1. Cipolla, Carlo M., Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700, New York, 1976, p.81.
2. Elaborating on the question why there was an overseas expansion of Europe and not of Asia, a question raised by Joseph Levenson in European Expansion and the Counter Example of Asia, New York, 1967, Lucile Brockway concludes that “they (the Asians) had neither the will nor the need to expand overseas. The self-sufficiency of these large, settled agricultural population with their well developed handicrafts in textiles, ceramics and metallurgy discouraged overseas expansion”. L. H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: the Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens, New York, 1979, p. 16–18. Angus Calder explains that the overseas expansion of Europe took place when “the landlust of noblemen married with the goldlust of merchants”.
3. Angus Calder, The Colonial Expansion: The Rise of the English Speaking Empires from the 15th Century to the 1780s, New York, 1981, p.6.
4. Calder, Angus, The Colonial Expansion: The Rise of the English Speaking Empires from the 15th Century to the 1780s, New York, 1981, p.8.
5. Baker, H. G., Plants and Civilization, California, 1978, p.31.