In the sixteenth century the Portuguese changed the course of the Asian trade with Europe, but did not significantly alter its content; they broke in upon the profitable port-to-port trade in the East, but did not fundamentally alter its pattern. From the end of that century their Dutch and English competitors more radically rearranged the Asian carrying trade, promoting the sale of Bengal silk in Japan and of Javanese sugar in Persia. They also put more Asian wares upon the European market, supplementing Malabar with Sumatran pepper, introducing indigo and sugar, opening a trade in that useful ballast commodity, saltpetre. The Portuguese had found coarse Indian cottons saleable in Africa and their Brazilian colonies; the newcomers found such cottons suitable for Europe—plain for sheets, towels and napkins, coloured for hangings, quilts and furnishing fabrics.

A still more dramatic expansion in the flow of Asian goods to Europe took place after 1650. Pepper and spices shared in that expansion, though they no longer dominated the sales in Amsterdam and London. Saltpetre continued to be important because in Bihar were found new sources of supply, capable of meeting the demand caused by the growing scale and intensity of war in Europe. A similar discovery, that of cheap raw silk in Bengal, also came to be exploited, as a succession of able Mughal governors progressively cleared the province of Arakanese and Portuguese pirates. The supply of Persian raw silk to north Italy and France had been partially diverted by the Dutch and English in the 1630's; the arrival of cheaper silk from Bengal further upset the old pattern. The cheaper and more plentiful supply, together with the influx of skilled refugees and the temporary protection caused by war in Italy, fostered the growth of a considerable English silk industry.