The European-Asian Trade of the Seventeenth Century and the Modernization of Commercial Capitalism

Abstract

The emergence of modern capitalism in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries has been a major topic of historical research and interpretation for many years. Among the current generation of historians there has been an ex,-plosion of interest in the relationship between the growth of capitalism and the expansion of Europe in the early modern era. The interpretive work of Wallerstein and Braudel and the detailed research of a host of others have added immensely to our knowledge of this relationship. They have led many historians to break away from the conceptual frameworks traditionally employed to explain both pre-industrial capitalism and European expansion.