2.1 The World in 1750

Why the World in 1750 Matters on Global II

The Regents Examination in Global History and Geography II begins its chronology around 1750 because that date is a useful "before" snapshot. Framework unit 10.1 asks you to picture a world of strong, stable empires and kingdoms before the Enlightenment, the Atlantic Revolutions, and industrialization reshaped it. Part I usually carries 0–3 multiple-choice items on 1750, but the unit also supplies the comparison baseline you need for later turning-point and causation questions.

The key exam skill here is comparison: you should be able to state both a similarity and a difference between two large states. A classic Regents distractor offers one true fact that does not actually answer the comparison being asked.

Eurasian Land-Based Empires

In 1750 most of the world's population lived under large land-based empires that ruled diverse religious and ethnic groups. Memorize these five and one signature feature of each.

Note the shared pattern: these were monarchies, not democracies, and most participated in long-distance trade rather than rejecting it. The Tokugawa alternate attendance system is a frequent answer for "how did Japan centralize power," and the Qing Canton System is the standard answer for limited, controlled trade. A second pattern is administrative reach: these empires were too large to govern directly from the capital, so they relied on local elites — Ottoman provincial governors, Mughal zamindar tax collectors, Qing scholar-officials chosen by the Confucian civil service exam, and Japanese daimyo.

That blend of central authority and local administration is what distinguishes a land empire from the smaller, trade-focused European states, and it is exactly the contrast unit 10.1 wants you to draw.

African Kingdoms

The Framework spotlights coastal and Sahelian African kingdoms active in trans-Saharan and Atlantic commerce:

• Songhai had been the great Sahelian gold-salt power (its capital, Timbuktu, a center of Islamic learning) before its 1591 fall, leaving a legacy of trade routes.
• Kongo and Benin were West-Central and West African coastal kingdoms trading with Portuguese and later other Europeans.
• Asante (Ashanti) and Dahomey rose as powerful states deeply involved in the Atlantic slave trade, exchanging captives for European firearms and goods.

The exam point is that Africa in 1750 was not a blank space waiting for Europeans; it held organized states with their own armies, trade networks, and governments. These kingdoms negotiated with Europeans on the coast, and the firearms-for-captives exchange shows how the Atlantic economy reshaped African politics well before formal colonization in the 1800s.

European Maritime Empires and Mercantilism

Against the land empires stood Europe's maritime empires — Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, Britain, and France — built on overseas colonies rather than contiguous territory. Their economic logic was mercantilism: a nation's wealth was measured in gold and silver (bullion), colonies existed to supply raw materials and buy finished goods, and a favorable balance of trade (export more than you import) was the goal.

Joint-stock companies such as the British and Dutch East India Companies financed risky long-distance ventures by pooling investors' money, and over time these chartered companies acted almost like governments — raising armies, signing treaties, and ruling territory in India and Indonesia. Mercantilism explains many later exam events: it is why Britain taxed its American colonies, why colonies were forbidden to manufacture competing goods, and why control of bullion-producing colonies mattered so much.

Global Trade Networks and the Columbian Exchange Legacy

By 1750 these empires were linked in one network. Spanish American silver (from Potosi and Mexico) flowed across the Atlantic and Pacific into China, where the Qing demanded silver for taxes. The Atlantic slave trade carried millions of enslaved Africans to plantation colonies producing sugar, tobacco, and cotton. The ongoing Columbian Exchange kept moving crops (maize, potatoes, cassava), animals, and diseases between hemispheres — American food crops fueled population growth in Afro-Eurasia.

Absolutism vs. Constitutionalism

Finally, 1750 frames a debate the rest of the course resolves. Absolutism concentrated power in a hereditary monarch claiming divine right — France's Louis XIV ("L'etat, c'est moi," the palace of Versailles) is the model, as are Russia's tsars. Constitutionalism limited the ruler by law: England's Glorious Revolution (1688) and the English Bill of Rights (1689) subordinated the monarch to Parliament, guaranteeing rights and regular parliaments.

Remember the contrast as a single sentence the exam can test: absolutism concentrates power in one unchecked ruler, while constitutionalism limits the ruler through law and a representative body. This tension previews unit 10.2, where Enlightenment thinkers supply the arguments — natural rights and consent of the governed — that turn constitutionalism into a revolutionary demand.