Ap European Slave Trade Chapter 1 Summary

HTSE- The immediate developments, such as the European “fascination for things Chinese” (711) and the increasingly affordable price of tea in Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, influenced the cultural patterns depicted in these illustrations. When tea first “made its entry in Europe” (711) from Japan and China, it was extremely expensive. As the tea was more readily available, the price declined and many more people were able to enjoy it. This painting shows two Europeans enjoying tea out of porcelain teacups, both representing the global commerce that took part during this time period, as well as the position the European had in this trade.

BPQ #1- Europeans transformed earlier patterns of commerce by participating in new networks of exchange, such as the silver trade. This trade network “gave birth to a genuinely global network of exchange” (679) by connecting many parts of the world. The silver trade was also the “first direct and sustained link between the Americas and Asia” (680). Europeans, specifically the Portuguese and the Spanish, also assimilated into older patterns by attempting to participate in (and control) a major trade network: the Indian Ocean commerce.
These legacies of the slave trade are prominent through the idea of race, as “Atlantic slavery came to be identified wholly with Africa and with blackness” (689) Racism was used in this time period to justify actions, as through racism, “Europeans were better able to tolerate their brutal exploitations of Africans” (690). This racial discrimination became a reoccurring theme that has lasted well into the twenty-first