Global expansion

The success of the Portuguese expansion east was spectacular, although it was bought at a high cost in human life on the long voyage around Africa and a high cost in ships. Yet it finished the Arab world as a major actor in world affairs until the discovery of oil there in the twentieth century.”

Peter J. Hugill
Professor of geography at Texas A & M University. He is the author of World Trade since 1431.

In World Trade since 1431, Peter Hugill showed how the interplay of technology and geography guided the evolution of the modern global capitalistic system. Now, in the successor to that widely acclaimed book, Hugill shifts the focus to telecommunications, once again demonstrating that those nations that best developed and marketed new technologies were the nations that rose to world power.