Setting the Stage for American History: Liberty versus Power in Europe and England

Columbus’ voyages:

• Columbus explored the Americas in 1495, 1495-1500, and 1502-04. He finally reached the American mainland in 1498.
• In 1509, the Portuguese defeated a fleet of Arab and Indian Muslims, and 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.

Colonization and Conquest

• The pattern of Spanish colonization was based upon conditions in Spain in the late Middle Ages
• Two major land-conquering and colonizing powers, Spain and England, preceded their respective transatlantic conquests by the conquest of neighboring peoples
• In these aggressions, 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

Unhampering the Market

• 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 textile manufacturers in England.
• Unburdened of 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.

Tudors

• Tudor Dynasty
• Medieval forms were transformed into machinery for repression
• Monopoly rights were granted in 1486 to the Fellowship of the Merchant Adventurers of England in all trade to the Netherlands except in wool
• Navigation acts restricted to English ships the importation of wines
• In 1496 the English government negotiated with the government of the Netherlands the Great Commercial Treaty 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.
• By an act of 1497 the English Government implemented its treaty power to monopolize and control trade to other countries

Smugglers, Pirates, and Freebooters

• By the mid-16th century, the silver mines of Mexico and Peru were contributing greatly to a monetary inflation in Europe, but also making Spanish commerce with America the most valuable part of transoceanic trade.
• 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.

American Neofeudalism

• 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
• Although the London merchants hoped to monopolize the renewed trade with Spain, the protests of the merchants of the West Country ports, especially Bristol and Plymouth, forced the government to backtrack
• Finally, in April 1606 Raleigh's old dominion over Virginia was granted to two sets of powerful merchants

Brief Bibliographical Essay

• An historical work can be extremely valuable despite great differences in basic political or even historical points of view, provided that it focuses on the right questions and that its scholarship is sound
• For example, it is rare these days to find a general work on American history that retains the richness of narrative an the vital factual record.
• While historians have written excellent monographs on specific areas, the more comprehensive works have either been brief essays presenting the author's point of view or textbooks that are remarkable for the increasing skimpiness of their material
• As a result, the reader interested in American history is no longer in a position to find those multivolume works so plentiful in the past

 

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