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Chapter 4 • Political Transformations, 1450–1750 207

resources, including highly productive agricultural lands, drove further expansion, AP ® EXAM TIP
ultimately underpinning the long-term growth of the European economy into the Understand the various
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The drive to expand beyond Europe was also motivations for European
motivated by the enduring rivalries of competing European states. At the same time, exploration.
the growing and relatively independent merchant class sought direct access to Asian
wealth to avoid the reliance on Muslim intermediaries that they found so distaste-
ful. In addition, impoverished nobles and commoners alike found opportunity for
gaining wealth and status in the colonies. Missionaries and others were inspired by
crusading zeal to enlarge the realm of Christendom. Persecuted religious minori-
ties were in search of a new start in life. All of these compelling motives drove the
relentlessly expanding imperial frontier in the Americas. Summarizing their inten-
tions, one Spanish conquistador declared: “We came here to serve God and the
King, and also to get rich.” 3
In carving out these empires, often against great odds and with great difficulty,
Europeans nonetheless had certain advantages, despite their distance from home.
Their states and trading companies effectively mobilized both human and material
resources. Technological borrowing also enabled European empire building.
Gunpowder was invented in China, but by 1500 Europeans had the most advanced
arsenals of gunpowder weapons in the world. In 1517, one Chinese official, on
first encountering European ships and weapons, remarked with surprise, “The
westerners are extremely dangerous because of their artillery. No weapon ever made
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since memorable antiquity is superior to their cannon.” Advances in shipbuilding
and navigational techniques — including the magnetic compass and sternpost rud-
der from China and adaptations of the Mediterranean or Arab lateen sail, which
enabled vessels to sail against the wind — provided the foundation for European
mastery of the seas.
Another source of advantage was divisions within and between local societies AP ® EXAM TIP
in the Americas, which provided allies for the determined European invaders. (See Understand the causes
Chapter 2 for more on the Aztec and Inca empires.) Various subject peoples of and consequences of
the Aztec Empire, for example, resented Mexica domination and willingly joined the Spanish conquest of
conquistador Hernán Cortés in the Spanish assault on that empire. In the final the Aztec and Inca
empires.
attack on the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, Cortés’s forces contained fewer than
1,000 Spaniards and many times that number of Tlaxcalans, former subjects of the
Aztecs. After their defeat, tens of thousands of Aztecs themselves joined Cortés as
he conquered a Spanish Mesoamerican empire far larger than that of the Aztecs.
(See Zooming In: Doña Marina, page 208.) Much of the Inca elite, according to
a recent study, “actually welcomed the Spanish invaders as liberators and willingly
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settled down with them to share rule of Andean farmers and miners.” A violent
dispute between two rival contenders for the Inca throne, the brothers Atahualpa
and Huáscar, certainly helped the European invaders recruit allies to augment
their own minimal forces. In short, Spanish military victories were not solely
of their own making, but the product of alliances with local peoples, who supplied
the bulk of the Europeans’ conquering armies.
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
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