Effects
The Commercial Revolution, coupled with other changes in the Early Modern Period, had dramatic effects on the globe. Christopher Columbus and the conquistadors, through their travels, were indirectly responsible for the massive depopulation of South America. They were directly responsible for destroying the civilizations of the Inca, Aztec, and Maya in their quest to build the Spanish Empire. Other Europeans similarly impacted the peoples of North America as well.
An equally important consequence of the Commercial Revolution was the Columbian Exchange. Plants and animals moved throughout the world due to human movements. For example, Yellow fever, previously unknown in North and South America, was imported through water that ships took on in Africa. Cocoa (chocolate), coffee, maize, cassava, and potatoes moved from one hemisphere to the other.
For more than 2000 years, the Mediterranean Sea had been the focus of European trade with other parts of the world. After 1492, this focus shifted to the Atlantic Ocean by routes south around the Cape of Good Hope, and by trans-Atlantic trade.
Another important change was the increase in population. Better food and more wealth allowed for larger families. The migration of peoples from Europe to the Americas allowed for European populations to increase as well. Population growth provided the expanding labor force needed for industrialization.
Another important outcome of Europe's commercial revolution was a foundation of wealth needed for the industrial revolution. Economic prosperity financed new forms of cultural expression during this period.
Read more about this topic: Commercial Revolution
Famous quotes containing the word effects:
“Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of thought to pass from cause to effects and effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)