How the Global Trade Affected People in Europe, Africa, and the Americas between 1400s and 1500s

In the fourteenth century, there was a great divide between Western and Eastern Europe. In the West, the feudal system evolved from a labor system of dependent serfs to a labor system of independent peasants, and thus forward economic developments could occur. In the East, the feudal system was confirmed in the form of serfdom and thus doomed to backwardness. This was also the era of the Black Death, in which so many Europeans died that there was a fundamental change in the labor-to-land ratio. In ...