This paper surveys major developments in world civilization from approximately 1500 to the early twentieth century. It examines the rise of global trade between 1500 and 1800, the intellectual upheaval of the Scientific Revolution, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the contradictions embedded in American ideals of liberty alongside the institution of slavery, the subordinate status of women in the Ming and Qing dynasties compared with other cultures, the fall of the Islamic states under Mongol invasion, the philosophical foundations of the American Revolution, and the consequences of industrialization and American imperialism. Together these themes trace the collapse of the medieval world order and the emergence of the modern era.
Europe was expanding its boundaries at the end of the medieval world: Spain and Portugal had navigated the globe. The Crusades had opened roads to the East, and the sea lanes had given way to a new world in which nations sought God, gold, and glory. The world has always become smaller with the advent of new technology — and the new technology in 1500 was navigational and nautical. By 1800, that technology had become increasingly more scientific and even militaristic. America had been colonized and the trade routes from East to West and back again were flourishing.
Italy saw the rise of the merchant class, and their wealth soon spread throughout Europe. A demand for goods, silks, and spices from the East — and tobacco from the New World, once the colonies took root — made Europe a trading outpost. Goods came in and goods went out. Tomatoes, now famous for their association with Italian pasta sauce, were not even native to Italy: they arrived as an import from the New World. That is one indication of the way in which global trade was on the rise. Flora and fauna went back and forth across the sea. New Englanders changed the landscape of America to fit their liking, while the southern states plowed the fields and planted cotton and tobacco.
The implications of global trade at this time were, of course, a change in philosophy. Philosophies in Europe centered on whether the Native American could be considered a human being. Another implication was the rise of the slave trade from Africa to the American colonies, a practice that was also hotly contested in England. Fashions changed, artwork was imported, and philosophical ideas were altered. The old world of Christendom was crumbling under the weight of the Protestant revolts and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which essentially established religious liberty on the continent — but the Church was still expanding through missions in the New World. The English, intensely Protestant by this time, were able to capitalize on the freedom found in the New World, and the United States became not a Catholic country but a Protestant one. The old world was finished. The new world would be an ironic combination of skepticism, Puritanism, and materialism.
There were several leading thinkers of the Scientific Revolution, ranging from Copernicus to Galileo to Newton. The Revolution coincided with the High Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. In other words, the Church was being attacked on all sides: the focus was on man rather than God, humanism was ascendant, and Christendom had grown weary of clergy who failed to inspire. Religion lost focus. The world wanted new definitions.
Galileo helped provide those new definitions. By using the Copernican model of the universe — heliocentric as opposed to Ptolemy's geocentric model — Galileo illustrated a concept in which the old world hierarchies were left out. The universe did not revolve around the Earth; God did not reside in the Heavens; instead, the heavens were essentially infinite. The universe was endless and the Earth was just one of many planets in a solar system that was itself just a small part of the big picture. No longer was the planet a focal point or place of significance. The planet on which the Incarnation had taken place was now shown to be just a speck revolving around the sun. The old world mythology was replaced by a new scientific cosmology. Galileo demonstrated it with his telescope.
Of course, his idea was nothing more than a hypothesis and no more provable than Ptolemy's — and the Church resisted it. Robert Bellarmine wrote of his displeasure with Copernican theory to Paolo Antonio Foscarini in 1615. Bellarmine was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, a doctor of theology, and later declared a saint. Foscarini was a Carmelite who, together with Galileo, had taken an interest in Copernicus' heliocentric model of the universe. In 1616, Foscarini's book defending heliocentrism was placed on the Church's Index of Forbidden Books. By 1633, Galileo would also be forbidden to spread his heliocentric doctrine, which he had written in vernacular Italian rather than the language of the learned, Latin. Thus, while the new astronomers were attempting to establish a new model of the universe, the Church attempted to preserve its own perspective: namely, that the Earth, man, and God made Man were the center of the cosmos.
Yet, through technological innovations, the Church's control over the gathering and dissemination of information was slipping. Galileo had studied the heavens using his telescope, while Bellarmine's studies had been grounded in philosophy, theology, and Scripture. Bellarmine represented the old science; Galileo the new. Newtonian mathematics would assist in the dismantling of the old world and the philosophical emphasis on empirical data as opposed to intellect and reason in the tradition of Aristotle. The philosophies of the Enlightenment were an outgrowth of this shift. Hume developed his skepticism and placed priority on knowledge gathered through empirical analysis. Rousseau idolized Nature and rejected the idea that human nature was fallen by Original Sin. The ideas of revolution — liberty, equality, fraternity — spread like wildfire now that the Church had lost its position of authority. Philosophers sought to assert their own authority. Again, God was displaced and Man assumed the throne. The conflict between scientific study grounded in theological traditions and scientific study driven by technological cues marked the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern world.
Columbus claimed the New World for Spain in 1492. Balboa was exploring Colombia within the decade. Cortez led his men against the Aztecs in 1520, and in 1550 began the Spanish conquest of the Mayan civilization. Pizarro battled the Inca in the 1530s. Everywhere viceroys were established as Spain took control of vast areas of South America.
One factor that helps explain the rapid Spanish conquest is the fact that the Indian tribes were not united among themselves and had no access to the weaponry that the Spanish conquistadors possessed. The Europeans also had one further weapon that the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Inca did not — germ warfare. Smallpox was as deadly to the Native Americans as anything else, and a vast number of the natives died simply because they came into contact with European diseases such as smallpox, against which their bodies had no immunity.
The most important events in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas begin with the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean Islands at the end of the 15th century, which was followed by the arrival of the conquistadors — Balboa, Cortez, Pizarro, and many others. The Aztec civilization fell in the 1520s, the Incas fell in the 1530s, and the Mayan civilization began to be dismantled midway through the 16th century.
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