ABSTRACT
The relative advantage of the great Eurasian societies increased, giving rise to the direct supremacy some of these civilisations exercised over those of other continents. New balances of economic and military power then emerged within Eurasia, together with the gradual development of European supremacy. Important process, known as the “Great Divergence”, has been the object of intense debate and will be the focus of particular attention. As French historian Pierre Chaunu observed very effectively several decades ago, the process of opening up these closed worlds between the mid-15th and mid-16th centuries marks a fundamental breakthrough in the history of humanity, and lies at the origin of an extremely important process of change. The geographical discoveries and establishment of new communication routes had an inestimable economic, social and cultural importance in opening up Europe’s “closed world”. In the late Middle Ages, only around 1% of total production was traded over long distances inside the various “closed worlds”: Europe and Mediterranean.
