Madison Rambles #3: The First Half of Greed
Hello, everyone!
The Chapter 14 reading was split into two parts: one on trade, and the other on slavery. At first, I was going to put both of these into one blog post for convenience, but I decided that it would be better if I followed the assignment and split them into two.
The first part today will be on how Europe was terrible at global trade. The second part, which will happen next week, will be on the very depressing topic of slavery.
As I said, this is on Chapter 14.
Most bad things start out with what people think are good intentions. Europe's problem with slavery started with them wanting to make money in the global market. As a geographical location, they had very few valuable things to add in the Indian Ocean trade, so they had to strategize.
Portugal tried to monopolize the spice trade by conquering potential trade posts and creating a fee for the Red Sea route. However, they could only control up to half of the spice trade, and thus were unsuccessful.
Spain tried conquering everything. For example, they had the Philippines until America took control of the country centuries later. Unlike Portugal, however, they succeeded at becoming a prominent country, and Spanish is still a widely spoken language today.
Even so, China was still the prominent country. Silver allowed many countries to buy goods from China, increasing its economy to great heights. Japan was also starting to become successful, as they were a major source of silver. These two countries are still economically successful today, and coincidentally, Japan is still profiting off of metals. It's called electronics.
日本の歴史を話すのが大好きですよ。(I love talking about Japanese history).
Next time, I'll talk about slavery. Although it is not the most pleasant, it is one of the most important subjects to talk about.
Until next time!
The Chapter 14 reading was split into two parts: one on trade, and the other on slavery. At first, I was going to put both of these into one blog post for convenience, but I decided that it would be better if I followed the assignment and split them into two.
The first part today will be on how Europe was terrible at global trade. The second part, which will happen next week, will be on the very depressing topic of slavery.
As I said, this is on Chapter 14.
Most bad things start out with what people think are good intentions. Europe's problem with slavery started with them wanting to make money in the global market. As a geographical location, they had very few valuable things to add in the Indian Ocean trade, so they had to strategize.
Portugal tried to monopolize the spice trade by conquering potential trade posts and creating a fee for the Red Sea route. However, they could only control up to half of the spice trade, and thus were unsuccessful.
Spain tried conquering everything. For example, they had the Philippines until America took control of the country centuries later. Unlike Portugal, however, they succeeded at becoming a prominent country, and Spanish is still a widely spoken language today.
Even so, China was still the prominent country. Silver allowed many countries to buy goods from China, increasing its economy to great heights. Japan was also starting to become successful, as they were a major source of silver. These two countries are still economically successful today, and coincidentally, Japan is still profiting off of metals. It's called electronics.
日本の歴史を話すのが大好きですよ。(I love talking about Japanese history).
Next time, I'll talk about slavery. Although it is not the most pleasant, it is one of the most important subjects to talk about.
Until next time!
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