Yet, despite these changes, there was no sharp acceleration in global rates of
innovation. There were signi¿ cant improvements in shipping and military
technology, and in mining and instrument building. But in general, global
rates of innovation remained sluggish. Populations grew less because of
signi¿ cant innovations than because of changes such as the introduction
of American crops or government backing for the settlement of new lands,
from Siberia to South America. The European Scienti¿ c Revolution may
have been a product, in part, of the torrent of new information that À owed
through European societies as Europe found itself at the center of the ¿ rst
global network of information. But as yet, science had little impact on
technological innovation.
In the smaller world zones, the initial results of global uni¿ cation were
catastrophic. Globalization exposed the smaller world zones to colonization
and brutal exploitation by European invaders. In the silver mines of Potosi,
in modern Bolivia, miners (many of them children) were routinely worked to
death, or their health was destroyed by the handling of mercury, all to ensure
the À ows of American silver that drove global commerce.
Europeans brought diseases such as smallpox that decimated indigenous
populations. In Afro-Eurasia, the widespread use of domesticated animals
allowed diseases to cross species, creating a rich palette of diseases and
toughening immune systems. The other world zones had smaller populations,
few or no domesticated animals, smaller exchange networks, and a less rich
disease environment. As a result, the introduction of Afro-Eurasian diseases
such as smallpox was catastrophic, mimicking the impact of Eurasian plagues
but on a far larger scale. In the more densely settled regions of Mesoamerica
and Peru, populations may have fallen 50%–70% in the course of the 16th
century. For Americans, this was an apocalyptic calamity.
How much had the world changed by 1700? Globalization stimulated
commerce and capitalism, and it transformed some regions, particularly in
Europe and (more destructively) the Americas. Yet most states were still
dominated by traditional tribute-taking elites with traditional aristocratic
values. Peasants, though increasingly enmeshed in market exchanges,
remained the vast majority of the population in most countries. The survival