ABSTRACT
Innovations and accelerations in global processes after 1750 were interesting and important, but for the most part they confirmed the durable shifts in global relationships that had developed from the 1500s onward. Changing transportation technologies were directly involved in the most obvious revolutionary development in transregional contacts after 1500: the inclusion of the Americas and, more gradually, Pacific Oceania in routine global exchange. The Americas and Afro-Eurasia, because of long human separation and very different biological experiences, had very different food pools, that now, quite quickly in some respects, began to merge. To the Americas came Afro-Eurasian grains, like wheat, and domesticated animals the latter vital as new transportation resources as well as food supplies. The phase of globalization that opened up after 1500 brought significant environmental change, as regions sought or were forced to seek new roles in world markets. Fur traders expanded their activities, again with a global market in mind, both in Russia and in North America.
