From 1600 to 1750, trade continued to expand, facilitating global trade networks that tied all areas of the globe together. Demands for silver, sugar, spices, silks, cotton, and porcelain drove trade so that products from each major region could be found virtually everywhere else. Enthusiasm for investment opportunities stimulated growth (and risk), but it was silver that allowed economies to become commercialized and began to strengthen the hand of European trade. As integration increased, it dramatically changed the way people lived.

Increasing Economic Linkages

Rising economic integration had far-reaching impact on rulers and common people alike.

Social and Political Effects

Shortages or surpluses of key goods greatly affected prices across the globe, which could affect fortunes. Tremendous fortunes, in turn, provided funding for larger armies and ambitious ventures, but they could also divide merchant interests from those of their monarchs. Some states became stronger because of trade (England, France, Holland, Japan). Others became increasingly destabilized by it (the Mughals, the Ming, the Ottomans, the Savafids). While at first limited to the fringes of trade in Asia, Europeans began to play a much more central role.

Extracting Wealth: Mercantilism

Gold and silver production in Spanish and Portuguese colonies stimulated other European powers to seek colonies of their own. Few found gold, but many found wealth in the New World’s fertile lands by building plantations or harvesting furs. Colonies were viewed strictly as sources of revenue for their European masters, who monopolized access to them. Wealth was then quickly translated into military power. Economics and politics became closely intertwined with one providing resources and the other defense.

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