Page 63 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

Prelude to m’zungu colonisation of Africa

"Veni, Vidi,"

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In 1453 the fall of Constantinople to the hands of the Ottomans was a blow to
Christendom and the established business relations linking with the east

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European overseas expansion led to the contact between the Old and New World
producing the Columbian Exchange,named after Columbus. It started the global silver
trade from the 16th to 18th centuries and led to direct European involvement in the

Chinese porcelain trade. It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to
another. Europeans brought cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World, and from the

New World Europeans received tobacco, potatoes and maize. Other items becoming
important in global trade were the sugarcane and cotton crops of the Americas, and the
gold and silver brought from the Americas not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Old

World.

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The new trans-oceanic links and their domination by the European powers led to the Age

of Imperialism, where European colonial powers came to control most of the planet. The
European appetite for trade, commodities, empire and slaves greatly affected many other
areas of the world.

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in coastal Africa, local states supplied the appetite of European slave traders, changing

the complexion of coastal African states and fundamentally altering the nature of African
slavery, causing impacts on societies and economies deep inland

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As a wider variety of global luxury commodities entered the European markets by sea,
previous European markets for luxury goods stagnated. The Atlantic trade largely

supplanted pre-existing Italian and German trading powers which had relied on their
Baltic, Russian and Islamic trade links.

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The European economic centre shifted from the Mediterranean to Western Europe.”

"Age of Discovery." 36
Wikipedia

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" When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European
access to the area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North

Africa and the Red Sea, two very important trade routes to the Far East.