What’s the Significance?
Big Picture Questions
To what extent did Europeans transform earlier patterns of commerce, and in what ways did they assimilate into those older patterns?
How should we distribute the moral responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade? Is this an appropriate task for historians?
What lasting legacies of early modern globalization are evident in the twenty-first century? Pay particular attention to the legacies of the slave trade.
Looking Back: Asians, Africans, and Native Americans experienced early modern European expansion in quite different ways. Based on Chapters 13 and 14, how might you describe and explain those differences? In what respects were they active agents in the historical process rather than simply victims of European actions?
Next Steps: For Further Study
Glenn J. Ames, The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700 (2007). An up-to-date survey of European expansion in the early modern era.
Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (1998). An account of the early modern world economy that highlights the centrality of Asia.
Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds, Trading Tastes: Commodity and Cultural Exchange to 1750 (2006). A world historical perspective on transcontinental and transoceanic commerce.
David Northrup, ed., The Atlantic Slave Trade (2002). A fine collection of essays about the origins, practice, impact, and abolition of Atlantic slavery.
John Richards, The Endless Frontier (2003). Explores the ecological consequences of early modern commerce.
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (1998). A well-regarded but somewhat controversial account of the slave trade, with an emphasis on African authorities as active and independent players in the process.
Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr., “Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record,” http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php. An immense collection of maps and images illustrating the slave trade and the life of slaves in the Americas.