Europeans and Asian Commerce

• Schoolchildren all around the world know that European empires in the Western Hemisphere sprang from an accident — Columbus's unwitting contact with the Americas — and that the consequence was new colonial cultures and trade links across the Atlantic. It was a very different story in Asia.

• The demand for tropical spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, and, above all, pepper — which were widely used as sauces and preservatives and were often regarded as aphrodisiacs — was the most urgent impetus for this huge effort.

• The overall revival of European culture following the tragedy of the Black Death in the early fourteenth century fueled this rising interest in Asia.

• Eastern products have been trickling into the Mediterranean for ages through the Middle East's economic network. Several important difficulties accompanied this trading pattern from the perspective of a more active Europe.

• Another issue for Europeans was paying for products from the East. In Eastern markets, few items from a less developed Europe were appealing. As a result, Europeans had to pay in currency — gold or silver — for Asian spices and fabrics.

A Portuguese Empire of Commerce

• Vasco da Gama and his Portuguese successors sailed into a world of Indian Ocean trade, regularly unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was massive, both in terms of geographical scope and the range of persons who took part. East Africans, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Malaysians, Chinese, and others were all free to trade.

• The Portuguese saw an opportunity in these circumstances since their ships could outgun and outmaneuver rival naval forces, while their onboard guns could destroy coastal defenses. Despite having a slower overall economy than Asian producers, Europeans had caught up in the crucial areas of naval technology and naval combat.

• The Portuguese established a "trading post empire" in the Indian Ocean, to control trade rather than vast territory or populations, and doing so by the power of armies rather than economic rivalry.

• The Portuguese gradually adapted themselves to the traditional patterns of Indian Ocean commerce after failing to control it as they had anticipated. Because they were unable to sell their commodities, they got actively involved in transporting Asian goods to Asian ports and marketing their shipping services.

The East India Companies

• The Dutch and English, who both entered the Indian Ocean trade in the early seventeenth century, were far more significant as European competitors for the spice trade than the Spanish. They rapidly conquered and ousted the Portuguese, often by force, while also competing fiercely with one another.

• The Dutch worked to control not just the transportation of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace, but also their production, operating in an area with fragmented and weak governmental power. The Dutch took possession of several tiny spice-producing islands with much bloodshed, compelling its inhabitants to sell solely to the Dutch and destroy the crops of those who refused.

• The British East India Company functioned in a different way than the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch monopoly kept the British out of the lucrative Spice Islands because they were less well-funded and economically sophisticated.

• Both the Dutch and the English, like the Portuguese before them, became deeply involved in Asian commerce. They were able to buy Asian products without having to pay for them in gold or silver from Europe because of the earnings from this "carrying trade."

Silver and Global Commerce

• It was the silver trade, not the Eurasia spice trade, that gave rise to a truly worldwide network of commerce. Silver, according to one historian, "traveled across the world and made the world go round." 12 The discovery of extremely rich silver mines in Bolivia and Japan in the mid-sixteenth century resulted in a massive rise in the supply of precious metal.

• China's massive economy, particularly its rising need for silver, was at the core of that Pacific network, and of early modern world commerce in general. In the 1570s, Chinese officials merged a number of different taxes into a single one, which the country's vast population was forced to pay in silver.

• This demand sent silver in motion all across the world, with China receiving the lion's share of the world's silver supply and much of the rest ending up elsewhere in Asia. There were various channels via which this "silver drain" functioned. Traders from China, Portugal, and the Netherlands rushed to Manila to sell Chinese products for silver.

The Slave Trade In Context

• Slavery in the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade was the most recent large-scale manifestations of a very common human practice: the ownership and exchange of human people. Certain early gathering and hunting cultures, as well as some village-based agricultural peoples and pastoral communities, had it.

• Slavery was also manifested in a variety of ways. Slaves were vulnerable "outsiders" in their masters' society worldwide, although they may be incorporated into their owners' homes, lineages, or communities in many areas.

• In some respects, the slavery that developed in the Americas was unique. The first was the massive scale of the slave trade and its importance to colonial America's economies.

• The beginnings of Atlantic slavery can easily be traced back to the Mediterranean civilization and the use of sugar, a now-common sweetener. Until the Crusades, Europeans knew nothing of sugar and relied on honey and fruits to sweeten their bland diets.