World Contacts Before
Columbus
What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world
before Columbus?
Indian Ocean Trading World
The center of pre-Columbian world trade.
Indian Ocean Trading World
Indian Ocean Trading World
• A “rich commercial world in which mutual self-interest
had largely limited violence and attempts to monopolize
trade.” (McKay, et al., 9/e, p. 485)
• Medieval China had the most advanced economy in the
world.
Africa
Africa – Kingdom of Mali
Mansa Musa (14th c.)
A mosque in Timbuktu
Africa – Legend of Prester John
Prester John enthroned on a map
of East Africa, in an atlas prepared
by the Portuguese for Queen Mary
of England, 1558.
Prester John’s kingdom in what is now Ethiopia,
map issued in Antwerp, 1570s.
The Middle East: Ottoman & Persian
Empires
Ottoman Expansion
•
•
•
1453 – captured Constantinople = end of Byzantine empire
1526 – defeat of Hungary
1529 – siege on Vienna
Venice and Genoa
• control of luxury trade with
the East
• support for Crusades brought
land & trading privileges
• Goods:
o Eastern luxury goods:
spices, silks, carpets
o Balkan slaves
o Euro. products: wool,
metal, textiles