Impact Of Mercantilism

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Mercantilism can be defined as the amount of gold and silver a person or nation has; everyone during the 16th and 18th centuries were looking to strike gold, or even silver, through trading. Within this time period, silver was very popular and it was most popular in Spanish colonial America and Tokugawa Japan. These cities exported tons of silver throughout many years, causing one’s status to be based upon mercantilism. There were empires that even began to rid their societies of paper money and just rely on silver. The trading of silver between the 16th and 18th centuries was a huge hit world-wide, and had a very large impact on the social and economic life of several nations. The emergence of silver as a high demanded product all over the …show more content…

This document describes the economic changes within Spain, Portugal, and other world powers of this time, in that their economies were boosted due to the introduction of silver. This allowed them to heavily depend on silver in their economies, which caused an inflation in the economic aspects of the world. Socially, this would lead to a hierarchy, which would divide people amongst their classes; a class would be established by the amount of silver one was made of. In summary, “Born with a Silver Spoon” would greatly impact the claims made by these documents, in that the themes are very similar and have consistent messages through the changes of economic and social …show more content…

The most prominent core zone of the era would have been Japan because of the amount of silver it exported to foreigners. This period was defined by the silver trade; never were there transactions that lacked silver. “For Europe draws from Asia nothing of solid use; only materials ot supply luxury, and only perishable commodities, but sends to Asia gold and silver…” (Doc 8). Someone’s status was dependent on silver. It was just as important as the slaves were to the Middle Passage; it was everything. In short, the trading of silver impacted the world greatly- both socially and economically- in that it created and inflation in economies and allowed for a social web to begin to