Colonialism was a great force of change in the modern era. From the Americas to the Asian and African continents, colonial expansion brought Europeans and their institutions around the world. It stirred nationalist sentiments and intensified competition within the European core; and the colonies provided an outlet for citizens who sought or were compelled to pursue a new life overseas. By disseminating people and institutions, moreover, colonialism forever changed the structure of trade and production within what had been an almost exclusively European commercial system. Nothing less than a genuinely worldwide system of states and trade was born out of colonialism. In the judgment of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known.”