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Thesis africa before european arrival
Commerce and trade 18th century
Thesis africa before european arrival
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Maritime advances of the 1500s made Western Europe’s ambitions for global trade feasible and thus gave birth to Europe’s Age of Exploration. Through the combined use of caravels, compasses, and astrolabes, Europeans stumbled upon commodities in foreign lands known as “drug foods”. Consequently, this introduction would have a lasting impact on the Europeans, they became drug addicts. Furthermore, this addiction, the demand for these drugs, became permanently embedded into European culture. To please an everlasting demand, Europeans had to decide on how to frugally acquire these commodities. The decision taken was one of regarding profit over ethics. Moreover, this decision not only impacted the culture and economy of the exploiters, European countries, but also, reciprocally, that of the exploited. China and Haiti were two countries that were exploited by Europe’s immoral decision on capitalism.
China, due to its unique environment and legal codes, was the only country that held a monopoly on its “drug food,” tea. As the English sipped on something new for a change they became enlightened since tea actually had benefits unlike their once preferred drink, alcohol. Tea stimulated people to work longer hours, instead of being tired and thus going home early. They also began to gather at coffeehouses that had become the epicenter of the English people’s day to day interactions, whether to discuss business or politics. The daily consumption of tea became
mundane for the English and thus it became embedded in their culture; even presently the English are synonymous with tea. This surge in demand mixed with England’s sense of superiority pushed the English to break down China’s monopoly on tea. For the English, their str...
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...e’s sugar cravings, Portugal not only ruined an entire country, Haiti, but also became an advertisement for sin, slavery.
Prior to the Renaissance, Europeans yearned for religious salvation through moral deeds, however, during the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration, Europeans yearned, instead for profits through immoral business decisions; from the use of slavery to exploiting opium’s illicit uses. Though technological advances are supposed to help people, Europe’s case of maritime advances proved to the contrary. The trade and consumption of “drug foods” benefited the culture and economy of Europe, while it leached the cultural and economic vitality of other nations. Europe’s footprint is still evident in China, where opium is still a social and an economic problem, as well as in Haiti which remains crippled in every aspect of its economy and government.
Tom Standage has described the beginnings of six beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola and has found many connections, and information helpful in finding out history of the drinks themselves but also their impacts on the growth of civilization as a whole. This book connects everything with society both past and present, it makes learning about history and the way drinks connect fun and interesting. Like learning without even realizing you are. A History of the World in Six Glasses is more than just talking about each beverage as a single but as a whole, it’s connections, uses, relations, and growth they started.
They have levied war, excited rebellions, dethroned princes, and sacrificed millions for the sake of gain. The revenue of mighty kingdoms has centered in their coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled barbarities, extortions, and monopolies stripped the miserable inhabitants of their property and reduced whole provinces to indigence and ruin. Fifteen hundred thousand perished by famine in one year, not because the earth denied its fruits, but this company and its servants engrossed all the necessities of life, and set them at so high a rate, that the poor could not purchase them. Thus having drained the sources of that immense wealth, they now, it seems, cast their eyes to America, as a new threat, whereupon to exercise their talents of rapine, oppression, and cruelty. The monopoly of tea is, I dare say, but a small part of the plan they have formed to strip us of our property.
Firstly, the Caribbean smuggling was viewed as necessary and positive in the late eighteenth century. According to William Taggart, a British sailor traveling to testify at his smuggling trial in April 1760, the illegal transportation of goods from the Spanish port of Monte Christi led to general prosperity in the area, as there were only 100 relatively poor families and that the governor had full knowledge of this and demanded a tax of one silver Spanish coin. Taggart mi...
At the end of the eighteenth century, China’s goods were much desired by Britain. However, the Chinese saw Europeans as savages and did not want to trade with them. During trade, there was an imbalance in China’s favor, because the Europeans were forced to buy Chinese goods using silver. The Western Imperialists began to grow opium poppies from in India, and then smuggle them into China. China soon became addicted to the drug and spent most of it’s money on the purchase of it from the Europeans and Americans. This shifted the balance of power to be in Europe’s favor.
This book is complete with some facts, unfounded assumptions, explores Native American gifts to the World and gives that information credence that really happened yet was covered up and even lied about by Euro-centric historians who have never given the Indians credit for any great cultural achievement. From silver and money capitalism to piracy, slavery and the birth of corporations, the food revolution, agricultural technology, the culinary revolution, drugs, architecture and urban planning, our debt to the indigenous peoples of America is tremendous. With indigenous populations, mining the gold and silver made capitalism possible. Working in the mines and mints and in the plantations with the African slaves, they started the industrial revolution that then spread to Europe and around the world. They supplied the cotton, rubber, dyes, and related chemicals that fed this new system of production.
Imagine contracting syphilis—would it be more appropriate to lament having such a disease, or express the benefits—the European discovery of cocoa and dyes—that followed Christopher Columbus introducing the disease to Europe? Pangloss, rather than feel sorry for himself, speaks of the aforementioned benefits, “…For if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease… we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal (Voltaire 15).” This quotation emphasizes how entangled Pangloss was with his own philosophy, that he could not see his own torment—his syphilis—was unnecessary. See, neither Pangloss nor anyone else had to suffer in order for anyone to receive chocolate or cochineal; in a better world, Christopher Columbus would not have brought syphilis back with him after discovering the New World. However, Pangloss cannot conceive of there being a better world because he is enamored with pointing out that, where there is evil, there is also good—which is what he does by pointing out how because Columbus went to the New World and contracted syphi...
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
Salisbury, Joyce E. and Andrew E. Kersten. "Food & Drink in Victorian England." Daily Life through History. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
“Catastrophe, riots, factories blowing up, armies in flight, flood - the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the starry night of the human body (Cocteau).” China is the human body of this metaphor, as Cocteau points out the destruction and chaos opium can cause in the body of man; it does the same to the well-being of China during the early to mid eighteen-hundreds. The aim of this paper is to discuss a key issue in which plagued China in their opposition to opium trade leading up to and during the Opium War. While there are many important issues related to China’s opium problem, the scope of this paper will be strategic errors. It is important to note that if improvements were made in this field, it does not guarantee that the
Around the beginning of the sixteenth centruy, many countires had started to explore farther away and finding new territories. New products like sugar and taobacco began to emerge around the world in many places. Many countries in Europe were gaining power due to the control of colonies in the Americas. Asian countries did not explore as much, but still managed to remain large and powerful for a while. The global flow of silver had economic effects on inflating prices of goods and stimulating econimic policy of mercantilism, and social effects on negative effects on the lower class around the world during the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century.
It seemed as if tea was a drug for the Europeans because for them it was just so addicting, to the point they would do anything just to get more and more. The only things that were worthy of trading with the Chinese were gingko (type of plant), shark fin, a soft type of wood (used for incense) and silver. As the demand for tea rose, Britain gradually ran out of silver to trade with, and was desperate to find what China wanted. Then, the British resorted to trading in opium. China was very picky about their opium.
European colonialism was the period between 16th and mid-20th century. The triangle trade had emerged in the 16th century and slaves, sugar, furs, and cotton, enforced through military interventions, drew together the people, politics, economics, and even diseases of Europe, Africa, and the Americans in a triangle of previously unimaginable, highly unequal, and long-lasting relationships of exchange. Even today, we can find traces of many of these connections in the global economy for example, the French military operating in Côte d’Ivoire. So, the European colonialism played a pivotal role in establishing the framework for today’s global economic system.
The Europeans needed to acquire profitable and cheap labor somehow. They knew that workers in foreign lands would be perfect. Not only were cheap laborers needed, but also profitable and cheap land. Goods such as tea, oranges, coffee, bananas, and chocolate were at high demand. The easiest way to acquire all of their desi...
...ition of spices into the market during the Middle Ages not only created an economic boom but also led to the change in social, political, and religious outlooks of society. The vast importance of the spice trade opened the doors for nations to expand and create new relationships with neighboring regions, but most importantly it allowed individuals such as Columbus, Da Gama, Polo and other explorers to be able to discover new domains that eventually led to the colonization of the Americas today. Paul Freedman’s book does an excellent job in enlightening the reader of how meaningful spices were throughout the centuries and with the help of numerous primary sources, the message was clear just after reading the first chapter. The book allows us to have a better understanding of the fundamental importance spices played in shifting the medieval times into the modern era.