


Simultaneously, European powers started the conquest of Asia. The Spanish conquistadors and their Portuguese, British, French and Dutch counterparts together conquered the whole geographical area, commonly known as the Americas, by causing the death of the vast majority of the indigenous population in order to exploit the natural resources (in particular gold and silver).

It was the starting point of a brutal and bloody intervention of European sea powers in the history of American peoples, a region of the world that had, up to then, remained insulated from regular relationships with Europe, Africa and Asia. The beginning of Globalization goes back to the outcomes of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus that brought him, on October 1492, to the shore of an island in the Caribbean Sea. In this study, Éric Toussaint covers the period from the 15 th to the 21 st century, focusing on the dramatic effects of capitalist globalisation.
