Chapters 14,15,16 reflection

Chapters 14, 15 & 16

Chapter 14 starts off talking about the European Empires in the Americas, talking about how western Europeans were marked by maritime expansion. This included the Spaniards in Caribbean, the British, French, and Dutch colonies in North America. The Europeans controlled most of the Americas by the nineteenth century. Chapter 14 touched on the packet that we read to write our analysis paper about the maritime voyages and the technology used by the Europeans. I really enjoyed reading about the Colombian exchange and how a wide variety of people created new societies in the Americas. It was interesting to read about how they replaced the previous societies that existed before 1942. It was mostly the Europeans and Africans that were bringing their people,diseases, and resources with them. I thought it was cool how much of an impact the animals they introduced to the Americas at the time had on the country. I never knew horses, pigs, cattle etc. came from Europe and Africa. I guess it makes sense!

Talked about in Chapter 15 was the spice trade. I never realized how important spices were in our history, and how important they were to the Portuguese. In the early 1500s The Portuguese created a "trading post empire" which was to try to control commerce, not large territories or  populations. They did this by force of arms not by economic competition. They controlled half of the spice trade into Europe. Spices were a big trade item for thousands of years in the Indian Ocean. Spain was the first to challenge the Portuguese's control of Asian trade. Spain then took over between 1565 - 1650.

Slavery is something most of us know about and have learned about throughout our time spent in school. I've always found slavery interesting.  I remember watching movies and videos on how they transported the slaves here from Africa and I still can't believe that took place in our history. After reading about the history of slaves, I never realized how most human societies had slaves, also Africans had been selling slaves for centuries. Reading about all the different forms of slaves and how the Islamic world preferred  female slaves, the Atlantic slave trade preferred males, how some even had political status was really interesting I have never really thought about slavery in other countries, just here in America and how it was by race.