The Europeans & The start of a new Era in India (part-1)

 History is continuous and without any exact timeline.

The reason why it is called the start of a new era is because a lot of economical and technological advances occured in this time period due to advent of europeans in india.

And since there is no proper timeline for when the modern history starts and when the medieval history ends, we consider, the advent of europeans as the start of modern history of india.

India was connected with the rest of the world by route of land from where the Indian goods were traded with the rest of the world (the silk route for example). There were sea routes as well like the red sea route by which the europeans had access to the goods of india.But after the decline of the roman empire these trade routes came under rule of arabs which resulted in the decline of direct contact between the europeans and india. It affected the availability of indian goods and precious stones which were greatly in demand.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the ottoman turks. now the merchandise from india were supplied to european markets via the arab muslims as the intermediaries. the red sea route which connected india with the roman empire previously, was now under a state monopoly from which the islamic rulers earned tremendous revenues. With the arabs dominating in egypt and persia, the land routes were also controlled by the arabs. So, Europeans wanted to find a direct sea route to india.

Now we know why the europeans wanted to come to india. In addition to this, in the 15th century, the europe was gripped by spirit of renaissance with its call for exploration which basically means that Europeans were full of energy and wanted to go explore and adventure. They also made remarkable advances in ship building and navigation which gave their eagerness to explore the unknown places of the East and go on adventurous sea voyages.

When we say europeans we are not just talking about the british people. There are many other regions in europe and we are collectively calling them europeans. Many regions of europe saw a great economic growth due to various factors like expansion of land under cultivation, introduction of better plough, introduction of scientific crop mangement(crop rotation) & increased supply of meat. it resulted in prosperity which resulted in demands for luxury goods which again resulted in demand for indian goods like spices, silk, cotton, precious stones etc.

So the portuguese were the first europeans who came to india and also the last to leave india. so why were the portuguese the first ones???

Click the link to know more->Part-2