3 - The Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400–1700: A European Counterpoint

Summary

Glory of empire! Most unfruitful lust

After vanity that men call fame!

It kindles still, the hypocritic gust,

By rumor, which as honor men acclaim.

What thy vast avengeance and thy sentence just

On the vain heart that greatly loves thy name

What death, what peril, tempest, cruel woe,

Dost thou decree that he must undergo!

—Luis Vaz de Camoëns

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by.

—Oliver Goldsmith

Where is the flag of England?

Go East, North, South or West;

Wherever there's wealth to plunder

Or land to be possessed;

Wherever there's feeble people

To frighten, coerce or scare;

You'll find the butcher's apron,

The English flag is there.

—Derek Warfield of “The Wolfe Tones”

On July 8,1497, as Vasco da Gama's men were embarking at Lisbon's Belem docks, an old man, a soothsayer out of Greek drama, warned the departing adventurers that the pursuit of glory, wealth, and power in the East would doom their own souls. The Christian West would lose its soul in the East – or at least that is how Luis Vaz de Camoëns told it, many years later. Da Gama's voyage and that of Columbus, five years earlier, set Europeans on the path to global unification through the rise of merchant empires. The transformation of Europe from a lesser civilization perched on the western point of Eurasia into a cluster of empires brawling for domination of world trade is widely held to mark a turning point in world history.