Extent of european influence b
Extent of european influence bThe Extent of European Influence on the World in 1650
The extent of European influence was almost unavoidable during the 1650's. After the Dark Ages and the Renaissance were over Europe became an intellectual and wealthy hub in the known world. There are several reasons that made this possible. A few were there vast merchant trading system there ability to maintain advanced weapon technology and the most important factor, the drive to explore everywhere there ships would take them. With these factors in place it is no surprise that Europe was a dominant world power. Their desire to expand their nations was so strong that many explorers dedicated their lives to discovering and conquering new lands. This is not to say that their motivations were not money. The only way to survive was to be the ones with the most money because from wealth everything else followed. Not to mention the blood that was shed along the way from the millions of natives that were enslaved, tortured and killed.
The first explorers or conquistadors, were actually Spanish and not English, contrary to popular belief. The three main conquistadors were Cortes, Columbus and Pizarro. Probably the most ironic part of that new age of discovery is that when Columbus original departed from Spain his mission was to find a quicker trade route to Asia than the Portuguese. Columbus found the America's by accident. At first he thought that he had come upon the Islands southeast of India. But it was not until some other Spanish explorer climbed a huge mountain in Central America and saw there was an even bigger ocean on the other side. This made it quite obvious that this was not the Indies but a completely new continent. All this is important because finding this new land was untouched resources is how Europe turned a new trade route into a whole new very wealthy economy.
It was not very long until the French, English and even the Swedes figured out that this was something that they should probably start doing. The bottom line with any country at this time was to expand and start building a solid economy; learning through others did this. When the Spanish discovered the largest silver mine in Peru they created a whole new way to make money. Instead of using the land to make money, they simply extracted it from the earth and shipped it over to Spain. So here they have all this money and all they do is spend it. They could have used the money to build factories and build up the economy in Spain. Instead they spread all there wealth throughout Europe making other countries rich. Finally Spain ran out of money, mostly due to the fact that all there major silver and gold mines in the America's had...
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