The History of European Expansion From the 14th Century – During the Age of Discovery

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The European expansion can be traced back to the 14^th century during the age of discovery. The emerging nation-states in Europe competed amongst each other and this led to the great expansion of the European economy. During the same period, China did not take advantage of its capability to expand from its well-established power, technology, and also good economic base. The economy of the Europeans expanded both in terms of trade and also farming. With time there was a great quest for more markets and also fertile lands where they could expand their trade. This involved expanding the economy of the European community outside the borders. The Europeans were therefore involved in capturing other economies and populations. During this period there were mercantile policies that guided how the expansion was to be carried out. The sole goal of the policies was to find very secure markets and trade for very profitable goods. The goods which dominated the market included precious metals, manufactured goods, and also addictive drugs. During the time of the renaissance in Europe, centralized European nation-states were formed. This acted as a catalyst to military and economic competition (Erik, p22).

The trade for spices and drugs dominated the market and this was the main source of economic growth. European expansion is greatly associated with the Portuguese who were involved in the trade of spices in Africa. The Portuguese had dominated the route of trade and transportation voyages to Africa. They protected the route from being invaded by other powers such as the Spanish who were forced to look for other markets in the west. The Spanish later discovered precious metals in large quantities which challenged the trade of spices. This encouraged other Europeans to seek discoveries of precious metals around the continent. The period also saw the introduction of plantations such as growing tobacco and sugarcane. However, the trade of precious metals enriched Europe through exports of manufactured goods (O’brien, p16). As the goods became saturated in the market, there was a growing need for other markets, and this lead to the search of routes of trade overseas. The British Merchant vessels traveled long distances looking for new markets.

The European expansion saw the immigration of the European communities to other territories especially in the 16^th and the 17^th century. The expansion of the European economy saw the rise of the slave trade. Many slaves especially from Africa were transported to England and also Germany. Other Europeans moved from England, China, Germany France, and other European regions and settled in the African countries where they dominated the fertile lands and various colonies were formed. Colonialism is seen as being a result of the great expansion of the European economy which led to the search for more markets for trade and also fertile lands for farming. It was initiated by the Portuguese and the Spanish who formed colonies on the coast of Africa, India, East Asia, and the Middle East. The Portuguese established colonies at the coast of Africa where they established their trade and also ports. The Europeans who dominated various areas formed territories and the white settler colonies ruled and exploited the indigenous people (Moon, p45) they took charge of the economic resources, labor, and also the markets of the colonial territories. They forced the indigenous people to conform to their culture, politics, religion, and also linguistic structure. This was referred to as cultural imperialism. Colonialism was now in control as the Europeans took military and economic control of the weaker economies. Spanish empires were established in the Aztec and Inca empires while the Dutch colonies took over Asia. Colonialism was very important at that age as this helped the European economies to expand and compete amongst each other. As the competition grew the Europeans were now seeking to acquire the other parts of Africa an era which was referred to as the scramble for Africa.

The need to expand the economies led to a lot of competition among the economies of the time. Classes emerged in the societies with the class of labor and that of the owners of means of production who were referred to as the capitalists (Erik, p27). The capitalist was generally the rulers and they exploited the majority of the society to obtain the benefits of their toil. The capitalist was generally concentrating on the exploitation of the means of production to gain more surpluses. The economies competed amongst each other to find out who was able to acquire more surpluses in the economy. The drive of the capitalist was not economic growth but the surplus that they would gain from the factors of production. The capitalist used the surplus they created from the factors of production to accumulate wealth and to expand the means of production. The aspect of owners of production is driven by the surplus they created from the means of production is what has been referred to as capitalism. It is traced back to the period of the Middle Ages in the Middle East and Europe. The 18^th century was a period when the merchants were dedicated to the accumulation of large amounts of capital through the exploitation of labor and other means of production. This was referred to as industrial capitalism (Moon, p49).

Initially, before the emergence of capitalism, the type of trade that existed was referred to as mercantilism which then developed in capitalism. Mercantilism itself involved trade by the merchants who were greatly involved in the search for discoveries overseas. They then traded their goods at a profit. It is important to note that at this stage the goods were produced through non-capitalist means of production. Mercantilism was the earliest form of trade among the Roman Empire (Wesseling, p68). Through this form of trade, the Roman Empire expanded and the mercantilist economy in Europe expanded. However, when the Roman Empire collapsed the era of mercantilism trade also collapsed in Europe but it still existed in Arabia. Later it expanded to Europe again in the 14^th century and it was mostly practiced by Portugal and Spanish. During the sixteenth century, feudalism laid the background for the growth of mercantilism but most of the feudal manors were self-sufficient making the role of the markets very minimal. This gave way to the rise of capitalism especially now that there were sudden developments in technology, discovery, and also agriculture. The mercantilist encouraged the importation of raw materials that could not be produced at home and this was to be financed by increased exports of precious metals (O’brien, p21). This, therefore, required the merchants to explore more areas where they could extract the precious metals. This was characterized by powerful colonies which were responsible for invading areas thatthese had this precious metals and exploiting the indigenous labor besides buying slaves to work in the factories. This expanded the era of colonialism. The era of mercantilism saw the expansion of many colonies that were seeking to invest their capital and in turn gaining returns from those investments.

The rise of the era of capitalism in the 19^th century has involved the exploitation of the processes of production to these accumulate profits in the financial systems. This period saw the formation of many cartels and monopolies on the production of various goods. The owners of the means of production and those who managed the process were separated from the process of production. There was a rise of established banking systems and also large industries whose main purpose was to accumulate profit. After the civil war in America, Capitalism expanded mainly from the influence of large monopolies (Moon, p58). Some of the industries that exercised such monopoly included the telecommunication sector, oil, banking, finance, shipping, and railway. Within these corporations, the profits which were accumulated and also the means which were used to create such profits were privately owned. The land, labor, and also capital were that owned by private individuals. The individuals then would gain profits separately from these investments. The whole process of production is driven by private decisions in the market. Capitalism flourished in England during the 19^th century and spread to other areas in the 20^th century as an essential tool of industrialization. The majority of the labor and the raw materials that were used to drive the economies were obtained from the content areas that were dominated by the Europeans. Colonialism during the initial stages of capitalism was seen as a necessity to ensure the expansion of the means of production (Erik, p33).

The growth of capitalism gave way to the rise of imperialism. Imperialism in this case was referred to as the expansion of the already expanded capitalism with the support of the economy and also the political processes. Imperialism was initiated in the 18^th century when the kingdoms were involved in political wars to gain and measure each other’s strengths (Wesseling, p75). This includes the Vienna and the France-Prussian war. The economies were able to gain more industrial powers from such political wars. Imperialism was greatly involved in the changes of finding the balance of power within the continent. The economies such as the UK benefited from imperialism since they were able to produce more goods more efficiently and at a cheaper rate. Through free trade, it also managed to dominate many industrial markets overseas. Imperialism was especially evident in the scramble for Africa when the European powers were trying to dominate the African continent. Imperialism, therefore, was a major driver of colonialism which graduated from the military influence to the economic dominance of those territories. This was referred to as the new imperialism during the First World War in 1914. Through imperialism, the Europeans were able to acquire and dominate their empires in the colonial period.

The Third world countries took the approach of nationalism to free themselves from the influence of the European countries. This involved the formation of cultures and social movements that were ideally focused on third-world nations. The nationalist movements formed by the third world countries were basically to win the freedom of their people from the colonial nations. Various movements were formed in the 19^th century with the pioneers’ beings people like Henry Mcneal Turner, Edward Blyden, and Paul Cuffe Martin Delany among others. Some of the most powerful movements included the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Uhuru movement in the 19^th century (Arnold, p54). The leaders of the nationalist movements preached a lot of independence for the black people from the western culture. They were very determined to bring up societies that had their ethical values. These movements were committed to gain their democracy from the western dominion such as France and Great Britain. The nationalist movements were directed towards bringing change to the economies, politics, and also the social life of the third world countries.

The Nationalist movements were not able to deliver their promises to solve the many problems affecting their nations. One of the major reasons is that the anti-colonial movements were too many such that they ended up quarreling. Such disagreements ended up in the abandonment of the proposals that they had set against the colonies (Lahouari, p25). The colonies also had great power over them and so they were easily dismissed one after another. In the political view, the movements were not able to deliver their promises because so many parties arose independently to vie for power in the elections. The competition of power by various parties often led to conflicts that divided the people instead of bringing them together. The parties lacked the unity that was required to achieve nationalism. There was a tendency to rise multiple internal nationalisms which were all targeted towards the same goal. There was also a great division between the post-colonial nations which were marked with internal ethnic challenges. The political systems were characterized by uneven consolidation of nationalistic spirit. The post-colonial nations had a characteristic of ethnic divisions where the nation-states such as Rwanda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia had separate communal movements arising with mixed up ethnic goals. In a country like Rwanda, these divisions in the nation-states led to the Rwandan-Genocide. Policies set by such ethnically supported systems were difficult to achieve since they were always met by the challenges of the opposing groups. The lack of coordination between the post0colonial movements led to cases of unresolved problems in the post0colonial nations after independence (Comaroff, p35). Governments also failed to attain political stability due to the lack of establishment of ethnic borders between the different ethnic groups.

The movements were not able to successfully mobilize the societies to adhere to the social reforms. The lack of stability in these nations makes it even difficult to bring the different ethnic groups together. There is the impossibility of forming a common national culture in third-world countries. The communities that live within the same nation keep rising against each other creating even more social problems. This has since led to a lot of mass violence. The best examples of nations with such societies include Rwanda and Somalia. Most of the communities in third-world countries are still marked with a lot of communal warfare. The social structures are marked with a lot of community-based social networks and old ethnic cultures with their origins traced before the colonial period. (Lahouari, p36) The thick ethnic social structures are locally based in terms of authority, personal ties, and also economic exchange. The social structures that exist in these countries are characterized by the mismatch of cultural believes, social structure, and civic movements.

The nationalistic movements also failed to secure solutions to the problems that were directed to the economic conditions of the third-world countries. One reason for their failure is that they lacked the technology that was being used by the colonies to drive the economy. The educated bourgeoisie in the communities still had the ideologies of the colonial era and this made it very difficult to separate their economies from the western economies. Such leaders were always suspected of conducting their own private business in favor of the western communities. This means any technologies in the economy were first regarded as foreign investments for the benefit of the western and were therefore rejected. Economic growth was also very difficult because the resources available were scarcely distributed among the different areas. This led to unequal distribution of resources and the result is unequal income and wealth distribution (Comaroff, p42). Some of the politicians also used the economic resources for their benefit and this leaps the economy through various channels of corruption. There is a lot of private accumulation of wealth and the economic growth only stands to benefit a few.

Work cited

Addi, Lahouari. The Failure of Third World Nationalist. Journal of Democracy. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997

David Arnold. Europe, technology, and colonialism in the 20th century. London, 2005

Frank Füredi. Colonial Wars and the Politics of Third World Nationalism. I.B.Tauris, 1994

H. L. Wesseling. Imperialism and Colonialism. London, Greenwood Press, 2005.

John L. Comaroff. Perspectives on Nationalism and War. Routledge, 1995

Patrick Karl O’brien. The Global Economic History of European Expansion Overseas. Cambridge University, 2006

Ringmar, Erik. European Expansionism. Journal of World History. University of Hawaii Press, 2006.

Suzanne Moon. History of European Expansion. CNWS Publications, 2007

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The History of European Expansion From the 14th Century – During the Age of Discovery

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