At Least 5 Paragraphs

Trade DBQ

10/27/15

    Throughout history, trade has intentionally and unintentionally transformed civilizations.  Most unintentional things that had happened, have to do with, health and the well-being of the people that were trading with other civilizations.  Diseases were spread and people had died.  But when you need resources for your people, a lot of people kept trading.  Which did help some civilizations prosper.  But with trade comes great responsibility, and a lot of violence.  

The trade networks that were made, were mostly made for being easier trade roots for traveling to different civilizations, to spread different goods.  The Phoenician Trade root, were going between several different civilizations.  Which meant you could pick up all different goods.  For example they would go to the Greek colony, Rome and be able to get copper.  If they didn't need that copper they would be able to go to another civilization that does need copper to trade with them.  Like, if Tanasis(another Greek civilization) needed copper, and you don't need copper but, have some from trading with Rome, and need Iron, then you would trade the Copper that you have with Tanasis, to get the Iron that you need. 

Trade throughout history has changed more than anyone could've imagined.  With the Phoenicians, they had a very confusing, and long route.  Which means they were able to send different goods to a range of many different civilisations.  Just like the Columbian exchange, they also made it so many different people had gotten many different types of food/goods.  But this made it so that many diseases could be spread very quickly.  Which meant when they wanted populations to thrive, they really started to dwindle.  This brings me to my next point about how The Silk Road made the spread of religion and art much, much wider.  The Silk Road was another set of routes for trading, but it also passed around different beliefs.  During this time is when gunpowder became more popular, which made it easier for people to threaten others with weapons, which also meant a lot more fights or wars could break out and people could die. 

When the Western European region's population blew up it had made it much easier for merchants to buy and sell goods to people in the 1100's.  But the only problem with all of this was that the merchants had to borrow money to buy goods to sell them again.  This is probably why so many people were buying gun powder, they were going after the merchants!!!  The solution to the merchants borrowing money was supposed to them just making the money loans, but what if the merchant die before they pay off their debt? Then what?  This point also bring me to Marco Polo.  Polo was an adventurer, looking to make things easier for people.  So with that he left on a journey to China for 24 years, only to come back with a good heat source.  Burning coal, although this was a great find, burning coal pollutes the environment.  This is what kind of started major polluting of the environment.  Speaking of starting stuff, with my last point, The Swahili trade comes up.  Africa's top traders back then, were Arabs, Portuguese, and Indians.  They would trade Bananas, Cloves, and other wonderful foods, for gold, ivory and slaves.  Because they took slaves, most Africans now are Muslim. 

    In conclusion most of the the unintentional changes have changed the whole world's present day.  If the Arabs never took slaves, then Most Africans wouldn't be Muslim.  We could even have a larger population, if disease wasn't spread throughout different countries.  But without trade we also wouldn't be able to get the goods that we needed.  At a cost, we have thrived as a population of the world, and even though some horrible things happened, we still are groing.