After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000

The early modern period is simultaneously the period when expanding and accelerating circulations bring parts of the world closer to each other through exchange of knowledge, technologies and ideas, and the period when Western Europe is able to dominate or control the emergent global networks of exchange.

The Industrial Age marks a distinct and remarkable phase in the history of globalization. For the first time in history, technological progress was rapid enough and broad enough to create sustained and rapid increases in material living standards. For the first 150 years of the new age, the economic gains went overwhelmingly to a small part of huma

The rulers of Western Europe gained a new and keen interest in ocean-based navigation. Suddenly, the countries of the North Atlantic (Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and Holland) had the upper hand of geography compared with the previous longtime leaders of east-west trade, Genoa, Venice, and Byzantium.

The three great empires and the northern kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent engaged in a long-distance exchange of technologies, manufactured goods, and ideas. The steppe regions provided the highways along the so-called Silk Road that connected Rome in the west with the Han Empire in the east (figure 5.6).