Jesenia Arzaga

Chapter 14 Economic Transformations European empires in the Western Hemisphere grew out of an accident - Columbu's unknowing encounter with the Americans --- and that new colonial societies and new commercial connections across the Atlantic were the result  The voyage of the Portuguese mariner Vasco da Game, in which Europeans sailed to India for the first time, was certainly no accident  Portuguese effort to explore a sea route to the East by creeping slowly down the West Africa coast, around the tip of South Africa up the East Africa coast, and finally across the Indian Ocean to Calicut in southern India in 1489 There Europeans encountered an ancient and rich network of commerce that stretched from East Africa to China  The most immediate motivation for this massive effort was the desire for tropical spices -- cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, clovers, and, above all, pepper -- which were widely used as condiments and preservatives and were sometimes regarded as aphrodisia...

Chapter 13 The Early Modern World  An Early Modern Era? The most obvious expression of globalization lay in the oceanic journeys of European explorers and the European conquests and colonial settlement of the Americans The Atlantic slave trade linked Africa permanently to the Western Hemisphere, while the global silver trade allowed Europeans to use New World precious metals to buy their way into ancient Asian trade routes Russians marched across Siberia  The massive transfer of plants, animals, disease, and people known to historians as the Columbian exchange, created wholly new networks of interactions across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, with enormous global implications  The most obviously modern culture development took place in Europe  The scientific revolution transformed at least for a few people their view of the world their approach to knowledge and their understanding of Christianity  Demographically, China, Japan, India, and Europe...