Stage 5: Ocean Conquest
Spices, teas, and silk were highly prized Asiatic luxuries made by hydrogen-bonded processes, but European merchants were cut off from these supplies by the Ottoman Empire.
Desperate for advantages, some sailors braved rough waters in search of an Atlantic route around the Southern horn of Africa, one that might bypass historical conflict zones and make them rich with trade goods.
Along their journeys, however, these sailors established the African slave trade.
Human labor is hydrogen-bonded energy, and competitive merchants offered European products to coastal leaders in exchange for prisoners of war.
Although it was not the first historical incidence when people of another language were forced into assimilation by violence, the African slave trade occurred for hundreds of years, resulting in the death and displacement of millions.
But even this new, natural wealth, these hydrogen-bonded human materials, did not satisfy greedy nobles, since such commodities, despite their intrinsic and primary value, had not proven easiest for the ruling classes to manipulate.
Instead, adventurers were commissioned by kings to continue sailing foreign lands in search of gold, that persistent, intermediate standard of value, the only thing known to spark compromise in warring factions of wealthy families.
For centuries, therefore, European wealth was defined by access to the sea. For a significant portion of human history, it was naval power that determined authority in our world order.
Incidentally, our oceans contain the largest concentration of hydrogen-bonded materials on Earth.