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The World That Trade Created By Kenneth Pomeranz And Steven Topik

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In the book The World That Trade Created by Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, the authors examine how trade has affected the world that we currently reside in today. With the help of seven chapters filled with various articles, the authors uncover how trade is interconnected with many other subjects such as economics, culture, and industrialization. The book examines trade from the New World with few references to the Old World with ties to all habitable continents. The book lets the reader get lost in history by showing how everything in interconnected in history. In the first chapter, the authors uncover how trade started in the New World. I feel like this was one of the weaker chapters of the book. The chapter features articles on …show more content…

The chapter first introduces us to the railroad, then the steamship. It later clarifies that shipping products by water was by far cheaper than land transportation. One of the articles it contains reveals how Shanghai thrived as a port during the nineteenth century. The city was situated near the Yangzi River where ships were allowed to carry various products to inland China. Another article featured Stamford Raffles and how he found Singapore. Raffles created Singapore by making it an entrepot for trade; therefore, his city flourished due to its prime location in the East Indies. Articles like these clearly demonstrate why transportation was so important. The third chapter will introduce the reader into how drugs stimulated the world economy. Tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and cocoa were all considered ‘drugs’ in international trade. Many readers often associated negative connotations with drugs, but they were a very essential part of an economy. This chapter contains articles on chocolate and its uses, the story of coffee, and sugarcane in Haiti. My favorite article in this chapter had to be about how Haiti transformed from a tropical paradise to a slave plantation when slaves were brought to Haiti to grow the luxurious product. The growth of sugar hit its prime about two centuries ago. To this date, sugar is found in most of the products we consume daily. Additionally, the article on chocolate uncovers that the sweet

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