Chapter 14 - Economic Transformations (Commerce & Consequences)
All of Chapter 14 is based on the international networks of exchange that helped shape human interactions during the centuries between 1450 and 1750. There was lots of different commerce going on around this period in history, for example The Spice Trade, Silver Trade, The North American Fur Trade, but one that really impacted me when reading, and impacted the world itself is The Atlantic Slave Trade. "Of all the commercial ties that linked the early modern world into a global network of exchange, none had more profound or enduring human consequences than the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1500 and 1866, this trade in human beings took an estimated 12.5 million people from African societies, shipped them across the Atlantic in the infamous Middle Passage, and deposited some 10.7 million of them in the Americas, where they lived out their often-brief lives as slaves." Slaves would often be sold several times on their journey, sometimes even branded, and h...