Chapter 13 - Political Transformations

Chapter 13 mainly outlines the European colonization of all different regions of the world. Those empires of Western Europe were able to conquer territories that lay much further away from them which was something that was very new during this time period. The Europeans were much more motivated to colonize than the Chinese, Indian, and Muslim empires because these empires already had rich markets. On the other hand European's were becoming aware that their region was marginal compared to the others. This factor combined with other factors such as the desire to avoid reliance on Muslim intermediaries between Asian wealth made the idea of colonization very desirable for Europeans.

There were many consequences that came with European conquest. The most significant one was the complete collapse of Native American societies. These Native peoples were not used to the European and African diseases that they came across and this nearly took out all of their population. The amount of death that came across these areas was in the tens of millions. This phenomenon is known as the Great Dying. Many immigrant newcomers came to the America's because of rapid population loss of the Natives. This included both the African slaves and the colonizing Europeans. This brought rapid change to the America's because they brought their foreign plants and domesticated animals which were not originally in America.

The main colonial areas in the Americas were the Aztec and Inca lands of Mexico/Peru, the settler colonies in the New England area,  and the sugar colonies in South America. Each of these colonial societies had their respective European colonizers and they each had their own distinctions.

Although a large part of Chapter 13 talks about the Europeans and their colonization in the America's, there is also quite a bit of information at the end of this chapter regarding the different empires that were emerging throughout the world. First comes the Russian Empire, which was beginning to take shape and expand eastward and westward . They took over Siberia and the Steppes and completely Russified the people of these areas. Next, the textbook talks about the building of the Chinese empire. Chinese expanded into Central Asia, inhabiting Mongolia, Xinjang, and Tibet into their empire. The rest of the chapter summarizes the Muslims and Hindis in the Mughal Empire as well as the Muslims and Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

Ultimately, there was an enormous amount of political transformations occurring all over the world. This time period from 1450-1750 gave way to a complete world transformation and new patterns of development followed all of these empire forming projects.