Page 94 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

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separate world zones of the agrarian era.The first signif- most important of all, the impact of Eurasian pathogens
icant states had emerged in western Europe during the such as smallpox crippled the Aztec and Inca empires and
first millennium CE as the region had been absorbed secured for the Spanish government an astonishing wind-
within the commercial and cultural hinterland of the fall of trade goods and precious metals that funded the
Roman empire. Early during the ninth century the first first empire to straddle the Atlantic Ocean. European dis-
holy Roman emperor, Charlemagne, tried to create a eases were particularly destructive in the Americas be-
revived Roman empire from a base on the border cause most natives lacked immunity to the diseases that
between modern France and Germany. His failure helps had spread through Afro-Eurasia through many cen-
explain why Europe emerged as a region of competing turies. Estimates of the population decline during the six-
medium-sized states. Because such states had a more lim- teenth century in the most densely populated regions of
ited tax base than great imperial powers such as the the Americas range from 50 percent to almost 90 percent.
Abbasid empire or China’s Tang (618–907 CE) empire, Control of global trade networks brought European
they had to seek alternative sources of revenue, including states great commercial wealth,but it also brought an influx
revenues from trade, to survive the vicious warfare that of new information about geography, the natural world,
became the norm in this region. and the customs of other societies.The torrent of new infor-
Not surprisingly, a tradition of predatory, militaristic mation available to European intellectuals may have played
trading states emerged, epitomized by the Vikings. a critical role in undermining traditional certainties and cre-
Blocked in the eastern Mediterranean, European powers ating the skeptical,experimental cast of mind that we asso-
sought new ways of cutting into the great markets of ciate with the so-called scientific revolution.
southern and eastern Asia, and this search, backed aggres- However, no region on Earth was entirely unaffected
sively by European governments, eventually encouraged by the creation of the first global system of exchanges.
European merchants, led by the Portuguese, to circle the The exchange of goods between the Americas and Afro-
globe. This search also encouraged the technological Eurasia stimulated population growth throughout Afro-
innovations needed to create ships capable of navigating Eurasia as crops such as maize, cassava, and potatoes
the world. The wealth that European states secured as spread to China, Europe, and Africa, where they supple-
they cut in on the profits of the great trading systems of mented existing crops or allowed people to cultivate
southeastern Asia and the even more spectacular gains lands unsuitable for other crops. The abundant silver of
they made by conquering the great civilizations of Cen- the Americas gave a huge boost to international trade,
tral and South America repaid the initial investment of particularly after Chinese governments began to demand
money and resources many times over. the payment of taxes in silver from the 1570s, pulling
more and more silver toward what was still the largest
Impact of Global Networks single economy in the world. New drugs such as tobacco
The Americas and Europe were the first regions to be and coca became available for the first time to Afro-
transformed by the new global system of exchanges. In Eurasian consumers, whereas older drugs, such as coffee,
eastern Eurasia the incursions of Europeans had a limited circulated more widely, stimulating consumer demand in
impact for a century or more. Portuguese and Spanish cities from Istanbul to Mexico City.
ships, followed a century later by Dutch and English Perhaps most important of all, the position of Europe
ships, seized important trading ports and began to cut in within global networks of exchange was transformed.As
on local trade, particularly in spices. However, they had long as the world was divided into separate zones,
little impact on the major polities of the region. In the Europe could be little more than a marginal borderland
Americas European weaponry, the breakdown of tradi- of Afro-Eurasia. The hub of Eurasian networks of ex-
tional political and economic structures, and, perhaps change lay in the Islamic heartland of Persia and Meso-