Lumen 22-1

European Dominance

January 15, 2022

Irrelevant tid bit – I love you more today than I did yesterday: yesterday you really pissed me off.

 

 

Europe has dominated the world in many ways, starting in the Middle Ages when European explorers and sailors spread out across the planet, finding “new” places.   Of course, the world was not lost so you can’t accurately say that Europeans found Africa or America, but they did incorporate these places, that were previously unknown to them, into the European culture (Table 1).

 

Europe was better than anyone else in war weapons and travel, in part because of their expertise in

Columbus "discovering" America

metallurgy, gun powder, ship design, and navigation as demonstrated by the invention and use of the sextant.  These technological advances, an attitude committed to dominating the people living in their “discovered” lands. and the drive to make money resulted in European explorers conquering lands and their inhabitants everywhere they explored.  Also, Europeans strongly felt that their culture, religion, and way-of-life was vastly superior than anyone else’s.  And certainty much better than the life styles of the “primitive” people they encountered throughout the non-European world.  They considered themselves better than everyone else and so they deserved to be dominant.  Are Europeans superior? was question that was not even asked in their progress toward conquering and subjugating the rest of the planet.

Europeans approached this colonial world domination on several fronts: military, transportation, economic, disease, and spiritual.  I will address the spiritual aspect in Lumen 22-2 on Missionaries.

Military – Superior Weapon Technology - Gunpowder and the weapons it spawned were a tremendous

Cortez and troops

advantage for the Europeans.  Many future colonies did not have any idea how to fight against these powerful new-to-them weapons.  The good example is how Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire, which flourished between 1325 and 1521, in less than two years.   Cortez’s Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico with steel swords, muskets, cannons, pikes, crossbows, war dogs, and horses - none of these assets had yet been used in battle in the Americas.  The Aztecs fought back with wooden broadswords, clubs, and spears tipped with obsidian blades: weapons that proved to be ineffective against the conquistadors’ metal armor and shields.

Great Britain is the all-time leader (a GOAT) in occupying areas and forming colonies at 90 (Table 2), including large colonies like Canada, Australia, and India.  Great Britain used locally fermented disagreements to start proxy wars or to take advantage of on-going wars while providing enough help to assure that their side would win.  This reduced their military presence and the cost of ruling and controlling their colonies

Transportation – Big Ships – While the Polynesians mastered transoceanic travel, they did not have the capacity to regularly travel in both directions between islands i.e., establish trade.  Compared to other boats at the time, the European boats were big, big enough to hold both people and trade goods.  This enabled the colonies to maintain contact with the home country, which was valuable both for trade and military resupply.  After the invention of the sextant, they even knew where they were going.

Economic – Big Companies – Making money was always a critical part of European exploration.  First through the search for treasure, i.e., finding golden cites, and some of this was successful, especially for Spain.  However, the more established and longer lasting way to get rich is through for-profit companies, and these companies can also contribute toward control of a potential new colony.  In many cases these companies were formally endorsed and formed by the mother country.

Businesses that helped conquer nations include the:  Dutch East India Company, Hudson’s Bay Company, and English East India Company.

In 1602 the Dutch government sponsored the creation of the Dutch East India Company in an effort

Dutch East India Co. logo

to stabilize profits in the Dutch spice trade and form a monopoly.  At its height, the Dutch East India Company established headquarters in many different countries, had a monopoly over the spice trade, and had semi-governmental powers in that it was able to begin wars, prosecute convicts, negotiate treaties, and establish colonies.  By 1669 the Dutch East India Company was the richest company in the world.

In the 21^st century the Hudson's Bay Company is a Canadian, now American-owned, retail business group that owns and operates retail stores in Canada and the United States.   However, it started as a fur trading business and at its peak controlled the fur trade throughout much of the British-controlled North America.

Hudson Bay Co. logo

A royal charter from King Charles II in 1670 granted the company a monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern parts of present-day Canada (known as Rupert’s Land).  The company functioned as the de facto government in parts of North America for nearly 200 years until it sold its land to Canada in 1869.

The English East India Company was formed by royal charter in 1600 to trade in the Indian Ocean

English East India Co. logo

region, and in the process of doing business, it seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonized parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, and maintained trading posts and colonies in the Persian Gulf.  The company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpeter, tea, and opium. 

During the beginnings of the British Empire in India, the company came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power, and assuming administrative functions.  Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 and lasted until 1858 when the Government of India Act led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.

Disease – Accidental and Otherwise – When Europeans first started to explore the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and the Pacific islands they did not know that they were introducing killer diseases to these “new” lands.  Lacking immunity to Old World pathogens carried by the Europeans, indigenous inhabitants fell victim to terrible plagues of smallpox, influenza, and other viruses.  Disease alone did not cause population reductions, but was complimented with  the disruption of native communities, brutal forced labor, and malnutrition.

            “Much of the credit for European military success in the New World can be handed to the                         superiority of their weapons, their literary heritage, even the fact they had unique load-                         bearing mammals, like horses. These factors combined, gave the conquistadors a massive                       advantage over the sophisticated civilisations of the Aztec and Inca empires.

            But weapons alone can't account for the breathtaking speed with which the indigenous                             population of the New World were completely wiped out.

            Within just a few generations, the continents of the Americas were virtually emptied of their                    native inhabitants – some academics estimate that approximately 20 million people may have                died in the years following the European invasion – up to 95% of the population of the                            Americas.

 

            No medieval force, no matter how bloodthirsty, could have achieved such enormous levels of                genocide. Instead, Europeans were aided by a deadly secret weapon they weren't even aware                they were carrying: Smallpox.”  (This is quoted from “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared                        Diamond.  If you are interested in the why’s and wherefores of human social and economic                    development, I highly recommend this book.)

 

Not all historians agree with Diamond’s blanket statements that population reductions were universal in the Americas.  Instead, they conclude that, even though Europeans brought chickenpox, smallpox, measles, mumps, and rubella to the new world, epidemic disease was a patchwork affair, striking some populations and not others at various times.  Some studies show that although rapid population loss and extinction occurred in some areas, many groups survived and accommodated new and challenging circumstances.

 

However, there are some striking case histories of disease-caused population declines.  1)  In April 1520, Spanish forces landed in what is now Veracruz, Mexico, unwittingly bringing along an African slave infected with smallpox.  Two months later, Hernan Cortez’s troops entered the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlán, and by mid-October a virus was sweeping through the city, killing nearly half of the population, which scholars estimate at 50,000 to 300,000 people. 2)  In the late 1770s or early 1780s, a smallpox epidemic spread through the entire Pacific northwest.  The most likely mode of entry was from two infected men left behind by a ship off the northern Oregon coast.  Members of the 1804-05 Lewis and Clark expedition commented on the prevalence of pockmarked natives and long abandoned villages.  Native informants told of widespread mortality.  From the North Coast Haida chief Kowes said “the small Pox swept off two-thirds of the people,” and from the lower Columbia “the Clatsops inform us that this disorder raged in their towns and destroyed their nation.”

Population Reduction Causes? Global Cooling. 

Researchers from University College London found that after the rapid population decline in the Americas, large swaths of vegetation and farmland were abandoned.  When this previously farmed land in North and South America — equal to an area almost the size of France — was reforested by trees and flora, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dropped.  Antarctic ice cores dating back to the late 1500’s and 1600’s confirm that decrease in carbon dioxide.  That drop in carbon dioxide levels was enough to lower global temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius and contribute to the global cooling trend called the "Little Ice Age," during which glaciers expanded.

Initially the weapon of disease was not well recognized by Europeans, nor intentionally used in the early colonial contacts.  In later times, especially the 19th century, disease was sometimes allowed to do its damage or was purposefully introduced into indigenous populations.  During the Seven Years' War in 1763, British Colonel Henry Bouquet recommended to General Jeffrey Amherst to distribute smallpox infected blankets to "inocculate the Indians".  Amherst approved this plan and suggested as well "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."  Legends and written documents indicate that many Europeans were using smallpox as a weapon.

In 1832 the U.S. government approved smallpox vaccinations for Native Americans.  However, the Secretary of War notified the Western Indian Agent not to vaccinate on the Missouri River above the Arikara villages, near present-day Pierre, SD.  In 1837 the American Fur Company’s (owned by John Jacob Astor) steamboat St. Peters went up the Missouri River with smallpox-contaminated passengers.  People getting off at Indian trading posts quickly spread an epidemic.  Most of the tribes suffered 60 percent population loss and the Mandan suffered a 90 percent loss.  This event has always been controversial and it is not clear that genocide was the intention.  Some say blankets were intentionally contaminated, others blame the edict by the Secretary of War five years earlier.  It is believed that only 40-150 Mandan survived the smallpox scourge and survivors had to seek refuge with the Hidatsa.

Disease increases caused by European domination was not only a problem in the Americas.

 

            “The African way of life was designed to avoid mosquito-borne infection. Africans made                     their homes in high, dry areas when they could, away from the natural habitat of the mosquito.             Also, African communities remained fairly small, which limited the level of disease                                transmission.

  

            Unfortunately, the arrival of colonizing Europeans, with their steam trains, machine guns and                dreams of industrial wealth, wreaked terrible damage on these centuries-old  mechanisms of                    survival. Torn from their villages, forced to live and work together in massive numbers and in                unsanitary conditions, tropical Africans fell ill as never before.  The scourge of malaria                            throughout Africa today is, in part, the consequence of the destruction of a way of life which                had existed for thousands of years.”  (Guns, Germs, and Steel)

 

So, the Europeans had superior guns, ships, and economic organization which enabled them to dominate other parts of the world.  These were the proximate reasons for their ability dominate, but a better question is why did the Europeans have these advantages and other parts of the world did not? Why did American Indians not have big ships?  Why did Africans not have steel rifles?  I will not address this question here but once more refer you to “Gun, Germs, and Steel” for an excellent investigation of the long term reasons that Europeans were able to dominate the rest of the world.

 

 

 Table 1 - A very rough

measure of colonial activity

 

European      # Areas

Country          Ruled*

Great Britain   90

France             77

Spain               34

Holland           19

Germany         18

Portugal          16

Russia             9

Italy                 4

Denmark         4

Sweden           3

Belgium          1

* various levels of control

 for various lengths of time

 

 

Table 2 - Countries with No Substantial Rule by a European Country at any Time in their History

 

Oceania

Hawaiian Islands – Before statehood Hawaii was ruled by US, but not any European country

Wake Island – Ruled by US, but not any European country.

 

Africa

Liberia

 

Asia

Afghanistan

Bhutan

Most of China

Iran

Japan

Korea - Russia briefly held North Korea

Mongolia - Heavy Russian influence

Nepal

Thailand

Tibet - Part of China

Turkey - Turkey was part of the Roman Empire and is partially in Europe.

 

Notice that all of North America, South America, and Australia was under the rule of a European country at one time during their history.  In Africa, only Liberia has totally avoided European control.  Under an international treaty agreement, signed by 12 countries in 1959 with 54 signees today, no part of Antarctica is controlled by any country, but the world was busy splitting it up before the treaty. Consequently, even today seven countries, who are all signatories to the treaty, (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom) maintain territorial claims in Antarctica, but the United States and most other countries do not recognize those claims.  The United States maintains a basis to claim territory in Antarctica, it has not made a claim.