Other world civilisations fall.

China and Central and South America.

China in Tudor times.

We have seen that England and other European countries desperately wanted to trade with China for their silks, porcelain, tea, gunpowder and paper making technologies. Ming China in Tudor times had the largest population in the world (Over 100 million compared to England’s 5 million) and was the largest economy with the largest Navy patrolling the China and Indian Oceans. Europe was too far distant to be threatened. Indeed the civilisations which they had visited were deemed to be so inferior that the Chinese leaders called a halt to all overseas exploration exactly at the same time as the inferior Europeans were discovering and colonising the Americas. The Ming Dynasty collapsed around 1650.

South and Central America

During Tudor times Spain and Portugal stole a march on England and commenced the colonization of this area notably Mexico and what is now called Peru. Both areas had developed a primitive civilisation but which was even in 1500 nowhere as advanced as say Egypt and Iraq had been 3000 years previously. The Aztecs had settled round the present Mexico City area and the Incas in the mountain areas of Peru. The Spanish, hot from finally ridding Spain from advanced Muslim and Jewish cultures unless these folk converted to Roman Catholicatism destroyed both the Aztecs and the Incas and stole their wealth in precious metals. The Portuguese men folk who colonized Brazil to grow sugar interbred with local native Americans and black female slaves imported from Africa and produced amongst other things great footballers and beautiful women. Brazil had no culture to destroy. This should be seen in contrast to the English colonization of North America where the norm was to travel and settle with your wife and family. North America like Brazil generally did not have the right climate, animals to domesticate and local foods available to develop further than hunting and gathering.