Final Exam: 1492 vs. the Present

Explanation: This was my final exam essay for my World History 1500 to Present class. Got an A!

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In 1492, the world was bifurcated. On the one hand, the so-called Old World of Africa and Europe for the most part had interconnected economies through trade routes and maritime commerce, complex societies, and political systems characterized mainly by monarchy. On the other hand, the Americas were isolated, with few societies in contact economically, a large proportion of people still hunting and gathering, and monarchy limited to only a few places. However, with the Columbian Exchange begun in 1492 and the consequent historical developments, the world has converged economically, politically, culturally.

Economically, the looting of gold and silver from the Americas was among the first impacts of contact between the hemispheres. The increase in hard currency drove prices up and also funded further colonial endeavors that further drove a fledgling trans-Atlantic trade. One example is the growth of the sugar trade based on the introduction of coffee to the European market. Because sugar must be farmed in tropical climates by workers accustomed to such conditions, Caribbean plantations drove the market for slavery.

With the Industrial Revolution in Europe, economic growth grew more than ever before, consequently linking hemispheres even more closely. The freeing of human industry from agriculture due to industrialization gave rise to further technological innovation, culminating in the digital economy of today. Compared to 1492, when markets in Belgium and the Amazon basin were totally unrelated, now all markets affect one another due to electronic banking, international investment, and free trade pacts from the late 20th century.

Politically, the Eastern Hemisphere was characterized by monarchies. Agriculture had given rise to food surpluses, in turn giving rise to divisions of labor, urbanization, and concentration of wealth. Large agricultural entrepreneurs who benefited from economies of scale amassed economic and political power, culminating in a hierarchical structure with a monarch on the top. The Western hemisphere, limited by fewer cultivable crops and animals suitable for husbandry, developed monarchies in only a few areas, maintaining a very large proportion of hunter/gatherer societies, characterized politically by fierce egalitarianism.

Contact between hemisphere, based as it was on clear economic and, thus, political inequality, resulted in the extension of monarchy to the Western Hemisphere in the form of empire. However, between the American Revolution and the final throes of decolonization in the post-World War II period, in most cases, political sovereignty was established such that new, independent states were established. Since World War II, in particular, democratization has been the norm, at least in theory. The republican form of government or, at the very least, constitutional monarchy has become commonplace, although certain areas of the world have found the transition more difficult than others.

Culturally, the world was arguably more diverse in 1492 than it is today. Cultures were distinctive in the Eastern Hemisphere on a roughly continent-wide basis, with Europe characterized by a culture steeped in Christianity, the Middle East in Islam, the Far East in Buddhism, etc. Outside of major world powers, languages were largely non-written and quite numerous. This was particularly the case in the Western Hemisphere, where only a handful of languages had any written form. Similarly, religion in the Western Hemisphere had not yet been influenced by Abrahamic faiths, which then as now made up a plurality, if not a clear majority, of professed religious faiths.

Since Columbus's arrival in the Americas, the story has been one of decreased diversity, although of course diversity persists to some extent. Christianity was undoubtedly triumphant in the Western Hemisphere. With the exception of a handful of sizable Hindu communities in the Americas arising from the diaspora of workers from India in the 19th century, Jewish communities strewn about as a consequence of international trade, and far more recent communities of peoples of other religions, including Islam, due to more open immigration policies, the Western Hemisphere has established populations with overwhelmingly Christian -- and in Latin America, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic -- populations. In addition, the Western Hemisphere (and post-Colonial Africa) now uniformly speaks European languages: Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch.

Consequent with the political and economic superiority of the United States since the end of World War II (if not longer), a pervasive culture marked by consumerism has become common in much of the world. Because the U.S. is the world's largest consumer base and because it has the world's largest gross domestic product, the production and trade of goods worldwide has taken on a focus on America and Americans, with clear multiplication of American commercial products (blue jeans, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, etc.). Although there has also clearly been a backlash against this trend, it is not that it will end anytime soon.

In conclusion, a world largely divided by hemisphere in 1492 has, in the five hundred years since then, become a more unified world economically, politically, and culturally. Markets are more independent than ever before, with international trade touching every continent and, as a result, affected virtually everyone's lives. Democracy has by and large replaced other forms of government, particularly absolute monarchy, although it is unclear how well it has succeeded in some places vs. others. Finally, contact between hemispheres had the cultural consequences of the spread of European languages and religions, and in the most recent century, American consumer culture. Whether international capitalism, democracy, and a triumphant Western/American culture will persist into the currently century is currently unknown, but it is clear that the clock cannot be turned back to the way it was before 1492. If change comes, it will be further progression, rather than devolution.

On Slavery

The institution of slavery had broad implications far beyond the obvious result of millions of sub-Saharan Africans being forcibly recollected to the western hemisphere. These implications were political, cultural, and economic in nature and can be seen throughout the eighteenth century. They include the catalyzing of the independence movement in the British colonies of North America, the racial intermarriage and the resultant institutionalization of racism in Europe and the Americas, and the emergence of a triangular trans-Atlantic trade among the Americas, Africa, and Europe. 

Politically, a major event in the eighteenth century was the emergence of the United States of America in the aftermath of a war for independence fought by British colonists in North America against the monarchy. Although the role of slavery in this independence might not be immediately apparent, slavery did play a key role. Although slavery had been legal for some time in the British colonies, it had particularly grown in the southern colonies, which had developed a plantation economy and therefore relied rather heavily on slavery for their economic viability. Fernandez-Armesto writes that the ruling by a judge in the United Kingdom in 1772 outlawing slavery, while welcomed in some of the colonies, was viewed with suspicion and fear by those colonies that relied on slavery for their well-being. He notes further than virtually the whole black population of the colonies sided with the British in the war for independence, likely as a result. While it is likely that the colonists would have sought independence for other reasons, slavery nevertheless contributed in a significant way to the desire for independence.

Culturally, the mere presence of a substantial black population in places where they had not lived before led to changes. In much of the western hemisphere, the intermingling of racial groups gave rise to large populations of people of mixed race. Along with this demographic change came significant linguistic changes. African languages, native American languages, and European languages melded first into pidgins to facilitate trade and then into full-fledged creole languages. However, at the same time that racial intermingling began, laws against such relationships were passed, although Fernandez-Armesto stipulates that these laws often sought to preserve sexual inequality as much as racial inequality. In Dutch Surinam, he reports, women were subjected to corporal punishment for fornication with black men, but not vice versa. Racism ultimately increased as both a cause and an effect of fear of the corruption of white womanhood.

Economically, slavery likely had the greatest impact of all, with this impact taking on a truly intercontinental scale. People of European descent in the western hemisphere operated plantations that required slave labor for their economic viability. Western Africa served as the reservoir for slave labor, and Europeans who operated the slave stations along the coast of western Africa became wealthy through the slave trade. This wealth, in turn, greatly enriched the nations from which those Europeans came -- primarily the United Kingdom but also the Netherlands and France. As a result, these countries grew in their economic influence, not to mention their military and political influence. By the time the eighteenth century ended, a well-established triangular trade with stations in the Caribbean, western Europe, and west Africa, with slaves transported from Africa to the Caribbean, agricultural products transported worldwide from the Caribbean, and money earned from trading in slaves transported to Europe. Although, as noted above, the British began to intimate a move away from slavery in the 1770s, it was largely as the result of expanded colonial endeavors, primarily in India, that the British were able to finally abolish slavery in the 1830s.

In conclusion, it is clear that slavery had widespread political, cultural, and economic consequences. From its important role in inspiring British colonists in North American to seek independence to the rise of a multiracial population in much of the western hemisphere, the backlash against this so-called miscegenation, and the increasingly economically lucrative interrelatedness of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, slavery was a truly transformative factor in the eighteenth century. Although slavery would be abolished in most of these places by 1890, its consequences can still be felt today.