Page 104 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, pacific 1881

the Pacific region occurred between the mid-eighteenth many other products were exchanged directly and indi-
century (end of the Mexican silver cycle) and the mid- rectly (via Western manufacturers) for Chinese silks and
nineteenth century (initiation of the “gold period”), when tea. Sometimes ecological consequences were also indi-
intensified exploration combined with new commercial rect, such as when the forests of Fiji were destroyed to
opportunities. Although Dampier’s voyage contributed provide fuel for drying sea cucumbers for export.
Australia to the global map as early as 1669, voyages by Nineteenth-century Hawaiian kings ordered forests
Bougainville and Cook a century later added Tahiti, torched in order to detect the distinct aroma of burning
Samoa, eastern Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii to sandalwood, a product exported mainly to China. All
the list of “new worlds” explored by Europeans. Only kinds of special products from the Pacific entered the Chi-
after Cook’s eighteenth-century explorations were many nese marketplace directly; or Pacific products could be
insular Pacific societies meaningfully linked to the world sold elsewhere in exchange for silver (since China was
economy. In 1788 a British fleet established a penal still the world’s largest market for the white metal). Soci-
colony in Australia. eties isolated for millennia were suddenly linked to world
Although the impact of American plants like maize, markets with millions of people demanding products
potatoes, peanuts, and cassava (the “Magellan Ex- from their fragile ecosystems. Scarcity of previously gath-
change”) on mainland Asian societies was immense, the ered Pacific products after 1850 reduced focus on the
450 European ships that crossed the Pacific between Chinese marketplace. American colonists had imported
1521 and 1769 generated little ecological impact on Chinese products since 1700, and merchants from Amer-
many Pacific islands initially. Cook’s voyages dramati- ica’s East Coast arrived in Canton after the American
cally accelerated impacts on the islands.The first conse- Revolution. American, British, and Russian seal hunters
quence of the European contact was a demographic scoured the America’s Pacific coast between 1780 and
catastrophe that involved a 90 to 95 percent population 1850 in response to demand for furs destined mainly for
decline on many islands; population numbers stabi- Chinese, Russian, and European markets. Indeed, the
lized around 1880–1920, and only grew subsequently. northward spread of Spanish missions up California’s
Diseases, enslavement, and migration were factors in the coast was a response to southward expansions by non-
decline. Labor migration contributed to the spread of Spanish fur traders, especially Russians. And by 1800
germs around the Pacific. Introduction of new crops and American whalers and seal hunters were active along the
alien species—such as grazing animals, mosquitoes, coasts of South America and Antarctica.
and rodents—altered island ecologies. Sheep were intro-
duced in Australia and New Zealand for the textile The Gold Period
industry.Thanks to the use of quinine (from trees in the The Pacific’s “gold period” began in 1848 with the Cali-
Andes) for combating malaria, native or Asian wage fornia gold rush and corresponded with expansion of the
laborers were used to develop island plantations that U.S., British, Dutch, and French influence on the Asian
emerged around the Pacific. mainland. Railroad expansion connected interior regions
Many perceive European voyages and settlements as with continental ports, while steamship technologies rev-
the main unifying forces around the Pacific, but American olutionized intercontinental commerce. European
and European merchants actually served as middlemen steamships and powerful new guns were decisive in over-
between Chinese markets and Pacific Island ecosystems, throwing the status quo in Asia. Commodore Perry
which suffered resource depletion on a grand scale.With imposed a commercial treaty on Japan’s isolationist Toku-
the exception of whaling, extractive activities were gawa regime in 1854 and within a few decades Japan
directed to the Chinese market. Sandalwood, sealskins, industrialized.Victories over China in 1894–1895, then
beche-de-mer (sea cucumber), tortoiseshell, timber, and Russia in 1904–1905 demonstrated Japan’s emergence