Page 392 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

into the lives of artisans and merchants. Pepper and spices from the Indies, West Indian and Brazilian sugar, and Asian coffee and tea were becoming more readily available to European consumers.
Trade within Europe remained strong throughout the eighteenth century, although this trade increased only slightly while overseas trade boomed. From 1716 to
1789, total French exports quadrupled; intra-European trade, which constituted 75 percent of these exports in 1716, accounted for only 50 percent of the total in 1789. This increase in overseas trade has led some his- torians to proclaim the emergence of a truly global econ- omy in the eighteenth century. Trade patterns now interlocked Europe, Africa, the East, and the Americas.
Chapter Summary
At the end of the fifteenth century, Europeans sailed out into the world in all directions. Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century with the hand- ful of Portuguese ships that ventured southward along the West African coast, bringing back slaves and gold, the process of European expansion accelerated with the epochal voyages
of Christopher Columbus to the Americas and Vasco da Gama to the Indian Ocean in the 1490s. The Portuguese Empire was based on trade; Portugal’s population was too small for it to es- tablish large colonies. But Spain had greater resources. Spanish conquistadors overthrew both the Aztec and Inca Empires, and Spain created two major administrative units in New Spain and Peru that subjected the native population to Spanish control. Catholic missionaries, under the control of the Spanish crown, brought Christianity, including cathedrals and schools.
Soon a number of other European peoples, including the Dutch, British, and French, had joined in the process of expan- sion, and by the end of the eighteenth century, they had created a global trade network dominated by Western ships and Western power. Although originally less prized than gold and spices, slaves became a major object of trade, and by the nineteenth cen- tury 10 million African slaves had been shipped to the Americas. Slavery was common in Africa, and the African terminus of the trade was in the hands of the Africans, but the insatiable demand for slaves led to increased warfare on that unfortunate continent.
It was not until the late 1700s that slavery came under harsh criticism in Europe.
In less than three hundred
years, the European age of
exploration had changed the
shape of the world. In some
areas, such as the Americas
and the Spice Islands in Asia,
it led to the destruction of
indigenous civilizations and
the establishment of European colonies. In others, such as Africa, India, and mainland Southeast Asia, it left native regimes intact but had a strong impact on local societies and regional trade patterns. Japan and China were least affected.
At the time, many European observers viewed the process in a favorable light. They believed that it not only expanded wealth through world trade and the exchange of crops and discoveries between the Old World and the New, but also introduced “heathen peoples” to the message of Jesus. No doubt, the con- quest of the Americas and expansion into the rest of the world brought out the worst and some of the best of European civiliza- tion. The greedy plundering of resources and the brutal repres- sion and enslavement were hardly balanced by attempts to create new institutions, convert the natives to Christianity, and foster the rights of the indigenous peoples. In any event, Europeans had begun to change the face of the world and increasingly saw their culture, with its religion, languages, and technology, as a coherent force to be exported to all corners of the world.
354 Chapter 14 Europe and the World: New Encounters, 1500–1800
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