CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. The Portuguese Voyages to Africa, India, and

Brazil

III. Columbus and the Opening of America

IV. The First Colonial Empires: Portugal and Spain

V. A Clash of Empires: The Ottoman Challenge

and the Emperor Charles V

VI. The Crisis of the Early Modern State

A. The French Wars of Religion and the Revolt

of the Netherlands

B. The Thirty Years’ War

C. The English Civil War

VII. The Price of Conflict: Fiscal Crisis and

Administrative Devolution

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CHAPTER 15

OVERSEAS CONQUEST AND RELIGIOUS

WAR TO 1648

T

he age of the Renaissance and Reformation

marked the beginning of European conquests

overseas. Their purpose in the first instance

was to expand the resources available to the

emerging monarchies of western Europe. The con-

quests were therefore an extension of the state-building

process, but a religious motive was evident, too, which

at times recalled the Christian triumphalism of the Cru-

sades. To say that European expansion overseas

changed the world forever is an understatement.

Though it laid the foundations of a world market and

added much to Europe’s store of wealth and knowledge,

it did so at a terrible cost in human misery.

In Europe itself, the rivalries that encouraged over-

seas exploration fueled the imperial struggles of the

early sixteenth century and the so-called Religious

Wars of 1559–1648. The growing cost of warfare

stretched the resources of princes to the breaking point.

This led to massive unrest as subjects sought to recover

rights and privileges lost to rulers who were desperate

to pay for security. Both the subsequent revolts and the

international conflict that helped to sustain them were

complicated by religious issues that made them ex-

tremely difficult to resolve. In the end, the wars of what

has been called the Iron Age brought much of Europe

to the brink of political and economic disintegration.

The Portuguese Voyages to Africa,

India, and Brazil

The process of overseas exploration began appropri-

ately enough in Portugal, the first modern monarchy

and the center of the fourteenth-century revolution in

shipbuilding. The Portuguese state had been effectively

consolidated by John I in 1385. Like other medieval

rulers, he and his descendants hoped to maximize do-

main revenue by increasing taxable commerce. The

gold and ivory of Africa were a tempting goal, but that

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