THE OPENING OF THE EAST 



Spanish colonies. The British plantations such as they were did not 

 call for any slave labour and it was not until Barbados and Antigua were 

 founded round about 1625 that the British slave trade sprang up. For 

 some time it was more or less casual, but in the reign of Charles II the 

 charter of the Company of Royal Adventurers from England to Africa 

 was taken over by the Royal African Assiento Company, who set about 

 making the supply of negro labour to the Spanish West Indies and to the 

 British colonies a regular business. Their head depot was at Kingston, 

 Jamaica, where a huge building was put up as a central mart. It was 

 later that Bristol and Liverpool made the carriage of slaves one of their 

 principal trades and entered into a bitter rivalry. Slaves and fruits 

 were somewhat callously regarded as perishable cargo, which was the 

 reason that the West Indiamen were built for speed whereas the East 

 Indiamen lumbered along in their own quiet fashion and made terribly 

 long passages. 



The Trend of Trade. 



With the beginning of the Tudor period trade tended to divide into 

 three parts, the home and Continental trade which steadily developed 

 in its own way without any very drastic mile posts and the overseas 

 trade to the West and to the East. These soon monopolised the interest 

 of the historian and are dealt with in the following chapters which show 

 how trade and discovery went hand in hand until the greater part of the 

 modern world was thrown open in a remarkably short space of time. 

 So striking were the instances of this opening that one is inclined to over- 

 look the less picturesque features of commerce but they steadily 

 developed on a sound basis, feeding and being fed by the progress of 

 discovery. 



CHAPTER XIII— THE OPENING OF THE EAST 



The Road to the East. 



The existence of Cathay and the great nations of the East had been 

 known to Europe from the earliest days, although then more or less 

 mythically. The Crusades led to more being learned, for the Over- 

 land Route to China was then in full operation and many Oriental 

 merchants were operating in the Near East. In those days, however. 

 Western Europe had little thought for trade, and those who had a mind 

 which saw further than agriculture and war had plenty to keep them 

 busy near at hand. When ships improved and the nearby markets 

 became fully covered, men's minds turned further afield and the stories 

 brought home by Marco Polo and others revealed in the Far East a 

 wonderful field of trade and profit. The Overland Route was long, 

 expensive and dangerous and did not welcome interlopers, so that it is 

 little wonder that efforts were made to find a sea road. 



Prince Henry the Navigator. 



A considerable part of the credit for the strides that were made in 

 exploration work during the fifteenth century must go to Prince Henry 



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