![]() However, explorers, traders, settlers, soldiers, and government officials often came in conflict with missionaries over European "vices" and the mistreatment of non-Europeans. Visions of the world abroad, filtered through Christian belief, supported assumptions of European spiritual and cultural ascendancy that were eroded only in the twentieth-century era of decolonization. In Europe itself, new wealth generated through seaborne trade contributed to increasing urban cosmopolitanism, while access to colonial markets significantly shifted patterns of consumption. All had the power to profoundly alter traditional patterns of non-European society. Traders carried European technologies of warfare and production as well as goods, while missionaries often advocated European social organization and education as well as religious beliefs. European society was itself significantly altered by these material and cultural exchanges as it acted in every region of the world as an aggressive force for the transformation of economies and societies.Įxploration, trade, and proselytizing often shaded into each other, and were frequently entangled with the use of military force and the establishment of colonial rule. From the sixteenth century Europeans engaged the world in increasing numbers, motivated by variously mixed ambitions for wealth, fame, honor, and the advancement of Christian spirituality, authority, and philanthropy. Explorers, traders, and missionaries were thus crucial to the construction of European systems of commercial and cultural exchange as they negotiated and interpreted European contacts with other world cultures. Aggressive venturers, seeking personal, national, and religious advantage, were at the forefront of new encounters with non-European peoples. European exploration was inevitably followed by penetration of markets by traders and the establishment of Christian missions, if not always by formal imperial control and colonization. ![]() ![]() European trade, cultural contact, and colonization, following the geographical discoveries and maritime innovations of the fifteenth century, profoundly altered non-European societies throughout the world. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |