The nature and structure of international trade between Europe and Asia

The history of European trade with Asia long pre-dates the discovery of the Gape route. But the Portuguese claim for an exclusive right to the new route, which swiftly followed the circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope, gave it an entirely new character. The participation of the countries of North Atlantic Europe in this trade from the beginning of the seventeenth century in turn changed its structure from what it had been under the control of the Portuguese. The spectacular increase in the volume of East India trade achieved by the Dutch and English was to leave a profound impact on the contemporaneous economic consciousness and give rise to a vigorous controversy about the effects of the Asian trade and the manner of its organisation. By the time our period ends in 1760 the military conquest of Bengal by the English East India Company was well under way. The memory of the Mughal court splendours, and the power and glory of the great Islamic Empire in the subcontinent, were rapidly receding into a dimly remembered past. In the third quarter of the eighteenth century, it was impossible for any sensitive and observant European to overlook the changes that had taken place in the trade, the pace of economic growth, and the political balance of the Western world since the first age of maritime expansion.