Readings: Spodek, 388-414, 421,
438-447

• Center of Trade—
Asia:
• Japan
• Moluccas
• China
• India

Southernization

Central Area of Early Modern Trade and
Empire Centered on Inida
• India Early Began Exporting Cotton, especially to Egypt, the Mediterranean, and East Africa
• 400 C.E. Malay sailors trading goods from
Easter Island to East Africa
– Rode the monsoons without a compass
– Used square pivot sails that allowed them to sail into the wind, by tacking against it —the prototype of the triangular lateen sail

China and Early Trade
• Cities on China’s southern coasts became centers of overseas commerce
• Exported silk, porcelain, iron hardware— needles, scissors, and cooking pots
• To facilitate commerce, conquest, and government —invented printing and paper, gunpowder, and the compass

Rise of Muslim World

Muslim Trade
• Spread crops developed or improved in India to Middle
East, North Africa, and Islamic Spain: Sugar, cotton, and citrus fruits
• Arabs first to import large numbers of enslaved Africans to produce sugar
• By 1000 sugarcane major crop in Yemen, Arabia, Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, the Mahgrib, Spain and
Mediterranean areas controlled by Muslims —in many places had to develop sophisticated irrigation
• Also spread cotton from Iran and Central Asia to Spain and the Mediterranean
• Used silver from mines they developed in Afghanistan and gold from across the Sahara

Southernization reached Zenith after 1200 because of Rise of Mongols
• Mongols wrecked many southern trade centers in China, southern India, and maritime
Southeast Asia
• Mongols controlled overland routes between
Europe and Asia in 13 th and 14 th Centuries
• While stopped some trading networks, Mongols retained unified world markets except on fringes
(Africa, Mediterranean, and Japan)
• Allowed southern Mediterranean areas to gain older Muslim markets in Sugar and Cotton
Increasingly integral to European commerce
But most of world still dominated by Islamic faith

• Europe increasingly on
Periphery
• Rise of Great Islamic
Empires, especially the
Ottoman Empire
• Spread of Arab Traders
• Problems gets worse
With Conquest of
Constantinople/Istanbul, the Great Byzantine City

• East Africans—the Swahilis controlled the
Indian Ocean Trade until Annihilated by the
Portuguese.
• Possibility of African Voyages Across the
Atlantic.
• Europe’s Problem was how to get past Islamic
Middleman for Cheaper Goods: Several
Voyages around Africa; Complicated by
Currents and Winds
• Must at least get to Africa then Sail almost to
Brazil.

Islamic Dominance and the Rise of Europe’s
North
• Portuguese became active traders with rise of Chinese compass, Arab knowledge, and lateen sail (in most recent incarnation
Arab)
• Once moved into world trade—seized tropical and subtropical territories as they sailed around Africa and moved into the
Southern Ocean trade

• Columbus Solution:
Sail across the
Atlantic
• Why was Columbus’ voyage possible?
– The Printing Press
– Maps
– Travel Accounts like
Marco Polo’s
– Inventions

• 1492—Thinking he reached islands near
China, Columbus probably hit what is now the Dominican Republic
• 1497 Vasco Da Gama sails around Cape of Good Horn (Africa)
• 1501—Amerigo Vespucci
• 1513—Vasco Nunez de Balboa
• 1519-1522—Ferdinand Magellan

• 1493-1494 Treaty of Tordesillas happened with the blessing of the Pope
• 1501—Slaves brought to Americas
• 1505—Portuguese destroy Kilwa
• 1522—Spanish conquer the Americas and the Americas are incorporated into
Eurasian trade
• 1542 Spanish claim the Philippines and later create the Manila Galleon