Maritime Empires (1450-1750): Causes, Key Players, and Global Impact

all right let's review everything you need to know about unit 4 for AP World History which is all about Maritime

Empires from 1450 to 1750 and the juicy developments there on to appertaining so if you're ready to get them brain cows

milks let's get to it okay first let's talk about the causes of European expansion during this period and we're

going to make it nice and tidy and break it into three categories technological political and economic so the first

cause of European exploration was European adoption and innovation of Maritime technology now this is kind of

a big deal because prior to this period Europe as I've said before was kind of like the butt bread in the loaf of world

power you know everyone touches it but nobody really wants it but during this period Europeans gained the knowledge

and technology that facilitated their ascendency on the world stage at first they adopted some Maritime Technologies

from the classical Greek Islamic and Asian world for example they adopted the magnetic compass which was first

developed in China and also they adopted the astrola from ancient Greece and the Arab world which helped Sailors know

their latitude and they adopted the latine sale which was used by Arab merchants on the Indian Ocean which

enabled them to take wind on both sides and not just from behind really what you need to remember here is that these

adopted tools made a possible for Europeans to navigate on the Seas and later take over everybody's crap however

it wasn't all adoption of old Technologies by Lord buttre no Europeans made Innovations of their own and here

we need to focus on ship building and I'll give you one example behold the Portuguese Caravel now as we'll see in a

moment the Portuguese were the first movers in the maritime Empire project and this was their ship design it was

much smaller than the massive Merchant ships like Chinese junks in the Indian Ocean and that meant they were better

able to navigate Inland Through Rivers and shallow coastal areas additionally they were fast and once the Portuguese

loaded cannons onto these sweet bippies they had everything they needed to take over the Indian Ocean train we could

also talk about the Portuguese Carrick or the Dutch flout but you only need to know one example but you also need to

remember that European Sailors improve their understanding of regional wind patterns both in the Atlantic and Indian

oceans and if you're sailing that's uh real important oh and by the way I should mention that this video is part

of a larger resource called the AP World heimler review guide which has everything you need to get an A in your

class and a five on your exam and met it's got whole unit review videos like this one that are not here on YouTube

and then note guys to follow along practice questions practice exams and answer keys for every dang bit of it it

is the fastest way to study for your class and for your exam in May so you know have a look okay now the second

cause of European Imperial expansion was the growth of state power you see during this period it's going to be important

to understand that European monarchs were growing far more powerful than they had ever been before and that was at the

expense of historically powerful groups like The nobility and so with this centralization of power monarchs now

played a much more significant role in the economic decisions of their state and perhaps one of the most significant

decisions had to do with interregional trade you see as Europe started emerging from the backwaters of world history

many folks especially among the upper classes started demanding spices from Asia and some other Goods as well but

there was a big fat problem with that you remember all those landbased Empires we met back in unit 3 well they're still

here during this period and they happened to control the landbased trading routes over which those lovely

spices were exchanged and that meant by the time they got to Europe the prices were jacked way up and so even the

fanciest of Fancy Pants Europeans were like butter my backside and call me a biscuit what you make this pepper out of

unicorn Hooves or something so that meant European States had a big incentive to find other routes namely

seab based routes to Asia which would allow them to trade on their own terms and then the third cause of European

exploration was economic and I've got two terms you need to know here first let me introduce you to mercantilism now

merism was a state-driven economic system that characterized these Imperial European States during this period And

basically what you need to know here is that mercantilist economics saw the world's wealth like a pie and the goal

was to get as much of that pie as possible now the thing about pie is that there's only a fixed amount since

mercantilism measured wealth in gold and silver then yeah there's only so much of those minerals in the world and so in

order to get the biggest piece of that Pi States main goal was to maintain a favorable balance of trade which just

means they organized their economies around exports and avoid Imports as much as possible and why well if you're

exporting Goods that means gold and silver are coming in and if you're importing Goods that means gold and

silver are going out anyway the point to remember here is that this system created a strong motivation for

expanding Empires through overseas colonization because once a colony was established it created a closed market

for exports from the Imperial country in other words in this Arrangement colonies existed only to enrich their Imperial

parents and then the second economic tool of European expansion was the joint stock company now by definition a joint

stock company was a limited liability business often chartered by the state that was funded by a group of private

investors what I mean by limited liability is that those investors who pulled their money to finance the

exploration could only lose what they invested or you might say their liability was uh limited and here's

where I tell you that this whole SE based Empire building project could only be successful if the state and its

mergence were tied together in mutual interdependence what I mean is States relied on Merchants to expand their

influence in far off lands while Merchants relied on states to grant them monopolies on various regions of trade

and it was joint stock companies that made this power and wealth hugfest work but I should also mention that it's the

states that primarily use this new kind of company that prospered during this period and those that stuck with state

sponsored voyages like Spain and Portugal were gradually decreasing in power and influence now you should at

least know one of these joint stock companies by name and I reckon I'll introduce you to the Dutch East India

Company which you'll sometimes see abbreviated as the VOC it was ched by the Dutch state in 16002 and included in

that Charter was a monopoly on the Indian Ocean trade and as we'll see in a minute the Dutch positively dominant

ated the Indian Ocean which expanded Dutch influence there and made the company's investors richer than a

dwarfish minor in Middle Earth such a nerdy joke but I stand by It Anyway both the British and the French developed

their own joint stock companies as well and that was one of the primary means by which they extended their influence also

and this fervor to insert themselves into the Indian Ocean created powerful rivalries among European States in order

to ascend to that top spot and that rivalry led to attacks on each other's trading ports and shifts and all kinds

of fun stuff okay now that we understand the causes of the rise of seab based Empires let's meet the main players and

for this we're going to need to rewind the clock a bit since all that mercantilism and joint stock company

talk came after this anyway the first European state to get its power pants on was Portugal thanks to the leadership of

our boy Prince Henry the Navigator who brought together Sailors map makers and ship Builders to figure out how to sail

down the Atlantic coast of Africa and initially Portugal's interest lay in the gold trade in West Africa but by the

1440s they had their eyes on entering the Indian Ocean now to that end they established what's known as a trading

post Empire around the coast of Africa and throughout the Indian Ocean and this is a unique kind of Empire like when we

think of overseas these Empires we tend to think of colonies and you know that's not wrong we're going to get to that but

colonies in case you've never established one yourself and don't know are expensive so the Portuguese strategy

was to Simply set up barebones trading posts which they called factories and all these places which serve to control

trade throughout the region they were largely able to do this if you'll recall from earlier because of their fast ships

like the caravel and the carck which were loaded with cannons and can blow up any Challengers quick fast and in a

hurry but that barebones Trading Post kind of empire was not how Spain did it and I reckon we ought to sit with them

for a spell you see by the time Spain started thinking about Maritime expansion Portugal already had control

of the Indian Ocean R and so the Spanish Crown decided to sponsor Christopher Columbus to sail across the Atlantic in

search of a western route to the spice tram and you probably know the story by now Columbus sailed West and instead of

finding a route to Southeast Asia instead ran into two massive continents that no one in Europe had previously

known about ins side note to the end of his life Columbus was like I found a route to Asia but it became pretty clear

through Voyages of other explorers that it was not in fact Asia oh he's crazy y'all anyway Spanish voyages to the new

world multiplied it establish their claim to a vast world colonization not just the establishment of trading post

and it marked the opening of the transatlantic trade which would eventually become even more prosperous

than the Indian Ocean trade but I don't mean to imply that the Spanish were uninterested in the Indian Ocean trade

no they went ahead and set up their base of operations in the Philippines but instead of setting up pidley Trading

Post they went full Colonial over the territory and in order to establish and maintain control there the Spanish used

the same methods that they used over in the Americas like tribute collecting and coer labor and so to put it mildly

Portugal and Spain were getting all kinds of rich off this Arrangement and that is when other states looked at the

pie and said oh we got to get us some of that and I'll introduce you to the big three that rose up during this period

first was France who sponsored Westward Expeditions in order to find a North Atlantic sea route to Asia they also

didn't find it mainly because it doesn't exist but they did establish a presence in Canada which gave them access to the

incredibly lucrative fur trade with indigenous peoples in the region the French Empire in the Americas was

similar to the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean since their Holdings were small and mainly focused on trade and that's

about the time that England came to the Imperial party so after Queen Elizabeth the first rose to power and like a boss

defeated Spain's attempts to invade England she took Vantage of Spain's weakness and started sponsoring

exploration into the Americans so she commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh with the Venture and established England's first

colony on Rowan Oak Island called Virginia as it turns out it was kind of a disaster and wouldn't begin to turn

around until 1607 with the establishment of Jamestown in Virginia and again the British weren't just interested in the

Americas they were for sure interested in chomping on the popsicle of power and the Indian Ocean too and for them India

was the prize but as it turned out they lacked sufficient Naval power to take over the subcontinent from the mugal and

had to be content with establishing a few trading posts along the coast don't feel too bad for him because later in

the 18th century their Naval power would be uh substantial and those trading posts would be transformed into full

colonial rule in India then not to be out Imperial by other states the Dutch joined the party as well so it was

during this period that the Dutch gained independence from Spain and it wasn't long before they became the most

prosperous state in Europe and with all that Newfound power and wealth they sent their fancy flouts to challenge Spanish

and Portuguese control over the Indian Ocean trade and spoiler alert the Dutch vocc very much came out on top and while

they also dabbled in colonizing the Americas like here in New Amsterdam it was mainly Dutch control of strategic

locations throughout the Indian Ocean and their Monopoly over the spice trade that increase their power and influence

okay now let's focus on one of the most significant effects of this flurry of Maritime Empire building across the

Atlantic namely the Colombian Exchange Now by definition this refers to the transfer of new diseases food plants and

animals between the eastern and western hemispheres and I'm going to give you some examples of each but before I do

let me just emphasize that the Colombian Exchange refers to environmental phenomena so don't get a confused with

things like the triangular trade or anything like that so first let's consider the transfer of disease but

before I tell you what they are you need to understand why this was such a big deal see because folks throughout afro

Eurasia had been in contact from Millennia they had developed immunities to diseases transferred among them

however because of the isolation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas the diseases Europeans introduced were

devastating so first and foremost Europeans introduced small poox and measles into the indigenous populations

of the Americans they spread fast and were incredibly deadly and as they spread through the Caribbean and Central

America and then into South America they cut some populations in half and in some cases it killed 90% of the peoples who

were infected and then the third disease was malaria which was carried by disease vectors like mosquitoes and all in all

while European states were growing exceedingly wealthy and Powerful through their empires in the Americas the

introduction of these diseases meant that indigenous populations were devastating and it's no wonder why they

refer to this as the great dying okay now second let's consider the transfer of food and plants which had major

effects on populations both in the new world and in the old world so European settlers brought wheat and olives and

grapes among many other things which were Staples of European diet and then eventually they also introduced African

and Asian Foods like rice and bananas and sugar and while indigenous Americans mostly maintain their tradition

traditional diets they also Incorporated some of these new foods which varied their diets and therefore slowly

increased their lifespan but going the other way crops from the Americas like Ma and potatoes were introduced to

Europe Africa and Asia and that contributed to healthier populations which led to longer lifespans and the

result was a population explosion after 1700 additionally the millions of enslaved Africans who were forcibly sent

to the Americas introduced Foods as well including okra and rice now as demand increased in Europe for these American

crops sprawling plantations were established in the Americas that focused on cash cropping and what's cash

cropping says you well says it's a method of Agriculture that focuses on growing crops usually a single crop

primarily for export so for example in the Caribbean sugar cane was grown in abundance with the work of enslaved

African laborers and then exported to Market in Europe and the Middle East and third let's consider the transfer of

animals Europeans introduced pigs and sheep and cattle to the Americas but by far the most consequential animal was

the horse Not only was the horse used for agricultural work but it also enabled indigenous Plains peoples to

hunt Buffalo far more effectively and thus better feed their population okay now by this point we've established that

the global balance of power was beginning to sh shift towards European States who were busy establishing

Maritime Empires throughout the world but I hope you didn't think everybody was happy about this don't be crazy no

there were plenty of examples of resistance and I'm going to tell you about several of them first there was

resistance from some Asian States against the intrusion of Western powers in the Indian Ocean and here let's meet

Tokugawa Japan now Japan had just emerged from a real contentious period in their history and was experiencing

some Unity under a Shogun from the Tokugawa Clan and at first when the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Dutch

came knocking on Japan's door the Shogun was relatively open to it because he was very interested in trading for gunpowder

weapons which helped enormously with Japan's unification but here's where I tell you that in addition to economics

one of the big motivations for European imperialism was the spread of Christianity and so by the second half

of the 16th century a growing number of Japanese people had converted to Christianity and the Shogun began to

perceive that development as a threat to the hard one unification of Japan and so the sh gun went ahead and booted all

those Christian missionaries from Japan and suppressed this foreign Western religion sometimes with brutality and

violence as a result Japan almost completely isolated itself from the growing influence of European Commerce

in the Indian Ocean only maintaining trade with the Dutch second we can see resistance on the local level in

European States themselves and here I'm going to introduce you to the frond which occurred in France so in response

to the newly adopted political doctrine of absolutism which concentrated all political power under the Monarch a

series of rebellions known as the frond occurred starting in 1648 basically in order to finance Imperial expansion

several new edicts were passed that increased taxation among French subjects and so the French nobility whose power

had been under threat from The Growing Power of the monarchy got all kinds of fed up and led peasants and spontaneous

rebellions that lasted for 6 years but in the end this resistance was crushed and bonus the monarchy increased in

power even more and then third we need to consider resistance from the enslaved and here I'm going to introduce you to

the maroon Societies in the Caribbean and Brazil so in most European colonies in the Americas enslaved Africans were

forced to labor on plantations but also in most of those colonies small pockets of free blacks existed which were mainly

made up of runaway slaves and these were known as maroon societies now from all you know about European colonial power

it shouldn't surprise you to find out that Imperial authorities were uh not fond of these communities and so for

example in Jamaica Colonial troops sought to crush these maroons societies but the free blacks led by a fiery woman

called Queen Nanny rebelled and fought back and so in a surprising turn of events the colonial militia could not

find a way to win this battle and so they signed a treaty in 1738 recognizing the freedom of this community of

Imperial resistance now here's where I tell you that Europeans were not the only folks prospering as a result of

their Maritime Empire frenzy and the expansion of networks of Exchange in fact the expansion of Maritime trading

networks also fostered the growth of some African States who participated in them thus connecting these states to the

global economic linkages these networks represented and that's true even if the network becoming increasingly European

since and I shouldn't surprise you if you've been with me since unit 2 remember that when we were talking about

the Silk Roads and the Indian Ocean Network and the trans Saharan routes there were certain cities and states

that grew in power and prosperity mainly because they were located in strategic points along those networks and it's the

same story here and there are two examples you need to know specifically from Africa first is the Assante Empire

here in West Africa they were able to provide highly desired Goods that European Traders were after things like

gold and ivory and enslaved people and that economic partnership made the Asante so rich that as we say here in

the South them boys buy a new tractor every time they run out of gas that wealth further enabled the Assante to

expand their military and consolidate political power over more and more of the region and then second is the

kingdom of the Congo here in southern Africa they made strong diplomatic ties with the Portuguese and provided them

with things like gold and copper and again enslaved people and interestingly similar to the way some African leaders

converted to Islam in the last period in order to facilitate trade with other Muslims the king of the Congo converted

to Christianity in order to facilitate trade with Christian states that were knocking on his door and although the

economic relationship would later deteriorate in the beginning it led to the expansion of the hgal State's power

and wealth okay now let's turn the corner and talk about how both change and continuity occurred in networks of

exchange during this period and that sounds about as boring as licking tree bark in order to guess the species well

you're wrong this is exciting so let's start with the Indian Ocean Network the big change during this period obviously

is the entrance in massive power grabs of European States into this network but even so there was significant continuity

as well Middle Eastern South Asian East Asian and Southeast Asian Merchants who had been using this Trade Network for

centuries before the arrival of the Europeans continued to use it even if they now had to dodge all those European

cannonballs in fact European entrance into this Trade Network increased profits not only for Europeans but also

for many of these Merchants who had always used the network for trade additionally long established Merchants

like the gujaratis continued to make use of the Indian Ocean trade even while Europeans sought to dominate the

Gujarati significantly increased the power and wealth of the mugal Empire through their ongoing participation in

the Indian Ocean train and it was precisely because of the continued power of folks like the Gujarati that the

Portuguese never achieved full domination in the Indian Ocean and then another significant continuity is that

despite growing European dominance on the sea Overland routes like the Silk Roads were still almost entirely

controlled by various Asian landbased Powers most notably Ming China and then the Ching after it and the Ottoman

Empire as well also peasant and Artisan labor continued and even intensified in many regions as demand for food and

consumer goods increased as a result of multiplying trade connection for example as the demand for cotton increased

throughout Europe peasant farmers in South Asia increased their production for export and in many cases increased

their standard of living and the same was true of silk production in China okay now let's shift and talk about

change in continuity in the west although to be honest it was mostly change over here and why well unlike the

Indian Ocean Network the opening of the Atlantic system of trade was completely new thanks Columbus and although

Europeans would for sure grow wealthy and Powerful in the Indian Ocean it was the movement of goods wealth and

laborers between the eastern and western hemispheres that made them stupid rich and Powerful in terms of goods sugar was

King and to that end Colonial plantations in the Caribbean specialized in the growth of sugarcane which was

exported across the Atlantic to satisfy Europeans growing demand for That Sweet Tree in terms of wealth silver was King

the Spanish when they weren't busy decimating entire indigenous populations with their nasty germ got busy mining

Silver in the Americas which was then transferred back to the Royal coffers and that had a big effect back in Europe

first that silver was used to purchase luxury goods from China which both satisfied the Chinese demand for silver

and further developed the commercialization of their economy that we looked at back in unit 1 second the

goods that silver purchased were then traded on the Atlantic system further enriching all who participate and then

regarding labor on the Atlantic system much of it came from coerced labor whether it was forc indigenous labor

indentured servitude or African slavery and eventually it was enslaved Africans that made up the bulk of the Imperial

labor force in the American regard the massive changes that occurred in the opening of the Atlantic system was

maintained by the global flow of silver and trade monopolies granted by states to joint stock companies we're just

tying everything together like it feels good doesn't it oh no all right let's just keep going now since I just

mentioned labor you're going to need to know some changes and continuities in labor systems as well and first let's

start in the Americans as I mentioned before the economies established in the Americas by Europeans were largely based

on Agriculture and Mining which is to say they were all farmy farmy over there and with that new Arrangement Europeans

made use of both existing labor systems and introduced new ones now one example of an existing labor system that was

continued during this period was the Midas system if you weren't sleeping through unit one you'll remember that

this system was developed and deployed by the Inca Empire and basically it amounted to requiring their subjects to

provide labor on state projects for a certain number of days per year so when the Spanish showed up and got their

Conquistador on they went ahead and use the Midas system for their silver mining operations which was dangerous and

sometimes deadly work for the indigenous people forced into it and to be clear the Midas system of the Spanish was not

an exact copy of the Inca version the Inca used the system for the good of their people while the Spanish used it

to force people to work private mind for the good of individuals and the Spanish state but despite some continuity it was

changes in labor systems in the Americas that arguably made the biggest impact and there are four of these new labor

systems you need to know first was chatt slavery which describes a kind of slavery in which the purchaser has total

ownership over the enslaved person additionally chatt slavery was race-based and hereditary and to be

clear slavery is not a new phenomenon that pops onto the scene fully formed out of nothing like Athena popping out

of Zeus's head Greek mythology joke nailed it no before 1500 the African slave trade was a regular feature of

Exchange in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean networks and trans Saharan networks as well and in those networks

enslavement was not race-based and enslaved people often assimilated into the cultures where they were but with

the rise of chatt slavery in the Atlantic system things uh changed first of all because the main economic engine

of Imperial empires in the Americas was difficult agricultural work and Mining Europeans purchased male slaves 2 to one

which significantly impacted the demographics of various African States second the size of the transatlantic

slave trade was far more massive than its Indian Ocean and Mediterranean counterparts like over the course of

about 350 years over over 12.5 million Africans were sold to plantation owners in the Americas and then third and most

distinctive was the racial component of the Atlantic slave system in the Americas slavery became identified with

Blackness and that provided the justification for the brutality of Slavery to be identified as black was to

be less than human and to be less than human meant that plantation owners could treat their workers with violence and

keep a clear conscience and they did both and look I am going to get to other new labor systems but we need to dwell a

little longer on the African slave trade because the significance was all out of proportion to the others that I'm going

to mention so here I just want to mention three social effects of the growth of the African slave trade that

you need to know the first effect was a profound gender imbalance especially in West African States since men were

preferred to women for the difficult agricultural work in the Americas men were sold into slavery at a rate of 2 to

one that leads to the second societal effect namely the changing of family structures and the main manifestation of

that was the rise of polygyny which describes the phenomenon of men marrying more than one woman that's not hard to

understand when you remember that in many places there were twice as many women as there were men and then the

third social effect was cultural synthesis that occurred in the Americas and a good example here is the growing

emergence of Creole languages in places like the Caribbean and Brazil and creole languages are basically mixed languages

and in this case various Creole tongues were developed as a synthesis of European and African languages and in

some cases indigenous languages okay now let's get back to the new labor systems that represented change in the Atlantic

world and we'll go faster through these so second there was indentured servitude which describes an arrangement in which

a laborer would sign a contract that bound them to a particular work for a period of time usually s years then at

the end of the contract they could go free and do whatever it is they wanted to do we see this form of Labor

especially in the British colonies in North America where many lower class workers in Great Britain signed

indentures in order to finance their journey across the sea to the new world and then the third new labor system

comes to us from the Spanish namely the encomenda system the Spanish use this system to divide indigenous Americans

among Spanish settlers who were then forced to provide labor for the Spanish in exchange for food and protection it a

little like the feudalism that you learned about in unit one but as the encomenda system declined not least

because of the widespread abuses that were taking place the Spanish cooked up a fourth system of Labor known as Henda

and technically speaking Henda is not a labor system but we're going to put it here for Simplicity so in this system

indigenous laborers were forced to work on the fields of large PL ation known as not surprisingly hendes and that

amounted to a situation that was not much different than slavery there are some similarities between these two

Spanish systems but the main difference you should remember is this in comenda had nothing to do with land ownership

and everything to do with controlling the indigenous population Henda on the other hand centered on land ownership as

the main vehicle for controlling the indigenous population okay now we also need to consider how all this contact

between New and Old Worlds created the occasion for the change of belief systems and here we're going to focus on

Christianity and the Americans now recall that in building these massive honking seab based Empire one of the

main motivations of States like Spain and Portugal was to get everyone everywhere to worship Jesus himself and

so to that end both States sent Catholic missionaries many of whom were Jesuits to their colonies in order to convert

the indigenous people and that way religion became a significant justification for the conquest of the

Americans because hey we all know that when Jesus said that he came to bring peace and not a sword well he didn't

mean that anyway through the efforts of these missionaries there was much conversion but it's not quite as tidy as

that in some cases indigenous groups outwardly adopted Christianity but privately continued to practice their

own religious beliefs and in some cases when this was was discovered it was met with violent retaliation from Colonial

authorities and ultimately the effect of all this was a religious syncretism that resulted in a blending of some Christian

beliefs and practices with indigenous beliefs and practices additionally indigenous African religions

participated in the syncretism party too for example vodun was a new faith that resulted from the blending of African

animist beliefs with Christian doctrines and practices in the Americans and finally we need to talk about changing

social hierarchies during this period And I know what you're thinking oh heer you saved the best for last dang

straight I did and so there are three categories of change in social hierarchy that you need to get cozy with and I'm

going to give you an example of each first you need to understand how States responded to ethnic and religious

diversity and here let's talk about the differing treatment of the Jews during this period in Spain and Portugal you

might recall that they were all about the Jesus and since Spain had just completed the Reconquista which expelled

all Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula Christianity now Reigns supreme but there was still a minority of Jews

living in the Kingdom some of whom had converted to Christianity and some of whom had not and so in order to remove

the Temptation for those converted Jews to convert back to Judaism Spain went ahead and booted all the Jews from their

land and many of them sought refuge in Portugal who as it turned out was becoming more politically intertwined

with Spain and so Portugal expelled the Jews as well but on the other side of the spectrum we have the treatment of

Jews in the Ottoman Empire so hearing news of this expulsion ottoman Sultan mhmed II opened his Empire to the

displaced Jews who then immigrated and drove and because of the relative tolerance of the Ottomans toward Jews

some of them Rose to prominence in the ottoman Court While others contributed to the economic and cultural environment

okay now the second category of changed to social hierarchies was the rise of new political Elites and I'm going to

give you two examples here first in the Americas the Spanish imposed this new social hierarchy known as the castus

system in their colonial Holdings essentially this system organized colonial society into a series of ranks

based on race and ancestry and what level of person landed at really depended on how much Spanish blood they

had running through their veins and the important thing to remember here is that prior to the imposing of the Casta

system native peoples were part of a wide variety of linguistic and cultural groups but the Casta system erased much

of that cultural complexity and ordered their society by the standards of a small minority of Spanish Elite and

another example here is the transition from the Ming to the Ching dynasty in China now recall from unit three that

the Ching was a estblished by non-chinese folks namely the Manu and in doing so they reserved all the best

bureaucratic positions in the empire for ethnically Manu people to the exclusion of ethnically Han people and finally the

third category of change in social hierarchies involved the struggles of existing Elites in various States you

see Elite members of various societies had always exerted significant influence on political and economic policies but

with the increasing power of monarchs this influence began to wne for example let's consider the Russian boards who

made up the aristocratic landowning class in Russia and they exerted great power in the administration of the

empire for Cent but when the absolutist Peter the Great Rose to power in Russia he wanted to take all the power he could

from those boards and keep it for himself and when the boards oppos this curtailment of their power Peter went

ahead and abolished the rank of boar and required anyone who wanted bureaucratic employment to serve the state directly

all right if you're feeling saucy you can click here and grab my AP World hler review guide which has everything you

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four videos if you need some help on any particular topic I appreciate you coming around and I'll catch you on the

flipflop I'm Lou