Trading Empires and trade routes
Asia’s Inland Trade, or How the Spice Trade Worked
The way we learn the story in elementary school in the United States, European trading companies sailed East in search of spices and other luxury goods. What those merchants took with them to trade is generally left unmentioned–perhaps because it makes it clear that Europe was a backwater in the global marketplace until well into…
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Blue Mutiny
In the fall of 1859, two years after the violent uprisings in Northern Indian known as the Indian Mutiny or Sepoy Rebellion,* thousands of peasant-farmers (ryots) in the Indian province of Bengal refused to accept cash advances to plant indigo crops in the spring–an act of resistance that became known as the Blue Mutiny. Property…
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A Spy in the Spice Trade
You know the beginning of this story. In the fifteenth century, Portugal under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator * began maritime exploration along the coast of Africa. More or less a hundred years later, a Portuguese fleet commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India. After a certain amount of bumbling around, Portugal transformed…
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