The Atlantic Slave Trade

I really enjoyed this reading because the subject of slavery has always intrigued me. Reading the section, Slave Trade in Context really broke down the thought of slavery and how it began. I found it very interesting that in the 15th century slavery was widely accepted as a perfectly normal human enterprise. To me, slavery has never been an acceptable subject. Slave trade seemed to rely on the Mediterranean World. Trade between the Europeans and Africans all took place in that area. Europeans provided things like sugar, honey and fruits, where Africans sole provided a wide variety of slaves.
    Looking at the charts on pg 454 was really shocking. The first chart was of the rise and decline of slavery. Slavery seemed to start off very slow until around the 1600's, then out of the blue it boomed. The peak of the slavery was between 1751-1775, importing over 60 thousand slaves to the US. It seemed to last until around 1870, until slavery was abolished. The second chart shocked me even more than the first. It showed the destination of slaves in the eighteenth century. I thought the Americas would for sure have the highest number of slaves, when in fact it was the lowest. British North America and US had a mere 348,000 slaves combined with Spanish America that had 578,600. Brazil and the Caribbean combined had over 5,000,000 slaves between 1450-1750. The high amount of agriculture in the region called for a higher need for slaves. The fast expansion of slavery was an incredible topic to read about.

Global Commerce

I thought the most interesting part of the reading was learning about the Portuguese Empire and explorers. In the beginning of the European and Asian Commerce section it spoke of Columbus and Portuguese explorers. They spoke of how Columbus accidentally came across the Americas but the Portuguese discovering Asia was a different stories. They were on a decade long escapade to find a good sea route to the east. They sailed down the coast of west Africa, around the southern tip, and back up the east coast until they discovered India.
     Global Commerce started a huge expansion of world trade. In the early modern era furs, silvers, textiles and spices were introduced as major items of global commerce. Since fur became so popular, fur-bearing animals population started to diminish. Animals such as beavers, rabbits, sable, marten and deer. I think using poor animals just for our own selfish profit is wrong. Shows how much things have changed over time. By 1500 everyone was wearing fur coats. A surprised visitor from Venice observed, "The weather is bitterly cold and everyone is in furs although we are almost in July". Fur coats were the thing to have.

I thought this reading was really interesting because of how they teach you about the change in agriculture because of the sugar cane. Sugar cane happened to be one of the most luxurious goods introduced to the markets in Western Asia and Europe. It grows in hot, moist areas and the production is extremely labor- intensive. Even with these flaws, I found it very interesting how quickly sugar cane popularity grew. It wasn't just growing cane in the backyard. Now there were huge plantations sole for the production of sugar cane. Its amazing how quickly popularity of agriculture grew because of one simple plant. The plantaions ran their companies in a master and field slave type of manner. It seemed to be a common commodity-producing system they were using.

Russian Empire

I thought the reading about the Russian and Asian Empires was really interesting. When it started off, I was first surprised to learn that the Europeans and Russian Empire were both expanding in the Americas at the same time. The Russian Empire seemed to expand much quicker than expected. From 1500-1800, the Empire had managed to expand to the Pacific Ocean. They brought Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, Belorussians and Baltic peoples to the America's. I would have expected the Europeans to bring more people, but the Russian Empire's expansion was a big surprise to me.
    Religion in the Mughal and Ottoman Empire was another big topic in our reading. The central part of the Mughal Empire was most religious. With the ruling dynasty, about 20% of the population were Muslim, where the rest practiced Hinduism. Within the Ottoman Empire, its two main religions were Muslims and Christians. Turks and Arabs were also were also a big part of the Ottoman Empire. Overall, the Ottoman empire combining with European expansion started admiration and envy as well as fear for the future.