
at such places as the Great Fairs, notably the Fairs of Champagne in Northeastern France.
Thus, pepper, by far the most important of the spices, was largely grown on the Malabar
coast of India, and from there taken to the Eastern Mediterranean and thence to Europe.
In exchange for these products from the East, Western Europe exported timber, metals and
especially woolen textiles, which had become its major commodity for export.
In the late 11th century, England became the major European supplier of raw wool because
of its advantages of soil and climate, as well as the advanced scientific management
of its monastic sheep ranches. The English wool was then exported to Flanders for weaving
into cloth. The cloth was exchanged for spices at the great fairs of Champagne and then carried
by the Italian merchants to sell in the Middle East. Three main routes connected the West
with the Orient. One was a virtually all-sea route from China, India, Malaya, and the rest
of the Orient to the Red Sea and thence up to Cairo and Alexandria. A second went up
the Persian Gulf to Baghdad and thence overland to Antioch or to various cities of the Eastern
and Mediterranean. The third, a northerly route, traveled overland by caravan from North
China westward to the Caspian and Black Seas. This last route was made possible in the 13th
century by the establishment of Mongol rule over this vast trading area. In all of this
trade, the northern Italians, as we have indicated, were predominant in Europe. They were the
The Great Merchants, Shippers and Bankers of the Western World
In the mid-14th century, a severe blow was struck at this vital pattern of European trade
with the Orient.
This blow was the general collapse of Mongol rule in Asia.
The end of Mongol rule in Persia destroyed the freedom of Italian, especially Genoese,
traders in that critical terminus of the overland route.
And the liquidation of Mongol rule in China ended Mongol friendliness to Western trade,
which had permitted both commerce and cultural contact with the West.
Thereafter, traditional Chinese suspicion of foreigners reasserted itself.
The consequent forced closing of the overland route doubled the price of silks in Europe.
Ordinarily, one would have expected the Mongol collapse and the closing of the overland route
to spur a search by northern Italians, especially the Genoese, for an all-sea route to the Orient.
Indeed, the Genoese captains by the late 13th and early 14th centuries had already sailed through
the Strait of Gibraltar and south along the western coast of Africa in search of Newspice
routes and had already discovered the Canary and Madeira Islands. But a cataclysmic set of
changes at the turn of the 14th century was to divert attention from such sea exploration
and drastically alter the pattern of European production and trade.
The expansion of medieval production and trade in the concomitant cultural progress of Europe
came to an abrupt halt at the beginning of the 14th century.
As wealth and capital continued to accumulate in Western Europe from the 11th century on,
this growing wealth provided great temptations to power, to seize and divert that wealth
for its own non-productive, indeed anti-productive purposes.
This power loomed in the emerging nation states of Western Europe, particularly in France
and England, which set about to confiscate and drain off the wealth of society for the
needs and demands of the emerging state. Internally, the state siphoned off the wealth to nurture
an increasingly elaborate and expensive state apparatus. Externally, the state used the
wealth in expensive wars to advance its dynastic power and plunder. Furthermore, the state
Therefore, the states increasingly regulated and intervened in, as well as taxed, the market economy of Europe.
The several nascent states of the modern era ruptured the harmonious and cosmopolitan social and economic relations of medieval Europe.
A unity in free market relations was sundered and ravaged by the imposed violence and plunder of the governments of the new nation states.
Specifically, the new policy of statism of England and France at the beginning of the
14th century involved first the immediate expulsion and confiscation of the wealth of
Jewish merchants, Italian bankers and vital independent financial institutions such as
the Crucial Fairs of Champagne.
For the longer run, the monies necessary to support the state apparatus and army were
were derived from privileges and monopolies granted by governments to associations of merchants
and craftsmen who aided in the collection of taxes, in return for the assurance of profits
by excluding native and foreign competitors.
The consumer was completely sacrificed to that producer who proved the best help in
the collection of taxes, and incentives for initiative, inexpensiveness of product and
and technical progress were destroyed.
Detailed regulations and controls were established by government-privileged guilds to assure
the collection of taxes and to prevent competition from more efficient producers within and without
the guild monopoly.
As a result of the growth and development of warfare, the state apparatus, monopoly
and Taxation, the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe were marked by stagnation, depression,
and even retrogression.
Not only were there no further expansion in the scope of international trade and no increase
in the volume of commerce, but this trade was forced to take far different directions.
The commercial centers of Italy, the northern cities, remained relatively free of restrictions
of monopoly and the state apparatus, and Italian capitalists now sought a commerce free from
control by the regulations and taxation of governments.
The crucial problem of the capitalists was the loss of their overland trade route to
northern France, brought about by the destruction of the great fairs of Champagne by the taxation
The Italian merchants, therefore, had defined an efficient route to Flanders, the source of European cloth. The only alternative for the carrying of large quantities of goods was the sea, and it was natural for Venice and Genoa to turn to the sea as the best means of transportation from the Mediterranean to Flanders.
The first Atlantic convoys of ships to Flanders were sent from Venice in Genoa about 1314.
They sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Atlantic coast of Europe to
the English Channel port of Southampton in England, then on to Bruges in Flanders.
Bruges now became the great centre of Northern European commerce.
It served as the northern depot of Italian trade, even as it had been the western terminus
of North Sea and Baltic trade, a trade which now received a great impetus for growth.
During the Middle Ages, cities were founded along the coast of the Baltic Sea as the German
people colonized eastward.
These German cities engaged in trade along the northern German Sea as well as the east
or Baltic Sea.
For the mutual defense of their trade, they formed a confederation of cities called the
Hanseatic League.
From the Hanseatic western depots, Bruges and the steel yard in London, the trade of
the League extended through the German and Scandinavian countries to the Slavic countries
of the eastern Baltic, terminating in the great northern Russian commercial center,
The Independent Republic of Great Novgorod The trade of the Hansards, or Easterlings,
from which the English measure of silver, the pound sterling, is derived, as the Hanseatic
merchants were called, was largely in raw materials and agricultural products.
The foundation of Hanseatic commerce was its dominance of the Baltic trade in dried and
and Salted Fish, a necessary part of the European diet because of the scarcity of meat and the
needs of religious observance. Search for the salt necessary for curing the fish had
led the Hanseatic traders to Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast of France, the major source
of salt. Bordeaux wine also accompanied the salt to Northern Europe. The Bordeaux trade
It increased the importance of England in European commerce as Bordeaux and the province
of Gascony had been English possessions since the middle of the 12th century.
For the spices and manufactured goods that the hand swords carried to the Baltic from
Bruges, they supplied the industrial centers of Western Europe with the dried and salted
fish of the Baltic, the grain of Prussia and Poland, the timber of Scandinavia, and the
The furs, wax and honey of the Russian forest. The closest to a luxury product for the hansards
was the important fur trade. Fur, because of its rarity and beauty, had become a symbol
of social and political importance. The only form of fur sufficiently inexpensive to be
available to the masses was hats processed from beaver, the most popular form of headwear.
The Russian Republic of Great Novgorod built its greatness by controlling the fur trade
with the Finnish peoples who inhabited the forest of northern Russia.
And the Hanseatic League controlled the distribution of furs across Europe from Novgorod to the
steel yard in London.
Wool, the principal product of English agriculture, entered Hanseatic and Italian trade mainly
They threw the cloth woven in Flanders. Poundage, the tariff on the export of wool and the import
of cloth, was the principal tax imposed by the English government in the process of state
formation. Poundage was permanently established by the 14th century, even though it was contrary
to the Provisions of Magna Carta. The newly burgeoning state apparatus was maintained
by this tax on wool exports and the rates increased as England's financial crisis
of the 14th and 15th century continued to intensify. This continuing crisis was brought
about by the English government's persistent interventions in overseas wars. To ensure
To ensure collection of taxes on wool exports, the English government granted a monopoly of the export of wool to a group of merchants drawn from the importing and exporting centers.
In return for the monopoly profits gained from this privilege, the merchants would enforce and collect the tariffs and insure their payment to the government.
The Mayor, Constables and Fellowship of the Merchants of the Staple of England received the monopoly of wool export to the continent in the mid-14th century after a succession of ill-starred attempts to grant the monopoly to smaller groups of merchants.
It was the first lasting organization of English foreign trade monopoly.
The merchants of the staple proceeded to use their monopoly privilege in the time-honored manner of monopoly, by moving to jack up their selling prices and to lower their buying prices.
Such procedure ensured their profit, but also eventually crippled the great English wool trade by reducing the demand for wool and by discouraging the production of wool at home.
But the free market also has a time-honored way of fighting back against restrictions by evading them.
Despite the restrictions, the free trade in wool persisted in the form of smuggling,
which the government policy had forced upon the merchants.
From the late Middle Ages through the 18th century,
England was not so much a nation of seafarers and shopkeepers as a nation of smugglers.
Since Flanders was being carefully watched by the merchants of the staple, the Dutch Netherlands became the center of the free trade, the non-taxed trade in smuggled wool, and the Dutch ship captains became the leading carriers and traders in tax-free goods shipped into and out of small harbors along the coast of England.
When the constitutional procedures of the common law were applied, there could be few convictions for smuggling by juries of ordinary people, who shared in the common interest as sufferers from taxes and monopoly, and hence in the common enthusiasm for smuggling.
To circumvent the constitutional courts of common law, the prerogative High Court of
Admiralty was established to absorb the jurisdictions of the maritime courts of the seaports, which
had administered the traditional sea law and law merchant.
A tariff on the importation of wines, called tonnage, the measure of a ton of wine, was
was imposed with the excuse that it would finance the policing of the seas.
The creation of the offices of Lord Admiral and the High Court of Admiralty increased
the burdens on commerce, while their activities were used by the government to advance the
claim of an English monopoly over the English Channel and other neighboring seas.
Thus, during the 14th and 15th centuries, in place of a universal economic system based
on international trade, common commercial laws and efficient economic relationships,
unnatural economies were created on a foundation of violence and political power.
The purposes were to supply a constantly increasing financial means of support for the civil and
The Military Apparatus of the State, and to grant special privileges for groups of merchants favored by, and sharing in control of, the State at the expense of the economy and the rest of the population.
This mercantilist system, having its origins in the rise of sustained warfare and the development
of the state apparatus, also introduced permanent hostility between countries by its destruction
of the universal European economy.
While Western Europe stagnated under the weight of the mercantilism imposed by the apparatuses
The Italian cities were preeminent not only by reason of their merchants, shippers, and bankers, but also for their advances in the arts and sciences of navigation, in technological inventions and the sciences of astronomy, cartography, and geography.
In the Middle Ages, the development of geography in Europe had centered in Sicily, where Latin culture had been enriched by classical and Byzantine knowledge, directly by Greek and indirectly by Arab scholars.
To classical geographical knowledge, summarized in Ptolemy's second century geography, was added knowledge of Africa and India from Arab sources and of East Asia from Italian travelers.
A leading Italian traveler was Marco Polo, a late 13th century Venetian merchant who had settled as an official in the Mongol capital of Peking and had written the most important book on Asia of the late Middle Ages.
This new geographic knowledge was incorporated into the scientific charts and maps developed by the cartographers of the northern Italian cities, the most advanced of which was a 1351 map of Laurentian Portolano of Florence.
The Arab and Jewish scholarship in Spain led, in the latter half of the 14th century, to
the development of the important Jewish school of geographers on the island of Mallorca,
which produced the most accurate medieval map, the Catalan Atlas of 1375.
This atlas had a significant influence on future exploration, both of Africa and of
Asia.
Ptolemy's geography had indicated a short circumference of the Earth, making Asia three times nearer Europe than it actually was, and had depicted the African continent as short and connected directly to East Asia, making the Indian Ocean an inland sea.
In 1410, however, Cardinal Pierre Dali wrote a Maggio Mundi. He indicated that Africa was long and surrounded by water, thus making the Indian Ocean approachable by sea. These works were all to have a profound influence on the explorations seeking the routes to Asia around Africa and across the Atlantic.
But before the advanced geographical concepts could guide exploration, the necessary ship designs, navigational science, and experience of oceanic sailing needed to be developed.
The northern Italian merchants had been forced to inaugurate the long Mediterranean-Atlantic
oceanic route in the early 14th century and thus had added oceanic experience to their
overall stature as the great seamen of Europe.
When thereafter the major Atlantic countries, England, France, Spain and Portugal, decided
In order to create governmental navies, they naturally turned to contract with Italian captains to develop, staff and command these navies.
The great northern Italian cities of Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Florence were particularly abundant sources of those having experience with the sea.
Thus, in 1317, Emmanuel Pezzogno of Genoa contracted to command the Portuguese Navy
as Lord High Admiral and to keep it supplied with twenty experienced Genoese navigators.
These arrangements were continued as hereditary contracts with the Pezzogno family for two
centuries.
In addition to the role that Italian navigators and sailors, astronomers and instrument makers,
geographers and map makers played in the maritime history of Atlantic Europe, Italians made
important contributions as ship designers and ship builders.
The Hanseatic cogs built in the Baltic were efficient ships for carrying bulky cargoes
in the Hanseatic trade.
and ship designers maintained this efficiency but revolutionized the ship's maneuverability
and speed. As a result, during the 15th century, ships became available that could travel long
distances at a suitable speed on rough oceans. They had large carrying capacities but needed
only small crews, so that they could remain for a long while at sea without stopping regularly
to take on provisions. However, as timber supplies in the Mediterranean became increasingly
scarce, greater reliance was placed upon such ships built and even manned in the Atlantic
European countries. At the same time that the sailors of the Atlantic countries were
gaining knowledge and experience from Oceanic voyages, increasingly higher prices of spices
Researchers in Western Europe encouraged the Atlantic countries to find the gold with which
to pay for the spices, or to discover better alternative routes to the oriental sources
of these commodities. Roots were also sought that could bypass the Italian middlemen. Hence,
when Portuguese explorers began to be sent southward along the African coast, their immediate
and primary objective was to discover the sources of the gold of West Africa, with which the
North African Arabs were plentifully supplied.
From 1419 until his death in 1460, most of the exploration of the 15th century was organized
by Prince Henry the Navigator, governor of the southern district of Portugal.
Murray accomplished his exploration with the aid of a court functioning as a veritable
maritime college, including Genoese captains, Venetian navigators, and Italian and Jewish
geographers. The Madeira Islands were discovered definitely by 1420 by a Portuguese expedition,
and one of the first officials sent there by Prince Henry was Bartholomew Perestrella,
and the Italian and future father-in-law of Christopher Columbus.
Sugarcane from Sicily was introduced into Madeira and into the Canary Islands being
settled by Spaniards and these islands soon became an important source of sugar for Europe
until the establishment of sugar culture in Brazil by the Portuguese in the 16th century.
These western islands also became an important center for the cultivation of sweet wines.
During the following generation, numerous expeditions made slow progress down the coast of western Sahara,
while others discovered and settled the Azores in the North Atlantic.
In 1441, a few negro slaves were brought back to Portugal,
Thus beginning the extensive and barbarous slave trade.
After tropical Africa, 1500 miles from the Strait of Gibraltar, was reached in 1445,
large numbers of slaves were purchased from the native chiefs of the coastal districts
and slave stations were constructed by the Portuguese along the West African coast.
Although the Cape Verde Islands were discovered in 1445 by a Venetian Captain Catamosto,
the world of Portuguese exploration largely turned to concentration upon commerce in gold
and local West African pepper as well as to the slave trade for supplying the large feudal
estates of southern Portugal, which had been granted by the Portuguese government after
After taking that region from the Moors. During the 1470s, explorations under private
auspices covered another 2,000 miles along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. The Spanish,
based on the Canaries, began to compete with the Portuguese in the Guinea trade and the
warfare resulting from this rivalry was settled by treaty in 1480. By this treaty, Spain recognized
Portugal's Prior Rights to Africa and the South Atlantic, and Portugal accepted Spanish
rights to the Canary Islands and the Western Seas beyond the Azores. Thereupon, and being
hurried by the rumor of an English expedition to West Africa, Portugal in 1482 commissioned
voyages to create a strong fort at Elmina in West Africa to defend the trade in gold
A large colony of Genoese captains, pilots and mapmakers had settled in Lisbon during the late 15th century, and by 1477, Christopher Columbus, 1451-1506, was established in Lisbon as a mapmaker.
and the Map Maker with his brother Bartholomew.
After engaging in the sugar trade from Madeira and the African trade for Genoese firms,
Columbus had gained sufficient experience in oceanic navigation
to propose a plan for westward voyage to the Orient.
Columbus had concluded that China and the Orient could easily be reached by sailing westward
If Asia were really 3,000 miles west of Europe, as the geographers had indicated.
Contrary to popular myth, the idea that the Earth was round was well known to the educated Europeans of the day.
The geographical concept of a feasible westward voyage to the Orient received even wider currency in Europe
when printed editions appeared of Ptolemy in the 1470s, Dali's Imaggio Mundi in 1483 and Marco Polo's Travels in 1485 and Aeneas Silvius' Poppaeus II's Historia Rerum in 1477.
Columbus was also encouraged in his project by his correspondence with the Florentine scientist Paolo Dalpozzo Toscanelli.
The Portuguese had meanwhile resumed exploration of Africa south of the equator under the command of Diogo Cao, who discovered the Congo River in 1483.
Upon Cal's return in 1484, the Portuguese prepared for more vigorous exploratory activity,
the crown appointing a Junta dos Mathematicos, composed of Bishop Diogo Ortiz and two Jewish
physicians to decide questions of navigation and exploration.
Late in 1484, Columbus presented his plans to the Junta for a westward voyage to China
in China and Japan. However, as Kao was to begin his second expedition, it was hoped
that he would discover the route to the Indies around Africa, so the junta decided to await
Kao's return before accepting Columbus's project. Kao promptly extended Portuguese
exploration by 1,500 miles, reaching Cape Cross in 1486. He also explored the Congo
In the summer of 1487, an expedition under Bartholomew Diaz was sent to discover the sea route to India. Diaz sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in early 1488, making it clear that an ocean passage to the Indies would soon be found.
Bawked by Portugal, Columbus had gone to Spain to seek aid for his projected voyage and although
he was well received, Spain too made no decision on extending its support. Columbus then renewed
his negotiations with the Portuguese and returned to Lisbon in late 1488. But when Díaz returned
to Portugal in December 1488 with news of his exciting discovery, Portugal lost interest
Post in Columbus' plan. Columbus then returned to Spain, meanwhile sending his brother Bartholomew
to London to present his plan to Henry VII of England. After receiving no encouragement
in England, Bartholomew Columbus went to the French court in 1490 where he received better
treatment and remained as a map maker. When the Spanish court rejected his proposal in
1491, Christopher prepared to join Bartholomew in France, but Columbus was recalled to the
Spanish court, partly because its conquest of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada was completed
in January 1492. The agreements between Columbus and the Spanish Crown were completed in April
1492. They provided for Spanish financing of the bulk of expenses of the voyage as well
as for naming Columbus Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of any lands that he might
discover en route. On August 3rd, Columbus departed from Palos in three ships, sailing
to the Canaries and then westward. Columbus discovered the Bahama Islands on October 12,
1492 and explored the Greater Antilles, Cuba and Hispaniola. Columbus was convinced that
But he had discovered the shores of Asia and so christened the natives he found there Indians.
But despite his error the New World was now to be opened to the ambit of European society.
Columbus left America in early January 1493, arrived in the Azores in February and reached
Lisbon early in March. Even though Diaz was busy supervising construction of the ships
When Columbus presented his report to the Spanish court in mid-March, 1493, it sought
to protect its claim from Portuguese encroachment. On the basis of the discovery and of the Treaty
In the Treaty of 1480, Spain appealed to the Pope for determination of its rights.
As a neutral third power, the papacy made a diplomatic award affirming Spain's claim
to monopoly possession of Columbus' discovery.
The respective discoveries claimed by Portugal in Africa and Spain in the West were protected
by drawing a boundary between Spain and Portugal west of the Portuguese Azores. The respective
routes to the Indies were recognized by limiting the Spanish to the western and southern route
and the Portuguese to their eastern and southern route around Africa. The Portuguese considered
the Papal opinions a useful base for negotiation but refused to be bound by them. To gain Portuguese
In his recognition for its claims, the Spanish government was obliged to make concessions
to Portugal, and in June of 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas extended the boundary 270 leagues
further westward than in the Papal mediation, which had the unintended effect of allowing
Portugal to control the yet undiscovered coast of Brazil.
Because the dispute was strictly between Spain and Portugal, the treaty and boundary related
only to the area that they had explored, and thus did not receive international recognition
by the other powers until confirmed by effective occupation of the respective claims.
Since the Spanish territorial claim was limited to the west and south of Columbus's discovery,
that is, the West Indies and Central and South America.
It did not exclude other states from North America, as witnessed the English, Portuguese
and French explorations.
There was conflict only when they approached the West Indies.
Meanwhile, in September 1493, Columbus had sailed again to the West Indies with 1,500
and the
the
after exploring the Lesser Antilles, a colony was established in Hispaniola
to be an agriculturally, self-supporting, mining town that would supply Spain with the
much-needed gold believed to abound there.
After further explorations, Columbus departed for Spain in March 1496, leaving his brother
Bartholomew as governor.
In March 1496, Henry VII of England granted a patent to John Cabot, a Genoese captain
and merchant, lately settled in Bristol, England, who had sailed for Venice and Portugal to
to explore to the west or north, thereby indicating that England would not intervene in Spanish
or Portuguese colonies. Cabot was granted a monopoly of trade to any lands he might
discover and claim for the crown, in the profits of which the government would share. And Bristol
was made a monopoly or staple port for all voyages to or from the newly explored regions.
In May 1497, Cabot and his son Sebastian sailed west from Bristol to Asia. They reached Cape Breton Island and sailed down the Atlantic coast to perhaps the site of Maine.
In the spring of 1498, Cabot went to Lisbon and Seville to hire sailors who had sailed with Gaul, Diaz or Columbus and set sail for Japan and the Spice Islands in May 1498.
He succeeded in exploring the coast of North America down to the Delaware Bay or the Chesapeake Bay.
Ziao Fernandes, called Labrador, a Portuguese who had advised Cabot, received a Portuguese
patent for northern and western discoveries and explored Greenland.
From 1501 on, a group of Bristol and Portuguese merchants, including Fernandes, explored North
America under English patents, while several Portuguese, such as the Corte Real brothers,
The Portuguese, however, were concentrating on the voyage to India, around Africa, for which Diaz had spent almost a decade preparing a fleet.
In July 1497, the fleet departed, commanded by Vasco da Gama, and arrived at the Malabar coast of India in May 1498.
of India in May 1498.
It returned to Lisbon in September 1499
with a cargo of pepper and cinnamon.
The Portuguese had finally found
their eastern sea route to India.
Early in 1500, a second expedition under Pedro Cabral
was dispatched to India.
Blown off course, Cabral discovered
and claimed Brazil for Portugal.
In 1501, the Portuguese spices reached Antwerp, which promptly became the major center of spices from Portugal, even as it was then the financial center of Europe.
The Italian merchants were not immediately disturbed at the development of the new spice route, for they considered their competitive position assured by their capital, their commercial ability, and the security of their established routes.
Lacking gold or specialized products, the Portuguese were not able to undersell the Arab and Venetian merchants.
A major Portuguese voyage of 1505 was in fact financed by Genoese, Florentine and South German bankers,
although the complications of bureaucracy led them to provide capital indirectly through investment in future cargos.
Similarly, Italian merchants and bankers in Spain provided the venture capital for exploration and discovery.
In 1495, on the death of Giannato Berardi, who had contracted to fit out 12 ships,
Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who was manager of the Medici bank at Seville, assumed the contract.
In succeeding years, Vespucci sailed in Spanish expeditions and then, from 1501 on, sailed in Portuguese voyages to explore Cabral's discovery, Brazil.
Vespucci wrote accounts of his voyages. They were immediately printed and received wide circulation.
As a result, the map-makers irrevocably attached Amerigo's name to the newly discovered continents.
The succession of the Habsburgs to the Spanish throne in the early 16th century promptly occasioned
investments by South German banking houses in Spanish mines and then in American mines.
The Fugers leased mines in Hispaniola and Mexico, while the Welsers leased Venezuela
for 20 years. However, the Italians, especially the Genoese merchants of Seville, dominated
Spain's American trade during the 16th century, importing gold and tropical products into
Europe and exporting manufactured goods as well as slaves under contracts or asientos
to America In 1498, 1500, and 1502-04, Columbus made
two further voyages to America, which he still believed to be part of the East Indies.
He finally reached the American mainland in 1498.
Explorations of the interior of the mainland were begun in 1513 when Ponce de Leon explored
of Florida and Vasco de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Panama to discover the Pacific Ocean,
which he believed could be easily crossed to reach the Spice Islands and the Orient.
Portuguese entrance into the Spice trade had led to mutual hostility with the Arab and
Indian merchants, for these Muslim traders feared the competition afforded by the new
sea route.
The new route was expected to avoid the heavy expense and taxation that had greatly increased
the cost of the route through the Levant.
At the same time, the Portuguese feared that they could not compete in the spice trade
for lack of capital, gold or specialized products.
In 1509, the Portuguese defeated a fleet of Arab and Indian Muslims and, under Alfonso
Albuquerque established trading centers at Goa on the Malabar coast and at Malacca in
Malaya. By 1513, Portuguese trade had extended to the East Indian Spice Islands and to Canton
in China. Albuquerque's attacks on Muslim shipping and markets caused a shortage of
of Spices in Alexandria, while the conquest of Egypt in 1517 by the Ottoman Turks temporarily
cut off spice supplies to Venice.
During the second decade of the 16th century, most of the spices for Europe arrived in Portuguese
vessels by way of Cape of Good Hope, and the Venetian merchants were forced to purchase
spices in Lisbon to supply their customers.
Soon, however, Venice reached a trade agreement with the Turks, the spice trade of the Levant returned to normal, and the Levantan trade in spices and Mediterranean goods remained larger and more important during the 16th century than oceanic commerce.
The Venetians bought goods of better quality, while the expenses of long voyages, shipwrecks
and military forces for Portugal and lack of goods for trading raised prices in the
Portuguese trade.
The Spanish finally reached the East Indies in a voyage under the command of Ferdinand
Magellan, a Portuguese mariner who had lived in the East Indies.
Proposing to follow a westward route around South America, Magellan, with a fleet equipped
by capital provided by the Fugers, sailed from Seville in the summer of 1519.
He passed through the Strait of Magellan, separating South America from Tierra del Puego, the following
summer and arrived at the Philippine Islands, where he was killed in a native war in April
1521.
In September 1522, one ship, commanded by Sebastian Delcano, returned to Spain by way
of the Cape of Good Hope and thus became the first to circumnavigate the world.
Meanwhile, in 1519, Hernando Cortes crossed from Cuba to Mexico and by 1521 had conquered
of the Aztec Empire and begun a search for ports for trade with the East Indies.
In 1532, Francisco Pizarro led an expedition to Peru where, after a number of years, the
Inca Empire was conquered.
In 1532, Francisco Pizarro led an expedition to Peru where, after a number of years, the
Inca Empire was conquered.
In 1527, Sebastian Cabot was to lead an expedition over Magellan's route to the East Indies,
but instead explored for gold on the Rio de la Plata in South America.
During the early 1540s, the Spanish explored the southern part of North America.
In 1539, Hernando de Soto landed in Florida from Cuba and traveled along the Gulf Coast
of the Western Lower Mississippi River, which he discovered in 1541.
At the same time, Francisco Vasquez de Cordonado traversed the southwestern part of North America
up to Kansas while expeditions sailed along the Pacific coast of California to Oregon in
1542 and 43.
France too undertook active explorations in the New World.
In 1524, the Florentine captain Giovanni de Verrazano explored virtually the entire east
coast of North America.
A decade later, Jacques Cartier sailed to Newfoundland in 1534.
A second voyage found him exploring the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River
in 1535-36, which he thought would lead to China.
A dubious tradition says he named the falls at Montreal La Chine, a bitter gesture indicative
of his failure to reach China.
A colony was established temporarily by Cartier near Quebec in 1541-42, but the Spaniards
were the only ones to establish important settlements in the New World in the first
half of the 16th century.
The pattern of Spanish colonization was based upon conditions in Spain in the late Middle
Ages. In contrast to Europe generally, where aggressions against non-European territories
had been checked by the growth of Turkish power, the Spanish and the English could still
pursue the conquest of lands and peoples against the Spanish Arabs of Granada and the Celts
of Ireland Thus the two major land conquering and colonizing
powers, Spain and England, preceded their respective transatlantic conquest by the conquest
of neighboring peoples, the Moors of Granada, by Spain, in the late 15th century, and the
Irish by the English, particularly during the 16th century.
In these aggressions, both the Spanish and the English not only acquired the skills and
appetites for further violence, but also established the attitudes and policies to be applied to
alien peoples through conquest, extermination, or enslavement.
Due to geographical and political conditions, Spain retained the military spirit of feudalism
for a longer time than other European countries.
The arid climate and the frontier wars with the Muslims caused the Spanish ruling class
to remain essentially horsemen, who in place of agriculture emphasized sheep and cattle
farming, occupations in which horsemen could be utilized and trained for war.
This style of life had a profound influence on Spanish colonization.
The Christian and Muslim farmers conquered by the Spanish nobles were kept in feudal serfdom
to provide foodstuffs for the ruling class, to whom their villages had been granted.
This feudal system, which had been imposed on the conquered lands of Granada and the
in the Canary Islands was then applied to the larger islands of the West Indies and
later to Mexico, Venezuela and Peru. The native villages were granted to Spanish conquistadors
who were to govern them so as to live upon the work of the natives. The hapless natives
were compelled to provide food, cotton and forced labor for building the great cities
The Spanish colonists were the Spanish lived and from which they governed and to work for large mining operations of the Spaniards.
Alongside the agriculture of the Indians, the conquistadors developed the raising of sheep, cattle, horses and mules to provide profits for themselves as well as work and plentiful meat for their keepers.
Generally, the Spanish colonists did not pursue productive work. Instead, they entered government and privileged occupations in which to live from the work of the natives whom they enslaved.
The right to conquer, coercively convert, govern and enslave the natives of the New World was subjected to intense criticism in a series of lectures in 1539 at the University of Salamanca by the great Dominican scholastic philosopher Francisco de Vitoria.
In international law, based upon the natural law insisted Vittoria, the native peoples as well as European peoples have full equality of rights.
No right of conquest by Europeans could result from crimes or errors of the natives, whether they be tyranny, murder, religious differences or rejection of Christianity.
Having grave doubts of the right of the Spaniards to any government of the natives, Vitoria advocated peaceful trade, injustice and impractice, as against conquest, enslavement and political power, whether or not the last mentioned were aimed at individual profit, tax revenue or conversion to Christianity.
Although the Spanish government prohibited further discussion of these questions, the
Vittorial Lectures influenced the new laws of 1542, which gave greater legal protection
to the natives in America.
Nevertheless, there were defenders of imperialism in Spain who rejected international law and
scholastic individualism and returned to the slave theories of the classical authors.
on the Theory of Natural Servitude, that the majority of mankind is inferior and must be
subdued to government by the ruling class, of course in the interest of that majority.
These imperial apologists propose that the natives be taught better morals, be converted
and be introduced to the blessings of economic development by being divided among the conquistadors
for whom they must labor.
The serfdom of the Indians was most strongly and zealously opposed by the Dominican missionary
Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, tireless in working to influence European public opinion
against the practices of Spanish officials in America. Las Casas argued that all men
must have freedom so that reason, which naturally inclines men to live together in peace, justice
and Cooperation can remain free and unhampered.
Therefore, concluded Las Casas,
even pursuit of the great objective
of conversion to Christianity cannot be used
to violate these rights.
Not only was all slavery evil,
but the natives had a right to live independently
of European government.
The Papacy in 1537 condemned as heretical the concept that natives were not rational men or were naturally inferior persons.
These progressive views were also reflected in the abolition of conquistador feudalism in the New Laws of 1542.
However, this abolition was revoked by the Spanish Crown three years later.
Political control of the Spanish colonies was first exercised by a committee of the
Council of Castile, and then from 1524 by the Council of the Indies.
In the New World, provincial governments were created, with the two most important, Mexico
in Peru, Raise to Status of Vice-Royalties. Economic control of the colonies was vested
in the Casa de Contrastación, instituted in 1503 to license, supervise and tax merchants,
goods and ships engaged in trade in the New World. In 1508, a Bureau of Pilots was established
under the CASA, which advised the government on maritime matters and supervised navigation
and navigators. Its first chief pilot was Amerigo Vespucci. Sebastian Cabot held that
office for about 30 years after transferring from English to Spanish service, as England's
maritime interest had shifted from exploration to the development of a government navy.
The shift of English interest from exploration to naval construction was reflected in 1510
when the English government began to build a shipyard for making vessels for a navy.
In 1512, the Comptroller of the Navy organized an association of pilots that would provide
experienced navigators for the navy in return for privileges in control of English shipping,
which is similar to those granted to the Spanish Bureau of Pilots.
With the controller of the Navy as its first master, that association was chartered as
the Master Wardens and Assistants of the Guild of the Trinity.
The Trinity House Corporation advised the government on maritime affairs and controlled
navigation and seamen.
Just as Spain had made Seville, the staple port to and from which all colonial commerce
was compulsorily channeled, so Bristol was made the staple port for monopolizing English
commerce with the New World. Bristol's experience in colonial trade had begun with the grant
of Dublin as a colony to the merchants of Bristol when England initiated its occupation
of Ireland. That experience was enlarged when Bristol's oceanic trade to the Iberian countries
was extended during the 15th century to the sugar colonies of Madeira and the Canaries.
By artificially depressing the price of wool in England and raising it abroad from the
mid 14th century on, the merchant staplers not only had greatly injured the growth and
export of English wool, but had also unintentionally spurred the establishment of wool and textual
For woolen manufacturers could now buy wool at significantly lower prices than could their competitors abroad.
This rising cloth industry was organized in country districts and villages where it could be free of the restrictions and the excessively high prices and wage rates imposed by the privileged monopolies of the urban guilds.
Furthermore, the merchants of Bristol were now able to bring to England the finer Spanish wool that formed the raw material for the developing manufacture of new drapery, a lighter and less expensive cloth than that woven from the heavier English wool.
Since the technique of manufacture of the new drapery was new, it did not come under the controls and monopolies of the urban guilds, which manufactured the traditional heavy cloth.
The period of peace from the mid-15th century on witnessed a rapid increase in population.
But the rigid cartel restrictions of the urban guilds condemned large numbers to unemployment.
Hence the expansion to the countryside of both the new drapery and the traditional heavy cloth industries of England.
Unburdened by guild regulations on production, prices and labor, the new rural woolen cloth industry was sufficiently elastic to respond to the demands of large-scale export markets for cheap plain cloth
by developing a large-scale organization of production forbidden by the guilds.
From the middle of the 15th century, indeed, there had begun to occur a great transformation of the entire economy of Western Europe.
Stagnation and depression proceeded to give way to economic progress as the state-ridden system of protection and regulation broke apart
and Capital was accumulated and invested outside the controls that had encompassed the economy.
In the Netherlands in particular, a development occurred similar to England's, the rapid emergence of a rural cloth industry free of urban guild and municipal regulations and taxation.
Furthermore, the controls and high taxation of commerce in Bruges drove trade to Antwerp,
where free of hampering legislation, privileges and taxes, business was able to organize itself
on the basis of a new spirit of capitalist progress and economic growth.
For a century, Antwerp now became the commercial capital of Europe, drawing by its freedom
Not only the traditional trades of English wool and cloth, Baltic grain and timber and luxury goods of the Mediterranean, but also the growing trade in spices and sugars of the Indies, East and West, Antwerp became the main center of importation, not only of English wool, but also of English wool and cloth, for woven cloth would be sent to Antwerp for dyeing and finishing. As Henri Perrin has noted,
Never has any other port at any period enjoyed such worldwide importance, because none has
ever been so open to all commerce, and in the full sense of the word, so cosmopolitan.
Antwerp remained faithful to the liberty which had made her fairs so successful in the fifteenth
century. She attracted and welcomed capitalists from all parts of Europe, and as their numbers
The rise of Antwerp, as the great center of European commerce, was complemented by the growth of the
of the Dutch Merchant Marine. For the free-trading Dutch were the major carriers of goods to
and from the unrestricted and progressive port of Antwerp and were as motivated by the
spirit of liberty and capitalism as was Antwerp. During the 15th century, the herring upon which
the Hanseatic trade had been founded migrated from the Baltic to the North Sea and became
From a cornerstone of Dutch commercial development, Holland and Zeeland became the major herring
fisheries of Europe. They improved the techniques of curing the herring and transporting it to
all the ports of Europe, while simultaneously refining the methods of shipbuilding and fishing.
Hence the Dutch were able to compete successfully with the Hanseatic traders in the Baltic,
from the North Sea and the Atlantic to Bordeaux and Lisbon.
Too many historians have fallen under the spell of the interpretation of the late 19th
century German economic historians, for example, Schmoller, Buecher, Ehrenberg, that the development
of a strong centralized nation-state was requisite to the development of capitalism in the early
modern period.
Not only is this thesis refuted by the flourishing of commercial capitalism in the Middle Ages
in the local and non-centralized cities of northern Italy, the Hanseatic League, and
the Fairs of Champagne, not to mention the disastrous economic retrogression imposed
by the burgeoning statism of the fourteenth century, it is also refuted by the outstanding
In the 16th and 17th century, the Dutch came to outstrip the rest of Europe while retaining
medieval local autonomy and issuing state building, mercantilism, government participation
in enterprise and aggressive war.
Despite the rise of rival Dutch shipping, the continued importance of the Hanseatic
League in the economic life of England was indicated by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1474,
which confirmed the trading privileges of the Hansards in England, including the payment
of lower duties than the English merchants paid.
That the accession of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne in 1485 marked the beginning
of a steady growth of the power of the English government.
Medieval forms were transformed by the Tudors into a more efficient and complete machinery
for repression, especially in regulating those economic activities that had achieved prosperity
by freely evading the government's regulations, controls and taxation.
Monopoly rights were granted in 1486 to the Fellowship of the Merchant Adventures of England
in all trade to the Netherlands except in wool.
Especially important was the export of cloth to the finishing and dine centers of the Netherlands.
Furthermore, Navigation Acts restricted to English ships the importations of wines, in
the vain expectation of thus increasing the number of English sailors and ships sufficiently
to develop a strong governmental naval force.
In 1496, the English government negotiated with the government of Netherlands the Great
commercial treaty, Intercursus Magnus, which provided favorable commercial conditions for
English merchants at Antwerp.
The important contribution of the Intercursus Magnus to international law was to recognize
the freedom of English and Dutch fishermen on the high seas, especially on the North
Sea, which had become the major European fishing area.
The fishermen were to be free to fish anywhere and to use the ports of either country in
an emergency.
For a century and a half, the intercursus magnus remained the foundation of Anglo-Dutch
commercial and maritime relations.
However, by an act of 1497, the English government implemented its treaty power to monopolize
and control trade to the other countries.
Specifically, the Act excluded English competitors of the merchant adventurers from the Netherlands
trade by granting that company a monopoly in the trade with Antwerp.
The cloth trade to the Netherlands now became the privileged monopoly of a limited number
of London merchants who came more and more to have the closest fiscal relationships with
The State through loans at favorable terms to the government.
For more effective enforcement of government power under the tutors, executive power was
exercised by a specially selected group of government advisers that, because it met in
secret, was called the Privy Council.
The Privy Council acted by means of fiat proclamations rather than by legislation of parliament.
Federal power was granted to the Court of Star Chamber, a prerogative court that tried
the violations of the proclamations by the mere force and whim of government, rather than
by the traditional common law which guaranteed the rights of the people. Defending the government
from the criticisms of the people, called libels, from conspiracy and riots, that is
any gathering protesting the oppressions of the government, and from infractions of
The Star-Chamber was notorious for the imposition of ruinous fines, cruel imprisonment, whippings, brandings and mutilations of those who came under its aegis.
To aid its work, the Tudor government had set aside the common law prohibition of the use of torture.
The Tudors also introduced the first permanent state military force in England,
in Ireland, as they had established the foundation for a governmental navy. Military force was
most generally used to subject the Irish to English rule. Poining's Law, 1495, which
established the model for the control of colonies by the English government, extended to Ireland
the repressive and absolutist measures current in England, and required all legislation in
of the Irish Parliament to receive prior approval from the Privy Council in England.
When, a century more later, England acquired transatlantic territories and Englishmen fled there to escape the economic effects of mercantilism or the repressions of the Privy Council, the Star Chamber or prerogative will,
The English subjugation and domination of Ireland that furnished the earliest precedents and
models for attempted imperial control of the peoples in America.
During the 16th century, a principal office developed in the Tudor government that would
later have the greatest importance for the English colonies in America.
This was the Secretary of State, a title of Spanish origin, indicating some of the strong
and political and cultural influence derived from England's commercial and diplomatic
relations with Spain.
By 1540, there were two Secretaries of State, each of whom had full authority to act on
a wide range of matters dealing with the King and his officials and the King and foreign
governments.
The Secretaries of State became responsible for the expanding areas that the Privy Council
took under its jurisdiction.
Internal Matters, Internal Government, Taxation and Economic Controls, Leadership of the Houses
of Parliament, Military and Naval Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and finally Colonial Affairs
when England acquired and governed colonies.
During the first half of the 16th century, while the English government was neglecting
the new world for state building and navy building, English fishermen quietly but regularly
They began to enjoy the abundant fishing in the waters off Newfoundland.
Fishing ships put out from west country ports such as Bristol and Plymouth and then sold
the fish in Spain, Portugal and Italy.
On their return, these ships carried the goods of the Mediterranean to Northern Europe.
For, with the decline and cessation in 1532 of the Venetian Flanders fleets that had been
and Calling in Southampton, English merchants imitated the Dutch and themselves carried
the trade of Italy, Spain and Portugal to Antwerp. The Venetian fleets could no longer
compete in the spice and Atlantic trade because of a growing shortage of, and therefore a
high price for, timber in the Adriatic, and because Portuguese aggression against Venice's
and Arab Allies at the ports of the Persian Gulf cut off its spice routes.
Such oceanic voyages, however, were not at this time of interest to the English government,
which was pushing for the building of large ships and the maintenance of fishing fleets
in the nearby North Sea, where the sailors could be regularly and immediately available
to be pressed into the Navy for military adventures in Europe in alliance with Spain.
To this end, a Navigation Act was introduced in 1540 requiring the use of the larger, more
expensive and less efficient ships of the English ship owners and captains instead of
the smaller, less expensive Dutch ships.
However, privileged merchants, such as the merchant adventurers, in trade with Spain or its possessions, for example Spain and the Netherlands, were exempted and could, by employing Dutch shipping, gain a competitive advantage over independent English merchants.
Decreased English participation in the North Sea herring fishery, caused by the greater efficiency of the Dutch as well as by the Reformation, which greatly reduced the religiously based demand for fish in England, greatly alarmed the English government.
To maintain the traditional source of impressment of men into the government's navy, a statute of 1549 imposed upon the English a political abstinence from meat, under penalty of fine, in place of the previous purely religious abstinence.
This intensification of mercantilist policy was accelerated by the intervention of England into the dynastic wars on the continent in the 1540s.
To support its military activity, the English government initiated a series of great debasements of the currency as a hidden form of taxation of the people.
The depreciation of the currency made England's goods cheaper to foreigners who were able to purchase more English goods for the same amount of money.
This taxation by inflation thus called forth an unnatural expansion in the production of the export commodities of wool and cloth, dislocating the economy both in agriculture and in industry.
and in Industry.
By 1550, the great increase in the cost of production brought about by the inflation
caught up with the fall of the foreign exchange rate, thus ending the artificial comparative
advantage causing the increased export of cloth.
The inevitable end to the over-expansion of export industry stimulated by the government's
The debasement in the 1540s resulted in a severe depression, prolonged during the 1550s by further restrictive and monopolizing economic intervention by the government.
Thus, Parliament passed laws to protect the guild industry and to bring the free rural industry under the control of the traditional patterns of regulation and taxation.
At the same time, the merchant adventurers, who were becoming the major tax collectors
and lenders of money to the government, received a more complete monopoly of the export of
cloths to Europe.
The accession of Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603, was followed by the transformation of piecemeal,
and systematic government interventions into a comprehensive program of restrictions, privileges, and taxes.
Elizabeth's reign brought to culmination the trend to absolutist government, especially noticeable in the exercise of power by the prerogative courts.
By the Statute of Laborers and Apprentices of 1563, Parliament extended to the whole
nation the restrictions that had formerly been limited to the urban guilds.
In order to check and control the free capitalist textile industry based on rural labor, the
government bound rural workers to agricultural labor and extended restrictive seven-year
apprenticeship requirements and maximum wage rates to the rural cloth industry.
In this way, by crippling the free cloth industry, the government moved to confer special privilege
on two powerful groups, the backward urban guilds who were being outcompeted by the free
and progressive rural clothmakers and the quasi-feudal landlords who had been losing
and Workers to the Higher Paying Cloth Industry.
To overcome the protections afforded defendants in common law trials, the punishment for violating
new laws was placed by the Privy Council into the hands of the prerogative courts where
prisoners could be tortured and were deprived of the benefits of trial by jury.
The Court of Star Chamber also developed censorship to control the reading of the people and the
laws of seditious and slanderous libel, to protect the government from criticism.
Under the pressure of the financial crisis and of the control of markets by monopoly
trading companies, the only possible avenue for the export of cloth appeared to be the
opening of new areas of trade.
As a result, there was a resumption of English maritime exploration by the merchants seeking
markets for cloth and sources of raw material.
The most successful of these attempts began in December of 1551 with the formation of
The Mystery and Company of the Merchant Adventurers for Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands
and Places Unknown.
To it, Sebastian Cabot, the partner and son of John Cabot and chief pilot of Spain for
30 years, was appointed as governor for life.
After consideration by the Trinity House Corporation, which was empowered to review petitions for
charters of exploration and trade, the company received its charter.
Organized according to Italian practice as a joint stock company, it was named the Russia
or Muscovy Company.
The company received a grant of monopoly in 1553 for all trade with Russia, Central Asia
and Persia through the White Sea port of Archangel.
An expedition to Archangel and Moscow returned in 1554 with permission to sell English cloth
and Purchase Russian Firs, plus the spices transported along the Volga River from Central
Asia and Persia. The descendants and relatives of the founders of the Muscovy Company were
important in later explorations, most of which were conducted under the auspices of the company.
The English also looked to Spanish America as a market for the export of cloth and the
the purchase of raw materials. Although Spain maintained a system of monopoly trade to the
New World, it could not supply large quantities of goods at low prices due to the regulations,
taxes and privileges of the mercantilist system. By the mid-16th century, the silver mines
of Mexico and Peru were not only contributing greatly to a monetary inflation in Europe,
in Europe, but also making the Spanish commerce with America the most valuable part of trans-oceanic
trade.
While Europe had difficulty in selling goods in Asia in exchange for spices and therefore
had to re-export American silver for spices, it could not supply enough manufactured goods
to Spain for purchasing the silver, hampered as it was by the restrictions, monopoly and
and Taxation imposed by the Spanish government. These restrictions and inefficiencies of the
Spanish monopoly greatly encouraged smuggling by ships from other European countries. Large
amounts of manufactured goods were re-exported to the Spanish colonies from the Portuguese
colony of Brazil, which around the middle of the 16th century became, by virtue of the
the absence of restrictions and heavy taxes, the major sugar producing area in the world.
Just as the bullion from America in payment for manufactured goods and loans on the slave
trade from West Africa, through which goods were smuggled to the West Indies by the Genoese,
now made Antwerp the banking capital of Europe, so the sugar trade from Brazil to Portugal
by Jewish Merchants, and From Lisbon to Antwerp by Dutchmen and Portuguese Jews living in
the Netherlands made Antwerp the center of the finest and cheapest sugar refining industry
in 16th century Europe.
The English, like the Portuguese, were able to engage in the illegal trade to the West
Indies at Reduced Risks, because of close diplomatic relations between England and Spain.
In 1562, Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth, after acquiring 300 slaves in West Africa, received
permission to sell them in slave-hungry Hispaniola and to purchase a valuable cargo of sugar.
Hawkins made a second voyage in 1564 to sell English cloth.
In return for a license to trade in the West Indies and promises as to his peaceful trade,
Hawkins offered to aid the Spanish in destroying the colony established in Florida by the French,
who were also the leading pirates in the West Indies.
The Spaniards, however, decided to do this job themselves.
In 1564, a group of French Huguenots under René de Laudanière settled at the mouth
of the St. John's River on the East Coast of Florida, and there constructed Fort Caroline.
The Spaniards, worried about their bullion convoys and the threat of buccaneers and anxious
to enforce their claims of monopoly power over Florida, sent Pedro Menendez de Avilés
from Spain to crush the French.
In 1565 Menendez founded the great base of St. Augustine, the first permanent city in
the Western Hemisphere and 50 miles south of the French settlement.
After a French fleet moving against the Spaniards was wrecked in a storm, Menendez, heavily
outnumbering the French, then marched over land and butchered over two-thirds of the
The Settlement, especially including prisoners, save for a hundred colonists who managed to escape to some French vessels in the harbor. Philip II, King of Spain, rejoiced at the news. Say to him, Menendez, that as for those he has killed, he has done well, and as for those he has spared, they should be sent to the galley, that is, into slavery.
In retaliation, a French nobleman, Dominique de Gourge, outfitted an expedition at his own expense, landed in early 1568 near the fort, now renamed San Mateo, and mobilized many Indians who were happy to take revenge on the hated Menendez.
Gourge now swept down on the Spanish garrison, taking it completely by surprise and conquering it easily.
The entire Spanish force, prisoners again included, was now in turn put to the sword.
Although Menendez himself escaped punishment by being absent in Spain, Gourge was able to enforce poetic justice.
Menendez had hanged several prisoners publicly posting the notice that they were hanging
as Protestants, not as Frenchmen. Now Gorge hanged a score of his prisoners on the same
trees and posted the sign, not as Spaniards, but as liars and murderers.
Due to English intervention into the constitutional and religious struggle of the Netherlands
against Spain, English activity in the West Indies tended more and more toward piracy
against Spanish shipping. The English Free Booters were encouraged in their piratic attacks
by the Crown, which participated in the profits of the plundering voyages. Sir John Hawkins
and his cousin Francis Drake were defeated at Veracruz in 1568, but in 1571 and 1573,
Drake plundered the Spanish silver depots at Panama. In 1577-80, Drake dared to circumnavigate
the globe. He was the first Englishman to challenge the concept of the Pacific Ocean
as a vast Spanish lake. Along the way, Drake plundered Chile and Peru and purchased tons
of Spices in the East Indies. In 1585 Drake returned to the West Indies. On this voyage
his fleet plundered Santo Domingo, Cartagena and St. Augustine. In 1587 he attacked Lisbon
and Cadiz and in 1588 participated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada which had attempted
to Retaliate Against English Attacks. This was a victory that brought to England domination
of the seas. Although the distraction of Spanish bullion would continue to complicate English
colonial activities in the future, the actual settlement of North America was founded on
the search for trade by the Muscovy Company and the extension of land conquest and speculation
from Ireland to America. A staunch defender of monopoly, special privilege and the royal
prerogative, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, after serving as an officer in the War of Extermination
against the Irish, 1566, had proposed to establish English colonies on the confiscated Irish
of British Lands, and was appointed Governor of Southern Ireland in 1569. Gilbert emerged
as the great leader of the feudal quest for a Northwest passage around North America to
the Orient. He published in 1576 his tract in behalf of this search, Discourse of a Discovery
The Muscovy Company, holding a monopoly privilege for exploration and trade in the Atlantic
Ocean, north of London, desired to find a northwest passage, as well as stations for
its whaling fleets for the whale oil used in the manufacture of soap.
The Muscovy Company thereupon licensed Martin Frobisher, a nephew of one of the founders
of the company, to explore Greenland and Labrador in search of a passage.
Frobisher made three fruitless voyages in 1576, 1577, and 1578.
Meanwhile, Gilbert perceived corollary possibilities of power and personal profit by the colonization
of Newfoundland, both in the conquest of its fishing grounds and as a base for search for
a Northwest Passage.
Preparing to petition Queen Elizabeth for a monopoly patent of exploration and colonization
of North America, Gilbert sought the advice of Dr. John Dee, mathematician, magician,
astrologer and mystic advisor to the Queen.
D was much consulted in matters of exploration. To support the petition, D submitted reports
extending previous historical fantasies that the English Crown possessed the God-given
right to North America and to sole ownership of all remotely adjacent seas and to all the
fish therein. Gilbert received the patent for exploration and colonization in North
of America in 1578. Humphrey Gilbert made several preparatory voyages to Newfoundland,
as did his brother Adrian, his half-brother and free-brooder Walter Raleigh, and his associate
John Davis. After further engaging in conquest and colonization in Ireland, Gilbert prepared
During 1582-83, another voyage for western planting in Newfoundland to establish a fishing
colony. He was lost at sea in 1583. In February 1584, Adrian Gilbert and Walter Raleigh were
granted a patent for northwest exploration under which John Davis made three voyages
1585-88, in a vain quest for a Northwest passage, while in the following months of 1584 Humphrey
Gilbert's monopoly patent for North American colonization was renewed in favor of Walter
Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh had been inspired by the Reverend Richard Hacklute concerning
in Colonization of the New World.
Hacklute, a friend of his in Gilbert's, had written pay-ons to the idea of English colonization.
Indeed, Raleigh commissioned Hacklute to write Discourse of Western Planting, 1584, to be
submitted to Queen Elizabeth in order to induce her to invest money in their colonization
schemes.
In this work, Hacklute promised virtually every boom to the English establishment, especially
to the merchants and the crown, markets for its products, especially woolens, raw materials
for its purchases, furs, timber and naval stores, outlets for her surplus population
and bases from which to loot Spanish shipping. Sir George Peckham, an associate of Gilbert
and Raleigh wrote in 1583, in support of Gilbert's project, that a Newfoundland colony would
provide a port to increase England's fishing fleet, a supply of valuable furs, and a northwest
passage. But all of Hacklout's and Peckham's propaganda could not induce the Queen to loosen
her purse strings. The products that Peckham and Hacklout expected America to produce,
and the trade with foreign countries that they expected American trade to replace.
These expectations were not arrived at accidentally.
Their program was founded on the experience of the Muscovy Company, which had established
trading post on the inhospitable coast and in the forest of Russia.
But the project was not described merely to indicate the close comparisons between America
in Russia, from whose forest had come furs, timber, and naval stores, and over whose roots
came the spices and luxury of the Orient.
Rather, the plan was offered as an alternative to the Russian trade that was desperately
needed by the London merchants.
For England's Baltic trade had been crippled by conflicts with the Hanseatic League, and
The German-English government had granted to the newly-charted Eastland Company a monopoly of exports to the Baltic areas.
The conflict between the Dutch and the Spanish in the Netherlands had brought upon Antwerp a series of calamities that ruined it as the great European center of commerce.
Moreover, when the King of Spain acceded to the Portuguese throne in 1580, the Dutch were eliminated from the vital trade in spices from Lisbon, causing a rise in prices.
Most important, in the 1580s, the Muscovy Company's trade with Russia suffered crippling blows when the Cossacks disrupted the Volga route, by which England had received spices from Persia and Central Asia.
and when Russia lost its Baltic coast, including the port of Narva, to Sweden.
To regain the spice trade, a group of leading merchants of the Muscovy Company formed the Turkey Company and the Venice Company in 1581
for direct trade with the Levant in spices and Mediterranean goods.
Because of wars in the Levant, these companies sent English merchants overland to India to establish a direct trade in spices.
When these merchants returned, the Turkey and Venice companies were merged into the Levant Company, 1592, with a charter to trade with India through the Levant and Persia.
Having secured his monopoly grant of colonization, Sir Walter Raleigh planted, in 1585, the first English colony in what would later be the United States, on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina.
The area had been first explored by Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville under Raleigh's direction the previous year and was named Virginia in honor of England's Virgin Queen.
The new colony had few dedicated settlers, however, and the people returned to England two years later.
In 1587, still another Raleigh expedition headed by the painter John White tried to affect a permanent settlement of Roanoke Island.
Indeed, the first English child born in America, Virginia Dare, granddaughter of John White, was born that summer at Roanoke Colony.
But English interest in and communication with the tiny colony was cut off during the battle with the Spanish Armada and White, stranded in England, could not return to Roanoke until 1591.
He could then find no trace of any of the colonists. The first attempt at English colonization of America had totally failed.
If Raleigh and Gilbert had received their inspiration for colonizing from such men as Hacklewt,
their practical experience had been picked up in the course of subduing and enslaving
Ireland. After serving in the army, attempting to impose English rule on Ireland, Gilbert
had proposed, in the late 1560s, to plant Englishmen in Ulster, as the Irish were forcibly
A few years later, Gilbert became governor of Munster in southern Ireland. In the course of pacifying the Irish, he drove out Irish peasants and replaced them with West Country English. Even as late as 1580, Gilbert and Raleigh fought together to suppress the Irish in Munster and were rewarded with sizable grants of land. After the American colonizing failures, Raleigh
In 1589, Raleigh, having expended 40,000 pounds on the American failure, and not succeeding in persuading the Queen to supply more, was happy to sell his patent for North American colonization to a group of associates and London merchants in the United States.
largely connected with the Muscovy Company and including John White, the Reverend Richard Hacklute, and Sir Thomas Smith.
Raleigh, however, reserved to himself the right of dominion over the prospective colony.
Leading circles in and around the Muscovy Company had thus resumed the monopoly of rights to exploration and colonization of North America,
which monopoly they had briefly held a decade earlier, but now they had a far greater incentive to pursue their grant to try to find compensation for the upheavals of the spice and Baltic trade and of Antwerp during the 1580s.
Consideration was therefore given to establishing a sea trade direct to the East Indies by English and Dutch merchants.
Thomas Cavendish, who had served on the Raleigh voyage to America in 1585, had sailed around the world during 1585-88 and had returned with a cargo of spices.
The war with Spain now completely cut England off from the Levant spice trade and in 1589, the London merchants received permission from the Privy Council to send three ships to the East Indies, carrying silver out of the country to pay for spices.
Cavendish and John Davis, another old associate of Raleigh, made an unsuccessful attempt to circumnavigate the world.
James Lancaster, who had been a merchant in Lisbon, was, in 1591, dispatched with three ships to India.
He returned in 1594 with one ship and a cargo of spices.
In 1593, the Muscovy and Levant companies moved to the fore, sending George Weymouth to search for a northwest passage to India along the coast of North America.
The Dutch began in 1594 to form companies for distant voyages around Africa to India.
Their first fleet returned in 1597, thereby giving a new impetus to the activity of English
merchants.
In 1598 alone, Dutch companies sent five fleets, totaling 22 ships, to the Indies.
John Davis was the chief pilot of the Zeeland fleet.
By 1601, over a dozen Dutch fleets of almost 70 ships had sailed for the East Indies. Because
of renewed English voyages and conflicts with the Portuguese, the Dutch merchants, forming
the companies that had sent the ships to the East Indies, began to amalgamate them, and
in March 1602, all the Dutch companies merged into the United East India Company.
In September 1599, London merchants belonging to various trading companies, especially the
Levant Company, formed an association on the model of the successful Dutch companies and
petitioned the government to charter a company of London merchants having a monopoly of trade
by sea to the East Indies.
The Charter to the East India Company was granted on December 31, 1600 under the title
of The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies.
The Levant Company was granted a new charter to distinguish the monopoly areas of the two
companies.
The governor named in the charter of the East India Company was Sir Thomas Smith, SMITH
or SMYTHE. Smith's grandfather, Andrew Judd, had been a principal founder of the Muscovy
Company. His father had preceded him as a leading tax collector and had been a key royal
Smith was governor also of the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company of which he was a founder, and was also the principal member of the group of London merchants to whom Raleigh had in 1589 assigned his patent for American colonization.
and Colonization. Indeed, Smith was the governor of every one of England's privileged companies
then interested in foreign commerce and colonization. Smith has been referred to as the greatest
merchant prince of his era, but it is clear that his status and wealth arose not from
private trade, but from the governmental privileges of tax farming and grants of monopoly.
The first voyage of the East India Company went out under the direction of James Lancaster and John Davis in 1601 and was followed the next year by George Weymouth's second voyage along the coast of North America, sponsored by the East India and Muscovy companies.
Meanwhile, Sir Walter Raleigh resumed his interest in the New World in 1602, sending out another feudal expedition to search for survivors of the Roanoke colony.
But in the following year, Raleigh's colonizing activities were unceremoniously cut short by the accession of King James I to the throne of England.
England. One of James' first acts was to consign Raleigh to an indefinite imprisonment
in the Tower and abruptly to vacate his dominion over Virginia. Among the King's motives was
the desire to give Spain a tangible token of the new King's wish to conclude peace
between the two warring countries. For Raleigh was now perhaps the most ardent warmonger
and plunderer against Spanish shipping and whose colonizing activities
sought bases for aggression against Spain.
His incarceration was therefore a particularly apt token of peace between
the two nations.
Indeed, peace was concluded the next year, in August 1604,
after which King James cracked down on the formerly
lionized captains of piracy and freebooting.
The Treaty of London of 1604 provided for freedom of commerce between England and Spain
as it had existed prior to the war. Since England had had the right to sail to Spain
and Portugal, England now claimed that its ships could sail to the East and West Indies
as well. Spanish America was the source of tobacco and its use in England increased greatly
once trade was reestablished on a regular basis
even though James disapproved of its use as a poisonous weed.
Although the London merchants hoped to monopolize the renewed trade
with Spain, the protest of the merchants of the West
country ports, especially Bristol and Plymouth,
forced the government to backtrack. First it tried to include the West country
merchants in the monopoly
and then it decreed for all English merchants freedom of trade
to Portugal, Spain and the Western Mediterranean, a policy that was later to apply to American
merchants. At the same time, the privileged merchants of the Levant and Muscovy companies
were suffering further losses because of local difficulties, especially foreign invasions
of Russia. While economic pressure was turning the attention of English merchants once again
to Possible Markets and Supplies of Raw Materials in North America, and peace renewed attention
to the new world that had been diverted by the war against Spain.
The peace treaty also terminated the previously permanent employment of many military and
naval officers engaged in the war.
In 1605, Wymouth again explored the coast of New England, this time in behalf of a group
A group of soldier couriers, including Sir Ferdinando Gorgias, the Earl of Southampton,
and the latter's brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Arundel.
Reimuth's return in July 1605 led to several projects for trade and colonization in America,
and in September of that year, petitions were presented to the Privy Council for the formation
of companies to engage in these activities.
Although the Privy Council was then considered a new project to plant English colonists in
the lands taken from the Irish in Ulster, the value of North American colonies to English
ship owners and to the English Navy led the Trinity House Corporation and the Privy Council
to approve the petitions.
Finally, in April 1606, Raleigh's Old Dominion over Virginia was granted to two sets of powerful
Merchants, which included the merchants to whom Raleigh had sold his rights of trade.
The new patent divided the monopoly powers of government over Virginia between two joint
stock companies of merchants.
The South Virginia Company was to have claim over the land between the 34th and 38th parallels
roughly from Cape Fear north to the Potomac River.
The North Virginia Company was to rule between the 41st and 45th parallels, roughly from
Long Island to Maine.
To stimulate competition and to provide incentive for colonizing, the zone in between was thrown
open to settlement by either company, with the stipulation that one could not settle
within 100 miles of the other.
Since the South Virginia Company was headed by leading merchants of London, it soon became
known as the London Company, while the North Virginia Company, centered around merchants
of Plymouth, came to be called the Plymouth Company.
Each company was granted powers to allocate its land in any way it wished.
The King reserved the then customary royalty of five percent of whatever gold or silver
The King vested supervisory control of the two companies in a royal council of Virginia, which was appointed by the King, and which in turn was to appoint resident local councils to govern each of the two colonies.
The settlers and their descendants were supposed to enjoy all the liberties, franchises and immunities of Englishmen at home, a clause immediately contradicted by the absence of any provision for elections or home rule.
The Plymouth Company for North Virginia was composed of West Country merchants, gentry and soldiers, and was headed by the Governor of Plymouth, Sir Ferdinando Gorgias, who desired to establish a fishing and fur trading colony, independent of the London merchant financiers.
Also included in the group were Raleigh Gilbert, a son of Sir Humphrey, and Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
Sir John had played a leading role in procuring the Charter.
The Plymouth Company dispatched an exploratory expedition in October 1606 and sent colonists
to America in May 1607 under Raleigh Gilbert and George Popham, a relative of Sir John.
A settlement was established on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine, but because of
of a severe winter and poor crops and the death of the two poplums, the colony was abandoned
in September 1608.
Thereafter the Plymouth Company did not attempt further colonization but concentrated on the
Newfoundland fisheries and some fur trade.
The London Company for South Virginia was composed of members of leading political families.
The leading member was the ubiquitous Sir Thomas Smith, the leader of the group that
had purchased trade rights from Raleigh and the governor of the East India, Muscovy and
Levant companies. Other leading members were the Reverend Richard Hacklute, Robert Rich,
Earl of Warwick, a leader in the monopoly chartered East India, Burma and Guinea companies,
and the leading London merchants involved in the Muscovy, Levant and East India companies.
And just as the Levant Company had been founded by members of the Muscovy Company and a quarter
of the stockholders in the East India Company were members of the Levant Company, so over
100 members of the East India Company were now investors in the London Virginia Company,
the main purpose of which was to provide a source of raw materials such as tropical products,
spices and furs.
Another prominent member in the London Company was Sir Edwin Sandys, a prominent Puritan
and friend of a royal favorite, the Earl of Southampton.
The London Virginia Company sent forth its first settlers in December 1606.
They were carried then, as in succeeding years, on ships provided by the Muscovy Company,
which long remained the major operator in the Virginia trade.
To them the colonist took the king's instructions to the company, which included the requirement
of a public oath of obedience by the colonist and a death penalty for all manner of crimes,
including tumults, sedition, conspiracy and adultery.
The president and the council of the company were empowered to make laws for the colonist,
Assistant with the Laws of England, subject to revision by the Royal Council.
The ships landed at Chesapeake Bay the following May 6. A settlement was founded 30 miles inland
on the James River, called Jamestown in honor of the King. This was the first successful
English settlement in North America. The colony of Virginia had begun.
The new English colonial grants were placed between the French exploration and settlement
to the north and the Spanish occupation to the south.
Through trading and missionary posts, Spain had been effectively occupying the coast of
what was later to become South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
The French had been continually exploring and trading on the St. Lawrence for some years.
In 1602, they had established a trade in furs, which would become the most valuable French
export from North America. In 1602, the patent for monopoly of the fur trade to France from
North America had been granted to the Company of New France, which sent Samuel de Champlain
to explore the St. Lawrence in 1603. The following years, Champlain established a fur post at
at Acadia, now Nova Scotia, and explored the coast of New England. In 1607, the Muscovy
Company commissioned Henry Hudson, a descendant of the founder of the company, to explore
the Arctic regions around Greenland. Two years later, Holland and Spain concluded a trade,
which the Dutch claimed gave them rights, similar to those accorded to the English,
to sail to the New World.
Promptly the Dutch sent Henry Hudson under auspices of the Dutch East India Company to
explore the Arctic regions.
Sailing along the North American coast from Newfoundland to the Carolinas, Hudson returned
by way of Delaware Bay, South River, and the Hudson River, North River, which he explored
up to Albany.
He claimed the fur regions for the Dutch.
In 1610, Hudson set forth under an English company, headed by Sir Thomas Smith, and discovered
Hudson's Bay before being abandoned by his mutinous crew. Several of the companies of
which Smith was governor were subject to reorganization in the spring of 1609 because of the new Dutch
competition in North American waters, resulting from the Dutch peace treaty with Spain. New
New charters were granted in May 1609 to the English East India Company and the closely
linked London Virginia Company. The East India Company was granted a perpetual monopoly charter
and in the following year established its first trading post in India. Analogous to
the East India Company charter, the new charter granted to the treasurer and company of the
The Adventures and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony in Virginia, a
Corporate Body Politic, with Sir Thomas Smith filling the key royally appointed Post of
Treasurer.
The Charter was completely distinct from the old Joint Charter of the unsuccessful Plymouth
Company.
The re-chartering of an independent London-Virginia Company for American Colonization was complemented
by the chartering of a new company for planting English and Scottish colonists in the lands
recently conquered in Northern Ireland.
In the spring of 1610, a group of London and Bristol merchants, interested in founding
a colony in proximity to the fishing banks off Newfoundland, was chartered as the treasurer
and company of adventurers and planters of cities of London and Bristol for the colony
or Plantation of Newfoundland. Under the direction of Sir Ferdinando Gorgias, the company prepared
to send exploratory voyages along the New England coast. To improve the financial condition
of the London Virginia Company, a new charter was issued in 1612 to Smith as the treasurer
The boundaries included the islands within 300 leagues of the continent, specifically the rediscovered Bermuda's or Summers Islands, which in 1615 were placed under the Summers Islands Company, of which Smith was also the governor.
Along with the 1612 Virginia Company Charter, Smith received a charter as the governor and company of the merchants of London, discoverers of the Northwest Passage, to follow up Henry Hudson's last voyage.
In addition, Smith's Moscovy Company was re-chartered in 1613.
This enlarged the Muscovy Company's privileges in exploring Greenland, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and North America, and included a monopoly of the whale and seal fishing, which had become the Company's major interest because of the troubles in Russia.
As this was an attempt to exclude Dutch, as well as independent English whalers, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands granted charters in 1614 to accompany for the Greenland whale fishery an informal recognition of the exploratory work of Henry Hudson, granted to the New Netherland Company the power to colonize and trade in the area about the South, Delaware,
and the North Hudson Rivers.