ABSTRACT
This chapter explores not only the global trade that brought goods to Europe, but also their patterns of consumption: the desire for things, the ways in which they were bought and sold, and the different meanings people assigned to things. Early modern global exchange of goods begins with the Spanish and Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Over the course of the sixteenth century, Portugal served as one of the most important centres for buying and selling goods from Asia. The seventeenth century saw a reconfiguration of global trade away from the Mediterranean and Southern Europe and towards both the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans. The amounts of Asian goods imported into Europe expanded dramatically over the course of the eighteenth century. In the early eighteenth century the Dutch and English were joined by French traders. The French East India Company, established by Colbert in the 1660s, expanded its activities especially in India.
