ously limited. Europeans didn’t produce any commodities or finished goods that Asians 

wanted to buy.

flour, oil, and wine

Gold from the West Indies

Consumer goods (things that people needed to live, 

such as cloth, pots, tools)

Gold, dyes, pearls

Mercury (used in processing sliver), fine foods and wines, 

damascene swords, quality textiles, spices, books, and paper

Silver (largest export), gold, hides, tobacco,

medicinal plants, indigo, and suga

of people in English society — the military, the church, and the ordinary male citizen 

— wore this fur. We know that by the seventeenth century, the British and the French 

had established colonies in North America. These settlements included forts, churches, 

and businesses, which of course required military, clergy, and ordinary male citizens. 

Fur became not just a luxury item, but a necessity of human life in cold places.

own silver 

•

Exports: Overwhelmingly silver

•

Imports: Chinese silk, porcelains, spices, wax. The Spanish crown limited this trade to what could be carried

in two galleons (ships) yearly.

•

According to one estimate, the value of silver sent illegally to Manila from Mexico was greater than the total

value of all goods, including silver, carried by Spain’s official trans-Atlantic fleet.

•

Imports continued as before.

•

Almost 95 percent of trans-Pacific exports consisted of silver.

regulated. Eventually, this led to the devaluing of silver all over the world (if there’s too 

much of it, it becomes less valuable. And there was not a lot of gold.

products including coats, boots, and hats. In fact, beaver hats became the most fashion

-

able, and therefore most wanted, type of hat throughout Europe from the seventeenth 

to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Beaver pelts were shipped from North America to 

Europe and Russia, where they were transformed into hats and other ready-to-wear 

goods. These fur commodities were then sold all over Europe, where both the upper 

and middle classes were willing to pay a good bit for them,