Global trade: Did you mean...?

Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595 CE) was an Elizabethan mariner, merchant and naval administrator who has the inglorious (if not wholly accurate) record of being England's first slave trader. In the 1560s CE Hawkins trafficked slaves from West...

African Slave Trade, map by KuroNekoNiyah, 2021. This map provides an overview of the slave trade out of Africa, c. 1500-1900, showing both transatlantic and ancillary global flows. It is based on Map I from Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave...

The Estado da India (1505-1961) was the name the Portuguese gave to that part of their empire which stretched from India to East Asia. However, in its widest sense, the name includes all Portuguese colonies east of the Cape of Good Hope and...

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was formed in 1602 by the Staten-Generaal (States General) of the then Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The company was granted a 21-year charter with rights to trade exclusively in Asia and to...

At its fullest extent, the Roman Empire stretched from around modern-day Aswan, Egypt at its southernmost point to Great Britain in the north but the influence of the Roman Empire went far beyond even the borders of its provinces as a result...

By c. 1750, Africa stood at the center of three major slave-trading systems, the transatlantic, trans-Saharan, and Indian Ocean trades, each connecting African societies to wider global economies. These networks operated simultaneously but...

Goa, located on the west coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1510 to 1961. The small coastal area was conquered by Afonso de Albuquerque (c. 1453-1515) and became an important trade hub for the Eastern spice trade. Goa was the capital...

Nagasaki, on the northwest coast of Japan’s Kyushu Island, was an important Portuguese trading base from c. 1571 to 1639, and the most eastern outpost of the Portuguese empire. The Portuguese presence transformed Nagasaki from a small fishing...

The Indian Ocean trade network of the 15th and 16th centuries formed one of the most extensive and dynamic systems of exchange in the premodern world, linking East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This maritime system...

Alexander the Great died in Babylon on the 13th of June, 323 BCE. His Macedonian-Greek empire broke apart, but Alexander’s heritage was felt throughout the ancient Mediterranean world for centuries. Three Hellenic empires emerged from the...