ABSTRACT
NINETEENTH-CENTURY IMPERIALISM Before 1500, Europe traded with Asia via a series of overland and sea routes stretching from Venice, Italy, and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) to the China Sea. In the sixteenth century, Portuguese vessels gained a monopoly over Asian trade by controlling water routes between Europe and the Indian Ocean and establishing Portuguese settlements at Goa, Melaka (modern Malysia), India, and Macau, China. Moving to compete with the Portuguese for the valuable Asian markets, most especially the spice trade, the Dutch East India Company began in the early 1600s to build a network of trading posts on the southwest Indian coast, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Indonesian archipelago, and Japan. England and France quickly joined the competition for Indian Ocean trade by the late 1600s. The British East India Company, formed in 1599, gained a foothold in India and Southeast Asia, and in 1711 was allowed to trade at Canton (Guangzhou), China. Until the nineteenth century, the goal of these Western merchants was to satisfy demand in the European markets for goods high-priced luxury goods such as cotton, silk, indigo, and tea.
