ATION A LISM.
All of the motives leading to overseas ex pansion have been powerfully advanced and given new energy by the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, which has fur nished the perfected mechanism of modern ex pansion and has greatly augmented the eco nomic motives for imperialistic activity. The vast increase in the productivity of marketable commodities through the application of the ma chine processes and the factory system has led to the search for more markets. The improved methods of oceanic transportation and of the communication of intelligence have made the search for world markets more feasible and successful. Exploration in the undeveloped re gions has revealed the wealth of raw materials to be obtained from these districts, and the in crease of available capital has led to a desire to develop the economic potentialities of these backward regions. This has been made easy through the fact that the industrial and scientific revolutions affected the military, as well as the economic field, and provided the modern ma chines of war which put the natives completely at the mercy of the European invaders. Mod ern world politics, then, is a great historic com plex of ever greater significance, which draws its motive power from the realms of religious fanaticism, commercial ambitions, national pride and the multifarious impulses from modern capitalism. See INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, THE.
III. The Commercial Revolution and the First Period of European Expansion. 1. The Background of the Commercial Revolution.— While the volume of European trade during the so-called 'Dark Ages' was greater than was once supposed, it is true that the earliest notable development of medirval trade followed the Crusades The peoples of western Europe de sired the edible spices from the Malay Archi pelago and the East Indies to make their coarse and ill-preserved food palatable. They further to secure the precious stones from Per sia and India ; the drugs, perfumes, gums, dyes and woods from the Indies, China and japan; and the draperies, cloth, rugs and fine steel work fry m Persia and Asia Minor. The de sire for these commodities was awakened by the contact with the East during the Crusades and I) the Italian ciy-states. Their
Knee ham > pun based these pro ucts which had been brought from the East through the Red Sea, Asia Minor or Turkestan, took them back to Europe and sold them to distributing mer chants. It was long a venerable tradition in European history that the occupation of the above-mentioned eastern trade-routes by the Turks following 1453 constituted the chief cause of the downfall of the Italian city-states and of the subsequent development of attempts to discover new routes to the East. Prof_ A. H Lybyer has shown, however, that Thorold Rogers' and M. D'Avenels statistics of prices following 1453 indicate no appreciable effect of Turkish occupation on the volume or prices of commodities coming from the East to Europe. and further calls attention to the fact that the Turks did not occupy the southern routes until nearly a generation after overseas communica tion had been established with the Indies. Rather, it seems that the chief cause of over seas exploration was the jealousy of the west ern and northern European powers and mer chants toward the Italian monopoly of the Eastern trade. The Portuguese under Henry the Navigator and Diaz began, in the middle of the 15th century, the explorations which ended in the successful voyage of Vasco de Gama to India in 1498. Under Spanish aus pices Columbus discovered America in 1492, and Magellan's fleet circumnavigated the globe in 1519-22. These and contemporary and sub sequent explorations opened the way for further expansion and constituted the geographical foundations of the Commercial Revolution and of the dawn of modern history. Along with this major economic impulse to exploration and colonization should be mentioned the religions ambition to convert the heathen, the politicalde sire to increase the territorial possessions and the national prestige of the states of western Europe, and the hope of satisfying that intel lectual curiosity which had been developing since the cultural revival of the 12th and 13th centuries. See Ammuca, thscovntv Arm Ceao NIZATION or; COLONLES AND COLONIZATION.