MilitaryBefore the 1400s, the European military system was small and consisted of only a few knights per kingdom. Most of their forces at that time Period were spent fighting in the Crusades. The major military change after the 1400s is that their military grew much longer and much stronger. With guns and more people will to recruit with the discovery of the new world, military expansion of each nation grew tremendously. Also the need to explore and colonize new worlds lead Europeans into developing a stronger navy, that could conquer and protect their trade.
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Social
Before this time period, politics, economics, and events seemed to have relative to one or maybe two civilizations. When the Europeans began to colonize the Americas and Parts of Asia, they connected distant parts of the world together in this grand global system. This is the beginning of Globalization, as the whole world seemed to have been interacting with each other and little was left isolated.
Political
Political Europeans set up mercantilism by creating a colony, then controlling all of the colonies production and exports. Thus they were able to gain a lot of capital in the mother country, while colony had a small growth in capital. This colonial expansion is also a new form of imperial expansion then what has been previously seem in history. Before expansion of empires meant enlarging the current borders. Now, we can see a sort of Fragmentation expansion, where your empire grows outside of your borders. |
Religious
During this era Christianity spread rapidly, mostly in the Americas. As new colonies where being established, Catholic missionaries started to covert the native people and the African slave being brought to Americas. This act is the reason why the western world today is predominantly christian.
Innovation
In this era the Europeans took a massive leap in innovations. With thousands of native Americans dying from disease and war, and with the extraction of the educated Africans to be sold as slaves, these two areas develop a brain drain. Europe on the other hand experienced a brain gain due to the large amount of extra resources coming in from the colonies that allowed for more specialization.
EconomicsThe general economic effect of mercantilism, was that Europe acquired a large amount of wealth, by manufacturing goods, with cheap resources, and then selling the goods at a high value. Their colonies did not acquire much of any wealth at all. Their economies generally stayed still or plunged. Also the large scale mining of silver by the Spanish, created the first global currency, as the demand for silver went up significantly during this era.
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