16 The Acceleration of Global Contact 1450–1600

> What new global connections were forged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? Chapter 16 examines the causes, course, and effects of European expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Before 1500 Europeans were relatively marginal players in a centuries-old trading system that linked Africa, Asia, and Europe. By 1550 the European search for better access to Asian trade goods had led to a new overseas empire in the Indian Ocean and the accidental discovery of the Western Hemisphere. With this discovery South and North America were drawn into an international network of trade centers and political empires, which Europeans came to dominate. The era of globalization had begun, creating new political systems and forms of economic exchange as well as cultural assimilation, conversion, and resistance.