Silver Trade Research Paper

Documents 3,5,6, 7 and 8 all mention how the economy changed dramatically due to the arrival and growth of silver as a currency. In document 3, a Ming dynasty court official writes about how the silver coin is hard to come by because the government is hoarding all of it. They take silver for taxes but do not redistribute it to the people. He is writing this because he is trying to convince the emperor to distribute the silver more appropriately to the people, and because his family is obviously not doing well financially. He is a court official who most likely has small influence in the government and writes in hopes of getting the emperor to consider spreading the wealth to the lower classes of China, to save his family, and other families like his. Document 5 expresses a different, but somewhat related view about how silver has become a hindrance to regular business interactions, because customers can no longer trade items of their own to purchase goods, they have to go through a lengthy process to pay everything in silver. Document 6 shows a counter point of view about the wealth that the mining of silver has brought to Spain. Document 7 is a report written to convince the emperor of China that there is much wealth to be found in foreign trade, because of how much silver some countries will pay for Chinese goods. Finally, document 8 examines how European countries are able to purchase Asian commodities freely because of their immense supply

Document 2 strongly states that silver flow began to snowball towards the Asian commodities in Asia, rather than those in Spain. This was due to the fact that prices of Spanish commodities were very high and people turned to the less costly Asian commodities. As an effect, silver flow started to concentrate in Asia and around Asian commodities. Wang Xijue, a Ming dynasty court official, reports to the emperor in document 3 about the scarcity of silver coin and the negative effects it has on the value of grain. Grain was a main cash crop in the Ming dynasty in the late 16th century and when the price of grain dropped, cultivators earned less of a profit. This snowball effect was directly based upon the price of silver because when the government takes the silver and doesn’t distribute it, there is less silver to pay for the grain. As a result, this reduces the amount of food produced and the population of the dynasty is reduced as less land is put into cultivation. Silver’s indirect effect on the amount of food produced affected many societies throughout the globe in the mid-seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. Document 4, 5 and 6 are expressing the constructive economic impact on the global flow of silver. In document 4, the positive economic effect on the global flow of silver is that silver coins are a great use of currency. Portuguese use the Japanese silver coins to their

The author also mentions that China-based their economy on the exchange of silver. Another important thing in this chapter was the role of the Chinese voyages in the history of China and the entire world. The voyages that were created around the 1400s were used for three reasons,

During the rule of Justinian (527-565 CE) this empire was expanded to the greatest size that it would ever reach. Because it was so big, Justinian assigned two capitals for the empire, and as this happened, there was transfer of goods and technologies through both capitals. Because the empire was so big and the amount of merchandise and money that was managed through the empire was so broad, Justinian implemented the use of banking, which changed completely the way people earned money, saved their money, and traded goods to get money from them to bank it. As this happened in the Byzantine Empire, China fell into a cultural exchange of goods, technologies, and ideas that came from the Silk Roads. It was during the Tang and Song dynasties that this trade was at its peak. At the time, besides receiving goods from Europe and other neighbors through the complex routes of trading, the Chinese developed their own technologies for their own exportation. Among these technologies there was large metallurgical production, invention of gunpowder, naval technologies, rapid and cheap printing, and porcelain. These technologies enhanced even more trade for China and due to this, paper money was invented for the purpose of controlling trade; the same thing that occurred with the Byzantine Empire and banking. Even though China invented more technologies than the Byzantine Empire, both became major trade hotspots in their own way and invented systems to

During the trade of the 1500 to 1750, the most exchanged profit was the amount of silver that lead to a production in the Spanish and Japanese world. Not only did it give greatness in the taxes, but it also left negativity, and left other countries in envy and wanting to join the trade as well.

Because the Chinese government were being inspired by the flow of the silver production they decided that all taxes and trade fees be paid in silver which affected China’s economy in a way that it would decline. In document 1, Ye Chunji, a county official of Ming China, orders an issue dealing with a limitation on wedding expenses. He doesn’t want people to live a lavish life and waste all of their money. He wants them to be cautious

China, not having there own raw supply of silver had to depend on trade to get silver, but this becomes a problem when they force taxes on the people in silver but the people barley have silver and barely can obtain it. (Doc# 1) Ye Chunji, a court official in China wants to limit the expense on weddings. This document shows the difference between a frugal man and a extravagant man. An extravagant man will throw a grand wedding with the best of the best, whereas a frugal man will have the bare necessities, which leaves him money over to pay for important things like his taxes. Since silver was in such low accounts the Chinese were not making their money back or making much money and putting there people through much suffering.

Though this started out well for China, people were already starting to lower their prices in harvest about twenty years later because “the national government requires silver for taxes but disburses little silver in its expenditures” (document 3), which means that the government was already getting greedy and hoarding the silver. This also means that now, because of this greed, not everyone has silver anymore and poor farmers are suffering because of it. After another twenty-some years, even the shops were requiring customers to pay in silver. Because people didn’t have enough silver, moneylenders started appearing to “help people out”, or rather, ripping people off. Due to the fact that the common people needed the silver more than the moneylenders needed the rice, grain, etc., they had no choice but to exchange their goods so that they can pay their taxes and buy food.

2 and 4 explains Asian trade and how it changed China. Doc. 2 is reliable because it was written by a Spanish scholar and it is a manual of deals and contracts, a document which is a record, hence it is reliable. This document simply explains how prices went up in Spain, so they bought from the Chinese. In order to pay China, they had to spend their resources in silver to pay them.

In Document 3, a British merchant describes his journey through Southeast Asia, most likely intending to share his story with Europeans back home. He describes how the Portuguese used Japanese silver to gain an advantage in trade with the Chinese, demonstrating the importance of silver to China and Japan. The author claims that Japan relied on the production of silver while European sailors depended on Japanese and Spanish silver to facilitate trade with the Chinese, who valued silver over European goods. Document 4 also serves to describe Spain’s trade relationship with China due to silver and illustrates the scale of the trade carried out between the two countries. Through this document, the author shows how the Chinese flocked to the Philippines; there the Chinese participated in large-scale trade with the Spanish, who exercised colonial control in the Philippines and its capital, Manila at this time.

Silver production in the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century increased substantially due to Spaniards gaining control of Potosí. This led to them creating mines in the area, which was rich in silver. By doing this, they substantially increased the silver in the hands of the Spaniards, which they mainly used to pay for luxury goods and products from Asia. The silver trade had long reaching effects on the social and economic state of empires and countries worldwide from the time period of the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Socially, the silver trade affected the Chinese social mindset and structure and caused them to change. Economically, the silver trade negatively affected the economy of Europe overall.

The increased flow of silver altered the worldwide global trading both socially and economically. The global flow of silver from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century caused social and economic issues by creating social impact in China, changing the economic purpose for trading, and the overall exchange between the Chinese and European nations.

Wang Xijue, an official in the Ming Dynasty Court, said that the Chinese government required that taxes and tariffs be paid in silver (Document 3). Xijue mentions how China’s silver policy adversely affected grain prices which affected the poor peasant farmers the most. Furthermore, Ye Chungji, a Chinese county official, stated how China’s policy of requiring domestic taxes to be paid in silver may explain order limiting wedding expenses (Document 1). Chunji, as a county official through China’s merit-based civil service system, uses the word “frugal” which justified the limitation on wedding expenses by noting it was in keeping with the Confucian value of frugality. This just proves how paying in silver affected the traditional Chinese culture. Due to this, the traditional Confucian social order was threatened. To add on, Xu Dunqui Ming writes in an essay that seems directed at the general public, of the unfairness of dye shops in the commercial city of Hangzhou and explains Ming China’s conversion from a barter economy to a currency-based market economy as customers now “receive a bill, which must paid with silver obtained from a moneylender” (Document 5). This only silver means of exchange likely harmed lower classes the most by plunging them even further into debt by forcing them to borrow from a money lender to get silver and explains the decline of traditional Chinese society and economy. Furthermore, the increased flow of silver brought inflation in China. He Qiaoyuan, a Ming court official, reported to the emperor that the trade ban should be lifted because of the inflated price of Chinese products in the Philippines by commenting on large supply of Spanish silver in the Philippines that led to massive inflation of 100 to 200 percent for silk yarn (Document 7). However, Qiaoyuan’s motives in his report is suspicious because repealing the ban on

The combination of increasing unemployment rate and food price created severe poverty across the nation (Goldfinger par. 1-3). The currencies in China, too, went through a lot of changes to accommodate the increasing trade. At first, the silver Spanish dollars became rare and increased in value so much that it was outlawed as a usable currency. However, at the same time, the Chinese copper currency were also being used less due to the fact that the metal was becoming rare and the administration of the currency was extremely poor. The Mexican dollar was introduced but the problem was not solved until paper money were used in 1853 (Goldfinger par. 2). To make the economy worse, during the First Opium War, China had to pay six million silver dollars to ransom Canton, and an additional nine million dollars were paid to foreigner traders for their loss. Later, twelve million taels of silver were paid to Britain and France under the treaties negotiated after the Second Opium War. All of those factors weakened the Chinese economy in the 1800s (Allingham par.5-9). However, the Opium Wars’ impact is everlasting, for “the Chinese have embarked on a long and arduous struggle to expunge the humiliations which they suffered during and since the Opium War…Foreign industrialists may continue to dream of the supposedly unlimited China market, but the Chinese…are determined to keep the 'open door' sufficiently ajar to import vital technologies, while keeping all unwanted

Europe seemed to remain the most neutral in this desperate silver trade, choosing to remain only involved enough to observe. British merchants were not entirely reliant on trade to or from the Asian worlds so merely recorded how China received “nothing but silver” (Doc. 4) and the Portuguese use this to “their good advantage in China”. However, England could not remain completely unaffected as scholars such as Charles D’Avenant observed. Luxury goods especially spices and silks have become prominent in European culture. While Europe draws from Asia “nothing on solid use” it has “tasted of this luxury” (Doc. 8) and it is not advisable for England to pull out of this silver trade. England could afford to remain more objective, but it could not pull out entirely. It had roots planted early on, and it would cause severe social disturbance to tear them up.