The world in 1300 was comprised of several powerful empires – Islam (at different periods of time covering a wide swath of territory from Spain, across Northern Africa, through the Middle East, up into parts of Eastern Europe and into Central Asia and dominated first by the Arabs and then the Turks), China, India, Byzantium (formed when Constantine split the Roman empire in 400 AD). Europe, or what we now know as Europe, was a poor fourth to the rest of the world. After the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Europe's economic and social life began to crumble. Without the extensive infrastructure of the Roman empire – the upkeep of roads which allowed for trade (and tribute) and the administrative wherewithal to tie it all together – Europe lapsed into what has been called the "Dark Ages". For almost five hundred years, while the Islamic, Chinese and Indian empires expanded and developed, Europe struggled to reestablish its economic and social life. It did this with the same tools available throughout the known world at that time – the plow, the windmill and later the waterwheel, the use of animal power and manual human labor. As the system of agricultural production was established and stabilized, trade started once again, towns grew up to facilitate that trade and the beginnings of commodity production arose with the need to service a market. Upon this foundation arose the property relations of the serf and the lord and the political system of feudalism. Even still, by the 1400s, Europe was simply one of many cultures and not even the most accomplished at that.
To understand the next stage in world history – the development of capitalism – we need to look at the world economy at that time.
World trade centered around and was controlled within the Mediterranean and Asia. This trade included luxury goods such as spices, silks and other fabrics as well as precious metals, gems and slaves. The route from China known as the 'Silk Road' was a key component of this world trade, passing through Central Asia, Persia and the Caucasus selling and picking up goods along the way for resale in other parts of the Middle East, Russia, Europe and the Mediterranean. The key distribution points were cities such as Alexandria, Beirut and Constantinople, all cities under the control of and jealously guarded by the Turks. By the 1400s, Venice and Genoa had become the dominant 'middlemen' in this Asian trade, controlling the goods and the profits between the rest of the world and Europe
Europe – or the various entities that comprised what we know as Europe – could not continue to develop economically without direct access to these world trade routes. Gold and silver were needed not only to fight the Turks, but for competing monarchs to establish national territories under their control which in turn would guarantee their control over a national market in order to further consolidate their wealth and power. An alternate route to the Indies was the only way for European powers to break this bottleneck. This meant either going around Africa, or, as Columbus for years tried to hustle in the courts of Spain and Portugal, to take the western route circumventing Africa, Arab navigators and any other known or unknown competitors jealousy protecting their shores.
The ability to make such journeys was greatly facilitated by the technological advances in shipbuilding and navigation that had taken place in the 14th century, the expanded knowledge of different areas of the world (such as voyages along the West African coast) that such advances made possible and the development of more accurate map making techniques.
The resource papers:
Paper #1: Science and Doctrine
Paper #2: Marxism as the Scientific Current Within Communism
Paper #3: How and Why Things Change
Paper #4: The Shape of History: Historical Materialism, Electronics and Value
Paper #5: Revolutionaries – The Role of the Individual
Paper #6: Revolution – The Line of March
Paper #7: Applying the Science of Society: The African slave trade, capitalism, and the ideology of race
Paper #8: Applying the Science of Society: The World Prior to 1492
Paper #9: Historical Materialism: The Civil War in the United States
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