Vasco Da Gama Dbq Analysis

During the age of exploration, Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama was the first to sail from Europe to India; which opened up a new world of trade for Europe and Asia. As the discoveries of his voyage caused many European nations a desire of luxury goods from Asia such as spices, silks, jewels, and textiles. This new desire of trade eventually encouraged more nations to find trading routes to Asia, ultimately reaching China and Japan where the Europeans acquired an even stronger desire for trade. However, the Chinese were very wary of foreign trade and only accepted silver as means of exchange; which eventually created a massive global flow of silver for European nations to be able to trade with China, where Japan and the Americas were the main

For example, the government caused scarcity of silver in China caused farmers to cultivate less land because it drove the prices of grain down (Doc 3). This conveys the social problem that because the flow of silver in china was limited because of the government, farmers were not able to cultivate as much land. Therefore, less food was produced to sustain chinese society. Moreover, Ming official Ye chunji explains that a simple man is fulfilled even with scarcity of silver, while a extravagant man can not be content with huge amounts of silver (Doc 1). This record depicts the social problem that the huge flow of silver has caused some people to leave traditional confucian and chinese values of modesty and unnecessary spending because the author claims that there are people in society that can not be satisfied with enough wealth. Moreover, the purpose of this source is to limit wedding expenses which further proves the social problem of unnecessary spending, as it contradicts chinese social values. Additionally, there were also social problems caused by the silver trade in the americas. For instance, Spanish priest Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa describes how Native Americans in the Spanish colonies are force to mine silver, under terrible conditions (Doc 6). This source shows a enormous social problem since people are suffering by being forced to mine silver to support the flow of silver towards china, which enriches spain at the cost of other people. In addition, the author of this document criticizing the practices of his own nation is significant because he acknowledges that there is a real problem in his own nation in the exploitation of people in america's; otherwise he would not be expressing his nation in such