I found the section in Richards, "The Unending Frontier" where it talked about the royal trading house and how the voyage brought wines, oils, paintings, along with the demands of exotic things such as birds and people. Anything that would bring a profit to the empire. The concern for profit out weighted the impact on the environment. Although the value is in the land the long-term effect can not and will not be seen due to the pursuit of profit. Humans take it upon themselves to ravage the lands and leave unsurmountable destruction in their wake. Later in the reading, we find that along with the furniture and dishes they brought many diseases that devastated the lands.
Something that amazed me was that no matter what we do to the environment the land never waivers in its ability to produce. Humans move from one thing to another as long as there is a demand or a need that is foreseeable. As disease ravaged the populous they understood the need to shift and counter in some measures the burden of hard labor in the gold mines. So we see the shift to more an agriculture profit. The land being fertile, again helps and the profit hunt continues with the birth of sugarcane. The human condition and the destruction of the land is all but secondary to the profits of man.