Author: Ecila Carpin, West Campus High School
📍Sacramento, CA

By the 16th and 17th centuries, the European countries were in an arms race to expand their power and wealth through colonization and trade with the New World. The need to expand trading access to Asia led to the discovery of a whole new continent, allowing the Europeans to utilize the new resources from the Old World for innovation and profit. The economic motivations and strict control over the colonies led to competitive mercantilist policies, which resulted in major rivalries between the European empires shown by the several military conflicts that had been started like the French and Indian War.  Although economic factors were a primary cause of conflict in both the Old and New Worlds during the 16th and 17th centuries, Economic reasons like competition over trade routes and resource exploitation was a significant reason to expand their territory while desiring more power,  even though religious tensions and political rivalries still played significant roles in shaping conflicts.

Economic competition over trade routes and resources between European countries intensified conflicts across the Old World during the 16th and 17th centuries because of the desire to gain land and power. The Portuguese and Spanish controlled profitable spice trade routes from Asia to Europe during the period before 1600 while dominating colonization across the continents. Their monopolies on spices including pepper, nutmeg, and cloves drove other European powers, famously the Dutch and the English, to compete to gain access to their resources. With the formation of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Dutch raided Portuguese possessions in Asia, including Malacca, worsening the Portuguese’s control of the spice trade Strayer and Nelson 254). Competition between the Dutch and the English against the Portuguese over those economic trade routes showed how profit from spice monopolies fuelled a conflict that increased the European presence in Asia. English rivalry involving Caribbean trade with the Spanish Empire, mainly in sugar and tobacco, was caused by several skirmishes and even full-scale wars (Strayer and Nelson, 272). With approval from the English crown, English soldiers began destroying Spanish ships and settlements where the cargo was very precious. That only intensified hostilities as the two powers fought to monopolize lucrative Caribbean resources of Sugar. These frequent soldier attacks by the English showed how economic incentives led to state-sanctioned piracy and territorial aggression. 

Economic exploitations of the Natives in the Old World through forced labor, mining, and exploitation led to conflicts between European countries involving the indigenous populations. The discovery of huge silver reserves at Potosí, Bolivia, led the Spanish to do intensive mining operations dependent upon forced indigenous labor through the Mita system. Such harsh working conditions and high mortality rates in the mines caused resentment and occasional resistance from indigenous populations, while the high profitability of silver attracted rival European countries (Strayer & Nelson, 259). Silver mining in Potosí shows the economic transformation of the New World into a resource-extraction economy controlled by European countries in a mercantilist system. Indigenous economies, which used to be diverse and self-reliant, were now focused on producing wealth for European countries to gain economic profit even when the natives suffered through harsh conditions. In a colonial period painting of the Potosí mines, the inhumane work conditions that workers had to bear are illustrated, working with toxic mercury and enduring a lot of hard time (Anonymous, 260). The purpose was to illustrate the importance of the Potosí silver mines in the colonial wealth but it also highlights the very brutal conditions of the laborers. The historical background is the massive economic change characterized by the silver trade as Ming China switched from paper currency to silver. The extraction was harsh which led to the enrichment of Europe, while the native populations along with their health were being treated badly. This could also be represented by the red hills of the silver mines symbolizing the death of the native population. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were generally dominated by the Spanish and Portuguese, who depended heavily on the labor of enslaved Africans. This made sugar-fueled economic rivalries among the European empires highly profitable, with repeated attacks on rival plantations and settlements as each nation sought to dominate the sugar trade (Strayer & Nelson, 302).  This picture shows a white soldier with a whip monitoring the natives who seem like they were forced to be there. A picture shows how the Portuguese exploited the indigenous workers in the areas that they conquered in the areas of Arabia and Indonesia (Anonymous, 252). This picture’s perspective shows how the portuguese were exploiting the native labor in order to get resources and advance their own country.  In North America, the fur trade was characterized by large-scale alliances between French traders and various indigenous groups, like the Huron and Algonquin, who provided valuable animal pelts. As the English and Dutch also joined in the fur trade, competition increased and intertribal wars over land and hunting grounds became common, often encouraged by rival European traders (Strayer & Nelson, 262). Economic motives in the fur trade enhanced conflicts in two ways: through Native American tribes, as each wanted multiple European trading partners; and through European powers, as each fought for dominance over the profitable North American market.

Although economic factors played a main role in the instigation of conflicts between the European powers, Religious and political rivalries had a significant effect in shaping the conflicts between European nations in the New and Old World. The Protestant Reformation sharpened religious divisions between Catholic and Protestant European powers. This helped fuel conflicts, such as that of the Spanish Armada, which they attempt by Catholic Spain to invade Protestant England, that was not only motivated by a quest for religious goals but also to secure maritime routes and deteriorate English influence in the Atlantic (Strayer & Nelson, 298). The religious divisions in many conflicts were usually coinciding with economic interests, proving that economic factors had been dominant but not completely free of ideological motivation. In a letter from 1588, Philip II of Spain explains his intention to invade England in order to restore Catholicism, thus combining a holy and political motivation for the conflict of the Spanish Armada against England (Phillip II, 1588). From the perspective of Philip II, a very Catholic king, it was clear that he wanted to reunite Europe under Catholicism, but the purpose of his letter makes showed the larger political and economic stakes involved in defeating a Protestant maritime rival. Alliances between France and indigenous peoples, such as the Huron, in North America were driven in part by France’s need for political allies against British colonial expansion. The alliances allowed France to hold off British territorial encroachment and retain its economic interests in the fur trade (Strayer & Nelson, 265). The French use of indigenous alliances shows how political partnerships served economic interests, increasing political rivalry together with economic competition in the New World. 

Economic factors were fundamental in driving conflicts in both the Old and New Worlds during the 16th and 17th centuries, as competition over trade routes, resources, and labor systems led to frequent hostilities among European powers, while political and religious causes added to this conflict the desire to expand land and earn profits significantly drove rivalries. These economic and political motivations foreshadowed future patterns of imperialism, like in the 19th century when European powers, were driven by economic interests and nationalist rivalries, carved up Africa and Asia in the “Scramble for Africa.” Like the conflicts that happened during the 16th and 17th centuries, this later period of expansion had the theme of economic gain and political prestige as coexisting colonization methods, shown to be recurring in resource-driven imperialism and the competing ambitions of great powers. The 19th-century imperial expansion proved that the European empires continued to use economic motivations as a main reason for conflict with deep involvement in global relationships and local societies in a competition for dominance.