Page 245 - Encyclopedia Of World History

early modern world 595

The Swan Theatre in England where
Shakepearean plays were performed.

regional histories, so often linked to high-level political
history, should not surprise. The global historian in
search of an early modern world can look beyond these
periodizations to seek processes that enveloped wide
swaths of the planet.

Development of
Global Sea Passages
Nothing is more characteristic of the early modern world
than the creation of truly global sea passages. Before
1492 the Americas remained essentially isolated from
Eurasia. In 1788 the last key sea passage was completed
by the first permanent settlement of Europeans in Aus-
tralia.This passage also concluded the integration of the
Pacific Ocean as a geographical concept, a process that
began when the Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa Global Demographic
became the first European to see the Pacific from Amer- Interconnections
ica in 1513. The world’s population doubled during the early modern
During the early fifteenth century the Europeans were period, from approximately 374 million (1400) to 968
unlikely candidates to fill the key role in this process of million people (1800). Although demographic data are
exploration. Portuguese exploration of the African coast limited, some patterns emerge. Rapid growth was punc-
was declining, and mariners were reluctant to sail out of tuated by a seventeenth-century decline in Europe, Rus-
sight of land. Even the overland excursions undertaken by sia, Iran, Central Asia, China, and Korea—and recovery
Europeans had become more modest. Muslims still con- from this decline occurred globally, even in the Americas.
trolled southern Iberia, and in 1453 the Ottomans con- The more populous regions tended to grow more rapidly.
quered Constantinople. Smart money would have looked The new global sea passages set the stage for a transat-
rather at the Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose seven lantic “Columbian exchange” (the biological and cultural
expeditions between 1405 and 1433 reached even the exchange between the New World and the Old World
shores of eastern Africa. A change in Chinese imperial that began with the 1492 voyage of Christopher Colum-
policy halted these expeditions, and the voyages that bus) and for a transpacific “Magellan exchange” of crops
finally connected the world were directed by Europeans. and disease pathogens that put the peoples of the world
In 1522 the survivors of the expedition of the Portuguese in a more direct demographic relationship than ever
navigator Ferdinand Magellan completed the first cir- before. The arrival of American maize and potatoes in
cumnavigation of the globe. During the following cen- Eurasia, and later in Africa, facilitated an intensive agri-
turies a skilled captain and crew could navigate a ship cultural, and thus demographic, growth, and the appear-
from any port to any port and reasonably expect to ance of tomatoes in Italy and chili peppers in India had
arrive. In 1570 the Flemish cartographer Ortelius pub- important dietary and culinary consequences.
lished what has been described as the first modern atlas, Disease also became a global phenomenon. First
the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theater of the World); this appearing in Europe in 1494, venereal syphilis reached
comprehensive yet handy and inexpensive work enjoyed India four years later, and by 1505 it had outraced the
immediate success. By the end of the period the best- Portuguese to China. The New World’s isolation and
mapped region of the world would be China. limited biodiversity (biological diversity as indicated by