Socratic Seminar questions for Silver DBQ
Doc. 1
1. Why would the government require silver form people to pay their
taxes?
2. Why is the silver coin scarce?
3. Why does everything gets paid with silver?
4. Why did the prices of crops fail?
5 .If the value of silver is low, why is the grain cheap?
6. How does the economic inflation impact crop yield and costs?
6. How did the prices of grains impact the amount of land put into
cultivation?
7. How did they impact the lives of the peasants?
8. How did the lack of silver impact Ming dynasty?
Doc. 2
9. Why did the Portuguese ships carry a lot of silver, silk during their
voyages?
10. Why did they bring only silver form Japan?
11. What are some of the advantages of the silver trade that the
Portuguese obtain? Is there any benefit from bringing silver from Japan?
12. What does this document state about the value and importance of
silver during that time period?
Doc. 3
13. What is the reason for stealing silver from mines?
14. 1How does the discovery of silver impact the Spanish economy?
15.How did it impact the Chinese economy?
16.Does the discovery of silver had any social impact? If yes, what was the
impact?
Doc. 4
17. Why were the prices of the Chinese products in the Philippines
inflated/higher in Philippines than in China?
18. 1Why did the ships return form Luzon only with silver coins?
19. What is the reason the foreign trade ban should be repealed?
20. How that ban on foreign trade impacted Ming dynasty economically?
21.How did the Spanish benefit form their trade with the Chinese?
22.How did the Chinese benefit form their trade with Spanish? (Use
evidence=words from the documents to support your answers).
23. Did one part/side benefit from that trade more than the other? Explain.
Doc.5
24. Why is D’Avenant concerned about the amount of silver that is leaving
the Spanish America?
25. What made Asia’s spices seem like a necessity?
26. Why doesn’t Asia make use of the silver they are getting instead of
burring it? How this will impact the Chinese economy?
27. Will the Bill in the British Parliament pass, now that the people are used
to the Chinese luxury products?
28. What was D’Avenant purpose?
29. Why were the Europeans trading everywhere?
Doc.6
30. What does this image portray? Why is significant to the silver trade?
31.What is the message/goal of this document?
32.Is this document biased?
Doc.7
33.Why did the extraction of silver from Peru decline in the 1800s, while
the one in Mexico increase?
34.Based on the graphs what are the effects of the silver minting
production in Mexico and Peru?
35.What cause the mining production to increase between 1780-1803, then
significantly drop after 1809?
36.What do the charts represent for the overall growth and decline of
silver?
DBQ skills
37.What 2 documents could you compare for complex understanding?
Provide the reason for your comparison.
38. What would you use as information beyond documents?
39. What is the contextualization for this DBQ?