CONQUEST, TRADE AND
DISEASE
By Bhavya
X‘D’
• The pre-modern world shrank greatly in the sixteenth century after European sailors
found a sea route to Asia and also successfully crossed the western ocean to America.
• Indian Ocean had known a bustling trade, with goods, people, knowledge, customs, etc.
criss-crossing its waters. The Indian subcontinent was central to these flows and a crucial
point in their networks. The entry of the Europeans helped expand or redirect some of
these flows towards Europe.
• Precious metals, particularly silver, from mines located in present-day Peru and Mexico
also enhanced Europe’s wealth and financed its trade with Asia. Legends spread in
seventeenth-century Europe about South America’s fabled wealth. Many expeditions set
off in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.
• The Spanish and the Portuguese were the first Europeans to conquer America in mid-16th
century.
• Americas original inhabitants had no immunity against the disease smallpox that the
Spanish conquers carried on their person.
• As a result of which thousands of
Europeans moved to America and slaves
captured in Africa worked in plantation
of cotton and sugar for European market.
• China and India were among the world’s
richest countries. They were also pre-
eminent in Asian trade. However, from
the fifteenth century, China is said to
have restricted overseas contacts and
retreated into isolation. China’s reduced
role and the rising importance of the
Americas gradually moved the centre of
world trade westwards. Europe now
emerged as the centre of world trade.
THE 19TH CENTURY
1815-1914
• Economic, political, social, cultural and technological factors interacted in complex ways to
transform societies and reshape external relations.
• Economists identify three types of movement or ‘flows’ within international economic exchanges.
1. The first is the flow of trade which in the nineteenth century referred largely to trade in goods (e.g.,
cloth or wheat).
2. The second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment.
3. The third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances.
A NEW ECONOMY TAKES SHAPE
• Population growth from the late eighteenth century had increased the demand for food grains in
Britain. As urban centres expanded and industry grew, the demand for agricultural products went up,
pushing up food grain prices.
• Under pressure from landed groups, the government also restricted the import of corn. The laws
allowing the government to do this were commonly known as the ‘Corn Laws’.
• Unhappy with high food prices, industrialists and urban dwellers forced the abolition of the Corn
Laws
• Railways were needed to link the agricultural
regions to the ports.
• Capital flowed from financial centres such as
London. The demand for labour in places where
labour was in short supply – as in America and
Australia – led to more migration.
• Nearly 50 million people emigrated from Europe
to America and Australia in the nineteenth
century. All over the world some 150 million are
estimated to have left their homes, crossed
oceans and vast distances over land in search of
a better future.
• Thus by 1890, a global agricultural economy had
taken shape, accompanied by complex changes
in labour movement patterns, capital flows,
ecologies and technology
INDIAN TRADE AND COLONISATION
• Historically, fine cottons produced in India were
exported to Europe. With industrialization, British
cotton manufacture began to expand, and
industrialists pressurized the government to restrict
cotton imports and protect local industries.
• Tariffs were imposed on cloth imports into Britain.
Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian cotton began
to decline.
• British manufacturers also began to seek overseas
markets for their cloth. As a result, the Indian textile
industry was adversely affected.
• If we look at the figures of exports from India, we see
a steady decline of the share of cotton textiles: from
some 30 per cent around 1800 to 15 per cent by
1815. By the 1870s this proportion had dropped to
below 3 per cent.
