The advent of the steamboat and treatment for yellow fever and malaria permitted Europeans to explore deeper into Africa than in the past and to establish colonies designed to produce commodities for export. The British in India used the "country trade," or intra-Asian exchanges, to generate capital with which to acquire Asian products in demand in Europe. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a veritable orgy of colonization as Europeans and now the United States as well, used gunboat diplomacy to carve up Africa and Asia and open China forcibly to outside trade and missionaries. The European impact on these societies before 1800 was thus much more limited than on those of the New World and Australia.Īfter 1800, however, Europe's rapid industrialization afforded it the wealth and military might with which to expand its political and economic control over large swaths of Africa and Asia, even as some of its older colonies in North and South America began to slip from its grasp. In Asia and Africa, by contrast, where the inhabitants possessed societies and immune systems more capable of resisting European microbes and weapons, Europeans were obliged to content themselves with wresting trading privileges and fortified enclaves from the local authorities. Even so, the history of European colonization in Australia and New Zealand closely resembles the patterns established in North and South America, especially in the devastating impact of European diseases upon the native populations. The first European settlement in Australia was established still later, in 1788, after the North American colonies had become independent. The first confirmed European landing on the coast of Australia, that of Abel Tasman (for whom Tasmania is named) took place in 1644. In these areas Europeans established colonies in which voluntary and forced migration from Europe and Africa provided labor to supplement or replace the diminished indigenous supply of workers. In regions outside of Africa and the Eurasian landmass, notably the New World, European diseases decimated the vulnerable native populations. Scholars recognize that the influence of European culture on most non-European societies was quite limited before 1800. Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Europe managed to insert itself into preexisting trade networks in Asia and Africa, although its success relied heavily on the use of force. They discern two stages in European expansion after 1450. Most historians today reject this highly Eurocentric interpretation. In developing this interpretation, European historians were deeply influenced by Europe's relatively early and easy conquest of the New World, and by the success of the second wave of colonization and "gunboat diplomacy" of the nineteenth century. As a result, the expansion of European economic and military might was inevitable, and positive, in that Europeans through colonization spread worldwide the benefits of their superior civilization. Europeans also had the good fortune to inhabit the most favorable climate in the world, which, unlike the tropics, fostered good health, energy, and action rather than torpor and disease. Instead it developed qualities such as individualism, faith in reason, and curiosity about the natural world that other cultures lacked. Historians disagree as to when Europe moved from being a backwater to the dominant economic In their judgment, European society during the Renaissance rejected the stagnation of the Middle Ages. In the process it was transformed from a relatively backward, underpopulated region in which at least 90 percent of the population worked in agriculture, to a highly industrialized, urbanized society that controlled much of the world, either directly through colonies or indirectly through economic and military hegemony. Sometime between 14, Europe moved from the edge of the world economy to its center. The second and third phases of European expansion are more controversial than the first. Parry called "the age of reconnaissance." Only after 1450 did the Portuguese successfully round the Cape of Good Hope and enter the complex, monsoon-driven commercial world of the Indian Ocean, initiating what J. The caravan trade across central Asia along the famous Silk Road flowered in the thirteenth century under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, but despite the fame of Marco Polo, the actual quantity of goods and travelers that made the overland journey to China was quite small. In the early Middle Ages, under the pressure of repeated waves of barbarian intic Ocean, confined them mostly to the world familiar to the Romans, the Mediterranean basin. The integration of Europe into the world economy, following a period of insularity between the disappearance of the Roman Empire after about 500 and the beginning of the Crusades in the eleventh century, took place in three stages.
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