ABSTRACT
The dynamism of the Iberian economies was already obvious in the fifteenth century. The Iberian peninsula was one of the richest centres of Christendom for the development of knowledge and technology. The Iberian peninsula boasts a huge variety of regional ecological systems: these stretched from the mountain ranges with an Atlantic climate of frequent rainfall, great forests, and fertile soils which were difficult to farm, to the plains with a Mediterranean continental climate, dryer and hotter. The Iberian peninsula saw the growth of number of littoral cities associated with international commerce, such as Lisbon, Porto, Valencia, and Barcelona. The role of the Iberian countries in globalisation lay behind the development of the science of botany and the experimentation with medicinal plants which was undertaken by figures such as Monardes or the Portuguese d’Orta. The role of the peninsula as a centre for the redistribution of merchandise between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic was strengthened by the oceanic expansion and globalisation.
