The New World contained two virgin continents, full of
natural resources and capable in a high degree of colonization. The native
peoples, comparatively few in number and barbarian in culture, could not offer
much resistance to the explorers, missionaries, traders, and colonists from the
Old World. The Spanish and Portuguese in the sixteenth century, followed by the
French, English, and Dutch in the seventeenth century, repeopled America and
brought to it European civilization. Europe expanded into a Greater Europe
beyond the ocean.
SHIFTING OF TRADE ROUTES
In the Middle Ages the Mediterranean and the Baltic had
been the principal highways of commerce. The discovery of America, followed
immediately by the opening of the Cape route to the Indies, shifted commercial
activity from these enclosed seas to the Atlantic Ocean. Venice, Genoa,
Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bruges gradually gave way, as trading centers, to
Lisbon and Cadiz, Bordeaux and Cherbourg, Antwerp and Amsterdam, London and
Liverpool. One may say, therefore, that the year 1492 A.D. inaugurated the
Atlantic period of European history. The time may come, perhaps even now it is
dawning, when the center of gravity of the commercial world will shift still
farther westward to the Pacific.
