Commodity Trading and the Birth of an Atlantic Economy

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Commodity Trading and the Birth of an Atlantic Economy
https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844636.book-part-007

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Abstract

The opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the early sixteenth century brought a whole new hemisphere into the network of late-medieval world trade. As Spanish and Portuguese maritime power eclipsed that of the Ottoman Empire, the locus of global commercial activity shifted from the Indian and Mediterranean Oceans to the Atlantic, which became the hub of the early-modern economy. The development of new commodities, the emergence of African slavery, and the invention of new commercial technologies coincided with Europe’s rise in the Atlantic and contributed to a radical transformation of the world economy.

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