World History

The period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was the time of great geographical discoveries and change of the world geopolitics The Europeans discovered the unknown lands , islands , seas and oceans and made first round-the-world voyages . All these events significantly changed man 's idea of the Earth but the consequences of the discoveries were contradictory . On the one hand , they accelerated economic development in certain European countries but , on the other hand , the discovered lands with their indigenous population were turned into the colonies what considerably hampered their development for a long

time

These explorations have a number of causes which were directly related to those processes that occurred in West Europe . The increase of production , trade , and market created a severe shortage in gold and silver for coinage . It was supposed that precious metals were abundant in Asian countries , especially in India . Another commodity that attracted the merchants from the West and spurred the changes in the world history was spices

The Europeans learned about spices from Arabic merchants . An elaborate mercantile chain brought spices to Europe already in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries . The raw materials came from countries at the eastern edge of the known world - that is to say , from countries bing on the Pacific Ocean . The most of spices came from the Spice Islands and other island groups , which are now included in the Republic of Indonesia . The source of cinnamon was Ceylon pepper grew in western India , but the choicest came from the Indonesian island of Sumatra Hence , spices had to pass through many foreign lands before they reached Europe . The complicated way spices had to cover made them extraordinarily expensive natural commodities . However , in the fifteenth century the way to Asia , which had been used traditionally , was disrupted in result of the conquest of the Middle East territories and almost the whole North Africa by the Osman Turks . There was a need for the water trade route to the eastern countries . Besides , the European merchants that searched for spices dreamt to get rid of the trade mediators (usually the Arabs and Chinese ) and to establish direct contacts with the eastern spices markets

Thus the hunt for precious spices urged the Europeans to find new routes to Asia and Africa . The Portuguese took a dominant lead in development of seaborne eastern trade . The specific geographical position of the Pyrenean peninsula , its protrusion into the Atlantic Ocean and its nearness to African continent were the main prerequisites of Portuguese activity in the exploration process . Portugal 's success motivated other European countries to participate in trade voyages . Thus in Spain after the Reconquista (the expulsion of the Arabs ) the great numbers of unemployed ' nobles became interested in new ways to earn wealth . They were eager to go into the furthest and most dangerous voyages to get the precious commodities . The destinations of spice traders got widened thanks to the exploration attempts by Portuguese sailors and included such South-East Asian countries like Indonesia , Malaysia and Singapore (as...