Title: World History For Us All: Big Era 6
Headings: Big Era Six
Big Era Six
This Big Era and the Three Essential Questions
Humans and the Environment
Humans and Other Humans
Humans and Ideas
Teaching Units for Big Era Six

Content: The ecological and demographic consequences of the Great Global Convergence were huge, especially the “Great Dying” of much of the indigenous population of the Americas. Europeans benefited from this disaster by peopling the Western Hemisphere with new immigrants, both free European settlers and Africans slaves. Europeans also gained access to important new sources of food and fiber. These included, among many others, maize (corn), tobacco, and the potato, which were American crops, and sugar and cotton, which came from Afroeurasia but thrived in American soil. A third change was the emergence of a truly global economy. This was another consequence of the Great Global Convergence, which linked together all major regions, except Antarctica, in a single web of exchange. Silver was the great lubricator of global trade. In the 1550s, silver mined in the Americas became available to Spain, then to the rest of western Europe, as well as to China directly by way of Spanish galleon voyages across the Pacific Ocean. Silver financed Europe’s increasing involvement in the economy of maritime Asia and subsequently provided the basis of the emergence of an Atlantic-centered world economy by 1800. The remarkable rise of European political and military power relative to the rest of the world was the fourth major change.