ocean-going ships to be destroyed, and another in 1551 made it a crime to
go to sea in a ship equipped with multiple masts. Merchants on the high
seas were assumed to be pirates and treated as such. When the Ming were
replaced by the Qing (Manchus), maritime China remained closed, foreign
trade being officially forbidden in 1655. Thus China disengaged from the
maritime system at almost exactly the same time the Europeans, coming
from the opposite end, were entering it.
For trade, the transition into the modern world was a two-step process
beginning in the sixteenth and culminating in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. The relative importance of these steps remains the source of
a howling debate with partisans insisting that one or the other was the real
beginning of the world as we know it today. In fact, once again, moder-
nization was a process rather than an event, one that was rather drawn out
with something of a pause, in the form of the seventeenth century, in
between. There can be no doubt the trajectory of world trade experienced a
radical turn, beginning in 1492 when Columbus pioneered the extension of
Old World trade networks to the New World. This was followed in
1497 – 99 by Vasco da Gama’s forging of a direct maritime link between the
Atlantic and Indian oceans and in 1519–22 when Ferdinand Magellan and
Sebastian del Canto completed the global connection by circumnavigating
the globe. A true worldwide system of exchange became possible.
Under the new conditions, the Atlantic coast of Eurasia, which during
most of its history was no more than a periphery and sometimes the fringe of
a periphery, quickly assumed the role of nexus, becoming the core of its
own system embracing the Americas and Atlantic Africa. Patterns of long-
distance trade became greatly altered, centers of capital accumulation shifted,
and a new commercial order began to take shape. Changes in technology
underlay much of the European upsurge. For some time Europeans had been
experimenting, often using ideas borrowed from others, with innovations in
maritime transportation. This process greatly accelerated, producing ever
larger and better designed vessels, more effective instrumentation, and greater
overall efficiency.
Changes produced their own changes. The invasion of the Americas led to
the looting of the Americas, which resulted in a large injection of bullion,
particularly silver, into exchange networks across the Old World. This
eventually penetrated even into China, where it helped in the commerciali-
zation of the economy to the general dismay of the Confucianists. In Europe
widespread monetization provided a foundation for the further development
of capitalism. Europeans also used the windfall in an attempt to gain control
over areas not in their system such as the Indian Ocean. However, here the
pace of change slowed down. Old history books liked to portray Portuguese
fleets sailing around the Indian Ocean having their way with the commerce
there when, in fact, changes outside of the new European core zone often
came slowly or remained incomplete for a long time. The Portuguese had an
Epilogue 141