Trade was probably the single most important factor in creating and integrating a cohesive oceanic economic community that supported and coexisted with national and imperial regimes. The intensification of Atlantic maritime trade between the voyages of Columbus and the battle of Waterloo encouraged innovation in technologies and methods, transformed commercial institutions, and required traders to develop novel ways of managing their businesses.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TRANSFORMATION

Columbus's “discoveries” were transformative rather than innovative, Atlantic exchanges having flourished since 1402, when Castilians “discovered” the Canary Islands. Still, from Columbus's return from America, Spaniards traded exotic goods he and his men found there more vigorously.

While each region had something to offer, Spaniards' main interest lay in gold and, after 1550, silver. Bullion became a “harvested exportable” that lubricated European economies and made the Atlantic a marketplace. Given its potential, the Habsburgs devised a complex commercial system to guarantee that America's wealth became Europe's. In America, it both brought “monetization and commercialization to the colonial economies” and forged an early link “between the mining and commercial sectors”. In Europe, it promoted a “mercantilist” mindset that argued for national self-sufficiency, augmentation of military and naval power, state control of gold and silver reserves, and protection of the economy.