ABSTRACT
The discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. The Atlantic World had the biological, cultural, and economic influences on parts of the globe that lay far beyond this ocean system. In the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, however, the patterns and processes that shaped the Global Atlantic changed significantly. The industrial revolution that occurred in the Europe and in the former European colonies of North America, led to a significant shift in power dynamics and a rising gap between the Western world of Europe and North America and other areas of the globe. These developments initiated a change in the global landscape that allowed the West to play an increasingly powerful global economic, political, and cultural role.
