Michael Frazier
Mr. Krueger
AP World Civilizations
November 24, 2010
T H E G L O B A L F L O W O F S I LV E R
The social and economic effects of the global flow of silver from the mid-sixteenth century to
the early eighteenth century were: the political power, the negative impact on the poor, and the
silver trade.
Documents 1, 4, and 8 all strongly demonstrate the political power by the global flow of silver
in the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. In document 1, Ye Chunji, (a Chinese official
during the Ming dynasty) is telling people that they must stop spending so much money on
weddings and save it instead. This is because the Ming want you to pay taxes. If you spend all of
your money on weddings then you won’t be able to pay your taxes. The Chinese aren’t the only
ones interested in keeping silver. According to document 8, Charles D’ Avenant wanted England to
stop trading with Asia (mostly China). He was a government scholar so on his scholar side he
thought that. On the other side he worked for the government and he knew if they stopped
trading with China then their economy would decline. He didn’t want that because it would effect
his whole life, being as he lived in England. These documents all deal with the political power on the
global silver trade in the 16th and 17th century.
Documents 3, 5, and 6 all demonstrate the negative impacts on the poor in the 16th and 17th
centuries. Document 3 describes how the prices of grain has decreased in China. This is because
the government is holding all the silver. They are not recirculating any of the silver that they get
through taxes; the public doesn’t have very much silver to use as currency. Thus the value of silver
goes way up and the price of grain goes way down. The poor people in society are mostly the
people that deal with the grain so they are the ones whose grain isn’t as valuable. Poor people
were also affected in the Americas. In document 6, Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, wrote about the
forced labor going on in the Americas. The Spanish forced poor people to work in the silver mines.
They extracted large amounts of silver for the Spanish to take back to Europe. The author is a
Spanish priest. As such he is sad that the “poor fellows” have to work so hard in the mines. He
doesn’t like this because he is Christian and they believe in equality between people. Therefore
none should suffer so that someone else can enjoy to the good life. An additional document that
would support document 5 would be one that was written by a Chinese peasant. This is so that
the peasant could describe how they had to pay for dye shop bills and how dye shops worked,
money wise, then we would know if document 5 was true. They could also tell us how the use of
silver in paying dye shops really effected there business.
Documents 2, 4, 5, and 7 all show how the trading of silver effected the global flow of silver in
the mid-16th and 17th centuries. Document 2 describes how silver moves from the Americas and
Japan to China. Silver moved to China because the Europeans first got their silver from the
Americas, then they traded it with China for luxury goods such as silk. China liked the silver
because their goods were much better than Europe’s and the Chinese government now required
silver for taxes. This was a win win for everybody. China stopped trading for a while. In document
7, He Qiaoyuan, (Ming dynasty court official) states that China has a ban on foreign trade. He also
states that merchants have been making a killing on trading silver with the Philippines. He says that
China should again allow trade. This is because he works for the state. So he wants people to make
more money within China that way they have to pay more taxes, then he gets more money. An
additional document, to support document 4 and how it explains how Portuguese merchants are
just the middle men for the trade between China and Japan, would be a document from a Japanese
merchant. It could help us understand how Japan’s isolation has effected their trading. The Japanese
are very isolated and they don’t trade very much. The Portuguese use this to their advantage. This
way they make a lot of money just between China’s and Japan’s ignorance.
The political power, the negative impact on the poor, and the silver trade, were the social and
economic effects of the global flow of silver from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth
century.