The people the Europeans encountered in the Americas were less technologically advanced and thus easier to dominate. In Asia, however, they confronted technologically comparable civilizations that were even more populous than their own. Consequently, although they were able gradually to establish trading empires, they generally were not able to conquer vast territories as they were doing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Europe and the Ottoman Empire

During the 1500s and much of the 1600s, the Islamic Ottoman Empire remained the primary threat to European Christian civilization. Nevertheless, the period also marked the beginnings of a relative decline in Ottoman strength just as Europe’s strength was increasing. The decline resulted partly from internal political problems. After Suleiman I, the Law-Giver (whom Europeans called ‘the Magnificent’) (1520–1566), only a handful of strong sultans ruled the empire effectively.[1] Unlike earlier rulers, few sultans now led their troops in battle. Consequently, their prestige with the army dwindled. Furthermore, where once Ottoman princes had been named as provincial governors, most now remained in the harem until they ascended the throne. Thus they had little or no experience in governing before becoming sultan. Grand viziers and members of the harem supported weak sultans they could easily control.[2]

            Such weak sultans could not stop the chaos caused by warring political factions or a rebellious military. Janissaries, the elite slave soldiers of the sultan's army, mutinied in 1589 after being paid with coins melted down from metal ornaments rather than real money.[3] In 1622 and 1648, Janissary rebels even assassinated the reigning sultans. Like Roman emperors and Abbasid caliphs, many Ottoman sultans became captives of their own bodyguards.

            The decline could also be traced in part to European economic expansion into Ottoman territory. In the early 1500s, in his wars against the Safavids and the Habsburgs, Suleiman I had pursued an alliance with France. As part of this alliance, in 1536 he granted France special trade privileges, which became known as capitulations.[i] These privileges, particularly tax exemptions and extraterritoriality (which made French subjects answerable not to Ottoman courts but to French courts run by French consuls), had the unintended effect of allowing French merchants to capture even the internal carrying trade of the Empire. Not only could French merchants undercut their Ottoman competitors in buying and selling goods, French ships could actually carry goods from one part of the Empire to another cheaper than their Ottoman counterparts. As French merchants dominated more and more of the Empire’s trade, their tax exempt status also meant declining revenues for the sultan’s treasury. Later sultans established similar agreements with other Western nations, further weakening the Ottoman economy.[ii]

            Yet, despite its growing weakness, the Ottoman Empire remained a major power in the 1500s and 1600s. When a combined Spanish and Italian fleet achieved victory over the Ottomans in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto, [iii] it was only a minor setback. The Ottoman grand vizier assured the sultan, Selim II, after the battle that "the might of the empire is such that if it were desired to equip the entire fleet with silver anchors, silken rigging and satin sails, we could do it."[iv] Within a year, the sultan had a new fleet that once again dominated the Mediterranean.

            The Ottomans also remained extremely powerful on land.[v] In 1683 the Ottoman army marched to Vienna, the Habsburg capital. Seeing the huge dust cloud stirred up by the Turks, wealthy Viennese citizens "fled their houses, courtyards and beautifully tapestried rooms, leaving wine in the cellars and rugs on the floors."[vi] Some 200,000 Ottoman soldiers under the command of Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa encamped in a great tent city outside the gates and settled in for a long siege. The siege was the second time Ottoman forces had attacked Vienna.            

Battle of Vienna on September 12, 1683. Taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Vienna_Battle_1683.jpg/300px-Vienna_Battle_1683.jpg

The siege was also the last time, however, for the Ottomans had finally overreached their own strength. After nearly two months, the city had not fallen. Then, responding to the desperate pleas of the Habsburg emperor, Polish and German troops led by the Polish king John Sobieski arrived and routed the Turks. An Ottoman chronicler of the time lamented this defeat:

      "The accursed infidels . . . succeeded in capturing such quantities of money and supplies as cannot be described. They therefore did not even think of pursuing the soldiers of Islam and had they done so it would have gone hard. May God preserve us. This was a calamitous defeat of such magnitude that there has never been its like since the first appearance of the Ottoman state."[vii]

The last siege of Vienna marked the beginning of a more rapid and steady decline in Ottoman power. Further defeats by Europeans led to the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, in which the Ottomans lost control over much of their European territory.[viii] 

The once unbeatable Turks were now permanently on the defensive. The largely volunteer Ottoman army rarely matched the growing professionalism of European armies. Even the once dreaded Janissary corps went into decline as its membership became hereditary and training was neglected. Provincial officials took advantage of this weakness. By the mid-1700s, the sultans had lost effective control of Egypt, Syria, and parts of Arabia to local governors. Like the last Abbasids, later Ottoman sultans ruled over much of the empire in name only.

The Portuguese in Asia

The balance of power in the Mediterranean took many years to shift from the Ottoman Empire to the European powers. In the meantime, the Portuguese, followed later by the Dutch, French, and English, sailed their deep-water vessels armed with heavy cannons around Africa in search of the spices, silks, and other luxuries of the East. From trading posts and forts scattered throughout the Indian Ocean and southern Asia, European merchants tried to impose their own control over the Indies trade.

             As the first Europeans to discover the way into the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese were also the first to challenge Islamic dominance of eastern trade and to establish their own commercial empire in Asia. When Vasco da Gama's crew landed at Calicut, India, in 1498, for example, an astonished Muslim merchant from Tunis exclaimed, "May the devil take you! What brought you here?" "Christians and spices,"[ix] replied the Portuguese, who returned home laden with spices, fine woods, porcelain, silk, and precious stones. Over the next several decades Portugal set up trading forts along the African coast, at the mouths of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and on the Indian and Southeast Asian coasts.[x]  

Map of the main Portuguese settlements in the East (1600s.). Taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/Pempir1.jpg            

In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque, the governor of Portugal's Asian possessions, attacked and drove from power the local ruler of Goa, on the west coast of India.[xi] Albuquerque made Goa the administrative center of Portugal's Asian trade empire. By 1515 Albuquerque had also conquered Malacca, the wealthiest trading center on the Malay coast, and Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.[xii]  Meanwhile, in 1511 Portugal had captured the main port in the Moluccas—the famed Spice Islands. In the early 1500s they also began settling Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka).

            Anxious to maintain a monopoly over the eastern trade, the Portuguese allowed only king's ships to trade with the Estado da India, as they called their Asian empire. Royal merchantmen, accompanied by armed escorts, carried black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and mace to Lisbon. Though expensive in lives and resources, the spice trade yielded handsome profits—for example, it provided 39 percent of the Crown's income in 1518. [xiii] Continuing to expand, the Portuguese also gained footholds in Japan and China. They reached Japan in the 1540s and quickly profited by trading Chinese goods for Japanese silver. In 1557 the Chinese allowed them to establish a trading station at Macao.[xiv] Here, however, the Portuguese were dependent on China’s goodwill, as António Bocarro, a resident of Macao, described in 1635:  

      “The peace that we have with the king of China is as he likes it, for since this place is so far from India, and since he has such vastly greater numbers of men than the most that the Portuguese could possibly assemble there, never did we think of breaking with him whatever serious grievances we may have had; because the Chinese have only to stop our food-supplies to ruin our city.”[xv] 

The spectacular rise of Portugal's trading-post empire, however, was followed by an equally rapid decline. 

            A small kingdom, Portugal had neither the people nor the financial resources to maintain such a vast empire. Portuguese rulers also proved remarkably shortsighted. As early as 1496, for example, they followed Spain’s example and ordered the expulsion of the Jews from the country. This cost Portugal not only large numbers of people but also much wealth and valuable expertise, which the country could ill afford to lose. In addition, the grandiose ambition of the royal monopoly in the Estado da India proved impossible to maintain. All traders, including local Asian merchants, were required to obtain licenses from the Portuguese to operate within Asian waters. They were also required to land their goods only in Portuguese controlled ports where they were obliged to pay Portuguese duties on their cargoes. In effect, the Portuguese were not only trying to monopolize the trade between Asia and Europe but to control and tax the entire inter-Asian seaborne trade! 

            To be successful, such a policy would have required an enormous fleet and control of virtually every important landing spot from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan - or at the very least all of the strategic narrows through which ships would have to pass. Portugal simply did not have the manpower or ships to maintain control over such a huge area. As early as the 1530s, both local Asian merchants and other Europeans were slipping through the Portuguese naval net and evading Portuguese customs duties. Moreover, despite numerous attempts, the Portuguese were never able to gain control of the strategic entrance to the Red Sea. As more and more Asian and European merchants evaded the Portuguese monopoly, by the 1560s the Red Sea route into the Mediterranean was supplying as much of the spice trade to Europe as the route around Africa.    

            Maintaining such a vast military and naval commitment proved more expensive than the entire profits provided by the Estado da India. In 1524, for example, the Portuguese crown had to float a huge loan using the revenues from the following year's spice production as collateral. In addition, though revenues from the spice trade were enormous, much of the profit ended up in the hands of Dutch merchants who distributed the spices from Lisbon into western and northern Europe. 

Portuguese Decline

            With appropriate irony, perhaps, the eventual demise of Portugal's dominance of the spice trade was due to the same movement that had first given birth to Portugal's overseas adventures - the crusading spirit of the reconquista. In 1578, the devout Portuguese king, Dom Sebastiao, led an army across the Strait of Gibraltar to fight against the Muslim ruler of Morocco. Neither he nor most of his men ever returned. Since the young king had died without an heir, the throne passed to his uncle, a priest and Cardinal of the Catholic Church, Henry I. Unable to obtain a release from his vows of celibacy from the Pope, however, Cardinal-King Henry also died childless only two years later in 1580. After a brief succession struggle, the Portuguese throne passed to Phillip II of Spain, on condition that Portugal and its empire would retain their identity and independence from Spain. 

The Portuguese nobility had hoped that Phillip's accession to the throne would benefit Portugal, but in fact the opposite happened. So long as the Spanish monarchy also ruled Portugal from 1580 to 1640, the Spanish neglected Portugal's trade and colonies. Even worse, with the union of the two crowns, Spain's enemies became Portugal's enemies - and at the time perhaps the most important of Spain's enemies were the Dutch, who were in revolt against the Habsburgs in an effort to establish their independence. Yet the Dutch were also the most important distributors of Portugal's spice trade into northern Europe. Despite his promise to keep the affairs of the two kingdoms separate, eventually, in 1594, Phillip banned Dutch merchants from trading in Lisbon. Unwilling to simply give up the lucrative spice trade, the Dutch quickly decided to obtain the spices at their source -  in effect, to challenge openly and directly the Portuguese monopoly in Asia. Over the next half century, until 1640 when Portugal regained its independence from the Spanish monarchy, in a sustained and deliberate assault Dutch forces harassed and raided Portuguese shipping and outposts throughout Asia. Although Portugal managed to hold on to many of its trading posts, its share in the eastern spice trade steadily declined in the 17^th century as much of the Asian trade fell into Dutch and English hands.

The Rise of the Dutch

The 1600s were in many ways a period of remarkable success for the Dutch. After winning independence from Spain, the new Dutch Republic became one of the wealthiest and most progressive parts of Europe. Although Calvinism became the dominant religion of the Netherlands, eventually a policy of religious tolerance prevailed. Politically, the Netherlands was a kind of federal association of the various provinces. The States General of the United Provinces, a parliamentary body of provincial representatives, governed the Netherlands. In military matters, the Princes of Orange, who had led the struggle against Spain, remained dominant.

            The Dutch owed their commercial success primarily to their position on the sea. In the northern provinces deep-sea fishing had become the primary commercial activity. In addition, by the end of the 16^th century the Dutch dominated the coastal shipping of northern Europe. In the 17^th century nearly 10,000 Dutch vessels dominated the carrying trade of France, England, Spain, and the Baltic countries.

            As their wealth grew, the Dutch also began to develop institutions to sustain such large-scale commercial activity. In 1609, for example, they established the Bank of Amsterdam, which issued its own currency, the florin. The Dutch government itself guaranteed the safety of deposits. At the time the rest of Europe’s various currencies were in a state of chaos due to the heavy influx of gold and silver from the Americas. Drawn by the stability of the florin as a currency, more and more people from all over Europe deposited their capital in the Bank of Amsterdam and came to the bank for loans. Amsterdam soon became Europe’s leading financial center.

            Dutch entry into the Indies trade was largely due to the continuing hostility of their former rulers, the Spanish Habsburgs. Even before independence, in 1594 Phillip II of Spain had banned the Dutch from trading for Portugal's Asian goods at Lisbon. As Spain continued to restrict the flow of Indies goods into Dutch ports, in 1602 Dutch merchants responded by establishing the private Dutch East India Company to trade directly with Asia. The new Dutch republic granted the company sole rights to carry on trade between the Netherlands and the East Indies and Africa. More aggressive than the Portuguese, the Dutch eventually began to conquer and occupy entire islands in an effort to monopolize the spice trade at the source of production.  

Map of the main VOC (Dutch East India Company) settlements in the East (1660s.). Taken from http://www.colonialvoyage.com/vocmap.jpg  

The Dutch established their first colony in Asia in 1619 at Batavia (now Jakarta) on the island of Java. From Java they expanded west to take the island of Sumatra and east to seize the valuable Spice Islands from Portugal. They also soon captured Malacca, Ceylon, and Cochin on the southwest coast of India, and established a trading post at Nagasaki, Japan. In 1652, they established a colony of Dutch farmers, or Boers, at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to supply their ships in the Asian trade.

Other European Competitors

The Dutch were not the only ones to seek the wealth of the Asian trade. In 1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the British East India Company. Over the next century, the Company established trading posts at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta in India. The company also set up a few trading posts in Malaya and the East Indies, but India remained its headquarters and chief source of wealth. By the end of the century, British ships also began trading for teas and silks in China.  

By the late 1600s the Portuguese and Spanish, the pioneers in global exploration, had been displaced in many regions by the English, French, and Dutch. Taken from http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/brummettconcise/chapter98/medialib/illustrations/WALL5295310.gif

Meanwhile, the French East India Company, formed in 1664, established a trading post at Pondicherry on the southeast coast of India. The French soon began to involve themselves in local politics and by the mid-1700s actually controlled some Indian territory. What made this possible was the state of Indian politics and the Mughal Empire’s declining grip on its subjects.

            Mughal power had been declining in India since the death of the emperor Aurangzeb in 1707. Aurangzeb’s long and costly wars in the Deccan had drained the imperial treasury.[xvi] Then, in November 1738, Nadir Shah, a powerful new Persian ruler, led his army across the Indus River. In 1739 his forces sacked Delhi, massacring some 30,000 people. Nadir Shah had effectively destroyed Mughal power, though weak emperors remained on the throne until 1857.

            During the remainder of the 1700s, Marathas from the Deccan, Sikhs from the Punjab, and Afghan invaders fought over much of the country. In their wars with each other, many local rulers looked for support to the Europeans who had established trading posts along their coasts. In return, the Indian rulers promised increased trading privileges and even the right to tax whole provinces. Sensing great profit, the British and French allied themselves with local princes to expand their trade.[xvii] By the 1740s Mughal weakness and disunity had left the door open for increasing European domination.

China and Japan

Farther east, in China and Japan, a different story unfolded. Under the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the Chinese Empire remained considerably more powerful than the new trading empires of Europe. In Japan too, shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty transformed the Japanese feudal system into a strong, centralized government that dictated its own relationship with the European "barbarians."  

The Qing. Under both the Ming and early Qing dynasties, China remained perhaps the strongest and most extensive empire in the world. As European traders and merchants appeared on China’s borders, they found that China had less to gain from Europe than Europe had to gain from China. The Chinese generally realized this too and consequently restricted European traders to certain ports along the coast. The Portuguese had been the first to arrive, and had essentially become a part of the Chinese system even at their base in Macao. As other Europeans arrived they found entry into China’s trade even more difficult.

            Even under China’s new Manchurian dynasty, the Qing, the old Confucian dislike of merchants and trade continued to shape Chinese attitudes. Having lived in China’s shadow for many generations, the Manchus had learned from Chinese advisers. Once in power, they sought to bolster their own legitimacy by maintaining the Confucian traditions. Even under their most enlightened ruler, Kangxi, although they began to experience more interaction with Europeans, they remained determined to control the relationship.

            BIO  Kangxi was born in 1654,[xviii] and at the age of seven he succeeded to the dragon throne of China as emperor.[xix] Like all members of the Qing dynasty, he was never allowed to forget his identity as a Manchu. As a child he learned the arts of a Manchu warrior, such as archery and hunting, in the grassy steppes of his Manchurian homeland. In that "untamed country," Kangxi later wrote, he had a "sense of freedom."[xx]  

Emperor Kangxi. From http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/article_images/2006-3-6-kangxi--ss.jpg

            The young Manchu prince was also taught to play the role of a Chinese emperor, however. In the imperial palace, within the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing, he learned not only to write his native Manchu but also to paint the intricate brush strokes of Chinese characters, and to recite the Confucian classics from memory.

            Although controlled at first by a powerful regent, at age 15 Kangxi began ruling in his own right. In his early years, he fought hard and successfully to consolidate his position on the throne. In 1683 he expanded the empire by taking control of the island of Taiwan. He also firmly established China's northern and western borders. Sending an army against Russian forces in the north, in 1689 he won back territory China had lost. When Mongol warriors threatened the western borders, Kangxi personally led an army against them. He regarded his defeat of Galdan, the Mongol leader, as his finest hour. "My great task is done," he wrote to his court "As for my . . . own life, one can say it is happy. One can say it's fulfilled."[xxi]

            Kangxi's later years were not as happy, however, largely due to his relationship with the Europeans. In 1706 the emperor had a serious disagreement with Catholic missionaries. For years Kangxi had allowed Jesuit priests to practice their religion in China because their scientific knowledge proved useful to him. He had appointed Jesuits as his chief astronomer and as advisers on geography and engineering. But when an emissary from the pope refused to acknowledge the validity of ancestor worship, Kangxi ordered the expulsion of Catholic officials, an act that had lasting effects on China’s relationship with Europe.[xxii]

Kangxi's death in 1722 left China territorially strong, but facing both internal and external challenges. Nevertheless, China’s strength allowed it to control the growing number of European merchants seeking entry into its territory.

Taken from http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/images/qingmap.gif  

In 1760 a British envoy petitioned the imperial court for increased and more open trade. The Emperor’s reply was a polite but firm no. Anxious not to lose control over their trade to “foreign devils,” Chinese emperors laid down strict guidelines to regulate all relations between Chinese and Europeans. For example, they allowed European ships to dock only at one port, Guangzhou, and to trade only with a small number of officially licensed Chinese merchants, known as the Cohong. They also required Europeans to live in a special "foreign settlement" outside the city walls and to abide by Chinese laws. Not until the 1800s did relations begin to turn in the Europeans’ favor.  

The Unification of Japan. Like the Chinese, the Japanese also controlled their relationship with the Europeans. The first contact between the two cultures occurred in 1543, when a Portuguese ship wrecked on the Japanese island of Tanega-shima. The Portuguese soon opened a trading post. Six years later, a Jesuit priest, Francis Xavier, arrived in Kyushu, hoping to convert all of Japan to Christianity, starting with its leaders, the daimyo. The Jesuits had arrived in Japan just as several strong Japanese lords had begun to restore central authority after a long period of political disunity.

            One of these lords, Oda Nobunaga, had begun the rebuilding process by creating a powerful new army. By arming peasant foot soldiers with long spears, Nobunaga defeated the more traditional cavalry forces of his enemies.[xxiii] When the Portuguese introduced firearms into Japan in 1543, Nobunaga was quick to arm his troops with the new weapons. From his strategic lands in central Honshu, Nobunaga expanded his control over much of Japan. By 1568, he had established his control over Kyoto, the capital, and made himself the emperor’s ‘guardian’.

Oda Nobunaga[4]  

As Nobunaga’s power grew, he faced serious opposition from a coalition of daimyos and powerful Buddhist warrior sects, particularly the Tendai based at their great monastery fortress, Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei. In 1571, however, Nobunaga attacked and razed Enryakuji, massacring its inhabitants. Two years later, in 1573, he deposed the last Ashikaga shogun. In 1580, he destroyed the last great Buddhist monastery-fortress at Osaka and thus became the undisputed master of central Japan. On the verge of accomplishing his dream to unify the empire, however, in 1582 he was betrayed and attacked by one of his own generals. In the fighting, Nobunaga was either killed or committed suicide rather than surrender. It was left to one of his loyal generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to continue the process of unification.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi is often presented by Japanese historians as the pivotal figure in the history of the country. He began life as a peasant from the village of Nakamura in Owari province.  Sometime in the 1550s, he joined Oda Nobunaga, eventually rising to become one of his greatest generals. After personally avenging Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi took control of the army and continued his mentor’s process of unification.  

Toyotomi Hideyoshi[5]  

            In this atmosphere of intrigue and internal warfare, the Jesuits unavoidably became involved in Japanese politics. Nobunaga had been fascinated by the Westerners. He valued many of the new tools and artifacts they brought with them – like guns – and he also seems to have patronized them as a counterweight to the militant Buddhist sects that opposed him. Hideyoshi too at first favored Christianity and the Jesuits. He himself liked to wear Portuguese clothes and Christian religious symbols that had become fashionable even among non-Christian Japanese, as something new and exotic. Nevertheless, as European contacts and involvement in Japanese life grew, many Japanese leaders, including Hideyoshi, increasingly worried about their long-term impact on Japanese society.

In 1587 a Spanish ship from the Philippines arrived hoping to break Portugal’s monopoly on Japanese trade. With the Spanish came another Catholic order, the Franciscans, who soon challenged the Jesuits for Japanese converts. The rivalry between the two Catholic missionary orders only added to the already complex political situation in Japan; rival daimyos allied themselves with one group or the other for their own strategic purposes. Alarmed by the growing political intrigues, Hideyoshi apparently concluded that the Jesuits were becoming as politically powerful and potentially dangerous as the Buddhist monasteries had been. Without warning, he suddenly issued an edict ordering all Christian missionaries to leave Japan – though Portuguese traders might remain.

Despite his sudden reversal, however, the peasant general did not at first strictly enforce the order. In fact, in 1593 he accepted three Franciscan monks from Manila as Spanish ambassadors. Although their primary goal was to establish trade relations, he subsequently allowed them to establish their own mission as well. Still, the growing influence of Christian missionaries over their converts among the samurai and daimyos continued to worry Hideyoshi. Finally, in 1597, all his fears about the real purpose of Christian missionary work came to a head when a Spanish galleon shipwrecked on the Japanese coast. In an effort to impress the Japanese daimyo who rescued them, the Spanish officers displayed a map of the world showing the vastness of the Spanish Empire – and bragged about the leading role that their missionaries had played in establishing it. When the daimyo’s report reached Hideyoshi he determined to put an end to the threat once and for all. After confiscating the ship’s cargo and sending the crew back to Manila, he ordered the immediate execution of all Franciscans in Japan. Eventually some twenty-six missionaries, six Europeans and twenty Japanese, were crucified. He had instituted this new policy, he subsequently wrote to the Spanish viceroy in Manila, “Because I learned that the promulgation of this religion was a part of the scheme of your country to conquer other nations.”[6] Soon thereafter he ordered all Jesuits to leave Japan as well, and began to destroy Christian churches. The persecutions might have continued but for Hideyoshi’s own death in 1598.

Hideyoshi’s death stalled the anti-Christian campaign, but only momentarily. In the early 1600s the Dutch and English also found their way to the island empire, bringing with them not only their often-violent rivalry over trade, but also their competing versions of Protestant Christianity – both of which were at war with all branches of Catholicism. As the Japanese learned of the religious and political rivalries that divided Europeans, more and more became disillusioned and began to turn against the foreigners. When Hideyoshi’s one-time rival, Tokugawa Ieyasu, completed the process of Japanese unification after Hideyoshi’s death, and became shogun in 1603, he and his successors finally outlawed Christianity and severely restricted European activities in Japan.

            Establishing a strong, central authority, the Tokugawa shoguns initiated more than two centuries of stability in Japan. Local rulers and their samurai, headquartered in fortified castle towns, kept the peace. In 1588 Hideyoshi had disarmed the peasants, allowing only samurai to bear arms, and the Tokugawa continued the policy. Confucian values of loyalty to lord and family underpinned a rigid traditional social structure. To limit disruptive outside influences, the shoguns strictly controlled trade and increasingly restricted foreign travel. By 1650 they had achieved almost complete isolation. A few Dutch merchants were the only Europeans allowed to trade in Japan, from a small base at Nagasaki, and all Japanese were forbidden to travel outside the island empire on pain of death.

Section 1 Review

IDENTIFY and explain the significance of the following:

Battle of Lepanto

capitulations

Treaty of Karlowitz

Afonso de Albuquerque

Aurangzeb

Nadir Shah

Kangxi

LOCATE and explain the importance of the following:

Goa

Malacca

Hormuz

Moluccas

Ceylon

Macao

Batavia

Bombay

Calcutta

Madras

Pondicherry

1.   Main Idea  How did the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the French establish trading empires in Asia?

2.   Main Idea  What economic and political factors contributed to the decline of the Mughal Empire?