Week 6
Written in 1482, Rui de Pina’s account of the foundation of Sao Jorge de Mina provides an insight into this specific colonial model which differed significantly from this other model most commonly used by the Spanish.
What are the Mediterranean Fort/Trade Model and Iberian Reconquest Model?
This specific form of wealth accumulation was fundamental to colonialism and based on moving commodities between markets to take advantage of price differences, drastically instigating chattel slavery and other forms of coercive labor practices.
What is merchant capitalism?
The general meaning of this term covered contracts granted by the Spanish crown for trading privileges on specified commodities. Within the colonial context, its most significant and extensive application was in the form of royal slaving contracts giving monopoly trade rights to a country with Spanish colonies.
What is asiento?
Originally grown in the Molucca Islands, Philippines, and New Guinea, this fruit was spread via the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic colonial networks to nearly one hundred countries over several continents including Africa and the Americas, and became a staple food item in many. The timber that came from it was also used in shipbuilding.
What is breadfruit?
Waged in Europe and in the overseas colonies, this is considered as the first global war and drastically shifted the global balance of power, rendering Britain as the foremost colonial empire.
What is the Seven Years War?
Signed in 1479, this treaty laid the foundations for the colonial discourse legitimizing official European dominion and right to divide and conquer without the consent of the indigenous people and set up the principles that inform the overseas Trans-Atlantic imperial expansion.
What is the Treaty of Alcáçovas?
This scholarly model explains technological innovations in relation to agricultural production, a manifestation of which can be observed in the type of weaponry used by Native Americans and Europeans. This primary source from the course reader can be read in relation to this model.
What are the Protein-Rich Crop Theory and the Huron Creation Story?
This was the initial form of coercive labor system instigated by the Spanish in the Americas and was based on tributary labor granted to a limited number of privileged individuals. A few generations later, it was replaced by this forced labor system which was seasonal and rotational but extended these grants to a greater number of European settlers rendering the exploitation of Native American labor even more pervasive and extensive.
What is Encomienda and what is Repartimiento?
Also known as the “Manila Galleons,” this was the name given to the Spanish Trans-Pacific colonial network, connecting China and the Philippines to Mexico. Commodities transported across this network were then moved to Iberia over two additional networks linking Mexico to the Caribbean and the Caribbean to Iberia.
What is La Nao de China?
The increasing consumption of coffee gradually overtook this highly popular food item in the 18th Century, the recipe of which included two slices of rye bread and cloves.
What is beer soup?
Converted to Christianity in 1483 for a short period, this Kongolese ruler took the name Joao I. Despite protecting the native “Kongolose,” he became one of the largest suppliers of enslaved people and was one of the examples of local African kingdoms’ collaboration with the Portuguese in colonial exploitation.
Who is Nzinga-a-Nkuwu?
This Mughal emperor was renowned for his policies encouraging inter- and intra-faith dialogue, appointed Sunni, Shia, and Hindu officials to administrative positions, and instigated a syncretic religious movement known as the “Divine Faith.” And this was the meeting house he built for interdenominational theological dialogue and discussions.
Who is Akbar I and what is Ibadat Khana?
In his 1623 letter home, this indentured servant asked to be redeemed for a "little sum of money," and if that would not be possible, for “cheese and butter and beef.”
Who is Richard Frethorne?
Although never actually visited China himself, this Jesuit historian wrote a detailed survey of China based on memoirs and reports of other Jesuit missionaries. Parts of his account include intricate depictions and demonstrations of the entanglement of science with colonialism and imperial expansion.
Who was Jean-Baptiste Du Halde?
The reign of this Siamese ruler was considered an example of global absolutism.
Who was King Narui?
Scholars such as Chet Van Duzer point out that Christopher Columbus very likely studied this map of the world before embarking on his voyage that captures the extent and limitations of navigational knowledge in Europe at the end of the 15th Century. This map incorporated text from the manuscript of The Travels of Marco Polo, a copy of which Columbus also had in his own library.
What is the Martellus Map of the World?
This 16th Century ethnographic study by Bernardino de Sahagun document Nahua accounts of Spanish colonial expansion in the Americas that demonstrate the extent and significance of indigenous alliances and diseases, as well as revealing the shortcomings and contradictions of “Old Conquest History” and offering invaluable insights informing the “New Conquest History.”
What is the Florentine Codex?
The firsthand accounts of these two formerly enslaved individuals document their experiences from their abduction to their enforced journeys through the “Door of No Return” and via the “Middle Passage” to the Americas. These were their names.
Who are Olaudah Equiano and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqa?
This French explorer and captain served in the West Indies and resigned his post a few years before the Haitian Revolution. His account of the island captures its colonial social hierarchy and provides an insight into the social context that preceded the Revolution.
Who is Alexandre-Stanislas de Wimpffen?
This barber, also referred as the “Chelsea Knacketory,” opened a coffeehouse in the city in 1695, later to be known as the “Museum Coffee House.” Its exhibits included multiple curiosities including Pontius Pilate’s Wive’s Chambermaid’s Sister’s Sister’s Hat. And this was the Spanish nickname given to the coffeehouse.
Who is James Salter and what is Don Saltero’s?
Drafted between 1510 and 1512, this document served as the official legal doctrine of Spanish colonialism in the Americas throughout the 16th Century. Capturing tensions of reconciling moral and material impulses informing colonial enterprises, it was read aloud to Native Americans in Spanish and considered as a binding legal contract. These are the names of the document and the jurist who wrote it.
What is the Requerimiento and who is Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios?
This is the name of the oldest synagogue in the Americas, and this is the modern state where it is located. Built by the Western Sephardim, it has a floor covered with sand to suppress the sound of communal gatherings and captures the violence and impositions of the Spanish Inquisition, a history of expulsions and forced conversions. The reforming of this community and their return to pre-expulsion Jewish practices document the reinvigoration of Old World faiths in the New World.
What is the Snoa Synagogue and where is Willemstad, Curacao?
In his 1634 testimony, Juan de la Mar identified this person as the ruler of the palenque in Limon, whose leadership style documented African models of monarchical leadership that defined Maroon political life until the 1700s. And according to Kathryn Joy McKnight, this was the legendary African queen who was a likely model.
Who are Leonor Criolla and Queen Njinga?
In his mid-17th Century account of a Barbados plantation, Richard Ligon offers a detailed account of the plantation trade complex as well as the everyday life experiences of the enslaved people. He was particularly impressed by the musical skills of one enslaved individual. This was his name.
Who is Macow?
This was the author of the following passage, which captures their embodiment of the nascent Enlightenment ideals:
“Nothing seems to be a plainer proof of the irrationality of mankind, whatever fine claims we pretend to reason, that the rage with which they contest for a small spot of ground, when such vast part of fruitful earth lie quite uninhabited. It is true, custom has now made it unavoidable; but can there be a greater demonstration of want of reason, than a custom being firmly established, so plainly contrary to the interest of man in general? I am a good deal inclined to believe Mr. Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state of war; but thence I conclude human nature not rational, if the word reason means common sense, as I suppose it does.”
Who is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu?