Chapter 14: Empires and Encounters

            The empires of the early modern era made a new stage in globalization.

Western European empires were marked by maritime expansion. For example, Spaniards in Caribbean, then on to Aztec and Inca empires, Portuguese in Brazil, British, French, and Dutch colonies in North America. Europeans controlled most of the Americas by the mid-nineteenth century.

            Europeans brought European and African diseases, which led mortality rate of up to 90 percent among Native American populations. As a result, native population nearly vanished. In the Caribbean, Central Mexico: population dropped from 10 million–20 million to around million by 1650. Further, the European conquest of the Americas created a network of communication, migration, trade, transfer of plants and animals. As a result, American food crops (e.g., corn, potatoes, and cassava) spread widely in the Eastern Hemisphere. More significantly, trade in slaves reshaped African societies and made an important mark in human history.

            Furthermore, Europeans did not just conquer and govern established societies: they created wholly new societies. Colonies of Sugar lowland Brazil and the Caribbean had known almost no civilizations but developed major societies in this era. Large-scale sugar production was introduced earlier by Arabs to the Mediterranean; and then was transferred to Brazil by the Portuguese.  British, French, and Dutch in the Caribbean broke the  Portuguese monopoly of sugar production.