Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Finding the Founding (Part 1): The Matrix of Colonial America and the Great Lie







That Christopher Columbus was tied to some romantic vision of exploration is one of the biggest lies perpetuated in the western world. In fact the consequences of his voyage, beyond the destruction of civilization as it existed prior in the Western Hemisphere, was the development of economic systems that formed the basis for capitalism and slavery in the Americas. But there was an even greater lie when it comes to North America as to its “founding” because North America did not fit neatly into the Columbus exploration leading to exploitation hypothesis.

            Ok, lie is not the most scholarly choice to describe what is going on, except in the sense of when you tell yourself something that is pretty much baseless and you believe it no matter how plausible or implausible. Plausible? If so then how could it be a lie. It’s a lie because the plausibility is never questioned because of the need for whatever it is to be true – because of a need to find truth – because of a belief that there is truth. This happens a lot with history, with ideas, with politics in the general public (and with scholars too). Sometimes there are good reasons for this and when it comes to history as the public knows it the reasons are good, so we live and love the lie. A better term might be applied, mythos. There is a mythos of the “discovery” and a mythos of the “founding” that are sacrosanct – unquestionable, because truth or lie, plausible or implausible, questioned or not, we need our story, our mythos to be true to insure ourselves of the nobility of what we are doing and where we came from (or even more cynically to justify the way things are and justify how it benefits some and not others). All cultures do it – ancient cultures were a direct product of the gods (the real ones and not the fake ones that their neighbors came from, hah). And America does it too – not springing from the gods, but from equally infallible circumstance. Mythos – the truth that supports our divine origin – must be protected at all costs – even if it is a lie.


            The Traditional Interpretation on Columbus, the origin, the motivation, the outcome, is sometimes secured in two entangled hypotheses: the “nice” phraseology of “God, Gold and Glory,” and that he was looking for Asia and sailed west to prove the world was round (killing two birds with one stone). Religion, and spreading the Only religion then becomes part of the Columbian Exchange. Was Columbus a devout Catholic and Christian? God only knows, though his writings are full of homage to the divine, but the problem is that sugar is the reality in consequence of his voyages and not mass conversion or evangelical revival. The establishment of capitalistic processes which benefitted the 1%, however, is not a good mythos for the establishment of European life in the Americas, much less a good justification for the destruction of the native cultures present in the Americas before Columbus, or, for that matter, the destruction of African populations brought to the New World by the Columbian sugar trade. The destructive ramifications of industrial agriculture as the only reason for the colonization of the New World (at least the Caribbean and Central and South America) seems barbaric, and it is. So Columbus and other subsequent colonizing efforts are rightly, but mostly wrongly, wrapped in a shroud of God and in the nobility of exploration.


            To suggest that all colonizing efforts were the same in their motivation and outcome is, of course, not correct, but even still, the way we are taught about colonizing ventures, whether in the Caribbean or North America, has the essential components of the same mythos – the same lie, or even more deviously a cover-up for the same thing. To reinforce “God, Gold and Glory” Spanish colonization skips over the development of sugar production through industrial agriculture (mass produced for market consumption) and moves straight to tales about Conquistadors and other military explorers. God is harder to see as the motivation behind the likes of Cortes and Pizarro, but the Gold and Glory is easy to see.  But sugar? It’s the main thing, but it’s a boring thing, but it’s the main thing. Why is it more significant than the GGG hypothesis?

When visiting Costa Rica, along a winding road, posts were being spiked into the ground for fencing by a group of workers. About a mile down completed fencing seemed to have posts that still had branches coming out of them. Did they just not trim those posts? And then a mile later the posts of the fencing were full blown trees. Trees? Was it possible that this place was fertile enough that you could chop down a tree, make it into posts, stick the posts into the ground and they would bloom back into trees, Trees? I don’t know, but that’s what it looked like.

In Costa Rica living fences is actually a thing.


Of course, "looks like" doesn’t substantiate anything, but what is known is that here is a climate good for year around growing with enough water resources and good enough soil to produce whatever it is you want to produce. I’ve never seen posts grow into trees in Cuba or Jamaica or Hispaniola or Barbados …. You get the picture, but the conditions for mass production to lead to mass consumption (and therefore growing profit) in the Caribbean was astounding. If you could control those lands, as Columbus and other Europeans who followed after him saw to, wealth beyond imagination could be yours –and once labor and transport were secured a system of production that would dominate the Atlantic World from 1500-1800 was established, and this system created massive amounts of wealth for those who controlled that system. Not the laborers – they were slaves, not the whole community – they were mostly peasants in the Old World, but for those who controlled the system went the wealth. Yikes, talk about a bad founding mythos, history, story, whatever. Can somebody get some religion in here to “create” a better story? Sure, but that’s not the worst of it, that’s not the big lie, as can be seen when we look to the North and the colonization of North America …. next time.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Why Are We Here? America, Columbus and the Modern Economy



Blog 1 – Columbus and Modern Economy

To start at the beginning -- the union of the hemispheres -- The meaning of Christopher Columbus. Historians are finally beginning to publish alternative hypotheses to the "Great Explorer" narrative that has been promoted for the last several centuries. In the past two decades this means that Columbus is no longer an unchallenged hero, but seen for the horrific devastation that resulted from his voyages. What interested me most was the story behind the story -- why did Columbus set sail in the first place. Anyone who grew up in America in the 1960s would be familiar with the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs convinced Columbus to sail in order to prove that the world was round. Despite the fact that learned humans had known the world was round for millennia, to little kids this seemed like a grand proposition even if it lacked any sort of historical plausibility. We were also taught that Columbus wanted to explore .... particularly, to find Asia -- an Asia, which he never reached and an Asia, which according to the great work of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima Columbus knew he never went found. In the early 2000s I wrote an alternative hypothesis based on key factors in Columbus' life and from centuries of activity directly related to who and what he was. It was simply called "Modern Economy" (ME). I've noticed other authors have recently caught on to bits of this hypothesis, which provides evidence to show that Columbus set sail to further economic trends developing in the Western world revolving around sugar production. Indeed, it was the contention of "Modern Economy" that Asia was never part of Columbus' motivation (even if it would have been a nice ancillary benefit to his endeavors) and that the only motivation was expansion of sugar production -- in which he had been involved for decades. Other authors, such as Charles Mann in 1493 have developed this hypothesis in fuller ways than I did at the turn of the century, but a couple of key points were left out.  
            The origin of ME, besides finding a better interpretation for Columbus than the one offered by Bugs Bunny, was to find out the historical basis for the European Renaissance – a period of literary, artistic and intellectual growth the likes of which would take a boat load of resources to pull off, and before the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, Europe didn’t seem to have any ships. Not literally, of course, but Europe lacked the wealth to experience such a flowering of cultural development. So Jerry Maguire style, I asked, “Show me the money?” Where did Europe find the resources to enter an age of development that altered the very course of civilization? So I went in search of that money. I looked in Europe, but found it lacking of any sort of economic basis by which to initiate anything, and I didn’t buy the “Black Plague” hypothesis that because of a devastation of the European population (numbers of which seem totally out of place, by the way, but that’s a different hypothesis) there were now enough resources for Renaissance …. Uh, but most scholars describe the Renaissance as beginning prior to the Black death, so what the …. “Show me the Money?” In looking for sources for money (much of which was in the 2/3rds of the world’s gold supply in West Africa, unknown to Europeans) I assembled the framework by which capitalism developed and came into the Western World. Columbus was an extension of this long train of economic connections that appeared to begin with the rise of Islam and the organization of the Arab Empire. Afterall, it was Muslim merchants who introduced sugar to the West, and, utilizing gold resources from West Africa, developed proto-free market capitalism and industrial agriculture, particularly with cotton and sugar. From being a historian of American History I knew well that sugar was the main resource in colonizing America, and that cotton surpassed sugar as the main engine of the Atlantic Economy by the 19th century …. And both of those commodities were established through the growth and development of the Atlantic Slave Trade and New World slave systems. It was on the backs of those slaves – and other slave systems involving many other peoples, like slavs taken into the Mediterranean – upon which the Renaissance and the subsequent growth of Western Civilization (including American democracy) was financed. There’s the money. Connecting Columbus to these economic cycles was not the difficult part. The difficulty was in the proposition of why Columbus was connected to the Age of Exploration instead of the growth of capitalism, exploitation of labor, and the pursuit of wealth at any cost …. It makes for a better story to connect Columbus to something noble? Is that it? I mean, even though he never got to Asia, he did sail the ocean blue so isn’t that exploring? When an army invades and conquers it is not exploring. When Columbus went looking for islands on which to expand sugar cultivation and then his voyages result in that expansion …. You found the money.
Attached is the original ME, though it has taken different shapes over the years. As it is written, it was intended for a class text that focused on the transition towards Modern Value structures, but eventually it does get to Columbus …. and sugar. Enjoy.


What a piece of work is a man?
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty
In form and motion how express and admirable
In action how like an Angel, in apprehension how like a God
The Beauty of the World!
W. Shakespeare -- Hamlet

            So how do we get from the Archaic to the Modern?  The patterns of the Archaic World from our view seem to point out certain tendencies, certain values, those five fundamental features we described in the introduction that are different from other patterns -- the values we take for granted today -- which began to develop around 1500.  But what can get us there?  What is so compelling as to bring a new set of values to human populations?  The simple passage of time?  Our species has existed for a long time, so how and why did patterns happen to begin to change within the last five hundred years.  This question is relatively recent in scholarship, as old assumptions (that people are just people wherever they are and they basically want, and expect, the same things out of life) are examined within the spectrum of new ideas.  Our assumption is that people are not just people, and though each culture has peculiar habits, more significantly, they also share certain general features that informs their consciousness.  And it is that change in consciousness that we describe generally as the facets of different worlds, which would need to somehow change to get us from Archaic to Modern patterns.  But what could alter human consciousness?  And not just with one person who can trip on some hallucinogen and claim to see into the spirit world, but over whole populations?  Something profound has to happen, and we will look for the possibilities of new experience and new frames of referencing which might fundamentally change patterns of human abundance and human knowledge.  And we believe the Bard was right, that for the expression of human kind to become so noble in reason, form and faculty will need to go through a profound change in order to alter the basic values of human communities. 
            Most Historians do acknowledge that within the last five hundred years there have been many profound changes which characterize the Modern Era.  They perhaps don't try and find general patterns of human consciousness the way we do, but to each his own -- interpretation that is.  Usually, these profound changes coincide with developments occurring in Europe, especially when trying to define the course of Western Civilization.  Most importantly, the Renaissance is used to describe the beginnings and birth of the Modern ideal.  And that may very well be true, for as we will see the Renaissance is at the very least a beginning of a new valuation of human life, and an era that sees the development of new identity systems which revolve around individual being.  Not perhaps individuated, yet, but emphasizing new patterns all the same.  And the Renaissance is big, it does change things, it does lead to the possibilities of a changed human consciousness, but in order to understand the possibilities of that change we need to understand first how and why the Renaissance came into being.  Most scholars seem to view the Renaissance as a European event, and therefore look for causation within European development.  This may be right, the Europeans may have (magically) re-invented themselves, and we'll discuss that possibility, and the traditional interpretations of other texts in the course of developing our argument.   But before we do that, we'll take a little diversion to somewhere outside the European world.  Our premise, for this chapter, is that change occurred, and that for change to occur new forms and new expressions must be relatable to both cause and effect in the progression of events.  Therefore, it will be our contention that the changes in the European world which spawned the Renaissance were stimulated by external causes.  Those causes we believe began with the rise and development of Islam.
Argument note:  How and why, as you should assume, must necessarily be based on logical assumptions.  They have to make sense.
            For the centuries that Europeans lived in the filth and squalor of the Middle Ages, the Islam flourished.  Islam encompassed the most advanced societies in the western world in technology, in medicine, in learning -- in hygiene.  More importantly over its long history, from the time of the Prophet Mohammed in the 7th century to the 15th century, Islam developed possibilities which might alter the basic structures of human society, and possibly lead to alterations in human consciousness.  Islam did not create the Modern World, nor are modern values a function of Islamic cultures.  In fact, most of Muslim populations today live by Archaic values.  But Islam did form a foundation for a change in values, both for itself and for other regions, which its growth, both cultural and economic, affected.
            After initial unity the world of Islam was dominated by regional empires which were based primarily on ethnic relationships.  Gone were the days of the Prophet's ideal of cross-cultural unity, and the people of Islam, like the people of Christendom fell back on what is most comfortable to the human species, corollary of Rule #3, promote one communal identity to the detriment of another.  Gooooooo humans.

Islam and the Beginning of the Modern World

            Islam, both as a religion and as a cultural perspective, developed in the Near East in the vacuum of power and cohesion in the Mediterranean world following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 400s.  While the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained until the 1400s and attempted to carry on the legacy of Augustus, it was a pale imitation at its best.  The Eastern Empire rarely exerted the sort of unifying dominion over the Mediterranean and Near Eastern World which Rome did, and therefore, economically and politically opportunity existed for some people or power to take advantage of the situation.  Arabia formed the heart of a new empire which would grow to encompass lands from Europe across North Africa and deep into Asia.  This new empire, based on Islam, would also transform the world through the introduction of new technologies, new ideas and new economic systems.  These systems ultimately laid the foundation for the type of wealth and knowledge which would lead to a change in consciousness, but not in the world of Islam itself, instead the beneficiaries would inhabit the lands of the old empire, which was centered on Rome.

Argument Note:  Two things:  first, we have our introductory paragraph, which, as you can notice, accomplishes two things.  We explain the variables we will explore, the rise of Islam and its cultural and economic impact, and also that Islam will eventually aid in the possibilities of the Modern World to come (that's our thesis, anyway).  The second feature of the paragraph is thematic, a way of writing which brings a nice current to the way the words are written.  Rome is mentioned in the first sentence, and then we moved away from it to describe our purpose.  Then we finish with the use of Rome, not the historical empire, but with Rome as a representative concept, ebb and flow, rolling with the tide. 
                  The second thing we need to mention, and you can keep this in mind when writing, we can't explain all there is to know about Muslim society -- and we won't -- What we need to do is bring forth information that will help us get to where we want to go, which is understanding the formation of the Modern World.  Historians very often frame information through omitting stuff that does not fit with their overall argument.  And that is o.k.  Just make sure you do explain the relevance of the material you do use.
            The Arabian region, as well the Levant and Syria, where Islam first flowered included both Christians, Jews, and animists, what our culture sometimes calls Pagans in the centuries before the Prophet Mohammed.  Most of the land in Arabia is inhospitable to the formation of agricultural societies; after all, it's a desert.  The desert climate of Arabia directly contributed to how and why Islam developed.  Prior to the coming of the Prophet Mohammed, the tribes of the desert were nomadic.  Few population centers existed, and there were also few areas of fertile land, after all, this was the desert.  Therefore, Arabs were historically non-agricultural, dependent on trade for their resources and like most pre-modern peoples, fought amongst themselves.  Keep in mind fighting is bad for business.  The Arabs were also polytheistic animists who worshiped the spirits of the earth and found particular importance in trees, caves and large stones.  Veneration for such forms makes perfect sense if you think about it in an environment that is made up of a lot of sand.  From a supernatural understanding typical of the Archaic world an oasis, a spring, or a landmark of the world must be a holy place -- hence the shrine of the Ka’bah in Mecca today, which houses a black stone.  Of course, where there are many gods there is more chance for fighting.  Enter the Prophet.  Mohammed ibn Abdallah, the founder and prophet of Islam, lived from 570-632 and came from a merchant family of Mecca during a time of intense trade competition between towns and clans.  The future prophet was initially raised by his maternal grandfather who was part of the powerful Koresh clan, though he was also raised by a paternal uncle, Abu Talib.  The senior most uncle on his paternal side, who by tradition might have taken over the raising of the orphaned Mohammed, declined, but nonetheless, this Uncle al-Abbas will be the forbear of a future Muslim dynasty known as the Abassids.  Under Abu Talib, Mohammed learned of trade and commerce, and also got his first taste of competition as the Koresh went to war with a rival clan, the Hawazin, around 580 c.e.  Warfare was an endemic part of life in the peninsula where resources were scarce, and the experience of warring clans, some of whom are aligned with outsiders, the Byzantines and the Persian Sassanian Empire, most definitely colors Mohammed's early years. 
            Marrying well was one avenue of success in the Archaic world.  Mohammed married into a wealthy mercantile family for whom he worked.  Khadijah, the prophet's first wife, was fifteen years his senior, though the strength of their bond is often portrayed by the fact that Mohammed took no other wives while she was alive.  The couple had four daughters which survived infancy, though neither of their two sons made it to adulthood.  The only daughter who has children was Fatima, whose name will later be the inspiration for a ruling dynasty in Egypt.  Being able to trace lineage, or at least ascribe heritage, to the family of the prophet will be a recurring theme in the Islamic societies, as you might expect in the Archaic World. 
            Mohammed managed the commercial interests of his wife's fortune.  Trade brought him into contact with monotheistic Jews, and Trinitarian and monophysitic Christians, both of which had traditions of book centered religion and an Abrahamic lineage.  Arabic tradition does ascribe their origin to the biblical figure of Abraham, though this tradition fell into disuse prior to Mohammed, only to be resurrected by the prophet to form the basis of his new religion.
            Islam was based on similar principles to that of both Judaism and Christianity.  Most importantly, the Prophet spread his divine words in the hope of unifying the people of Arabia.  Unity is good for their primary mode of life which is trade and the expansion of markets.  Mohammed began having revelations in 610 in which he received the words of the Holy Koran from the angel Gabriel.  Even more so than Judaism, which developed a negative tribal code with the 10 commandments (thou shallt not what thou shallt do), and Christianity, whose original message was adopted for a subject people to foster group cohesion (seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, love those who hate you), Islam developed a positive, personal mode of faith that was not tied to formal church organization or hierarchy, but involved individualized discipline and ritual.  Of course, much of the ritual was done as a group, but let's see what sense we can make out of the major tenets of the religion if we are interpreting with an eye to possibilities.
Argument note:  Some scholars who seek a secular understanding of historical developments rationalize the inspiration behind divine revelation in purely human terms, especially when it is a religious system not predominant within their society.  While this is an accepted scholarly practice it is perhaps better not to overtly doubt the possibilities of the divine of other cultures, just as you might not want it done for your own.  We can assess the motivations, causes and effects of figures like Jesus and Mohammed without denying their connection with God, or with their interpretation of God.  Though if we were in the Archaic world, such intellectual tolerance would not be necessary.
The Sophistication of Islamic Culture
            Where Islam spread, so too did a variety of ideas and products.  In the diffusion of technology the Muslims introduced to the West the compass from India, and passed along their own innovation of the astrolabe, both of which would become instrumental to the new world economy which revolved around trans-Atlantic trade.  Interestingly enough the Chinese had a leg up technologically on the West, but their values inhibited using it to extend their own knowledge and resource base outside a limited sphere of influence.  Ah, Archaic values.  Chinese Imperial policy was highly xenophobic and commerce was seen as a despicable pursuit, and so few Chinese spread westward. 
            One such mariner was the eunuch admiral Zheng He, who in the first decades of the fifteenth century was sent by his master, the emperor of China, on an expedition that took him to the East Indies, India and into the Persian Gulf.  The Junks (Chinese ships), which were five times as large as Columbus' Santa Maria, were impressive enough, but that was all the mission was supposed to accomplish -- impress the rest of the world.  Quite a communal attitude, one apparently not shared by the Arabs and other Muslims who were growing rich in trade, picking up such bargains as gunpowder and sugar from the Far East.
            Besides technology Islam also caused a diffusion of learning.  To keep better books the Muslims spread their numeral system.  To be a good Muslim, unlike animistic peoples, who depended on divining and mythology, and Christianity, which depended upon group ritual, Muslims read the Koran which meant that converts had to become literate in Arabic.  A boon for business, no doubt, as across the Trans-Saharan and Trans-Asian networks some commonality could be found in Arabic script.  Muslims, therefore, established schools and universities which led to developments in science and a preservation of the geometry and philosophy of Antiquity (Persia, Greece and Rome). 
            Like Europe during the Renaissance, the world of Islam toyed with humanistic notions, perilously challenging traditional conceptions of God, tradition, and communal values.  Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian-Turkic scholar of Shiite leanings become noted for his work in medical research and the compilations of medical terms and drawings, drawn from ancient writers, such as Hippocrates and Galen.  Avicenna's most enduring work was The Canon of Medicine.  But Ibn Sina, Avicenna's name in the Muslim World, was most influential, at least by how he affected subsequent European philosophy, for incorporating the Platonic forms into his vision of Islam.  Similar to Plato, Avicenna related the creative power of Allah to that of the "Prime Mover" of Plato, a force which created but then left the rest up to that creation in ways that would have made sense to the West African tradition of Chuku.  But this was very unsettling to the mass of Muslims, and other philosophers, who believed that the will of Allah defined and controlled all acts of life, and hence was not ready to accept human inspiration as the defining factor for understanding the geo-physical world. 
            Hold on to your supernatural.  It was apparent to some Muslim philosophers that too much reliance on the Ancients brought about a rationalism inconsistent with faith.  The most influential Muslim philosopher who stood opposed to the rational insights of Avicenna was al-Ghazali who lived from 1059 to 1111.  Abu Hamid Mohammed al Ghazali didn't like the rationalist trend of those associated as faylasufs, and instead was drawn more towards the emotional expression of another Islamic sect, Sufism, a form of mysticism.  Al-Ghazali in this sense was an anti-Platonist and anti-Aristotelian because he believed that the will of Allah governed all things, and not rationally based laws or definitions.  Why does the sun set?  Because of the will of Allah, not because of the rotation of celestial spheres, gravity and stuff like that.  Logic is only useful, reasoned individualized interpretive thought is only useful, if it explains the omnipresent reality of Allah.  Al-Ghazali had a great impact on reinforcing Sunni orthodoxy, and gave weight to Shariah (Muslim Law) as the basis for civil law -- supernatural over secular. 
            The flowering of philosophy in the late Abbasid period seen in the works of Avicenna and Al-Ghazali was also found in the works of a Spanish born thinker by the name of Ibn Rushd.  Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) made an even greater impact on Europe, where he was known as Averroes.  Averroes most significant Christian disciple was another philosopher with an A name, which makes it easy to remember, Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic saint of knowledge.  The Andalusian Averroes reconciled Muslim beliefs with Greek thought, particularly Aristotle, because he found a way to explain how the truth of Allah could only be enhanced by seeking rational truth. 
            Truth was truth, and if ultimate truth came from Allah, all pursuits of truth confirmed the will of Allah.  Aquinas was able to read Latin translations of Averroes and the European worked under similar constraints as his Islamic influence.  To deny the supernatural knowledge of a religious system, as Averroes and Aquinas knew would lead to severe penalties; they had to satisfy the powerful, Islamic Orthodoxy and the Roman Church, that their work fulfilled the rule of the divine of the temporal.  Aquinas rationalized philosophy as a means to understanding "secondary causes" which supported the "primary cause" of God as understood by theologians.  Unfortunately, Averroes was to free thinking and was banished from the seat of Moorish power in Cordoba in 1195.  Aquinas lived more happily ever after.
            Philosophy and the development of complex systems of logic and reasoning, both important to understanding the Koran were coupled with advances in Mathematics.  The Islamic World made strides in the development of Algebra, Trigonometry, and Optics, the study of refraction, transmission and speed of light, which in turn led to advances in physics and astronomy.  To make such computations the numerical system of the Muslim world included zero and decimals.  The work in algebra and trigonometry by poet and mathematician Omar Kayyam (1038-1131) lade the foundation for astronomers such as Nasir al-Din in the 13th century.  Nasir al-Din worked from models of the universe from ancient Greek astronomers, like Ptolemy, and his calculations laid the foundation for explaining the movement of celestial bodies in the solar system.  Without such work Copernicus and Galileo would not have been so star struck. 
            Being a practical bunch, all this science also needed achievements applicable to the market place.  Muslim science led to gains in chemistry, and figuring out how to make such useful items as sulfuric acid, to break stuff down, and carbonate of soda, to help when the tummy has broken down.  The Muslims began and spread the first real hospital system, by which they were the first to diagnose stomach cancer, treat eye disorders, understand infectious disease, and promote personal hygiene.  While the Europeans were bleeding people (to death), Muslims in Africa and Arabia were separating diseased patients into separate wards, keeping a medicinal dispensary and medical library at treatment centers, as well as using hospitals as training centers where licensed physicians taught would-be doctors.  Physicians, like Razi (865-930), discovered the difference between small pox and measles which lead to different treatments on a much more sophisticated scale than the merely keeping the “Aristotelian Humors” in balance.  During the Renaissance the scientific investigations of the Islamic world provided Europeans with a foundation for their own scientific investigations.
            All this science and mathematics did have applications in architecture and engineering as well.  Muslims, by the nature of a religion with no formal priesthood or infrastructure similar to the Catholic Church, banded together in cities, which dotted the Islamic map from Asia to Spain.  The center piece of most cities was the mosque, and secondarily, palaces of the leadership.  Their architecture featured vaults, pillars, domes and asymmetrical symmetry.  Architecture was probably the greatest artistic expression of the Muslim world, since it was blasphemy to paint a lot of iconic images, as was prevalent in Christendom. 
Argument Note:  There are a lot of interesting things about the historic world of Islam that need to be included besides a direct connection to the Rise of the Modern World.  The cultural achievements of Islam are important to know in their own right, but these attributes can also round out an essay topic on the connection of Islam with the rest of the West.  Think as you read how you can find a place to make this information relevant?  Part of the answer to that might be through comparing the cultural features of the Islamic World with what you know has become incorporated (maybe from Europe or Africa) in our society, and then maybe how that incorporation may reflect modern values.  By doing this you create links between various topics and are able to show cause and effect.  You should get a sense of what we mean from the following paragraphs and the commentary that goes with them.
The Empire of Islam and the Foundation of the West
            By 750 an Islamic empire stretched from Persia to Spain and by the 800’s Arabs and other near eastern converts were trading with West Central Africa for commodities like gold, iron, and palm oil, and also with China for silk, spices, and new technology.  The Arabs also figured out the process of refining cane, and soon began growing sugar in Persia, the Levant and on islands throughout the Mediterranean.  Everyone loves sugar and the Arabs found lucrative markets for the stuff in Europe and North Africa.  Of course, sugar was just one of many commodities traded in the Muslim world and though it was highly profitable was not the most commonly produced good. 
            Sugar, in both literal and figurative terms, however, was explanatory of two major phenomena that would eventually change the Muslim world.  Since sugar needed to be grown and refined to make the best profit margin, the Muslim world needed non-Muslim labor to work the fields, and they got that labor in the overland trade on the Sahara.  Into the Muslim world beginning in the ninth and tenth century came millions of slaves from East and West Africa -- and many through the imperial complexes of Ghana and Mali.  Sugar, as a symbol for Asiatic trade and intercourse, also helped to create markets in Europe (which helped vault Italian trading cities like Venice and Genoa into prominence), and helped to cause an interchange, which brought new groups into the Muslim Arab world.  These groups, to which we now refer, did not really come to make a buck, but rather came to conquer.  Conquering hordes from Central Asia, and minor bands of ill equipped soldiers from Europe from the 11th to the 14th centuries forever altered patterns of cultural, economic and political development in the Muslim World, and arguably inhibited the possibilities of modern values being first established in the Middle East.  Maybe even more interesting, without the profound alteration of the Muslim world from the 12th century into the 15th, Christopher Columbus would have never met Santa Maria.
Argument Note:  Here we have a dual thesis, and maybe even a duel thesis, two ideas, and ideas that seem to be competing.  But what is important is that in both we have very specific statements of purpose which lead us to arguable interpretive points.  In some ways we can break those sentences down to really understand just what such a point could and maybe should look like from your professor's point of view.  Notice each has a defined, and specific "Who, What, When and Where" in the statement, but let's break one down more explicitly.  "Conquering hordes from Central Asia," this is a "Who", for which we could have just said Natural nomadic peoples of Mongol-Turkic ethnicity, but it certainly does not have as snappy a literary feel as Conquering hordes.  "What" is kind of dually explained in the phrases conquering horde and "altered patterns," and not only that it helps to describe another essential element we need in our thesis patterns -- "How and why."  We also need something relatable, arguable, and interesting which explains the "Significance" of our statement.  We ought to have a reason why we are bothering to write the essay, or taking up the reader's time with our thoughts.  The significance in the first thesis is "inhibited the possibilities of modern values," and in the second the same idea is expressed, through Chris Columbus as our figurative device -- though we also mean it quite literally.  We could further break down the ideas behind these portions relating to significance, and explain them within the context of our paper, and particularly in our conclusion, as to how our ideas of "inhibited the possibilities of modern values" was a short term reality, related to a specific series of events, and also related to long term development.  "All in a nice neat package," said Homer Simpson.  But we'll let you draw your own conclusions for now
            The expansion of the empire through conquest and the solidification of trade routes with Africa and Asia created an abundance of resources, which flowered in the 9th through the 12th century in philosophy, mathematics, art, and the growth of abundant cities, but it also alerted peoples on the fringes of empire to new possibilities.  Nomadic peoples from central Asia, most significantly at first, the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, and later the Mongols, swept in swords blazing into the Muslim controlled territories, establishing empires of their own.  At the same time, pressure came from the West, as Europeans, who were making money with the economic expansion of Islam affecting their own markets, sponsored a series of Crusades to "take back the Holy Land," or for interpretive purposes, to get a share of the loot.  And as we know with conquest, comes booty, and everybody likes booty. 
            The Seljuk Turks began making a significant impact on the Muslim world in the 10th century by carving out spheres of influence in Asia Minor, now known as Turkey.  Nomadic peoples, of the Natural World no less, eventually converted to Sunni Islam, and took over the Abbasid caliphate.  In 1055 they seized Baghdad, and even meted out a little punishment on the Byzantines who they defeated at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 to solidify their control of Asia Minor.  Not only did this throw a wrench into the Arab-Persian monopoly on power in the world of Islam, it also caused Christendom to stretch its neck and cast its eye on Muslim held positions in Europe and even in the Levant.
            The era of the Crusades is not merely an event revolving around armed men with swords and crosses attempting to secure passage to the holy sites of Christendom in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.  Actually, the armed conflicts from 1095 to 1270 entailed a much larger strategic agenda by Christendom on many fronts to combat the growth of Islam and to take control the Mediterranean economy.  The Seljuks for their part helped this along by destabilizing the caliphate, and opening a window of opportunity of which the Christians took full advantage. 
            Spanish Christian armies began a series of campaigns that would last until 1492 to take the Iberian Peninsula from the heirs of Tariq.  French Norman knights swept into the Mediterranean and seized the (sugar growing) island of Sicily in the 11th century.  The first Norman King of Sicily was crowned in the early 1100s as Roger I.  Not a great name for a king, but he certainly was smart enough to keep producing the agricultural commodities of the island's Muslim heritage, like grapes, olives, citrus fruit, and sugar cane.  He had a little help from investment capital provided by the mercantile interests of Venice and other Italian cities, and his kingdom eventually began importing their own labor supply through the Byzantine Empire (controlled in the 11th century by Crusaders and the Venetian navy). 
            Venetian ships also helped to move Crusader armies to the Levant, and into Byzantine territory.  The Levant was, of course, the site of major Christian holy places, like the Church of the Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and that must have been why they sailed?  Yeah.  The Levantine ports were also major embarking stations for goods coming out of the Muslim world, and a nice growing area for crops, like sugar.  If Jerusalem had not been located there, the Crusaders, and their Italian transports, would have moved it.  The motives might have been purely religious from the perspective of the Roman Pope, Urban II, who called for the initial military expedition in 1095, but the Crusades degenerated into a frenzy of wealth grabbing.  In 1204 the Crusaders bypassed the Levant altogether and sacked Constantinople, after which they kept control of this most precious port for sixty odd years.  Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire, never fully recovered, and remained an entrepot of Italian investment and trade until its conquest at the hands of another Central Asian people in 1453. 
            The Ottoman Turks, conquerors of Constantinople, followed their Seljuk cousins into the Muslim world in the late middle ages, but did not make a splash of their own until after the greatest land empire of all time chopped up the Islamic empire at the hands of another Central Asian group, the Mongols.  The Mongol chieftain, Temujin, who later took the title Genghis Khan meaning Great Ruler, was able to unite the tribal units of his people by 1206, and fashion them into a fearsome fighting force.  In the early 13th century the armies of the Great Khan controlled China, and tore into the Middle East.  By the time of his death in 1227 Genghis ruled an empire from China to Russia, and his successors added the heart of Islam with the capture of Baghdad in 1258. 
            The Golden Horde of the Mongol, as the mass of light cavalry was sometimes called, seemed an invincible, and rapacious force.  And the Mongols were brutal on a scale that was vicious even by Archaic standards.  Try and fight them, and if you are defeated they will slaughter your whole city.  Give up and they'll just bleed you dry through taxation; probably a better option.  The only thing that saved Europe from dread, devastation, and destruction was because a successor to Genghis died and the Mongol army in Hungary turned back so it could take part in choosing a new Great Khan.  Japan was saved only by the intervention of a divine wind.  While most of Islam fell to the Mongols, An Egyptian army was able to stem the tide at Ain Jalut in the Levant near Nazareth.  In one of histories most significant battles, the Muslim armies fought off the invaders keeping North Africa safe from Mongol conquest. 
            By the fourteenth century, however, conquest had turned to regional competition as the Mongol empire fragmented and regional Khans sought to assert their own power.  The Khan in China converted to Buddhism and the Khans of central Asia and the Middle East converted to Islam.  Here Mongol power was superceded by the rising power of the Ottomans who controlled the Near East by the dawn of the 14th century.  It would eventually be opposed as the main power in the Islamic world by the revival of Persian power under the Safavid Empire.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Ottoman Sunnis and the Shiite Safavids would duel over control of Iraq, and for control of the cultural voice of Islam.  Of course by this time the Mongol and Turkic invasions had ushered in militaristic governments, bordering on what we might call totalitarian -- and with this the possibilities for individual emancipation, despite a growing independent merchant class, was over.  No Modernity for you.
Argument Note:  Sometimes you have to play to your crowd.  Your professor appreciates a well turned phrase -- though usually not a colloquialism.  Alliteration is a nice literary form to use every once in a while, which was twice used in the subsequent paragraph.  Word patterns which start with the same sound or letter such as "dread, devastation, and destruction" (not the greatest example of alliteration), or "fashion them into a fearsome fighting force," (better) can be appealing to a reader, especially stuffed shirt professors.  As a side, it was during this period that coffee from Africa began making its way into the Muslim economy.  In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, particularly in Egypt, coffee shops became havens for talk of rights and liberties in a way very much similar to that of coffee shops in the British colonies of North America in the eighteenth century.  The Ottomans put a stop to such coffee talks.

The Grounding of the Modern Economy: Africa and Europe
            The Trans-Saharan Trade Network expanded from the beginning of the 8th century under the control of the empire of Ghana.  The strategic location of the West Central African empire near the great bend of the Niger River afforded the Kings of Ghana great wealth.  Wealth, and its accumulation and production, is a highly significant thing -- it changes everything, and it brought West Africa into contact with the commercial world of Islam.  The trade partnership of these societies increased the wealth and power of both regions through the trade of African metals (gold, silver and iron), minerals and spices, such as salt and pepper, for Near Eastern and Indian tapestries and cloth, agricultural produce, like palm oil, tubers, plantains, for finished products, and also a growing trade in human slaves, mostly for domestic service at first, but later for agricultural work in the Muslim world.  Goods going from West to East, Ghana to Morocco to Arabia, and East to West from India to Arabia, Arabia to the Magreb all in a corridor of trade that was more expansive than anything anyone had ever known.
            Over the next three centuries trade increased, wealth grew forming the basis of a merchant class in the Muslim world, and ideas and learning of a variety of pursuits were exchanged and expanded.  Arabic and other Muslim traders of the Near East established contacts with the Far East, China and India initiating trade in spices (good as preservatives and to add flavor to food), silks and useful items, most notably gunpowder and the compass.  Expanding markets, expanding technology, expanding their understanding of the geo-physical universe, but also expanding the horizons of human being. 
            The Trans-Asian trade brought sugar, the single most significant commodity, into the Islamic world.  Over the 9th, 10th and into the 11th sugar production and distribution grew through Muslim merchants, and not just in the traditional lands of the Koran, but especially in newly conquered, formerly Christian areas, such as Cyprus, coastal Spain, and Sicily.  Slavery was not a sin, but controlling the labor of a fellow follower of the Prophet was.  As a labor source the Muslims relied on their trading partners in West Central Africa to supply them with non-Muslim agricultural slaves.  Apart from squabbles between sects, spin-off emirates, business was good; in fact better than good, it was the envy of the world. 
            What brought Europe back into prominence from a long extended sleep after the fall of Rome was economic expansion.  This expansion was in consequence with economic growth brought about by Islamic trade, and by the introduction into European markets of products, which were wealth creating luxury items, like sugar.  Part of this expansion was initiated in the form of religious crusades.  Out of these Crusades Europeans, most notably the Italians merchants of Venice, Genoa and other trade cities, were not only exposed increasing commerce, but also to the learning of the East and Byzantium. 
            Trade with Asia and the Middle East began in earnest during the Crusade Period through Byzantium, and then just a hop, skip, and a jump to the lands of the Great Khan and the riches of Xanadu.  In Xanadu did he decree a stately pleasure dome, to paraphrase Coleridge down to his sunless sea, but it was not measureless caverns that merchant adventurers, of which Marco Polo was but one, came to find.  No, this merchant of Venice more than likely established trade links by which he could market the products of foreign lands back home in Italy.  His was a story not really of adventure, or exploration, but of merchant capitalism in its infancy.  Overland trade with the certainly jump started growth and development in the south of Europe, at the same time Europe found it cost effective to push the Moors out of former Christian lands.  It was not a coincidence that the "Reconquista," as a general term for European forays into previously Islamic dominated regions, and trade routes, came at the same time Europe became connected to the realities of an expanding market economy from Asia to Africa. 
            Investment and increased development in Italy certainly enhanced economic growth in Northern Europe, particularly in the cities of the Low Countries, like, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels.  The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries would see market development in a host of northern cities, such as those in the Germanys who formed a trade alliance known as the Hanseatic League, which traded a lot of boring items such as wool, wheat, and wood.  Well, other items were included metal manufactured items, textiles, and other food commodities, but the question to ask is does it get us to the Modern World, could these commodities have made the difference in changing the very consciousness of man?  Let's see.
            Most European economic historians place heavy emphasis on the interplay between Northern cities, such as those of the trade league named for the German city of Hansa, but the pattern of economic growth found there did not extend a new philosophy towards wealth creation, as distinct from wealth accumulation, upon which basic value structures could be changed.  The modest accumulations of excess wealth made possible by the "Agricultural Revolution" mentioned earlier did cause markets to expand, and between the Hanseatics, the Low Countries, Northern France and even England, there was a tidy economy in the North Sea.  These historians also connect the north with the south of Europe.  The developing northern markets of the 13th and 14th century may have been bigger than ever before, but they reinforced conservative patterns compatible with Archaic values, or at least the same patterns established by the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries.  The goods speak louder than words, according to Fernand Braudel, who lists the types of commodities traded in northern fairs:  mostly agricultural goods, mostly low value and small profit, mostly subsistence oriented, with little wealth creation.  What was really stirring the pot (and it was a copper kettle in which sugar could be refined, like those the Venetians supplied to Sicily in the 13th century, according to Charles Verlinden) was the development of commercial and financial systems in Italy involving more speculative cash crops.  These crops didn't supply sustenance, they brought much more.  Sugar, wine, olives, and goods from the East didn't keep you alive, but they did make life worth living (if you could afford these commodities and most could not).
            Part of our whole idea is to seek a chain of causation to what we know will fire the Modern Economy, and help to bring meaning to the germination of new values.  That economy takes hold in the Atlantic world, and revolves around non-European crops, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and tea.  The wealth created from these crops changes the post 16th century world.  Sugar by itself was not the most abundant commodity in Europe, but it led to an unprecedented expansion of wealth beginning with the Muslims and into the Atlantic Economy.  Those Italian cities, chiefly the rivals Venice and Genoa, began trading in useless luxury items, like sugar, but practicality does not necessarily rule the market place, and those items, which would make the Atlantic economy rich, would also form the basis for the Renaissance, the African Slave Trade and the United States of America.  Of course Italian commercial capitalism was made possible through the labor of others.  Like the Moors before them, European operations in former Arabic sugar growing regions in Mediterranean, like Sicily, Sardinia and other islands needed a supply of labor.  To placate their demand they worked through their own trade partners.  Knowing nothing of the sub-Saharan kingdoms which supplied the Muslim World, the first European slave exports came from Russia through the doddering Byzantine Empire.  Then in the middle of the 15th century, as wealth poured into Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Rome, the world changed -- 1453.
            Interaction with the west continually weakened Byzantium, and the fourth crusade actually brought an end to the empire for a while.  But it wasn't just the Europeans, sponsored by Venetians and Genoans who were after the prime bit of real estate upon which Constantinople was built.  The capital of the Byzantines held sway over the waterway between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and also between the also by land between Europe and Asia Minor.  The Turks wanted this land too.  Mehmed II led a campaign of over 100,000 soldiers which was rebuffed for a time by the 9,000 troops under the final Byzantine emperor.  He died defending one of the gates into the city from the onslaught of Ottoman warriors, but it wasn't infantry that did in Constantinople, it was cannon.  Cannon adopted from technologies of the East, brought to bear military fashion on the thick walls of Rome's past glory, which had protected Constantinople since the before the 8th century.  Now it was gone.  Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, and the Turks became giants in the affairs of the Mediterranean.  Italian investment and production in the Eastern Mediterranean was forced to find new lands, new labor sources, and new paths to the East. 
            Traditionally, the fall of Constantinople was seen by modern historians as a great boon to Western Europe, because Greek scholars who carried on the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions fled westward and revived old school Greek learning among the monks of Italy and France.  Of course, many of the thinkers in Western Europe were already familiar with Plato and Aristotle through the writings of Averroes, and other Spanish scholars, like Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher who lived in Moorish Spain.  Besides, living standards and accumulation of wealth had grown in the Western Europe that by 1453 extensive resources were already being devoted to science, art and philosophy.  Byzantium's scholars fleeing west was hardly what made 1453 the most important year of the last millennium.  Instead it made possible the founding of America.  Yes, that America.
            But before we make the American connection we want to backtrack a bit to explain a little about the Italians of the late Middle Ages and their connection to economic growth.  Always looking for new markets, the conquests of the Muslim empire brought them into contact with the peoples of Southern Europe, especially Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa, Florence and Pisa.  Merchants in these towns bought into the Trans-African/Asian trade and sold commodities throughout Europe.  The sale of exotic luxury items helped kick-start, and provide serious value, for peripheral trade networks to the North and West, particularly in Belgium, but also in England, France and the Germanic States.
            Certainly the communal mind of the Archaic Italian merchant was not to be out done by the Infidel.  The mercantile states of Italy soon wanted a larger share of the market, and as they grew more powerful economically they were able to enhance their military and naval capacity (even if they had to pay mercenary forces to accomplish their objectives), enough so that they moved into the sugar growing regions of the Eastern Mediterranean.  The Italians possessed capital, but did not have a labor supply, and they were not in any sort of economic, political or otherwise relationship with the Arabs labor source, West Central Africa.  Not to fear, the Byzantines were able to supply the Italians with slaves from the Crimea.  We already explained this part, but what was really interesting is that all of this commercial activity was creating new business forms; commercial capitalism was developing financial capitalism -- banking, insurance, stocks, bonds and exchanges, eventually anyway.
            To make their economic endeavors more efficient, and to increase profits, the Italians created a sophisticated banking system to facilitate capital investment. One of the most important, and most powerful, was the Medici family of Florence who helped propel Italian hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean and over the sugar market.  The brains behind the operation in the middle of the 15th century was a financial genius by the name of Bartholomeu Marchione.  Marchione was not the only financial officer involved in the expanding trade centers of Italy.  Hundreds of other men managed the financial matters of several Venetian, or Genoan, or Pisan family concerns.  Marchione's task was to make sure that investment and dividends kept flowing, just like the flow of slaves from Byzantium, and growing trickle of sugar to the markets of Europe.  He also scouted for new areas to set up operations, sending Italian seafarers throughout the Mediterranean to set up shop.  This is capitalism in its infancy, and at its finest:  research and development, investment strategies, market development, labor procuration, profit management (creative bookkeeping), and reinvestment (hide the profit).  It was all going so nicely.
            Then came 1453.  No more Byzantium, no more labor supply and no more holdings in the Eastern Mediterranean.  But the beauty of capitalism is that it does not have to be limited by a particular physical boundary.  Marchione knew he could set up anywhere but in 1453, the Turks had limited his interests to the West.  In fact the Venetians wouldn't totally secure the Mediterranean from the Turks until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 -- if then.  But Italian investors, most notably Marchione were aware of possibilities, and he found his answer because of what the Portuguese had been up to for the previous 50 years.
            After unifying their Kingdom and defeating the Moors by the 1300s, Portugal was looking seaward to get some of those exotic items, and build wealth through trade for itself (well at least for the monarchy).  The efforts were spawned through the stunted ambition the youngest son of King John I (r. 1385-1433).  If you are the youngest of four heirs to the throne, you better find something to do.  Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), as this son is known to history, devoted his life to navigation and geography, and built a school and observatory to train sailing men.  The efforts of Henry culminated in the development of the caravel, an ocean going vessel with a wide hull more suitable for open ocean sailing than the sleek galleys of the Arabs and Italians.  Muslim centers of learning, since conquered in Spain and Portugal, also provided a rich supply of charts and maps from antiquity.  Henry undoubtedly knew what the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians knew ... the earth was round.  Unfortunately, sailors under Henry were based their assumptions of earth's continents on the Hellenistic model of the astronomer Ptolemy, who did not include the Americas in his cartographic predictions. 
            Henry was kind enough to list out for posterity his reasons for setting men adrift on the deep blue sea, as recorded during the reign of his brother Eduardo:  zeal for the service of God and the King, establish trade with populations of Christians in Africa (if findable), oppose the Moors, look for Christian allies, make converts, the “Inclination of the Heavenly Wheels,” which Henry believed to be the most important of all, though exactly what he meant is lost.  If we examine these reasons we can get a sense of some of Henry's Archaic values, and the motivation of the Portuguese in general.
            The first of Henry's reasons seems to be derived from the proper etiquette, but it is not without some significant meaning.  The very communal essence of his society is explained here, as his will is subordinate to the representatives of his community, his identity is derived through both temporal and supernatural powers, and his definition of self is ultimately fulfilled by someone else.  The subsequent reasons reinforce these parameters.  Henry is not in business for himself -- in fact, he does not exist in his reasons.  Perhaps the most interesting distinction Henry makes is the importance of religion as the defining quality of friend or foe, and not something like race or ethnicity.  The African kingdoms know to the Portuguese may have included Mali, but it is more likely that Henry refers to Ethiopian Christian kingdoms who did carry on (limited) correspondence with European monarchies.  The Ethiopians were having trouble with invading Muslims as well.  And as to the inclination of Heavenly Wheels?  Well, your guess is as good as any, though given what we assume of the Archaic world, this could be a statement regarding fate.
            And so Henry's sailors began the most popular dance of the 15th century, Portugal’s "Caravel Crawl."  Of course it wasn't a dance, like dancing in a club, more so circular jaunts out into the unknown and then back again.  Each time the loop would expand until the ship sailed into something.  These forays into the Atlantic paid dividends as the Portuguese were able to find uninhabited and inhabited semi tropical islands, great for growing, olives, grapes, other fine Mediterranean products, and oh yeah, sugar.  In 1419 the caravels found Madeira, in 1431 the Azores with the Canaries coming shortly thereafter.  By 1455 Henry’s sailors had navigated well down the coast of Africa to Cape Verde and the islands adjacent, and in 1460 they reached the Bight of Benin.  Both in Benin and Cape Verde the Portuguese established trade contacts with local Kings, just as they attempted to do each place they stopped along the way.  The Kings liked European glass, cloth, and goods, and the Portuguese were thrilled with the Africans gold and silver, palm oil and spices.  There is evidence that the first slave trading took place around 1434 with North African Moroccans, since at this time evidence first appears of African slaves, mostly as household servants, arriving in Portugal.  Most of the principalities the Portuguese encountered were only secondary or tertiary contributors to the Trans-Saharan markets, though as trade increased over the centuries, commerce was siphoned off the Sahara in favor of the costs. 
            But here is where our story gets interesting.  You can almost picture Marchione and others like in him no less, sitting in a dark candle lit villa in Florence pouring over business reports and other news.  He hears of the fall of Constantinople and without a panic he began negotiating leases with the Portuguese King to put his new found lands to good (tasting) use.  The system of Italian sugar production would soon turn Portugal’s new island empire into paradise ... or rather sugar plantations.  He sent several of his lieutenants to scout the area, set up the necessary cultivating and refining equipment, and gain access to a labor supply while he set up the financing in his new digs in Portugal.  Several Italian investors began taking up residence in Portuguese cities, and they weren't there to learn the language.  Portugal was the center of operations from which sailors from Italy and Portugal maintained markets, and secured labor contracts with African princes.  One such seafaring corporate drone was a Genoan sailor by the name of Cristoforo Colombo.  And that should send bells off in your memory, and if it doesn't, then here goes.  Ding Dong.
            The Eastern Mediterranean may have been lost to the Infidel, but trade soon stabilized in the West and Portugal, and Italian investors, as well as African Kings were getting rich, not only off of the profit of sugar, but also on the backs of their African workers.  By 1486 what was left of the Benin Empire began trading with Portugal, and it seems that there is evidence of limited attempts by Spain as early as 1470 to secure African trade partners and sources of slaves.  The center of the slave trade was at the Portuguese Castle at Elmina off the Gold Coast, and in Benin at the Castle of San Jorge where Africans brought captures to be sold to the Portuguese.  By the 1500s, since demand kept rising, the means by which slaves were procured became increasingly lawless.  But don’t forget, this was not the only slave trade going on, and it was still pretty minor at that.  Slaves still crossed the Sahara and went as far away as India: note in 1486 East African slaves in the kingdom of Gaur in India revolted and placed their own leader on the throne. This kingdom did not last long; however, as a new Muslim Empire called the Moguls rose in the early 1500s and unified India.  And as for Spain, they were still dealing with the Muslim Kingdom of Grenada in the 1470s and 1480s to have much investment capital for sugar, slaves, and trade.
            Most research by modern historians on the economic development between Africa and Portugal revolves around the labor supply because of its connections to the later Trans-Atlantic slave trade.  But these economic patterns, which eventually expanded across the Atlantic in the 16th century, brought unprecedented wealth to the crowns of Portugal and Spain, and by extension a growing merchant middle-class in the port cities of Europe.  And Portugal and their eventual partner/competitors, Spain (the kingdoms were merged in favor of Spain for much of the 16th century), kept looking for new markets, as well as routes to old markets, which would by pass the Middle East.  An end run around the Ottomans was good for business in many ways.  But these were hardly voyages of discovery in the sense of fulfilling some sort of scientific, or otherwise benign, curiosity.  That's every bit as whack as the idea that these Europeans had evil murderous objectives -- from our point of view almost everything done in the Archaic World is murderous and evil.  Mostly, these journeys were forays into a capitalist future. 
            Bartholomeu Dias sailed to the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 and Vasco de Gama in 1497 completed the task of reaching the Indian Ocean, and the lands of rugs, silk and spices.  Of course the Muslim overlords of the East weren’t too happy, and sought to keep out the Infidel.  A beautiful thing about the Archaic mentality -- everyone's godless (and to be smited) to everyone else.  War erupted between the Europeans, and the Ottoman and Mogul Empires in 1509-1515 in the Indian Ocean.  The European commander, Alfonso De Albuquerque, seized important coastal towns, Goa and Calicut, and established a permanent fortress at Macao, and the Euros won.
            By 1492, the Spanish states of Castille and Aragon united by their leaders, Ferdinand and Isabella, drove the remaining Muslim rulers out of the Iberian Peninsula and added Granada to their Kingdom.  Ferdinand and Isabella wanted to increase Spain’s role in the economic expansion, which the Portuguese dominated.  He had been studying some of Henry’s Ptolemaic maps and was sure he could open a better route to trade with China and India across the Atlantic rather than round the Horn, of Africa that is.  And new routes also bring the potential for new land on which to raise ... sugar, or other high priced cash crops.  John II of Portugal turned a down a proposal by Cristoforo Colombo to sail west to get to the East.  The ambitious Colombo had been turned down by Spain in the late 1480s, but after Grenada fell, a new opportunity for investment had arrived.  The pitch was made, and the Spanish invested what they could, which was a limited amount seeing how they had just finished a war against their mortal (or immortal) religious enemy, the Moors.  No, it wasn't a side deal between Columbus, as we know the Genoan Cristoforo, and the Spanish Queen.  No, instead this was a clear policy choice, prompted by ambition.  And so Colombo (Colon in Spanish, Columbus in Latin) set sail with the Santa Maria, the Santa Clara, and the Santa name lost to history.
            In the fifty years after Columbus made that first voyage, the Spanish set up shop in the Caribbean replicating old Italian economic practices of sugar plantations.  The Spanish initially tried to enslave the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands, but the population did not survive the process.  Without hesitation, without moral reservation, laborers were shipped from Africa.  The Portuguese realized the potential of the New World, and established large plantations in Brazil.  To promote a friendlier business climate Pope Alexander VI divided the world between the two kingdoms by the Treaty of Tordesillas ... And America was born.
            More important than the birth of America, if anything can compare to that, are the consequences of this economic development.  Of course, the most direct consequence is the expansion of these economic processes in the Atlantic World, the development of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, depopulation, colonization, Revolution!  But more significant than that, at least for the purposes of understanding from where the Modern World came, this economic expansion provided the wealth behind two very important things:  the development of (an increasingly autonomous) merchant class, and huge investment in Europe's infrastructure, including investment in art and science .... You guessed it, all this sugar stuff brought about the Renaissance, and that wasn't just a re-birth of antiquities, it was the birth of the Modern.
Argument Note:  You should take some time to peruse other texts and scholarly works on the causes and origins of the Renaissance.  Incorporate these into your thinking as to how and why events occurred, and also you can reflect on how values might change based upon those interpretations.  You will likely notice that from other perspectives the Renaissance magically appeared in Italy in the 14th or 15th century, and led to marvelous costly works of art (they don't really say magic, but they may as well). 
            Here's the problem:  just like with politicians, most historians don't show how they are going to pay for what they promise (this is partially because historians of economics, slavery and the Renaissance seldom work together).  The Renaissance took a lot of wealth, and not the kind that could be scraped together through indigenous economic practices, and established products developed in the previous 1,000 years.  Art, science, architecture -- they take money, and lots of it.  That money was built on changing market practices (capital investment and mass production leading to mass consumption and capital investment) based on products that produce wealth, create demand and change mentalities.  Money from commercial capital adventures, like those made in sugar, not only paid for the Renaissance, but wealth and prosperity (because people like the esteem, and comfort of it) paved the way for people to redefine how they would view themselves, and, eventually, how they would view others.

List of Sources
David Brion Davis, “Looking at Slavery from a Broader Perspective,” AHR 106 (February 2001)
David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York 1984).
M.A. Cook, edit. Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to today (London 1970)

Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist, 1972)

David Eltis "Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery in the Americas: An Interpretation," AHR 98 (December 1993)
R. Stephen Humphreys, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (Berkeley, 1999)
Joseph C. Miller's presidential address, "History and Africa/Africa and History," AHR 104 (February 1999)
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975).
William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985)
Maya Schatzmiller, Labor in the Medieval Islamic World (London, 1994)
Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York, 1976)
Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, "Before Othello: Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 54 (January 1997)
Charles Verlinden, L'esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale, Vol. 1: Péninsule Ibérique, France (Bruges, 1955); Vol. 2: Italie, Colonies italiennes du Levant, Levant latin, Empire bysantin (Gent, 1977); The Beginnings of Modern Colonization: Eleven Essays with an Introduction, Yvonne Freccero, trans. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970).