Examine the growth of worldwide trade from 1500 to 1800. Discuss the rise and implications of a global trading system. (Keep in mind implications to: political, social, economic, cultural, environmental, etc.)

The Age of Exploration began around 1500, led mostly by Spain and Portugal, which had the wealth to fund explorers, their ships, and tools of navigation. The goal was to find faster routes to Asia in the interest of bringing sought-after spices back to Europe. Of course, an error in navigation resulted in finding continents that Europe had not known existed: what are now North and South America.
In the Americas, new foods, such as tomatoes and corn, were discovered and integrated into European diets. Without this exchange, the Western culinary traditions that we know today would not have developed.
However, there were also negative effects. The first slaves were brought to Hispaniola, the island that now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in 1502, ten years after Columbus's fateful voyage which landed him on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Not long after the "discovery" of new lands, Europeans began to colonize them. Indigenous peoples who were not slaughtered died from European diseases, such as yellow fever, smallpox, and influenza. Africans were then kidnapped from West Africa and brought to the Americas, particularly Brazil and the Caribbean, to work on plantations growing sugarcane, rice, tobacco, and, later, cotton.
Cotton was key to the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1750. Textile mills in New England and Great Britain depended greatly on cotton from the American South, which was separated from seeds more quickly and easily after Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793.
Industrialism led to overcrowding and pollution in cities that were hubs for manufacturing, particularly London. Though factory workers were not slaves, they worked very long hours, had no safety protections at work, and lived in crowded and dirty tenements. Children were also employed. The environmental effects of industrialism, including air and water pollution, persisted for centuries and have only recently been addressed in some countries. The effects of climate change, a warming phenomenon caused by the release of excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which diminishes the atmosphere, remain an urgent concern today.