Europeans Abroad, 1450-1750

Description

This innovative book looks beyond the traditional history of European expansion--which highlights European conquests, empire building, and hegemony--in order to explore the more human and realistic dimensions of European experiences abroad. David Ringrose argues that Early Modern Europe was relatively poor and that its industrial and military technology, while distinctive in some ways, was not obviously superior to that of Africa or Asia. As a result, the interaction between Europeans abroad and the peoples they met was vastly different from the relationship created by the economic and military imperialism of the post-1750 Industrial Revolution. Instead, the author depicts it as a process of cultural interaction, collaboration, and assimilation, masked by narratives of European conquest or assertion of control. Ringrose convincingly shows that Europeans who went abroad before 1700 engaged in an exchange of cross-cultural contact and has framed the process in its own time rather than as the precursor of what came later. Then, as now, historical actors knew nothing of the unexpected consequences of their actions.--Alfred Andrea, University of Vermont "CHOICE" Contents Figures, Maps, and Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: Perspectives on European Expansion 1 Europe Crosses the Threshold 2 Ambiguous Identity and Cultural Opportunism? 3 An Era of Empires 4 Three American Empires 5 Africa, Portugal, Brazil, and the Atlantic 6 Atlantic North America: No Empires to Conquer 7 An Era of World Trade 8 Europeans and the World: Spices, Silk, and Silver 9 Europeans and Asian Trade in the Seventeenth Century 10 Disappearing Colonists: Death, Assimilation, and Desertion 11 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index