A Short History of the World

by Christopher Lascelles

  While the inflow of wealth from the Americas helped Spain in recovering fairly rapidly from its financial losses, the country was less able to recover from the blow to its prestige. Who were the English to defeat mighty Spain, or the Dutch for daring to challenge them for that matter? The defeat gave the English and the Dutch new confidence in attacking the Spanish at sea and contributed to their growth in power over the coming century. As a result of the Armada’s defeat, Francis Drake became a national hero and Elizabeth became a legend; she had seen off the greatest threat the country had faced since the Norman invasion 400 years earlier.

  While Elizabeth had made England great, her successors unravelled much of what she had achieved. In 1603, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England, although it would take a hundred more years and the Act of Union in 1707 before the two governments were officially joined in the Kingdom of Great Britain.73 James was unloved by the people and it was during his reign in 1605 that a group of Catholic peers, led by Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament – an act still remembered every year in England on 5th November. James’ son, Charles I, would lead the country to civil war.

  The Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia (1618-1648)

  Philip II of Spain died in 1598, deeply in debt74 and militarily exhausted. His successor, Philip III, had no choice but to call for a truce between Spain and the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1609. The peace lasted for nine years, only to be broken by a 30 year long and Europe-wide religious war that lasted from 1618 to 1648 and involved most of the continental powers. To complicate matters, the French Bourbons, despite having a Catholic king, fought alongside the Protestants, concerned as they were with being surrounded by Habsburg territories.

  Germany felt the brunt of the attack, with entire regions devastated and up to one-quarter of the population killed by war, famine and disease. Other nations were bankrupted. Outside Europe, the war also raged in its nascent colonies with hostilities occurring in Asia, Africa and America. In the East the Dutch waged a tough war against the Portuguese and ended up taking from them most of their possessions, including the lucrative Spice Islands.

  Negotiations for peace began in 1643, only to be agreed upon five years later, after interminably long negotiations. The Peace of Westphalia, which was signed in 1648, marked both the end of the 80-year-long Dutch revolt and the Thirty Years War. Christianity, purportedly a religion of peace, had brought death and destruction and permanently divided Europe. It was clear to everyone that change was desperately needed.

  The negotiations revealed a new Europe: the Dutch Republic was finally recognised as an independent state and the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire, were given de-facto sovereignty – an action that effectively reduced the power of the Holy Roman Emperor. Such territorial adjustments however, were in many ways only a side story compared with the fundamental changes that occurred.

  First, it was agreed that people should be allowed to express their religious opinions freely, a belief that continues to be the basis of civil society. Calvinism, Lutheranism and Catholicism were all recognised equally and religion became separate from the state, and remains separated in most Western countries to this day. Second, the edicts that were signed set the basis for modern-day sovereign nation states as opposed to imperial blocks, with kingship becoming the dominant form of government from that time forward. It established boundaries for the states, many of which remain the same or similar today, and from this time onwards it would be national rivalry, rather than religious disputes, that would lead to wars and cause shifts in the balance of power in Europe.

  The Colonisation of North America (17th Century)

  Over in North America, the European presence in the 16th century had been primarily focused on the search for a way through to the riches of the Indies, still seen as the easiest way to wealth. America was not initially seen by many Europeans as a land to conquer and in which to settle, but more as a territory for settling the differences of the major European powers and as a source of plunder with which to finance their wars.

  By the mid-16th century Spain held most of central and southern America, together with the huge amounts of silver it had mined there. Having enslaved and murdered a large proportion of the local population in their hunt for riches, the Spanish began to import slaves from Africa in the hope that they would be more resistant to disease and be harder workers. The Portuguese soon followed suit, importing slaves to man their sugar plantations in Brazil.

  But as Spain grew rich, other powers looked to take this wealth from her, notably France, England and the Netherlands. England, under Elizabeth I, had specifically gained a reputation for piracy in the Caribbean, attacking the Spanish treasure galleons returning laden with gold and silver from the New World; after all, why mine for gold and silver when it could so easily be stolen instead? With few riches discovered in northern America and the Caribbean, this area was of little interest to Spain, and so its enemies were able to gain a foothold there.

  Yet the European powers were slow to fully grasp the benefits of colonisation. It was not until 1565 that the Spanish founded a more substantial trading post on mainland America, at the city of St. Augustine in Florida. Twenty years later the English, under Walter Raleigh, also tried to establish a more permanent trading post, as opposed to a colony, at Roanoke Island, on the coast of present-day North Carolina. This was no easy endeavour though; the first colonists, having in the first place been convinced to go there by propaganda, asked to be carried home the following year. The next colonists to make the long journey across the Atlantic simply disappeared.

  It was not until the early 17th century that a concerted effort was made by the European powers to colonise this part of the world. Religious persecution and bad harvests in early 17th century Europe meant that there were plenty of volunteers, despite the terrible crossings in which many died.

  Jamestown and the Settlement of North America (1607)

  The failure at Roanoke, together with continued war with Spain, suspended English colonial efforts until 1606, when the king authorised the London Company to establish settlements. The result was the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, an event that many view as the real beginning of northern American colonial history. Even this was not easy; one-third of the colonists died during the voyage, while another third died in the first year in a period of adjustment that came to be called ‘the seasoning’. Furthermore, the first 20 years were wracked by hunger and disease, requiring the settlers to be supplied by England until they could look after themselves. The colony was saved by growing tobacco, which had become increasingly fashionable to smoke and which was relatively easy to grow. It was not long before cheap Virginian tobacco flooded the markets.

  The French founded their first permanent settlement in Quebec in 1608, and in 1609, Sir Henry Hudson, an English mariner in Dutch pay, discovered Manhattan Island. The island was initially used as a base for traders but the Dutch began to send settlers in 1624, purchasing it from the Indians for a few trinkets, a trade recognised as the best real estate deal in history. They named it New Amsterdam. Forty years later, the English decided New Amsterdam was blocking their westward expansion, so they captured it and renamed it New York, in honour of the Duke of York, brother of King Charles II. In return, and as part of the treaty to end the Anglo-Dutch war, the English ceded their part of Suriname in South America to the Dutch in maybe the worst real estate deal in history!

  As word spread of the opportunity to be had in the Americas, more and more Europeans decided to emigrate. In 1610, on the other side of the continent, the Spanish founded the city of Santa Fe. In 1620 a group of religious separatists fleeing persecution in England landed in Plymouth, in present-day New England, on the Mayflower. A year later they celebrated the success of their first corn harvest together with their native American allies in a thanksgiving ceremony still remembered by Americans every year.

  The Europea
ns soon earned a bad reputation among the native American Indians, who referred to them, among other names, as ‘people greedily grasping for land’ or the ‘coat-wearing people’. Over the course of the next few hundred years the native Indians would be destroyed by European diseases, principally smallpox and cholera.

  The Europeans were generally surprised by the friendliness of the natives that survived, but nevertheless went on to butcher them. Time and time again the white settlers broke their treaties while the native Americans, not understanding why the newcomers needed more land than that on which they could grow food, failed to unite against them. Eventually they could no more hold out against the diseases the Europeans brought with them than against their lust for land, and were slowly but surely dispossessed, subjugated and exterminated. To the native Americans, the arrival of the Europeans was a holocaust in itself.

  Things were not so different in South America, however, where those who had survived disease were often worked to death in mines or on farms by the Spanish and the Portuguese. It was the high death rate of the native populations that led the Europeans to look for a new source of labour.

  Sugar and the Slave Trade (15th–19th Centuries)

  By the mid-15th century, slaves from Africa had been imported to Portugal in larger and larger numbers as a result of the expeditions down the west African coast. There had been a long history of slave trading among native Africans and Arab middlemen for centuries prior to European intervention. Acclimatised to the temperature and of strong build, African slaves had made good labourers in the sugar plantations of the newly discovered Portuguese colonies off the west African coast such as the Canaries, the Azores and Madeira.

  It was this realisation that encouraged Portuguese entrepreneurs to begin exporting slaves to newly-discovered Brazil where they rapidly began growing highly profitable sugarcane and mining silver. African slaves were imported in such huge numbers75 that by the end of the 17th century up to half of Brazil’s population consisted of African slaves.

  Growing demand for sugar in Europe, which came as a result of the increasing popularity of tea and coffee, encouraged other nations to grow sugarcane in the Caribbean, a group of islands that had a similar climate to that of Brazil. This interest coincided with the reduced return on investment that the tobacco growing industry in the Caribbean had seen after the world markets were flooded by cheap Virginian tobacco. Yet high mortality rates in the Caribbean meant that much of the original European workforce had either died or fled to northern America where the climate was more agreeable. Not only a new crop, but a new workforce would be needed.

  While the English and the French busied themselves with setting up sugarcane plantations, the Dutch supplied much of the credit and the slaves in return for which they handled the sale of the sugar. It was the Dutch who first supplied slaves to northern America in 1619, where they would eventually become essential to the economy.

  By the time the slave trade ended, the Caribbean had taken an estimated 50 percent of the roughly fifteen million African slaves transported to the Americas as cheap labour over a three hundred year period. In fact, up until the beginning of the 19th century, the majority of immigrants to the Americas were African.

  The journey across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas generally took place under horrendous conditions. Slaves were chained together in the hulls of overcrowded ships to maximise profits for the trader, disease was rife, and it was not uncommon for 25 percent of the slaves to die during the ‘Middle Passage’, as the crossing came to be known. Once they arrived they were treated like animals. Their low life expectancy, combined with the shortage of women, and therefore children, meant that regular shipments were required.

  By the 1680s, the Dutch, English and French all had their own sugar plantation colonies, with production surpassing even that of Brazil. For a while, British-owned Barbados became the largest sugar producer in the world, only to be surpassed by Jamaica and French-held Santo Domingo in present-day Haiti. Entire islands became dependent on sugar, and huge profits earned it the name ‘white gold’.

  The trade in slaves was part of the triangular trade pattern or ‘Atlantic System’ between the 17th and 19th centuries. Western manufactured goods, such as textiles and guns, were sent to Africa where they were exchanged for slaves who were, in turn, shipped to the Caribbean and exchanged for sugar and other commodities such as tobacco and coffee. These commodities were then sold in Europe and used to buy manufactured goods that were subsequently exported to Africa where the whole process repeated itself. A sugar by-product called molasses was distilled into rum and also shipped to Africa in a vicious cycle of profit where slave labour led to the enslavement of more slaves.

  Capital generated from the sugar and other slave-dependent industries was used to finance banks, extend credit and invest in new inventions, all of which contributed to the industrial revolution in Britain.

  The Dutch Empire Grows…

  Despite their seemingly never-ending war against Spain, the Dutch United Provinces developed a flourishing economy and a global empire. Building upon strong grain-importing, fishing and ship-building industries, and aided by the arrival of those fleeing religious persecution in the south and elsewhere in Europe, the Dutch were able not only to amass wealth but also to devise ingenious solutions on how to manage it. The Bank of Amsterdam – the first central bank in the world – was established in 1609, largely to finance trade. Good re-payers of debt, the Dutch were able to get credit at advantageous interest rates, thereby allowing them to finance the expansion of their trade and their wars. Their investment in ship-building made them the most effective world naval power until the late 17th century.

  Pushed to find new markets by Spanish embargoes, the Dutch gained a strong presence in the Americas and in Asia, where the Dutch East India Company (established in 1602) became the first multinational corporation. Dutch privateers sacked Portuguese ships with impunity in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and succeeded in achieving a near monopoly on trade with the Spice Islands. Furthermore, in an attempt to protect their routes to the East, they established an outpost at the Cape of Good Hope, over which they would fight the English centuries later. The Dutch held the largest trading empire in the world until the English surpassed it, and they were to fight doggedly to keep it, notably going to war with the English three times in the 17th century.

  …while Spain and Portugal Decline

  The Portuguese and Spanish empires, on the other hand, united temporarily under Spanish rule from 1580 to 1640, were on the wane. It was Portugal’s misfortune to be united under the same crown as Spain at a time when Spain was waging war on half the world and becoming increasingly isolated in the process. All of these wars led the country to bankruptcy which, despite Spain’s massive influx of wealth from the Americas, it declared three times in the 16th century. Spain was also determined to stamp out any free thought or intellectual activity that might challenge Catholicism. With this aim, books were banned,76 students were forbidden to study abroad, and any foreign thought was, by its very nature, unwelcome.

  Fearful of change, the Iberian peninsula77 failed to develop at the same pace as the rest of Europe and missed out on the Reformation which had done so much to develop the continent. Additionally, the flood of wealth from the New World – which incidentally led to unforeseen and serious inflation – did not encourage innovation as most goods could simply be bought.

  Portugal, under the House of Braganza, eventually reclaimed its independence from Spain in 1640, but by then it was too late for the country to regain its former glory. By this time, it had been weakened by the suppression of free thought and had lost its leadership on navigational techniques that had made it strong in the first place.

  France Gains Dominance Under Louis XIV

  With Spain on the decline and England not yet powerful, France dominated European politics for much of the second half of the 17th century. In 1643, Louis XIV became king at the age of five and exp
erienced the longest reign in European history (1643–1715). Louis XIV claimed rule by divine right and famously proclaimed that he was the state. Such was his power that the 17th century even came to be known as the age of Louis XIV. To expand his empire he married his first cousin, the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. Yet despite its growing might, France was not without its own problems. Internally, Louis, a strong Catholic, was not spared religious wars, revoking the Edict of Nantes and making Protestantism illegal. Externally, the last decades of the ‘Sun King’ – as he became known from the emblem he chose to represent himself – were taken up with various wars on which he squandered much of France’s wealth.

  England: The Beginnings of an Empire

  During the 16th century England had only a fraction of the population and resources of either Spain or France. France was an historic foe, and an ascendant Netherlands was on the way to becoming England’s main commercial enemy. England would make war and peace with both countries many times over the next hundred years. But England had advantages over other European countries that included the difficulty of invading an island and a strong parliament to check the power of the king. It was to do so in a devastating civil war between 1642 and 1651.