Regions that participated in Asian trade grew richer than the regions that did not: by 1500 Italy’s GDP per capita was 60 per cent higher than the European average. But historians often put too much emphasis on exotic trade with the Orient. As late as 1600, European trade with Asia, dominated because of transport costs of luxuries such as spices, was only half the value of the inter-regional European trade in cattle alone. Europe could trade with Asia because it traded so much with itself, not vice versa.
