section_path: Global impact
section_name: Global impact
paragraph_text: Global impact
  
  European overseas expansion led to contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian exchange. It started the global silver trade and led to direct European involvement in the Chinese porcelain trade. It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to another. Europeans brought cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World, and from the New World Europeans received tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, and maize. Other items and commodities becoming important in global trade were the tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton crops of the Americas, along with the gold and silver brought from the American continent not only to Europe, but elsewhere in the Old World.
  
  The formation of new transoceanic links and expansion of European influence led to the Age of Imperialism, which began during the Age of Discovery, during which colonial powers from Europe colonized most territory on the planet. European demand for trade, commodities, colonies and slaves had a drastic impact on the rest of the world; during European colonization of the Americas, European colonial powers conquered and colonized numerous indigenous nations and cultures, and conducted numerous conversions and attempts at cultural assimilation both voluntary or forced. Combined with the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe, these events led to a drastic decrease of the indigenous American population. Indigenous accounts of European colonization were summarized by scholar Peter Mancall: "the arrival of Europeans brought death, displacement, sorrow, and despair to Native Americans". In some areas, like North America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, indigenous peoples were badly treated, driven off their lands, and reduced to dependent minorities in the territory.
  
  Similarly, in East and West Africa, local states supplied the appetite of European slave traders, changing the complexion of coastal African states and fundamentally altering the nature of slavery in Africa, causing impacts on societies and economies deep inland.
  
  In North America, there were many conflicts between Europeans and indigenous peoples. The Europeans had many advantages over the indigenous people. Introduced Eurasian diseases wiped out 50–90% of the indigenous population because they had not been exposed before and lacked acquired immunity.
  
  Maize and manioc were introduced into Africa in the 16th century by the Portuguese. They are now important staple foods, replacing native African crops. Alfred W. Crosby speculated that increased production of maize, manioc, and other New World crops led to heavier concentrations of population in the areas from which slavers captured their victims.
  
  In the global silver trade, the Ming dynasty was stimulated by trade with the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. Although global, much of that silver ended up with the Chinese, and China dominated silver imports. Between 1600 and 1800 China received 100 tons of silver on average per year. A large populace near the Lower Yangtze averaged hundreds of taels of silver per household in the late 16th century. More than 150,000 tons of silver were shipped from Potosí by the end of the 18th century. From 1500 to 1800, Mexico and Peru produced about 80% of the world's silver, with more than 30% of it eventually ending up in China (largely because European merchants used it to purchase exotic Chinese commodities). In the late 16th and early 17th century, Japan was exporting heavily into China and foreign trade at large. Trade with European powers and the Japanese brought in significant amounts of silver, which then replaced copper and paper banknotes as the common medium of exchange in China. During the last decades of the Ming Dynasty the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and the entire Ming economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, and sudden epidemics. The ensuing breakdown of authority and people's livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority.
  
  New crops that had come to Asia from the Americas, via the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, contributed to the Asia's population growth. Although the bulk of imports to China were silver, the Chinese also purchased New World crops from the Spanish Empire. This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—could not grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China. In the Song dynasty (960–1279), rice had become the major staple crop of the poor; after sweet potatoes were introduced to China around 1560, it gradually became the traditional food of the lower classes.
  
  The arrival of the Portuguese to Japan in 1543 initiated the Nanban trade period, with the Japanese adopting technologies and cultural practices, like the arquebus, European-style cuirasses, European ships, Christianity, decorative art, and language. After the Chinese had banned direct trade by Chinese merchants with Japan, the Portuguese filled this commercial vacuum as intermediaries. The Portuguese bought Chinese silk and sold it to the Japanese in return for Japanese-mined silver; since silver was more highly valued in China, the Portuguese could then use Japanese silver to buy even larger stocks of Chinese silk. By 1573, after the Spanish established a trading base in Manila, the Portuguese intermediary trade was trumped by the prime source of incoming silver to China from the Spanish Americas. Although China acted as the cog running the wheel of global trade during the 16th to 18th centuries, Japan's huge contribution of silver exports to China were critical to the world economy and China's liquidity and success with the commodity.