1. The Crusades transported information of the Islamic world’s grander economy and the merchandises that could be imported from Asia. The Mongol Empire, which hurried up interactions between the civilizations of Asia, also encouraged European interest. The plummet of the khans in China interrupted this exchange, as China became once again a land of mystery to Europeans. Europe’s upper classes had by this time become habituated to introduced products from Southeast Asia and India, particularly spices. These goods were brought to the Middle East in Arab ships, and then brought overland, where they were put onto vessels for the Mediterranean trade. Europeans entered into this era of growing contacts with several disadvantages. They remained oblivious
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The Columbian Exchange was a wide change, generated by Europe’s maritime dominance, and developed from the 1490s onward. This was an exchange of foods, diseases, and people. The extension of international contacts spread disease. The victims were millions of Native Americans who had not been previously exposed to Afro-Eurasian diseases such as smallpox and measles and who therefore had no natural immunities. They died in large numbers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More than half the native population dies, some estimates run as high as eighty percent, in North and South America. Whole island populations in the Indies were wiped out. This was a major blow to earlier civilizations in the Americans as well as an opportunity for Europeans to forge a partially new population of their own citizens and slaves imported from Africa. The devastation occurred over a period of one hundred fifty years, although in some areas it was faster. The same dreadful patters played out, devastating vibrant cultures, when Europeans made contact with Polynesians and Pacific Coast peoples in the eighteenth century. New World crops were spread rapidly via Western merchants. American corn and sweet potatoes were taken up widely in China (where merchants learned of them from Spaniards in the Philippines), the Mediterranean, and parts of Africa. These productive new crops, along with local agricultural improvements, triggered large population increases in some cases. For example, new …show more content…
Europeans satisfied themselves with minor coastal strongholds rather than entitle themselves to large territories of their own. Generally, environment, illness, and unnavigable waterways discouraged the Europeans from reaching into the inland. From original coastal settlements, Portugal directed expeditions into Angola in exploration of slaves. These expeditions had a more undeviating and more troublemaking impact in this part of southwestern Africa than away along the Atlantic coast. More imperative still was the Cape Colony established by the Dutch on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. The intent was to form another coastal station to stock Dutch vessels bound for Asia. But, some Dutch farmers were sent, and these Boers (farmers) began to fan out on large farms in a region still lightly populated by Africans. They clashed with local hunting groups, enslaving some of them. Only after 1770 did the expanding Boer settlements directly conflict with Bantu farmers, opening a long battle for control of southern Africa that raged until the late twentieth century in the nation of South
The Columbian Exchange was a wide change, generated by Europe’s maritime dominance, and developed from the 1490s onward. This was an exchange of foods, diseases, and people. The extension of international contacts spread disease. The victims were millions of Native Americans who had not been previously exposed to Afro-Eurasian diseases such as smallpox and measles and who therefore had no natural immunities. They died in large numbers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More than half the native population dies, some estimates run as high as eighty percent, in North and South America. Whole island populations in the Indies were wiped out. This was a major blow to earlier civilizations in the Americans as well as an opportunity for Europeans to forge a partially new population of their own citizens and slaves imported from Africa. The devastation occurred over a period of one hundred fifty years, although in some areas it was faster. The same dreadful patters played out, devastating vibrant cultures, when Europeans made contact with Polynesians and Pacific Coast peoples in the eighteenth century. New World crops were spread rapidly via Western merchants. American corn and sweet potatoes were taken up widely in China (where merchants learned of them from Spaniards in the Philippines), the Mediterranean, and parts of Africa. These productive new crops, along with local agricultural improvements, triggered large population increases in some cases. For example, new …show more content…
Europeans satisfied themselves with minor coastal strongholds rather than entitle themselves to large territories of their own. Generally, environment, illness, and unnavigable waterways discouraged the Europeans from reaching into the inland. From original coastal settlements, Portugal directed expeditions into Angola in exploration of slaves. These expeditions had a more undeviating and more troublemaking impact in this part of southwestern Africa than away along the Atlantic coast. More imperative still was the Cape Colony established by the Dutch on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. The intent was to form another coastal station to stock Dutch vessels bound for Asia. But, some Dutch farmers were sent, and these Boers (farmers) began to fan out on large farms in a region still lightly populated by Africans. They clashed with local hunting groups, enslaving some of them. Only after 1770 did the expanding Boer settlements directly conflict with Bantu farmers, opening a long battle for control of southern Africa that raged until the late twentieth century in the nation of South