HY 102 Lecture 33: Mediterranean Colonialism - ch 11
30 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
I.Mediterranean Colonialism
A. Motives for westward expansion
1. African gold trade
2. Growth of European colonial empires in the western Mediterranean Sea
B. Silver shortages and the search for African gold
1. African gold trade was not new
2. Catalan and Genoese merchants traded woolen cloth for gold at Tunis
3. Gold needed because of a serious silver shortage
4. Balance-of-payments problem
a. Too much silver flowing east in the spice trade
b. Could not be replaced
c. Gold as alternative for large transactions
C. Mediterranean empires: Catalunya, Venice, and Genoa
1. Catalunya
. Colonized Majorca, Ibiza, Minorca, Sicily, and Sardinia
a. Expropriation and extermination of native population (usually Muslim)
b. Economic concessions to attract settlers
c. Reliance on slave labor
2. Venice
. Venetian colonization controlled by city's rulers
a. Concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean
b. Spices and silks
3. Genoa
. Focused on western Mediterranean
a. Cloth, hides, grain, and timber
b. More informal and family-based
c. More closely integrated with native societies of North Africa, Spain, and the
Black Sea
d. Moved toward larger, fuller-bodied sailing ships
D. From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic
1. Italian merchants sailed through Straits of Gibraltar to the North Sea (c. 1270)
2. Canary Islands as "jumping-off point," especially for the Portuguese
E. The technology of ships and navigation
1. The Portuguese caravel
2. Changed to larger caravel with lateen sail
. Could sail against the wind
a. Required smaller crews
3. Navigation
. Quadrants in use by 1450s
a. Astrolabes
b. Compasses
c. Could not determine longitude until the eighteenth century
d. Dead reckoning
e. Maps and navigational charts (rutters and routiers)
f. Portolani
F. Portugal, Africa, and the sea route to India
1. Chronology of Portuguese colonization
. Captured North African port of Ceuta (1415)
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