In Europe supported by Africa and America (1796), artist William Blake, who opposed slavery, depicts the interdependence of the peoples of Africa, Europe, and the Americas. While gold armbands suggest the subjugation of the African and Native American women, the strand binding all three women together suggests that Europeans could not have dominated the New World without the support of African and Native peoples. The strand appears to be made of tobacco.

Globalization, the ever-increasing interconnectedness of the world, is not a new phenomenon, but it accelerated when western Europeans discovered the riches of the East. During the Crusades (1095–1291), Europeans developed an appetite for spices, silk, porcelain, sugar, and other luxury items from the East, for which they traded fur, timber, and Slavic people they captured and sold (hence the word slave). But when the Silk Road, the long overland trading route from China to the Mediterranean, became costlier and more dangerous to travel, Europeans searched for a more efficient and inexpensive trade route over water, initiating the development of what we now call the Atlantic World.

In pursuit of commerce in Asia, fifteenth-century traders unexpectedly encountered a “New World” populated by millions and home to sophisticated and numerous peoples. Mistakenly believing they had reached the East Indies, these early explorers called its inhabitants Indians. West Africa, a diverse and culturally rich area, soon entered the stage as other nations exploited its slave trade and brought its peoples to the New World in chains.

No one on either side of the Altantic could have imagined the diverse blending of cultures that resulted after Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas in 1492. As William Blake’s 1796 drawing depicts, the history of the Americas after 1492 would be defined by the interdependence of three worlds. Once separate, the destinies of peoples living in the Americas, Europe, and Africa were now forever linked.