Atlantic Trade FRQ and Thesis Statements

After the Portuguese explorer Prince Henry the Navigator paved the way for an age of explorers, trade across the Atlantic ocean bustled.  All sorts of resources were sent back and forth between Europe and the Americas in the Columbian Exchange, Europe and Asia in the East and West Indian Trading Companies, and from Africa all around the world in the slave trade.  Countries and colonies all around the world could now share their goods.  However, this was not the case.  The trade between Europe and the New World was not a symbiotic relationship; rather, it was a way for the rulers of the European countries to abuse their newly found colonies.

Even before the thought of economic benefits from the New World arose, conquistadors like Hernando Cortez and Spanish explorers like Columbus were already abusing the natives they had come across.  With the use of the European's guns, their diseases, and their superior metal weapons, they defeated the natives who had done nothing towards them.  In fact, the natives even worshiped them as gods.  None the less, the Europeans were to power- and money-hungry to care, only wanted to use the Americas for their own good.

Many countries from Europe, instead of letting their colonies produce goods on their own, shipped the goods back to the mother country, manufactured them, and then sold them back to the original country from which they came.  This led to an increase in revenue in the mother country in Europe.  The country from which the goods came, on the other hand, suffered.  Though they did get money for the original raw materials, it was still an expense to pay for the manufactured goods from Europe.

Not only did the Europeans want resources for themselves, they wanted people too.  Beginning in Africa, Europeans defeated the Africans and forced them to become slaves, laboring for free so that their wealthy owners wouldn't have to expense anything.  From the colonies in the Americas Europeans sought out skillful workers to produce goods that they could sell for even more money.  Countries like Spain and Portugal at first then eventually France and England only wanted to gain from the colonies they conquered, not compromise.

The thirst for power in Europe was too much for the rulers to overcome, so instead of trying to befriend and benefit their new colonies, they conquered them and used them for all they were worth.  The Americas did benefit from some of Europe's resources, i.e., horses, but it was not worth what they had to give up: their freedom.  The New World was controlled by Europe, and the European rulers knew it.  Though trade should have opened up worldwide friendships, everything became a hierarchy, with Europe at the top.  The European rulers took full advantage of their new resources, and the people in their colonies suffered from it.

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3.  The reason the economy of the Dutch Republic declined was because of the structure of the economy, and the fact that the wealth was TOO distributed.
4.  The biggest shift in power after the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War was the power that France now had.