The European Voyages and How The

World Changes

When Asia was the World economy

Strait of Malacca

•Two of three places where west bound trade routes could be blocked.

Strait of Hormuz

•Asia waters; essential for world trade.

The Economic Culture of DrugsSince the dawn of time, the people wanted commodities such as sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco and alcohol. These items alter the state of mind then in turn have been stereotyped as “DRUGS”. Taxes on these so called drugs, still fund civilizations today.

Coffee Tobacco

Aztec TradersAztec traders acquired turquoise and silver from new Mexico was traded down to Tenochtitlan in exchange for either bowles,knives,combs, blankets, and feather work. They also accumulated rubber from Veracruz,chocalate from Chiapas, jaguar pelts and honey from the Yucatan, gold from Nicaragua, cacao and obsidian from Honduras or El Salvador, and gold from Costa Rica.

One Potato, Two Potato

•New World Crop•Yield a lot of calories per acre•Wide variety of vitamins•Require little labor•Easy to store

Potato crops Potatoes

Sweet revolutions•Monopolize from sugar•Brutallness of sugar; harsh labor slavery•Sugar plantation workers said, if you don’t free us then we will free ourselves.

Where There’s Smoke…•Money = power and economical growth

•Where one person smoked, soon would be another to follow.

Mocca is Not Chocolate

•The coffee beverage was probably developed around 1400 in the city of Mocco•Coffee also became intimately related to the growth of secular society; hence, coffeehouses became one of the few secular public places in Muslim lands short of public space.

Chocolate: From coin to Commodity•These curious beans were known in Mayan as ka-ka-wa, which the Aztecs changed to cacao and the Spanish eventually corrupted into chocolate.•In early times the cacao bean used to be used as payment.•Cacao trees began being cultivated in Venezuela and Central America and then transplanted to the Philippines and Indonesia, Brazil, and finally Arica. The cacao bean became a commodity rather than a coin.