Forms and Effects of European Exploration and Expansion in the Pre-Modern World

In the early fifteenth century, European countries began launching the first in a long succession of vast maritime expeditions to explore the oceans of the world. And, while their impulses for exploration were by no means aberrant in human history, by the mid-eighteenth century, the nature and profound impact of European expansionism had certainly proven to be (Bentley & Ziegler 598-599). The effects of European exploration and expansionism were felt not only in the Americas, but in Africa and Europe itself. Early interactions between Europeans and other cultures in the pre-modern era at their very best bred mutual distrust, suspicion, or fear, and were almost universally resolved by violence or subjugation by colonial interests. The results of European exploration and settlement of the Americas and Africa, the onset of colonialism and the slave-trade were ultimately an enormous increase in wealth and global influence for the European nations, and the decline, exploitation, or in some cases complete extermination of the indigenous populations and cultures they encountered.

The major motivations for European exploration and expansion beginning in the early to mid-fifteenth century were numerous. Fragmentation, fierce competition, and exhaustive conflicts had long depleted what sparse natural resources were available to European countries, and geographical isolation and inefficient agrarian economies had kept them largely cut-off from the rest of the world commercially and politically (Ellenberger et al. 5). This created the nearly-ubiquitous desire among European nations to seek out new lands, resources, and trade routes overseas, and with the advent of sophisticated new seafaring technology and a new breed of skilled navigators - first among the Portuguese - these and promises for spreading political influence and Christianity became attainable possibilities for many ambitious explorers (Ellenberger et al. 6-7). The discovery of new sea-routes, rich, temperate lands, and curious new alien cultures across the Atlantic opened up a multitude of new opportunities for settlement and expansion from what began for Europeans as mainly a quest to find more efficient routes to Asian markets for trade.

Some of the first and most historically significant exchanges between Europeans and the indigenous peoples they encountered in Africa and the Americas were cross-cultural interactions and perceptions. Two quintessential examples of the earliest of these exchanges come from firsthand accounts of Vasco Da Gama's first voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and along Africa's eastern coast, and Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of native peoples in the Caribbean. A journal from Da Gama and his crew's visits to Mozambique and Mombasa alternately describes the people they encounter as "dogs" and "unbelievers," and expounds on the exoticness of their dress and goods (Ellenberger et al. 24). The Sultan of Mozambique, on the other hand, seems thoroughly unimpressed with the gifts he is presented by the Portuguese, who are met with threats and forceful resistance when they try to go ashore to collect fresh drinking water (Ellenberger et al. 24-25). The accounts from both coastal cities reveal deep suspicions and thinly-veiled hostility from both sides, each time ending with violence (Ellenberger et al. 24-26).

In his personal correspondence, Columbus describes the natives he encounters in the Caribbean as "savages," "idolaters," and "excessively cowardly," and mentions that he has taken a number of them as captives, but nonetheless proclaims himself "enchanted" by them and their fertile lands (Ellenberger et al. 7, 32, 34). Columbus' account extols their "timid" and giving nature, but also adds that "the few men whom [he had] left there alone could destroy them all," and that they would be submissive and accepting of "conversion to [the] holy faith of Christ" (Ellenberger et al. 33). Both Columbus' comments and Da Gama's crewman's exemplify typical European attitudes of cultural, social, religious and technological superiority over foreigners during this period, as well as common tendencies to dismissively exoticize the unfamiliar.

When Cortés and his men set out to conquer the Aztec empire they held similar attitudes, perhaps even more-so; they were, however, to be met with much greater and more organized resistance to their goals. Upon first seeing the capital of Tenochtitlan, even the infamous conquistadors were duly astonished by its enormity, sophistication, and wealth (Ellenberger et al. 57-62). Yet, throughout their campaigns in Mexico they remained firm in their beliefs that the Aztecs were largely ignorant and immoral, and that efforts to seize their wealth and force them to submit to Spanish rule would be sanctioned by God (Ellenberger et al. 36). Common Aztec rituals like human sacrifice and idol worship became major factors in shaping how they were viewed by the Spaniards, and gave further impetus to their would-be conquerors' ambitions (Ellenberger et al. 62-63). Moreover, the unusual appearance and terrifying technology and weapons the Spaniards brought with them were shocking and demoralizing to the Aztecs, and added to the mythos surrounding the legends of Quetzalcoatl; whether or not the majority of Aztecs - particularly Mocteuzma - fully believed Cortés and his men to be gods seems debatable, given the repeated attempts to kill them, but either way, it was certainly one of the cultural misconceptions the Spaniards were able to exploit to their advantage (Ellenberger et al. 37-38).

Conquest, discovery, and settlement by Columbus, Cortés, and numerous others laid the groundwork for the vast colonial empires that would grow out of the "new world;" however, many historians agree it was the Atlantic slave trade that became the true backbone of new, flourishing American economies, and by extension, their European "parents" (Ellenberger et al. 72). Fertile plantations in the American colonies needed cash crops which would require vast amounts of cheap labor to harvest, and with Native American populations utterly decimated by warfare and disease, Africans seemed the optimal choice for slave labor, particularly on sugar cane and later cotton and tobacco plantations (Ellenberger et al. 72). Contemporary accounts like Jacques Barbot's describe African slaves in a way practically indistinguishable from livestock or other trade-goods, with detached, inhumane rhetoric reminiscent of earlier explorers' treatments of Native Americans, the main differences being they "had better immunity to tropical diseases than either Amerindians or Europeans, they were readily available and relatively inexpensive, and their cultural distinctiveness helped Europeans to contrive racial justifications for their enslavement" (Ellenberger et al. 71, 77-84).

Thus slave trading and slave labor became, for Europeans and Euro-American colonists, extremely lucrative ventures, and were used to create thriving agricultural economies that would form much of the basis for more diverse, globalized networks of trading like the Columbian Exchange, and generate the abundance of wealth necessary in forming early industrial societies (Bentley & Ziegler 621-624). Meanwhile, for many Africans, who were far from unfamiliar with slavery in their own homelands, new avenues of trade were opened up with European and American slavers, primarily for guns, metals, and other commodities which would allow them to strengthen or defend themselves against tribal rivals. And, as some scholars argue, this only led to an increase in the fragmentation and violence among African cultures that would impede their development in global marketplaces and politics for centuries to come (Ellenberger et al. 72).

Works Cited

Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. Fourth ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 2008.

Ellenberger, Nancy, Stephen Morillo, Samuel H. Nelson and Thomas Sanders.

Encounters in World History. First ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.