Chapter 15 deals with international commerce, which really means trading with Asia for spices, silks and other things. Now Europe didn't really have anything worth trading at the time so with the sacking of the Americas for Silver they now had something to trade.
The spices must have been awesome for the Portuguese and other European countries set up trading outpost in the Indian sea lanes which they ofter took by force. With the early withdrawal of Zheng He's naval force it was the wild West, or East in this case, and the European decided that someone would take control. Why not it be them. Essentially the Europeans took control of areas in SE Asia, E Africa and S India to establish their trading prowess.
It is odd that these goods the were seeking were in such high demand, but I guess we currently have domesticated foods and easy retrieval of anything we'd like so it is really hard to tell what worth is in a time like this.
Anyway, hopefully their food tasted much better and it was all worth it!
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The UK is still catching up -
ReplyDeleteTheir food remains horrible... which is shocking... Wasn't this where the West Indies Trading Company came out of (or is that only in movies)...
Perhaps it is not their lack of access that leads to the bad food, but the lack of taste...
Ut Oh - now I am just being insulting...I should not have said that... and I apologize...
I mean look they have the Jaguar, Aston Martin, the orginal mini cooper, the MG, oh the Rolls Royce and Buckingham Palace...
Eghm -
Not really sure where this is going, but maybe I will insult someone, and they will respond... I mean isn't that what we want? A rich and active dialog on history via our blogs?
Usually you need to piss someone off on the internet to get them to respond...
Forgive me... I have been drinking...
I was thinking the same thing... The food in the UK is still blah.
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