Afro-Eurasia Dbq Essay

After Columbus “discovered” the Americas, the Colombian exchange began. In this trading system, Afro-Eurasia would trade items from the Americas with their commodities. Many Europeans would go to the Americas to make money or spread their religion. One empire was the Spanish empire. They looked for valuable minerals and found silver mines in Mexico and Peru, prompting the silver trade. With the globalization of this trade, it impacted many empires in the Americas and Afro-Eurasia. Once the global silver trade started in the sixteenth century, empires across Afro-Eurasia and the Americas were affected socially, such as Native Americans having to overwork themselves because of the Spanish desire for silver, and economically, with a change in

The Spanish adopted coerced labor systems including the mi’ta, a system that was already established in indigenous societies. As described in Document 3, the indigenous people had to climb ladders with bags of ore and described other harsh conditions. This document was written by a Spanish priest who came to the Americas to convert the Natives, so he most likely had a more sympathetic view of the indigenous working conditions than other Spanish explorers. Such working conditions were also drawn out in Document 6, where a camp can be seen near the mines and indigenous people helping to take care of the camels. Both documents show a shift in traditional indigenous society as the Spanish make them work in the mines. The extensive labor caused the death of many of the indigenous men and since most of the men had to work in the mines, the birth rate for the indigenous population

Once silver became more global, China was one of the main countries that showed a desire for it. Document 5 reflects Chinese trade with Europe for silver. Just like Japan, China was also a xenophobic country at the time, so trading with Europe indicated their desire for silver. However, this wanting for silver wasn’t entirely positive for their economy. Document 1, written from a Ming dynasty court official's point of view, communicated the decrease in the cultivation of land. This came from the tax change, also referred to as the Ming Single Whip reform, where China began using silver as tax. However, they distributed the silver poorly, so the price of grains fell, and farmers didn’t have enough profit. The trade of silver had the short-term benefit of the Chinese economy growing but in the long-term, it caused the destabilization of its