Free A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe by Gordon Kerr

would open up the Atlantic to trade fromthe east and provide a fast route home. In 1522, ships in the expedition originally commanded by the Portuguese captain, Ferdinand Magellan, completed the first circumnavigation of the world. By the early seventeenth century, European ships could sail to the furthest corners of the earth.
    The age of discovery was virtually over. Nonetheless, its impact was far-reaching. European colonial powershad now divided up much of the world between them and, in doing so, they destroyed civilisations and committed genocide, so great was their hunger for slaves, trade and the pursuit of imperial ambitions. They imported diseases never before suffered and, in North America in particular, disease is believed to have killed 50–90 per cent of the indigenous population. Europe, in turn, imported syphilis,but its effects were nowhere near as devastating as those that travelled in the other direction.
    International trade exploded. By 1600, 200 ships a year arrived back in Seville from the New World bringing untold wealth in gold and silver. The southerly route around Cape Horn was plied by the Portuguese and then by the Dutch. From the east came Polish grain to feed the growing populations of westerncities. Meanwhile, the English were supplying cloth to the Low Countries and English trading companies such as the Muscovy Company (1555), the Levant Company (1581) and the East India Company (1600) began making fortunes for their founders. In the Netherlands, too, the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, was trading successfully. In the same year it was established, the world’s firststock exchange opened in Amsterdam.
    Europe now welcomed a variety of new foods and products – pepper, coffee, cocoa, sugar and tobacco. Tomatoes, potatoes, maize and haricot beans also arrived from the Americas. Trade became global. In Africa, slaves were obtained in exchange for goods made in Europe; the slaves were sold to American plantations and the ships, returning to Europe, carried suchitems as tobacco, sugar and cotton. Global trade, in turn, brought the birth of capitalism. The banking system was developed and encouraged by trading associations and branches of the most important firms opened in all of Europe’s major cities. Credit became available and such techniques as double-entry book-keeping were introduced. Banks began to extend credit to kings and princes who, as a result,interfered more in running their economies, increasingly centralising them.
    As a result of the new wealth engendered by global trade, the European economy went through a serious crisis in the sixteenth century. Prices rose by more than 300 percent as a result of the increase in the money supply due to the gold and silver pouring in from Africa and the Americas. The standard of living rose butEurope, not for the last time, began to live beyond its means. The biggest loser was Spain which fell from the grandeur of the sixteenth century to the status of a second-rate power a hundred years later. As untold wealth flowed into the country from overseas, it failed to modernise its industry and squandered its riches. The aristocracy was content to buy luxury items from the rest of Europe, allowingits international rivals to benefit from its wealth. In the seventeenth century, Spain and Portugal entered a severe depression.
Charles V
    Charles V (who ruled the Spanish realms from 1516 to 1556) inherited a vast empire that, when he abdicated in 1556, two years before his death, measured some four million square kilometres. Born in 1500, son of Philip I the Handsome, King of Castile (ruled1504–06) and Joanna the Mad (1479–1555), he was the heir to four of Europe’s leading dynasties – the Habsburgs of Austria, the Valois of Burgundy, the Trastamara of Castile and the House of Aragon. In addition, he would rule over concessions in Africa, in Italy (Sicily, Naples and Sardinia) and immense colonial tracts in the Americas. In 1530, he also