Document Based Question: Global Flow of Silver

Document Based Question (DBQ): Global Flow of Silver During the mid-seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, many events occurred along with the global flow of silver bullion. In the early 1600’s, the Dutch East India Company was founded and this contributed to the Dutch Golden Age of trade, science, military and art. Also in the early 1600’s, Tokugawa Ieyasu seized Japan and made the Tokugawa Shogunate military government that was headed by the shoguns. In the mid 1600’s the Taj Mahal was being built in Agra, India by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. In the late 1600’s, John Locke was starting to publish his first work and he was starting to influence Voltaire and Rousseau. With these influential time periods came the global flow of silver throughout the world. The global flow of silver from the mid-seventeenth century and early eighteenth century can be split up into three groups of social (Documents 1, 6, 7 and 8), destructive economic (Documents 2 and 3) and constructive economic (Documents 4, 5, and 6) with the constructive economic effects having the largest effect on the global flow of silver because the influences of the silver currency throughout the world and the rise of wealth of silver-producing countries is substantial compared to the social and destructive economic effects. The social effects of the global flow of silver from the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century did indeed have an effect on the trade of silver throughout the world as this is expressed in documents 1, 6, 7 and 8. Although the social effects on the global flow of silver were miniscule compared to the economic effects, they affected the trade system and small scale trading relations. Although document 1 is the shortest document, it shows the extensive greed of an extravagant un-satisfied man with a lot of money compared to a satisfied person that has little money. This document clearly states that silver was the form of wealth in the Ming dynasty and the well-being