how was the trade before World War first
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Answer:
World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers)
Even before the U.S. Civil War of 1861-5, the export of cotton from the American south and of sugar from the Caribbean islands had shown how European agriculture could be replaced and augmented. After the Civil War the coming of the steam engine and the iron hull to ocean transport made possible the export to Europe not merely of cotton and sugar–crops which could not be grown in the climate of the European industrial core–but also grain, meat, and wool.
The second wave of products from the Americas were the staple plantation crops of tobacco and sugar, the mainstays of the triangle trade: sugar and tobacco to Europe, rum and weapons to Africa, slaves to the Caribbean. But tobacco and sugar were boosts to European consumption, not raw materials for further transformation in industrial enterprises. It is hard to see how this second wave of products might have shaped the structure of the European economies.
Things become different with the early nineteenth century, and the third wave of products from the Americas: cotton. North American slaves and Eli Whitney’s cotton gin together produced a cheap material input to an important manufacturing industry, and this time the industry was dynamic enough and the raw material important and cheap enough that the presence of the Americas did change the shape of the leading European economy, that of Britain.