Chapters 14-16

Through this reading three things stood out to me. The rise in trade, the rise in production of goods or trade and the way this impacted their world.

As I was reading through the "Colombian exchange". I felt sad for the many people that lost their lives because another group of people came to their area. These people didn't have the immunity they needed to over come these new diseases this other group of people brought with them. This exchange brought with it many goods, crops, animals and along with that diseases. The book shares that during that time the most number of people died, that some died because of the diseases and that some died because they were too fragile to get up and look for food. Although not as severe, it made me think about my job as a teacher and how I get sick along with the kiddos. Just recently, there were a couple of kiddos that had a runny nose and a cough. One teacher caught the bug, then another kiddo, then me, then so on it went. Before we could get better, another kiddo got sick with a different strand of the cold and cough. Most of us went through it again, finally a couple of weeks ago a few kiddos got the flu and then again some of us caught it too. For us in that classroom, we caught the various bugs that went around but we were able to make it through because of our immunity, unfortunately for the people in those days, they didn't have that immunity because they had not been exposed to any of these new diseases, animals, and foods.

Going on to the next chapter, it made me see how the rise in trade also set off a rise in production of goods and a changed way of life for people. Since more goods needed to be produced and cultivated then more people were needed to do the work. The response for some was to purchase and abuse people so that they could produce a benefit with their goods. The book shares about the men and women that were taken from Africa and used as slaves. What I was surprised with and a bit unbelieving was that the books shares that some parts of the world weren't as cruel to their slaves. As the book shares about slaves in a couple parts of the world it made it seems as if it weren't that bad as it was in the Americas. Certainly all slavery is bad and that should be the stand it takes, not make it seem one is better than the other.

Through world trade peoples lives changed. Some like I mentioned before, became slaves, others worker more, other less, others became wealthier while others became pore. Communities changed, with the introduction of new items peoples diets changed and so did he way they viewed the world. This time brought something like an explosion. There was lots of movement of people and goods. There were lots of lives lost through the exposure of diseases and through the transport of goods. This time brought lot of change, permanent change from those days till now.