How Europe was Affected by the Discovery of Two New Worlds

The compass opened the universe.

Asia and Africa were found, of which only some borders were known; and America, of which we knew nothing.

The Portuguese discovered the southernmost point of Africa. They saw a vast sea, which carried them to India.

Camoens writes about:

• their danger on this sea,
• the discovery of Mozambique, Melinda, and Calcutta

His poems make us feel something of:

• the charms of the Odyssey, and
• the magnificence of the Æneid.

The Venetians previously carried on the Indian trade through Turkey despite oppressions and discouragements. The discovery of the Cape of Good-hope removed Italy as the centre of the trading world and turned into a corner of the universe until today.

The commerce even of the Levant depended now on that of the great trading nations to both the Indies, Italy even in that branch can no longer be considered as a principal

The Portuguese traded to India in right of conquest. The modern Dutch imposed constraining laws on the commerce of the little Indian princes established before by the Portuguese.

The fortune of the house of Austria was prodigious. Charles 5th gained Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon and arrived afterwards at the imperial dignity. The new world paid him obeisance.

Christopher Columbus discovered America.

Spain sent such a small force that the least European prince could have sent the same. Yet it subdued two vast empires, and other great states.

While the Spaniards discovered and conquered the west, the Portuguese pushed their conquests and discoveries in the east. They met each other and so went to Pope Alexander VI who made the line of partition.

But the other nations of Europe would not suffer them quietly to enjoy their shares.

The Dutch chased the Portuguese from almost all their settlements in the East Indies. Several other nations planted colonies in America.

The Spaniards considered these newly-discovered countries as the subject of conquest.

Other European nations were more refined. They found the new countries to be the proper subjects of commerce. Hence several nations have conducted themselves with so much wisdom, that they have given a kind of sovereignty to companies of merchants. Those merchants governed these distant countries only with a view to trade. They made a great accessary power, without embarrassing the principal state.

The colonies they have formed are under a kind of dependance, of which there are but very few instances in all the colonies of the ancients= whether we consider them as holding of the state itself, or of some trading company established in the state.

The design of these colonies is to trade on more advantageous conditions than could otherwise be done with the neighbouring people, with whom all advantages are reciprocal. It has been established, that the> * metropolis, or mother country, alone shall trade in the colonies, and that from very good reason; because the design of the settlement was the extension of commerce, not the foundation of a city, or of a new empire.

Thus it is still a fundamental law of Europe, that all commerce with a foreign colony shall be regarded as a mere monopoly, punishable by the laws of the country.

• In this case, the laws and precedents of the ancients, which are not applicable

A commerce established between the mother countries, does not include a permission to trade in the colonies; for these always continue in a state of prohibition.

The disadvantage of a colony that loses the liberty of commerce, is visibly compensated by the protection of the mother country, who defends or supports it
From hence follows a third law of Europe, that when a foreign commerce with a colony is prohibited, it is not lawful to trade in those seas, except in such cases as are excepted by treaty.

Nations in the world are like individuals in a state. These are governed by:

• the laws of nature, and
• particular laws of their own making.

One nation may resign to another the sea and the land.

• The Carthaginians forbade the Romans to sail beyond certain limits.
• The Greeks had obliged the kings of Persia to keep as far from the sea-coast as a horse could gallop.

The great distance of our colonies is not an inconvenience that affects their safety.

If the mother country, on whom they depend for their defence, is remote, no less remote are those nations who rival the mother country, and by whom they may be afraid of being conquered.

Besides, this distance is the cause that those who are established there cannot conform to the manner of living in a climate so different from their own= they are obliged therefore to draw from the mother country all the conveniences of life.

Aristotle said that the Carthaginians more dependant, forbade the Sardinians and Corsicans, under penalty of death, from planting so that they could be supplied from Africa and made dependent.

The Europeans did the same thing without such severe laws.

Our colonies in the Caribbean islands are under an admirable regulation in this respect.

the subject of their commerce is what we neither have, nor can produce; and they want what is the subject of ours.

The discovery of America connected Asia and Africa with Europe. It furnished materials for a trade with that vast part of Asia known by the name of the East-Indies.

Silver, that metal so useful as the medium of commerce, became now, as a merchandize, the basis of the greatest commerce in the world.

The navigation to Africa became necessary to furnish us with men to labour in the mines, and to cultivate the lands of America.

Europe is arrived to so high a degree of power, that nothing in history can be compared to it.

Whether we consider the immensity of its expences, the grandeur of its engagements, the number of its troops, and the regular payment even of those that are least serviceable, and which are kept only for ostentation.

Father Duhalde says that the interior trade of China is much greater than that of all Europe.