316 i STEP 5 Build Your Test-Taking Confidence
commercial relations between China and Britain. The English also introduced their inex-
pensive cotton manufactures to India, destroying the local textile trade.
In 1450, North America was involved only in hemispheric trade, as peoples of Mes-
oamerica exchanged goods with those of present-day southwestern United States. After
the voyages of Columbus, however, the Columbian Exchange saw an exchange of crops,
livestock, and diseases across the Atlantic. The African slave trade changed forever the
social composition of North America. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
slave trade was part of a greater system of triangular trade that joined Europe, Africa, and
the Americas. In the nineteenth century, the United States was instrumental in opening
up trade relations between Japan and the Western world as the United States increasingly
extended its commercial contacts across the globe. Canada continued not only as a trade
partner of the United States, but also as a member of the British Commonwealth with the
economic as well as political ties with Britain that its status entailed.Comparative Question
A good response regarding the Middle East may discuss the trans-Saharan slave trade that
extended to the Middle East. Other slaves entered the Middle East through trade routes
from sub-Saharan Africa through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Many of these slaves
were used as household servants; some of them were children, including boys intended for
eunuchs used as harem guards. The Ottoman Empire also used the devshirme, which took
Christian boys for use as Janissaries, or military slaves, in the Ottoman army.
By 1450, Africans were carrying on an active slave trade with Portugal in exchange
for Portuguese gold and technology, including guns. African society deteriorated as guns
increased the frequency of slave raids. The trans-Atlantic slave trade tapped into already
existing slave routes. Both Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trade depopulated some areas
of Africa. Within Africa, as in the Middle East, women were prized as household servants,
whereas the trans-Atlantic trade differed in preferring men for the heavy-duty plantation
labor. African villages suffered as men were carried off, leaving a void of workers to carry
out more rigorous tasks.
Latin American slavery in 1450 usually involved prisoners of war among the Aztecs and
Incas. In the Aztec empire, some of these slaves were used for human sacrifi ces. In contrast
to the Middle East and Africa, Latin American slavery involved plantation labor rather
than household labor. As the Spanish and Portuguese arrived, Indians were used as slaves
until they died in large numbers from European diseases. Africans were then imported as
laborers in the sugar and coffee plantations and in the mines.