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Global Trade, 1250-1500 This site explores global trade.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/HIST/tutor/oldwrld/instructions.html
Questions for further exploration:
Click on "Begin Tutorial", and then click on “By Period.” Examine the Third and Fourth Period entries, making sure you click the “For further details” button at the end of the brief introductions to each period. These sections will allow you to answer the following questions: What was the nature of global trade in the two centuries prior to Columbus’ voyages? What were the chief products exchanged? Who dominated the market? What were the major trade systems and routes?
2
Early Modern World Trade and South Asia This site offers an essay by a noted South Asian historian that first defines the nature of trade and cultural exchange in the early modern period and then attempts to place South Asia within that world. It is a useful corrective to studies of the early modern period that focus on Europe instead of Asia, where, after all, Europeans were desperately seeking to gain wealth by participating in some small way in Asia’s advanced and complex economies. Asians were not begging for profits from European trade.
http://reenic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/india/JohnRichards'Indian.html
Questions for further exploration:
According to the author of this essay, what are the six elements that distinguish the early modern period? How did Asia fit into this new world system?
3
Early Contacts between the British and India This site offers the text of a letter from the Mughal Emperor Jahangir that illustrates the initial nature of British trade with India.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/1617englandindies.html
Questions for further exploration:
Why did the British seek to trade with India? What was the initial nature of that relationship?
4
The Evolution of British Dominance in India This site serves as a resource for the history of India.
http://www.historyofindia.com/home.html
Questions for further exploration:
Click on the link to “The British” and after scanning the text, click on the link to “management of the company” within the text. From this material, discuss the means by which the British East India Company went from peaceful trade to warring tax collector. What was “the subsidiary alliance system?” How did the British management style change with the onset of the Industrial Revolution?
5
Columbus’ Letter These sites offer text and information regarding the first letter Columbus wrote upon his return to from the New World.
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1400-1500/columbus/brf94.htm (with text file for further information), http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/columlet.html (another copy), and http://www.usm.maine.edu/~maps/columbus/ (a history of the letter’s dissemination)
Questions for further exploration:
The colonizing mission of Europeans in this epoch is often said to have been in the service of “God, Gold and Glory.” Which of these is the focus here? This letter provides insight into the mercantilist economy of the day. What details about the flow of wealth, including the use of ports and the place of the Queen in the New World’s trade illuminates this trade policy? Can you detect any patterns that would eventually drive Latin American merchants to rebel against Spanish control?
6
The Columbian Exchange of Food Crops These sites examine food crops in use around the world.
http://horizon.nmsu.edu/garden/history/ and http://bbg.org/gardening/kitchen/tomatoes/cutler.html
Questions for further exploration:
What “Old World” crops listed at these sites seem essential to much of the diet in the Americas? What “new World” crops would also seem necessary to most of the world’s diets? Click on the links for Cacao, peanuts and tomatoes (or corn or sugar, and potatoes) and discuss the origin, nature and spread of each of these crops around the world.
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The Columbian Exchange of Commodities This site explores tobacco as a commodity on the world market.
http://daphne.palomar.edu/scrout/colexc.htm
Questions for further exploration:
The tobacco of the Americas helped restructure the world economy. How did its evolution as a commodity on the world market transform the Americas? How did it influence changes in Russia, which, in turn, changed the economies of the Americas even further? Following the links to the history of tea, discuss how tea became a status symbol among the European and American elite and played key roles in the American Revolution and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars.
8
Vasco da Gama This site offers the text of Vasco de Gama’s account of his encounter with the trade systems of the Indian Ocean.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1497degama.html
Questions for further exploration:
Who controls the trade of the Indian Ocean at the time of de Gama’s arrival? How ignorant of the peoples of the region are the Europeans? What does de Gama tell the Zamorin of Calicut he is looking for? Is de Gama searching for “stones” or “men” or both? What crop does de Gama mention as an asset of his country that has only recently been discovered in the New World.
9
The Colony of Maryland’s Edict of Toleration This site introduced and provides the text of a landmark document in religious toleration that is evidence of how the backwater status of Britain’s North American colonies permitted it freedom to engage in Enlightenment ideals.
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1601-1650/maryland/mta.htm
Questions for further exploration:
Click on the “Context” link, survey its contents, then read the text provided. Why was the edict of toleration not as much a symptom of American religious toleration as is often believed? Why is it no less significant because of its origins?
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The Early Modern World and World Systems Theory This site offers a useful summary of Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory of modern world economic development and underdevelopment.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/wallerstein.html
Questions for further exploration:
What does Wallerstein mean by the terms core, semi-periphery, and periphery? Can you suggest nations or peoples who might exemplify these places in the global economic order? What were the chief phases by which Europe began its rise to core status in the modern world? Who benefited from this development? Who benefited from the rise of Europe to core status, even in the periphery?
