Chapter 15: Global Commerce

The East India Companies
I thought this section was a little surprising because out of all the history classes I have taken, we never really talked about the Dutch and this section does. So, the Dutch controlled the shipping and production of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg in Indonesia. They controlled small spice producing islands and made the Native only sell to them and whoever refused their crops were destroyed. As the Dutch profits increased the local economy of the Islands was destroyed and the people were impoverished. This is different from the British East India Company because the British East Company had less money and weren't "commercially sophisticated". They, however, controlled three major trading settlements: Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. Since on land they weren't as powerful they couldn't do the trade by warfare like the Dutch. The statement about silver: "went around the world and made the world go round" could mean that silver was a big part of the global trade commerce, so it went around but also made the world go crazy for it, doing whatever means necessary. Like Potosí means "portrait of hell". And the Native would have funerals for the miners that had to go dig for silver which is very dangerous..