How was the world interconnected in the early modern period, according to the introduction by Pomeranz & Topik? In what ways did the non-Western “peripheries” still have influence in their economic roles?
The world was interconnected in the early modern period by trade. Many different countries traded goods with each other, and adapted different cultures and traditions. For example, when China started using silver as currency, they traded with the British and Dutch. The Dutch would pay with pesos that had been made by African slaves using Incan and Aztec forms of labor. The silver would then eventually find its way to more places. Although, the people at the time didn’t know this, the world was interconnected because of trade, and because of the many places and people involved in trade.
Why was trade so pervasive in the Islamic world prior to contact with the Portuguese? In what ways did the Portuguese change those economic networks? What did they not change?
In the Islamic World currency was very important in the pervasiveness of trade. As long as tribute was paid, the rulers were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Most rulers were accepting of traders and allowed many of them to move from port to port. When the Arabs conquered the most of the Byzantine empire, they decided that
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At first the Incas used the silver for jewelry and temples, but soon the spanish conquistadors found the mountain and began to use the mita system to extract the silver for themselves. The Peruvian Indian villages were forced to provide men that could work extracting silver. The men were unable to avoid the system so they stayed and worked. They had to work for about 6 to 7 days a week providing ores to the Spaniards, that could later be melted into silver. After time the city surrounding the mountain grew very large and attracted many people because of the large amounts of silver in the