MEMPIN, CHERRISE DG.

MT 2-3

1. Factors which contributed to renewal of trade between the east and the west?

The Commercial Revolution was a period of European economic expansion, colonialism, and mercantilism which lasted from approximately the 13th century until the early 18th century. It was succeeded in the mid-18th century by the Industrial Revolution. Beginning with the Crusades, Europeans rediscovered spices, silks, and other commodities rare in Europe. This development created a new desire for trade, and trade expanded in the second half of the Middle Ages. European nations, through voyages of discovery, were looking for new trade routes in the 15th and 16th centuries, which allowed the European powers to build vast, new international trade networks. Nations also sought new sources of wealth. To deal with this new-found wealth, new economic theories and practices were created. Because of competing national interest, nations had the desire for increased world power through their colonial empires. The Commercial Revolution is marked by an increase in general commerce, and in the growth of financial services such as banking, insurance, and investing. 2. age of exploration and discovery

A. Trade routes between Europe and Asia Long-distance trade played a major role in the cultural, religious, and artistic exchanges that took place between the major centers of civilization in Europe and Asia during antiquity. Some of these trade routes had been in use for centuries, but by the beginning of the first century A.D., merchants, diplomats, and travelers could (in theory) cross the ancient world from Britain and Spain in the west to China and Japan in the east. The trade routes served principally to transfer raw materials, foodstuffs, and luxury goods from areas with surpluses to others where they were in short supply. Some areas had a monopoly on certain materials or goods. China, for example, supplied West Asia and the Mediterranean world with silk, while spices were obtained principally from South Asia. These goods were transported over vast distances either by pack animals overland or by seagoing shipsalong the Silk and Spice Routes, which were the main arteries of contact between the various ancient empires of the Old World. Another important trade route, known as the Incense Route, was controlled by the Arabs, who brought frankincense and myrrh by camel caravan from South Arabia. B. Early voyages to asia Portugal and the East (c.1400-1498) Portugal started serious exploration in the early 1400's, hoping to find both the legendary Prester John as an ally against the Muslims and the source of gold that the Arabs were getting from overland routes through the Sahara. At first, they did not plan to sail around Africa, believing it connected with a great southern continent. The guiding spirit for these voyages was Prince Henry the Navigator whose headquarters at Sagres on the north coast of Africa attracted

some of the best geographers, cartographers and pilots of the day. Henry never went on any of his expeditions, but he was their heart and soul. The exploration of Africa offered several physical and psychological obstacles. For one thing, there were various superstitions, such as boiling seas as one approached the equator, monsters, and Cape Bojador, which many thought was the Gates of Hell. Also, since the North Star, the sailors' main navigational guide, would disappear south of the Equator, sailors were reluctant to cross that line. In 1460, Prince Henry died, and the expeditions slowed down for the next 20 years. However, French and English interest in a route around Africa spurred renewed activity on Portugal's part. By now, Portuguese captains were taking larger and bolder strides down the coast. One captain, Diego Cao, explored some 1500 miles of coastline. With each such stride, Portuguese confidence grew that Africa could be circumnavigated. Portugal even sent a spy, Pero de Covilha, on the overland route through Arab lands to the Indies in order to scout the best places for trade when Portuguese ships finally arrived. The big breakthrough came in 1487, when Bartholomew Dias was blown by a storm around the southern tip of Africa (which he called the Cape of Storms, but the Portuguese king renamed the Cape of Good Hope). When Dias relocated the coast, it was to his west, meaning he had rounded the tip of Africa. However, his men, frightened by rumors of monsters in the waters ahead, forced him to turn back. Soon after this, the Spanish, afraid the Portuguese would claim the riches of the East for themselves, backed Columbus' voyage that discovered and claimed the Americas for Spain. This in turn spurred Portuguese efforts to find a route to Asia before Spain did. However, Portugal's king died, and the transition to a new king meant it was ten years before the Portuguese could send Vasco da Gama with four ships to sail to India. Swinging west to pick up westerly winds, da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in three months, losing one ship in the process. Heading up the coast, the Portuguese encountered Arab surprise and hostility against European ships in their waters. Da Gama found an Indian pilot who led the Portuguese flotilla across the Indian Ocean to India in 1498. In 1519, Charles V of Spain gave five ships and the job of finding a southwest passage around South America to Ferdinand Magellan, a former Portuguese explorer who had been to the Spice Islands while serving Portugal. Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe was one of the great epic, and unplanned, events in history. After sailing down the South American coast, he faced a mutiny, which he ruthlessly suppressed, and then entered a bewildering tangle of islands at the southern tip of the continent known even today as the Straits of Magellan. Finding his way through these islands took him 38 days, while the same journey today takes only two. Once they emerged from the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific "Sea", Magellan and his men figured they were a short distance from Asia, and set out across the open water and into one of the worst ordeals ever endured in nautical history. One of those on the journey, Pigafetta, left an account of the Pacific crossing: The conquests of Mexico and Peru more than compensated Spain for its failure to establish a trade route to the Spice Islands. The wealth of South America's gold and silver mines would provide Spain with the means to make it the great power of Europe in the 1500's.

Unfortunately, Spain would squander these riches in a series of fruitless religious wars that would wreck its power by 1650. Other Spanish expeditions were exploring South America's coasts and rivers, in particular the Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio de la Plata, along with ventures into what is now the south-west United States (to find the Seven Cities of Gold), the Mississippi River, and Florida (to find the Fountain of Youth). While these found little gold, they did provide a reasonable outline of South America and parts of North America by 1550. However, no one had yet found an easy route to Asia. Therefore, the following centuries would see further explorations which, while failing to find an easier passageway, would in the process piece together most of the global map. C. Division of the world The characteristic feature of this period, he concludes, is, therefore, the division of Africa and Polynesia. As there are no unoccupied territoriesthat is, territories that do not belong to any state in Asia and America, it is necessary to amplify Supans conclusion and say that the characteristic feature of the period under review is the final partitioning of the globefinal, not in the sense that repartition is impossible; on the contrary, repartitions are possible and inevitablebut in the sense that the colonial policy of the capitalist countries has completed the seizure of the unoccupied territories on our planet. For the first time the world is completely divided up, so that in the future only redivision is possible, i.e., territories can only pass from one owner to another, instead of passing as ownerless territory to an owner Hence, we are living in a peculiar epoch of world colonial policy, which is most closely connected with the latest stage in the development of capitalism, with finance capital. For this reason, it is essential first of all to deal in greater detail with the facts, in order to ascertain as exactly as possible what distinguishes this epoch from those preceding it, and what the present situation is. In the first place, two questions of fact arise here: is an intensification of colonial policy, a sharpening of the struggle for colonies, observed precisely in the epoch of finance capital? And how, in this respect, is the world divided at the present time? For Great Britain, the period of the enormous expansion of colonial conquests was that between 1860 and 1880, and it was also very considerable in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. For France and Germany this period falls precisely in these twenty years. We saw above that the development of premonopoly capitalism, of capitalism in which free competition was predominant, reached its limit in the 1860s and 1870s. We now see that it is precisely after that period that the tremendous boom in colonial conquests begins, and that the struggle for the territorial division of the world becomes extraordinarily sharp. It is beyond doubt, therefore, that capitalisms transition to the stage of monopoly capitalism, to finance capital, is connected with the intensification of the struggle for the partitioning of the world. In the most flourishing period of free competition in Great Britain, i.e., between 1840 and 1860, the leading British bourgeois politicians were opposed to colonial policy and were of the opinion that the liberation of the colonies, their complete separation from Britain, was inevitable and desirable. M. Beer, in an article, Modern British Imperialism, [3] published in 1898, shows that in 1852, Disraeli, a statesman who was generally inclined towards imperialism, declared: The colonies are millstones round our necks. But at the end of the nineteenth century the British

heroes of the hour were Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlain, who openly advocated imperialism and applied the imperialist policy in the most cynical manner! D. Reasons for the Europeans coming to Asia Firstly the travels of Marco Polo and his exciting narrations about thecontinent of Asia had catalyzed a frisson of interest within the Europeans to experience and explore Asia. His book that he wrote about his travels to Asia was a prime motivator for Europeans whose eagerness to visit the foreign continent increased with its fascinating details. Another reason for Europeans' keenness to visit Asia was the development they had managed to achieve in the field of technology. This development had enabled them to build ships with better sales and use the compass, which used to tell them the direction. Moreover they were also familiar with the astrolabe, which helped them to determine the distance their ship was from the equator. With all these technologies, it became only a matter of time as to when the Europeans would begin their travel to Asia. Another reason for them was their hunger for knowledge and new ideas, which drove them to Asia to explore the new land. 3. The Magellan expedition and its significance There were some significance to Magellan's expedition, which began in 1519 and ended in 1522. Through this expedition, the Strait of Magellan was discovered. More importantly, the first circumnavigation of the globe occurred, even if Magellan himself did not survive to complete it. Even though Magellan himself didn't make it all the way around the globe, his expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe. This effectively proved that the world was round, gave an idea as to the full extent of the earth, established the need for an International Date Line (despite faithfully maintaining their logs, the crew's calendar was a full day behind), and observed many foreign/exotic things that had been unknown to Europeans before that point (llamas, for example). 4. other expeditions to east This was the first time that this route, or one similar to it, had been attempted in its entirety by vehicle. It would be one of the longest of alloverland journeys, from the English Channel to Singapore. Several expeditions had already tried, and some had even got as far as the deserts of Iran or the plains of India, but none had managed to traverse the jungle-clad mountains of Assam and cross northern Burma and Thailand to Malaya. Many elements of the route taken had previously been deemed as anything from highly risky in terms of the possibility of vehicles breaking down in isolated locations to being totally impassable up to that point. One such stretch of the journey was the desert run between Damascus and Baghdad, a gruelling fourteen and a half hour drive across largely virgin desert only for the adventurous or one of a handful of specialised vehicles, such as the Nairn Transport Company's two MarmonHerrington6x6 articulated buses. Another such stretch was the narrow mountain route into Nepal, where previously, for sections along the route, vehicles had hitherto been dismantled and carried over obstacles, but which the two Land Rovers drove.

The other obvious example is of course the most famous stretch following the Ledo Road, constructed by General Stilwell of the U.S. Army duringWorld War II, from Ledo in the Assam province in India through to the Mong-Yu junction with the Burma Road in North Burma. This section of road, which had largely fallen into disrepair following the War as an area controlled by head hunters and bandits, spanned 10 major rivers and 155 secondary streams, averaging one bridge every 2.8 miles (4.5 km). 5. the founding of manila

Global trade emerged with the founding of Manila in 1571, at which time all important populated continents began to exchange products continuously. The silver market was key to this process. China became the dominant buyer because both its fiscal and monetary systems had converted to a silver standard; the value of silver in China surged to double its worth in the rest of the world. Microeconomic analysis leads to startling conclusions. Both Tokugawa Japan and the Spanish empire were financed by mining profitsprofits that would not have existed in the absence of end-customer China. Europeans were physically present in early modern Asia, but the economic impact of China on Western lands was far greater than any European influence on Asia. 6. Reasons for easy conquest

The easy conquest of the Philippines by Spain was due to the following reasons; First, the Filipinos at the time of Legaspis arrival were disunited. They constituted different groups under various datus. Taking advantage of this disunity, the Spaniards manipulated the groups against one another. For instance, 600 Cebuanos helped de Goiti defeat Raja Sulayman in the Battle of Bangkusay, in Tondo. Second, the Spanish invaders have a great leaderLegaspiwho won the peoples friendship and trust by his generosity and wisdom. Third, despite their courage and tenacity in battle, the Filipinos could not win against the military discipline and superior weapons of the Spanish invaders. And finally, the Filipinos were won over by the Spanish missionaries, who taught them a new religion of mercy. By accepting Christianity, they became loyal subjects of Spain. Indeed, the cross did more than the sword to conquer the Philippines.