The Discovery of the New World
and the End of the Old

The natives had amassed a great deal of golden treasure over the centuries, and the first flood of "new" gold into Spain and Europe came as a result of the conquistadores [Spanish for "conquerors] seizing this accumulation. With the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro, new gold began to be mined; and, with the discovery of the silver veins of San Luis Potosi in Mexico, vast amounts of silver began to appear. The European explorers began to search primarily for gold, for the "Land of El Dorado," a fabled land where, after the king bathed each morning, his subjects would cover his body with gold dust until he shone like the sun. Since the time of the conquistadores, a series of new sources of gold strikes have been made -- bonanzas, from the Spanish word meaning "prosperity" -- Colorado, California, South Africa, the Canadian Klondike. Well over 95% of the gold in use today was mined since 1500.

Gold is like anything else: the more there is of it, the less valuable it is. And so, as gold and silver arrived in Europe from the Americas, the price of everything began to rise steadily. Just to explain why that happened, consider that if a hundred people have one ounce of gold apiece, they all want to buy wheat, and there are only one hundred bushels of wheat for sale, the price of a bushel of wheat will be one ounce of gold. If those same people find a pirate treasure and divide it up so that each of them has two ounces of gold, but there is still only one hundred bushels of wheat for sale, the price of a bushel of wheat will be two ounces of gold. You can look at it another way. When the amount of gold (or any other medium of exchange) in circulation increases, the value of salaries, rents, and debts drops. There is a simple equation for all of this:

The steady increase of gold and silver in Europe brought about what historians call The Price Revolution. People on fixed incomes were impoverished; it became more advantageous to owe money than to be solvent. Money lost value every day it stayed in one's pocket, so the only way to prosper was through trade. Nobles could no longer depend on their income from the rents paid by their tenants, and began to use their lands to raise sheep for wool and meat, or to produce other goods for sale. Land was no longer the basis of wealth, and the land-owners no longer the dominant economic class.

We have said that most of the population of medieval Europe went to bed hungry and that their diet was unbalanced and boring at best. The new plants that were introduced from the New World changed that situation. A medieval peasant could expect to harvest about 600 pounds of wheat from an acre of land. It took a long time for the Europeans to get used to these new plants, but when that same acre of land was planted in potatoes -- native to South America -- the peasant could plan on harvesting 50,000 pounds of food. It was even harder for the Europeans to get adjusted to corn -- eating it made many of them sick, and they weren't accustomed to planting row crops in their fields -- but they could harvest 1800 pounds of corn on the acre that had given them only 600 pounds of wheat. Some Europeans, such as the Italians, eventually became used to corn, but it was used primarily as food for chicken, geese and other fowl, and for pigs. If the introduction of potatoes produced a caloric revolution, the acceptance of corn brought about a protein revolution. Since the land of Europe could now produce more food, the relative price of food began to drop. The productive capacity of the land had caught up with the population, and the average European could now eat more. The Europeans, in turn, introduced corn into Africa and sweet potatoes in China, where these new foods also changed conditions dramatically

He could also eat better, since a number of lesser food crops arrived from the New World that made possible a more varied diet. The French imported tomatoes, which they called "apples of love," and used them for ornamental purposes in their flower gardens. They thought that they were poisonous, which, in fact, many of the early varieties were. In time, however, the poison-producing capacities of the tomato were bred out, and the tomato became one of the most popular additions to European cuisine. There were many other food plants brought back to Europe -- particularly many varieties of squash, beans, pumpkins, peppers -- that introduced a welcome variety, as well as a wide range of vitamins, into the European diet. The health of the average European began to improve, and his height, weight, and strength increased. As this occurred, his resistance to disease grew.

We have noted that medieval Europeans displayed violent swings of emotions. Part of this may have been simply a difference in cultural norms, but it should be noted that the men and women of medieval Europe had relatively little personal control over their states of mind. Like most other parts of the world, the Europeans had an effective depressant in alcohol, but, unlike any other of the world's civilization, they did not have an alkaloid stimulant. These were quickly important from their native lands, and their use swiftly spread. The first was cocoa from the Aztecs, a rich source of caffeine, and Europeans began their long love affair with chocolate. Coming next were coffee, another source of caffeine, from the Near East, and tobacco, adding nicotine to the Europeans' personal stash of drugs. Finally tea from the Far East introduced another potent source of caffeine. The Europeans developed the custom of mixing caffeine with sugar, an import from India and the Near East, a practice that cut the bitterness of the drink and enhanced its effectiveness.

At the same time, coca leaves from South America yielded cocaine, opium from Far Eastern poppies provided both opium itself and morphine, and hashish from the Near East offered a potent form of marijuana. The use of these narcotics and depressants was widespread until well into the 19th century. It's said that Coca-Cola started out as a medicinal concoction laced with cocaine, and was guaranteed to slow you down, but, when such patent medicines became illegal, the company substituted caffeine for cocaine and guaranteed that their drink would pep you up.

In any event, the exploitation of lands beyond the sea gave Europeans a variety of potent stimulants and depressants, and they now had some control over their moods. Western culture has continued this practice, and few of us go through a day without a smoke, a coke, a cup of coffee, or a candy bar. It is difficult to imagine what people might be like if they did not have easy access to these New World drugs.

This list could be extended greatly, but the point should be obvious. European manufacture had been woefully short of industrial materials. The resources of the New World gave it the supplies it needed to produce the surplus necessary to begin a profitable trade with the other parts of the world, parts that Europe had not be able to conquer as it had the Americas.

One difference is exemplified by the "Birkenhead Rule." When the the British liner Birkenhead was sinking and everyone was trying to get into the lifeboats, someone shouted out Women and children first!, and this has been the custom of the sea ever since. A medieval man or woman would never have thought of raising such a cry. A child is a burden upon society, consuming more than it produces for at least the first ten or twelve years of its life. Able-bodied men, however, are an investment that society has already made and from whom it must gain a return. Young women are necessary to restore the losses of population due to wars, famines, plagues, and the other dangers of life, but they do not produce as much as mature men and so are less valuable to society -- unless of course, they fall into short supply. In the middle ages, young men and women would have had first call on the lifeboats, and the young and aged would have been left behind. This may strike you as cruel and inhumane, but that is only because you are rich enough to afford such luxuries as believing that the Birkenhead Rule is the only proper way to behave.

The gulf that lies between you and the men and women of medieval Europe is mostly the difference between your wealth and their poverty. Many of you drive an auto with a hundred horse-power engine. The work of a single man is rated at about 1/8 horse-power, so you have the equivalent of 800 slaves to carry you from place to place. Your rooms are lighted by the equivalent of hundreds of candles, and your closet has more clothes than the entire population of a medieval village possessed. The knives in your kitchen are made of a steel so fine that, in medieval times, only a king could have afforded their equal. You look back upon the men and women of medieval Europe and see their ignorance, dirt, and heartlessness; if they could look at you, they would see only a person wealthy beyond their comprehension. They would also wonder why you should enjoy such riches since they worked much harder and longer than you and had so much less to show for it. And if you could speak to them and tell them how you felt that people should behave, they would think to themselves Sure, it's easy to make sacrifices and be generous and kind when you are wealthy. I wonder what would happen to their high principles if they were hungry and cold most of their lives?

I suppose that the basic question is why you are so much wealthier than they. The usual answer is that you are enjoying the fruits of global commerce and the Industrial Revolution. But neither of those things would have occurred without the discovery and exploitation of the New World. That's one reason to consider that 1492 is as good a date as any and better than most to mark the end of the middle ages. It also marked the beginning of a 500-year boom economy for Europeans and their descendants, but that's another matter.