Silver DBQ

The colonization of the Americas by Spain and the beginning of a widespread silver mining in Japan had a major impact on silver production, greatly increasing it. However, this increase in silver supply seemed good to some people, but overall caused many problems. Suppliers such as Japan and Spain, and receivers such as Ming China, seemed to benefit from this rapid increase in silver mining, but this increase caused worldwide problems as well. Based on the documents, the effects of the increase of the production of silver, was beneficial to those who facilitated trade, but weakened the states empire that supplied and received silver in vast quantities. In China, increased trade to economically benefit from the return of silver was a strong belief, especially in the Ming dynasty. Although, many problems arose with displeased people, and the Ming dynasty soon decreed that all taxes and trade fees were to be paid in strictly silver. This became a huge hassle to pay the bill of even a simple dying of cloth, like in Hangzhou, which Xu Dunquiu Ming complained about in 1610 (Doc 5). Scarcity of silver soon took its toll in the 1570s and began to harm the economy due to the debt acquired by those who could not pay their taxes and had to seek out the middlemen to find a supply of silver. Going through the middlemen did not only take longer before various individual’s taxes were paid but it also decreased the value of their produce (Doc 3). A man named Wang Xijue presented the problem to the emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1593, explaining that the cultivation of land was at risk due to the scarcity of the silver coin affecting the price of grain. In 1626, the emperor makes a ban on foreign trade, but it is soon frowned upon and taken into the matters of court official, He Qiaoyuan in 1630, who reports to the emperor that he believes the ban should be repealed. Qiaoyuan describes the extreme amount of silver that the Ming, a country with little interest in international