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What Was European Trade in the New World Like in the 16th Century?
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British Empire — Elizabethan Privateers, 1500-1600
This course examines the role of English privateering in shaping imperial ambitions during the Elizabethan era. Key topics include: (i) the challenges to English access to the Americas and the rise of maritime ambitions under Queen Elizabeth I, leading to tensions with Spain; (ii) the contributions of figures like Hawkins and Drake, whose privateering in the Caribbean highlighted Spain's vulnerabilities; (iii) the growth of privateering in the 1570s-1580s, supported by Elizabeth I, and its link to English colonial expansion; (iv) the failure of the Roanoke colony as a privateering base; and (v) the lasting impact of privateering on England’s state policies, economy, and piracy culture.
What Was European Trade in the New World Like in the 16th Century?
In this lecture, we explore privateering and imperial expansion during the Elizabethan period, focusing on: (i) early European exploration and the Treaty of Tordesillas, which restricted English access to the Americas; (ii) the rise of English maritime ambitions under Queen Elizabeth I, leading to tensions with Spain; (iii) John Hawkins' profitable slaving voyages in the 1560s and their impact on English trade in the Caribbean; (iv) Francis Drake's involvement and the growing awareness of the vulnerability of Spanish colonies; and (v) the shift from slaving to privateering, as English sailors targeted Spanish treasure fleets and laid the foundation for future colonial ambitions.
Hi, I'm Doctor Elaine Murphy and I'm associate professor of
00:00:06maritime history at the University of Plymouth.
00:00:09I research pirates, privateers,
00:00:11and I'm currently working on women at sea in the early modern period.
00:00:13Here today, I'm going to be talking about privateering and empire during
00:00:17the Elizabethan period.
00:00:22When we think about privateering and Elizabeth,
00:00:24we think about people like Francis Drake,
00:00:26and we think about people like John Hawkins.
00:00:28But before we start thinking about Drake and Hawkins,
00:00:31we need to take things back a bit earlier into the fifteenth century,
00:00:33and we need to think about Columbus crossing the Atlantic
00:00:37in fourteen ninety two, and discovering,
00:00:40if you want to use that phrase, the New World,
00:00:43landing in the Caribbean,
00:00:45and then of course later explorers coming to find the
00:00:47Americas.
00:00:50So in fourteen ninety four, the Pope splits the New World,
00:00:51the new discoveries between Spain and Portugal in the
00:00:55Treaty of Tordesillas.
00:00:57And what this treaty does is it excludes other European powers
00:00:59from trading to and sailing to these new lands
00:01:03that have been discovered by the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas.
00:01:07Other European powers especially the French and
00:01:12English felt aggrieved by this.
00:01:14They didn't believe that the Spanish and the Portuguese had
00:01:16the right to keep them out of this area.
00:01:19They felt they should be able to trade there too.
00:01:21In the late fourteen nineties,
00:01:24John Cabot with the backing of King Henry the seventh sails to
00:01:27Newfoundland, but Cabot dies on a later voyage.
00:01:30Then when we move into the fifteen hundreds,
00:01:34you see some early interest in voyages under King Henry the eighth.
00:01:36John Rut goes to Newfoundland in fifteen twenty seven,
00:01:40and John Hoare also goes to Newfoundland in fifteen thirty six.
00:01:43But these voyages aren't particularly successful in this period.
00:01:47The French under Jacques Cartier are also sailing to the
00:01:51new world, especially North America in this period as well.
00:01:54But really what happens from a French and English perspective
00:01:58is wider political and religious issues in their own
00:02:01countries, especially for King Henry the eighth,
00:02:04the matter of his divorce and break from Rome,
00:02:06mean that there isn't really an interest in the early sixteenth
00:02:09century from the Tudors in going to the new world.
00:02:13This all changes after the fifteen sixties when Queen
00:02:17Elizabeth comes to the throne.
00:02:21And what we really have in this period is that English
00:02:23merchants have been hearing about and seeing the wealth and
00:02:25the trading opportunities coming back from the new world
00:02:29for a long time now, and they want to get in on this.
00:02:31They want to get a share of the action.
00:02:34They want to share the wealth.
00:02:36They want to trade there directly.
00:02:37And these merchants feel aggrieved that they have been
00:02:39cut out of this trade.
00:02:42They're not allowed to sail their ships over and profit directly.
00:02:44So really what happens is that these merchants are becoming aggrieved,
00:02:47and tensions are beginning to ratchet up between Elizabeth
00:02:51the first's England and Spain under King Philip the second.
00:02:54And a lot of these tensions in this period are religious,
00:02:58as Elizabeth is a Protestant monarch,
00:03:02and Philip is a very staunch Catholic monarch.
00:03:04And what happens as we see as we move into the late fifteen
00:03:08eight sixties and into the fifteen seventies is that
00:03:11English merchants and English traders believe they should go
00:03:14and trade directly to the Americas themselves.
00:03:17One English argument put forward is that the Spaniards
00:03:20have brought these evils upon themselves by their injustice
00:03:23towards the English,
00:03:26who they have excluded from commerce with the West Indies.
00:03:27In fifteen seventy nine, Francis Drake actually told a Spanish captive,
00:03:31if the king of Spain would not give us leave to trade paying
00:03:35him his dues, then we would come and take away the silver.
00:03:38So essentially, the English feel that they've been unjustly treated,
00:03:42harshly treated by the Spanish.
00:03:45And by the time we get to Elizabeth's reign,
00:03:47merchants are no longer willing to let this lie.
00:03:50English merchants are going to start trading directly into the new world.
00:03:52The first and probably most important and well known of
00:03:58these is John Hawkins, a local Plymouth man.
00:04:00And Hawkins is best known in the fifteen sixties for three
00:04:03slaving voyages to the Americas.
00:04:06And essentially what Hawkins sees is that the Spanish
00:04:09colonists are desperate for slaves,
00:04:12and that if he sails to the coast of Africa,
00:04:14he can purchase or capture slaves,
00:04:17and he can sail to the Spanish colonies,
00:04:19and he can trade with them.
00:04:21And he knows that the Spanish colonists are so desperate for
00:04:22slaves that they will defy the rules from the Spanish
00:04:25government, and that they will willingly trade with them.
00:04:28And this is what he does in his first voyage in fifteen sixty
00:04:31two, and he sails to the coast of Africa,
00:04:34he acquires some slaves, he brings them to the Caribbean,
00:04:37and he very profitably trades for them.
00:04:40And he discovers that the Spanish government in the
00:04:42Caribbean are largely powerless to stop him and the colonists from trading.
00:04:44The colonists defy the rules and willingly trade with him,
00:04:49and Hawkins returns to England with a really good profit from this voyage.
00:04:52Francis Drake, a young kinsman of Hawkins,
00:04:57actually sails on this voyage with him.
00:04:59So after Hawkins' first voyage,
00:05:02everybody can see the potential here, the potential for profit,
00:05:05the potential for trading into the Spanish colonies in the new world.
00:05:08So Hawkins, unsurprisingly, decides to take a second
00:05:12voyage, a second slaving voyage in fifteen sixty four.
00:05:15This one is different from his earlier voyage because this one
00:05:19has royal backing.
00:05:22Queen Elizabeth sees the potential for profit here and gets involved.
00:05:23She's one of the backers of this voyage.
00:05:27She actually gives Hawkins an old naval ship called the Jesus of Lubeck,
00:05:29and he's allowed to fly the Royal Standard on his ships.
00:05:33So this voyage has sanctioned from the Queen of England.
00:05:36The first voyage was really just a private voyage by
00:05:39Hawkins for profit, but now the Queen is getting involved.
00:05:41Obviously, as you can imagine,
00:05:46the Spanish were not happy about this.
00:05:47The Spanish ambassador in London, Da Silva,
00:05:49complains to the Queen,
00:05:51he complains to his master Philip II about the actions of
00:05:52men like Hawkins, but everybody ignores him.
00:05:56The Queen and people like Hawkins aren't going to not go
00:05:59because it's profitable.
00:06:02And Hawkins sails on his second voyage,
00:06:03and it's even more profitable than his first one.
00:06:06Da Silva estimated in his complaints that there was a
00:06:08profit of sixty percent on this voyage.
00:06:11So as you can imagine,
00:06:14this is something that English merchants, English sailors,
00:06:16traders, and nobles are taking more and more notice of.
00:06:19One of the things that's really interesting about Hawkins'
00:06:23second voyage is how he comes home.
00:06:26Because Hawkins doesn't just sail straight back across the
00:06:28ocean, he actually sails up the coast of North America to
00:06:31Newfoundland before crossing to sail home for England.
00:06:35And on the way,
00:06:38he stops in Florida and sees a French settlement there,
00:06:39and He thinks there's actual real potential here for
00:06:42settlement, for English settlement in the New World.
00:06:45As it happens, this French settlement is destroyed soon after by the Spanish,
00:06:48but we're starting to see Englishmen thinking about
00:06:52settling, colonizing in the Americas,
00:06:55and also this link into privateering and voyages and
00:06:58trading against the Spanish.
00:07:02So as early as the fifteen sixties,
00:07:04we're seeing some Englishmen thinking about these ideas.
00:07:06Elizabeth, unsurprisingly,
00:07:09was very pleased with Hawkins and the profit that he made
00:07:11from the voyage when he comes home,
00:07:14but at this point the Spanish complaints are so loud and so
00:07:16annoying that Elizabeth forbids Hawkins from going on a third voyage.
00:07:20She says to him, nope, you're not allowed, go.
00:07:24And instead, Hawkins sends another captain who'd sailed with him,
00:07:27a man called John Lovell,
00:07:30on a voyage to slave to the West Coast of Africa and then
00:07:32to the Caribbean.
00:07:36Lovell's voyage isn't particularly successful.
00:07:37He's not as good a commander as Hawkins.
00:07:40But a few years later in fifteen sixty seven,
00:07:43Hawkins decides to go with Sir Francis Drake,
00:07:46Sir Francis Drake as he was then,
00:07:49on a third voyage to the Caribbean.
00:07:51The Queen again backs this voyage.
00:07:54So Elizabeth likes the profit that she can make from these voyages.
00:07:56Elizabeth as a queen is always slightly broke and looking for more money,
00:08:00so any chance to make a profit is incredibly desirable for the
00:08:04Queen.
00:08:07By now, as you can imagine,
00:08:09the Spanish were very annoyed with men like Hawkins,
00:08:11and this time they send a fleet.
00:08:14They have a naval presence in the Caribbean ready to
00:08:17intercept Hawkins and his ships,
00:08:20and this is what happens on the third voyage.
00:08:22Hawkins and his ships run into the Spanish and they're
00:08:25defeated quite badly.
00:08:28A number of ships are sunk or destroyed and quite a large
00:08:29number of the crew are killed.
00:08:33Hawkins and Drake managed to escape back home to England and
00:08:35Hawkins returns to Cornwall in January fifteen sixty nine.
00:08:39He writes to the Queen at this point to say,
00:08:42all is lost save only honor.
00:08:44So this third voyage and the defeat by the Spanish really
00:08:48marks the end of English interest in slaving
00:08:52voyages in the late sixteenth century to the Caribbean.
00:08:56What we see now is something that's really really
00:09:00interesting because, yes, we see the end of slaving
00:09:02voyages, but what men like Hawkins and
00:09:07Drake and other English sailors do is they realize the weakness
00:09:10and the vulnerability of Spanish territories in the
00:09:14New World.
00:09:17They realize how vulnerable the Spanish colonies are,
00:09:19how relatively undefended,
00:09:22and how wealthy Spanish towns and garrisons are.
00:09:24They also realize that by and large,
00:09:28the Spanish do not have a large naval presence in the region,
00:09:30That Spanish shipping is relatively unprotected
00:09:34and is carrying large amounts of very desirable goods and
00:09:37treasure that can potentially be attacked and captured.
00:09:41The Englishmen feel aggrieved by being cut out of this trade.
00:09:45Under Hawkins, they see opportunity.
00:09:51So now we're starting to think about these opportunities.
00:09:53And for men like Hawkins,
00:09:57we're also seeing these ideas about potential settlement in
00:09:58North America, potentially setting up bases of operations.
00:10:02So probably not quite colonies at this point in time,
00:10:06but you could set up places where you could work from,
00:10:09where your ships could trade from,
00:10:12where you could gain wealth from,
00:10:14where you could refit and refitile your ships.
00:10:16So essentially, what you're seeing is English sailors and English merchants
00:10:20are starting to see opportunities in the new world,
00:10:23and at the same time,
00:10:25they're starting to see the weakness of the Spanish and how
00:10:26they can potentially attack the Spanish in this region,
00:10:30and they're becoming more and more aggrieved with the
00:10:34Spanish.
00:10:37Hawken's voyages also serve to give a lot of English sailors
00:10:38experience crossing the Atlantic,
00:10:42experience operating in the Caribbean, experience
00:10:44sailing around this area,
00:10:49and they also meet lots of interesting people in these voyages.
00:10:50They meet local traders, local merchants,
00:10:54local Spanish colonists who give them information,
00:10:56who are willing to provide information that they can use.
00:10:59They also meet lots of escaped slaves who are willing to help
00:11:03them attack the Spanish and profit.
00:11:07So really what we see by the end of the fifteen sixties is
00:11:09that English sailors are starting to have a lot of
00:11:13information about the Caribbean,
00:11:16a lot of information about North America,
00:11:18which they're going to put to good use as we move into the
00:11:20fifteen seventies.
00:11:23
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Murphy , E. (2024, November 12). British Empire — Elizabethan Privateers, 1500-1600 - What Was European Trade in the New World Like in the 16th Century? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/british-empire-elizabethan-privateers
MLA style
Murphy , E. "British Empire — Elizabethan Privateers, 1500-1600 – What Was European Trade in the New World Like in the 16th Century?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 13 Nov 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/british-empire-elizabethan-privateers