Why China Didn’t Rule the Waves? by Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, 2000 in The World That Trade Created.

“[China’s] policy shift [against voyages and explorations like Zheng He’s] began when a new faction gained influence in China’s Ming court. Its members advocated a greater focus on domestic and continental matters, emphasizing agricultural production, internal stability, a military buildup and colonization at the edges of the Central Asian steppe, and refurbishment of the Great Wall, designed to repel invaders…

China wasn’t closed, and the market didn’t halt because of artificial factors. There just wasn’t a market for the outsized “treasure ships” anymore. Instead of financing big ships for long hauls to India and the Middle East, Chinese traders commissioned smaller vessels, capable of carrying porcelain and silk to midway points, where traders would buy Indian cotton and indigo for the return trip. The shorter routes also fit better with weather patterns, keeping Chinese merchants out of far flung ports where shifting monsoon winds could strand a ship for months.

Deference to the weather proved good business, but was a detriment to the development of shipbuilding and open ocean navigation. To make big ships and long voyages worth the investment required ulterior motives, such as missionary work, military competition, or the desire to monopolize the seas and bypass the competitive markets in all these port cities. The Chinese left such ambitious projects to the Europeans, who proved willing to defy market principles, thereby launching a new era and pattern for world trade.”

2. In your own words, what key piece of evidence from this passage helps explain how it was Europe that conquered the Americas?




Charles C. Mann in The Atlantic Monthly March 2002

“The Indians in Peru, Dobyns [Henry F. Dobyns Ph.D] concluded, had faced plagues from the day the conquistadors showed up – in fact, before then smallpox arrived around 1525, seven years ahead of the Spanish. Brought to Mexico apparently by a single sick Spaniard, it swept south and eliminated more than half the population of the Incan Empire. Smallpox claimed the Inca dictator Huayna Capac and much of his family, setting off a calamitous war of succession.”

3. In your own words, what key piece of evidence from this passage helps explain how it was Europe that conquered the Americas?




Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, ethnobiologist: What advantages did Europeans have that Native Americans did not possess?

“Plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human populations. The resulting food surpluses, and (in some areas) the animal-based means of transporting those surpluses, were a prerequisite for the development of a settled, politically centralized, socially stratified, economically complex, technologically innovative societies. Hence the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents. The military uses of horses and camels, and the killing power of animal-derived germs, complete the list of major links between food production and conquest . . .”

4. In your own words, what key piece of evidence from this passage helps explain how it was Europe that conquered the Americas?




Constructing a Historical Argument

5. Out of your four pieces of evidence collected, which do you reason is most important in explaining why it was Europeans that conquered the Americas and explain why in a paragraph? Think carefully about your choice. You cannot just say all were important.