What were the commodities which was preferred by Europeans.
Answers
Answer:
- During the colonial era, Britain and its colonies engaged in a “triangular trade,” shipping natural resources, goods, and people across the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to enrich the mother country.
- Trade with Europeans led to far-reaching consequences among Native American communities, including warfare, cultural change, and disease.
- Although the British government attempted to control colonial trade through measures like the Navigation Acts, it only sporadically enforced trade laws
The Atlantic highway
Which is easier to get to: a town that’s 10 miles away on the other side of a mountain range, or a city that’s 3000 miles away on the other side of an ocean? Today, there’s no question that the nearby town would be easier, but before the widespread adoption of cars and railroads, a sea voyage was a much easier prospect than a journey over treacherous land. In the colonial era, the Atlantic Ocean served as a highway between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, tying together a network of people, raw materials, finished goods, merchants, and sailors that brought wealth to colonial empires.
Generating wealth for the mother country was first and foremost among the reasons for European colonization in the Americas. During this era, the economic theory of mercantilism suggested that a nation’s power relied on a favorable balance of trade: that is, exporting more than it imported.
Establishing colonies promoted mercantilist goals in two ways: first, the colonies ensured the mother country had a cheap supply of raw materials (timber, sugar, tobacco, furs, just to name a few), and second, the colonies served as a captive market for finished goods (furniture, guns, metal implements). In other words, colonies existed to sell things to the mother country and to buy things from it, and the government made its profit by taxing and imposing customs duties on trade.
Mercantilism led to the emergence of what’s been called the “triangular trade”: a system of exchange in which Europe supplied Africa and the Americas with finished goods, the Americas supplied Europe and Africa with raw materials, and Africa supplied the Americas with enslaved laborers.
In theory, a ship could make its way from one continent to another laden with cargo that would be prized in the next port: buying enslaved laborers on the coast of Africa, sailing to Barbados to sell enslaved people and buy sugar, sailing to England to sell sugar and buy guns, and then sailing to the coast of Africa to sell guns and buy more enslaved people.
After a grueling Middle Passage by boat in which about one-third of captives died, most enslaved laborers arrived in the Caribbean to work on the sugar islands, like Barbados and Jamaica. Some of those who survived the harsh conditions growing and processing sugar would be sold north to Virginia or Carolina, where they worked growing tobacco or rice. Although few enslaved people worked in the New England colonies, those colonies propped up the colonial system of slavery by sailing Middle Passage ships and selling provisions to enslavers.
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