- Mercantilism and the construction of the market: political and economic
- Conquest of the Americas by the Spanish and the Portuguese
- Local trading networks (regulated by Aztec and Mayan empires) replaced by the Atlantic trade (regulated by Spanish and Portuguese crowns)
- Differences between Spanish and Portuguese expansion
- Portuguese in Africa and the Indian Ocean in the 15th century: establishment of commercial bases and a trading network
- Spanish in America: establishment of an empire
- Demographic collapse and slavery, establishment of a plantation economy
- Emergence of new political and economic structures in Latin America
- Flow of silver: a mixed blessing for Europe
- Reasons for the decline of Spanish and Portuguese power
- The rise of the Dutch: domestic conditions in the Low Countries, the struggle between merchants and crafts guilds, and between town and countryside.
