Chapter : 1. The Making of a Global World
Conquest, Disease and Trade
Conquest, Disease and Trade :
(i) (i) The pre-modern world shrank greatly in the sixteenth century after European sailors found a sea route to Asia and also successfully crossed the western ocean to America. For centuries before, the Indian Ocean had known a bustling trade. The entry of the Europeans helped expand or redirect some of these flows towards Europe.
(ii) From the sixteenth century, America's vast lands and abundant crops and minerals began to transform trade and lives everywhere.
(iii) Mining of precious metals from present day Peru and Mexico, enhanced Europe's wealth and financed its trade with Asia. legends spread in seventeenth-century Europe about South America's fabled wealth. many expeditions set off in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.
(iv) European conquest was not just a result of superior firepower. Most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was the germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their person. Because of their long isolation, America's original inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases. Smallpox, once introduced spread deep into the continent, ahead even of any Europeans reaching there, it killed and decimated whole communities, paving the way for conquest.
(v) Poverty, Hunger, Crowded cities, deadly diseases, Religious conflicts and prosecution of religious dissenters forced thousands of Europeans to flee Europe for America.
(vi) From the fifteenth century, China restricted overseas contacts and retreated into isolation. China's reduced role and the rising importance of the Americas gradually moved the centre of world trade westwards. Europe now emerged as the centre of would trade.
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