ABSTRACT
There has never been any event which has had more impact on the human race in general and for Europeans in particular, as that of the discovery of the New World, and the passage to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope. It was then that a commercial revolution began, a revolution in the balance of power, and in the customs, the industries and the government of every nation. It was through this event that men in the most distant lands were linked by new relationships and new needs. The produce ofequatorial regions was consumed in Polar climes. The industrial products of the northwere transported to the south, the textiles of the Orient became the luxuries of Westerners; and everywhere men mutually exchanged their opinions, their laws, their customs, their illnesses, and their medicines, their virtues and their vices. Everything changed, and will go on changing. But will the changes of the past and those that are to come, be useful to humanity? Will they give man one day more peace, more happiness, or more pleasure? Will his condition be better, or will it be simply one of constant change? (Abbe Guillaume Thomas Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des etablissements et du commerce des europeens dans les deu Indes, 1770, Book I: 1. [new edition as L'Anti-colonialisme au xviiie siecle: Histoire philosophique et politique des etablissements et du commerce des europeens dans les deu Indes, p. 43]).
