Lecture 2. 1600 Eurasian Power Bloc

By the 17th century, the Eurasian world from Japan to Western Europe was a contiguous economic power bloc connected by well-established cross-country and coastal trade. From one end to the other, wealth and ideas traveled in the baggage or minds of traders, migrants, and armies. This was the Old-World order that was now increasingly undermined by the newly arising and more efficient ocean trade. Eventually by the 19th century, the advantages of the ocean routes, the unprecedented advantage of untrammeled access to the American continents, and industrialization would make colonial Europe the unrivaled power of the world. Until then, until the complete collapse of the Silk Route, the old Eurasian world still dominated the old economies of the world.


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