Similarities Between Spice Trade And American Monopolies

States and private enterprises were similar in their roles in the fur, spice and slave trades in that they both tried to establish monopolies by any means possible as well as their roles in trade constantly benefitting Europe, however they differ greatly in their treatment of native people who were in their path to become involved in global commerce.

Both private enterprises and states were similar in the spice, fur and slave trades as they both sought to establish monopolies on different forms of trade during the early modern era. After the travels of Vasco de Gama discovered the open commercial network of Indian Ocean commerce, which could provide valuable goods that could be used in Asian networks due to the low value of European goods,

Similarly, the Dutch and English sought to get involved in the valuable spice trade, although they did this by displacing the Portuguese by force. During the early 1600’s the Dutch and English started ventures in the Spice Trade by providing charters to private companies. The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company both sought for control of the trade by quickly established competing trading post empires that were similar in many respects. The Dutch forced natives out and bought in their own workers, this lead to the Dutch easily being able to monopolize the trade of spices such as nutmeg and cloves which in turn made the Dutch huge profits. The British were excluded from the main spice markets and in turn focused on the Indian market and valuable materials such as cotton. In the lucrative fur trade the Europeans sought to gain valuable Native American furs in exchange for basic goods and alcohol. The French and British sought to sway the fur trade in their favor as both tried to establish control of the North American fur trade. The two nations drive for power often led to Native Americans having to take sides in deadly wars, even though the Native Americans gained many goods they were also decimated by disease and many became

In the North American fur trade the primary beneficiary was of course the European nations of Spain and England who traded with the Native Americans, but with the Siberian fur trade the primary beneficiary may have been Russia but many of the furs eventually benefitted Europe. Russia expanded into Siberia to gain furs as they were extremely valuable to the Russian people, but they could also be used as barter for trade with European nations as well as China. Fur was also highly valued in these markets, and the high worldwide value of furs highly benefitted everyone involved in the trade. In the slave trade private enterprises directly benefitted Europe with African slaves due to the high numbers of Africans. African sellers, often elite class, pulled the slaves from marginal groups and sold to wealthy European nations who competed for the African slave trade. These slaves provided labor for European slave owners and led to the depletion of African societies as a whole. During the spice trade the Dutch and English as well as the French paid charters for private companies to establish trade post empires in the Indian Ocean. Although these were private companies, they were working for their respective countries and directly benefitted Europe through their involvement in the spice trade. Despite the Russian fur trade not directly