Global convergence from 1400 to 1800 led to accelerating changes worldwide. Ideas, goods, technologies, and pathogens spread further and faster as trade networks expanded. World population grew significantly due to improved nutrition, while disease devastated native populations in the Americas. States and empires grew larger and more powerful through conquests, colonization, and wealth from trade and manufacturing. Challenges to absolutist rulers emerged from new social elites and ideas about human rights and democracy. Overall, this era saw the world become more interconnected as it moved closer to the modern globalized world.