4 Ch. 1 • Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries
(Left) Jacob Fugger, merchant-banker and creditor of rulers and popes, traded with
the port of Seville (right), a stepping-off point for colonization of the New World.
had in 1500 of living in a period of rebirth and revitalization. In Italy, the cul
tural movement we know as the Renaissance was still in bloom, and it was
spreading along trade routes across the Alps into northern Europe (see Chap
ter 2). The by-products of trade and exploration were an increasing exchange
of ideas and a growing interconnectedness among European states.
Although famine, disease, and war (the horsemen of the apocalypse) still
trampled their victims across Europe, significant improvements in the
standard of living occurred. The European population rose in the late fif
teenth century and continued to rise throughout the sixteenth century. Eu
rope’s population stood at about 70 million in 1500 and around 90 million
in 1600 (well less than a third of that today). These gains overcame the
horrific loss of one-third of the European population to the Black Death
(the bubonic plague) in the mid-fourteenth century. The expansion of the
population revived European commerce, particularly in the Mediterranean
region and in England and northwestern Europe, where the Fuggers and
other merchant-bankers were financing new industry and trade. Towns
multiplied and their merchants grew more prosperous, building elegant
houses near markets.
The pace of change was quickened by several inventions that would help
shape the emergence of the modern world. Gunpowder, first used in China
and adopted by Europeans in the fourteenth century, made warfare more
deadly, gradually eliminating the heavily armed knight. The invention of
the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century engendered a cultural revo
lution first felt in religious life, with the Bible and other religious texts now
more widely available to be read, discussed, and debated. The compass,
first used to determine direction by Chinese and Mediterranean navigators