Growing Global Economy

1. Explain the role of technology and big business in the growing global economy of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The technology and big business in the growing economy of the 16th and 17th century was booming, ships were being built differently to accommodate with their traveling needs, like the galleon. Trading companies collaborated in a variety of ways to expand seaborne commercial operations like the House of India which had control over the transoceanic trades like importing many spices and metals from Africa and Asia and selling them for a different price in Lisbon. While the House of Trade which was ran by the Spanish functioned more things like a regulatory agency by issuing licenses to private traders.
2. Summarize some of the continuing effects of the Columbian exchange on the world as described in this chapter.
The continuing effects of the Colombian exchange on the world is that still there is animals and plants being brought over like horses, honey bees, and dandelions. Also, small pox, measles, and syphilis were still being passed around. Animals that were brought to America had multiplied on the lands. The Europeans took dominance
over the lands and put the Native Americans to work by raising Afroeurasian crops and herds that were companionable for the local climates.
3. What effect did the influx of American silver have on the world economy, particularly Asia?
The influx of the American silver had effected the world economy by making the encouraging the Japanese to produce other commodities for export, which then made their way to the Americas, Europe, and West Africa.
Also, it led to an increasing traffic in humans to work, among other places, in the silver mines of the Americas. In China, the request for silver initially drove the global economy and it expanded its market economy in conditions of general political stability. Then later silver swamped the Chinese market, bringing its price down. The devaluing of silver in China had a devastating financial effect on Spain which allowed its European competitors to gain the upper hand in a new global trade focused on sugar, tobacco, gold, and slaves. The effect of it even lead the fall of the Ming dynasty and a rise of a new
one.
4. What caused the "price revolution" and how did it affect Europe, particularly Spain and Germany?
The cause of the “price revolution” was the production of basic commodities like bread and firewood failed to keep pace with demand as the population grew which drove the prices relentlessly rising which the historians called it the price revolution. In Europe, people had to pay more for bread and the government tried to cut the military and administrative spending by diluting their metal with out changing the value which only worked for a short term. Women had to work on farms while their husbands and sons went to look for waged jobs. In Spain, the Habsburg kings had to pay huge amounts of silver to pay their debts that were incurred in the European wars for their wine, guns, and other thins that shipped to the American empire. Spain went to war with Germany fighting a brutal “free for all” as famines and then later both made an agreement to a general settlement.
5. Briefly explain what motivated New World business men to turn to African slaves as their primary labor source (as opposed to other sources) and the conditions endured by those slaves. What role did African leaders play in the slave trade?