Exam 11: The Global Economy

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The text identifies sugar, slaves, fur, coffee, tea, cocoa, European manufactured goods, and later cotton. In addition to these, Fig 11.1, which illustrates the Triangle Trade routes, adds: rum, molasses, tobacco, fish, rice, grain, gold, linens, horses as the items exchanged in this trade network. However, students must mention sugar, slaves, and European manufactured goods are the principle commodities of the network. The Triangle Trade network occurred between Europe, the Americas, and Africa in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Slaves produced sugarcane on Caribbean plantations and sugar cane products were exported to Europe. Initially a luxury item in Europe, it became a diet staple, in part because it was used to sweeten other key commodities produced in the colonies such as coffee, tea, and chocolate. Students should explain that millions of slaves were imported from Africa to the Caribbean and South America to work on plantations owned by the Spanish and Portuguese. Slaves were later transported from Africa and the Caribbean to work on plantations in the southern part of North America, to supply cotton for the British textile industry. Europe, and Britain in particular, supplied manufactured products to the captive markets of its colonies. The fur trade in the northern part of the continent exchanged initially with Native Americans, then later penetrated farther into the interior, seeking out furs that were exported to Europe and made into coats for elites. As a result, Native Americans were involved in wars with and between Europeans and, like the indigenous populations of South America and the Caribbean, were decimated by diseases. Additionally, students might add, Native American communities were displaced, and many African communities felt consequences of depopulation.