LAWLzoR

Oh my goodness does trade make an impact on world history. It doesn't even have to be intercontinental, it can just be from the Middle East to North Africa. Trade made several hug impacts on the world, as well as some pretty big events. Let's look into it:

1. Cultural Diffusion
Cultural diffusion is when the culture of one area goes to another area by any means, i.e. trade or war. Trade helps facilitate the cultural mixing, because the merchants travel to meet with other merchants and live where the goods were at. Take for instance John Washington, great grandfather of George Washington. After his ship had a malfunction in Virginia, he decided to live there even after the ship was fixed. Why? Because that's where the money's at (tobacco)! With the merchants living there, they bring their culture to other merchants and to other societies. A huge example of this is the spread of the Islamic faith. Besides the Middle East, do you know where Islam is heavily concentrated? Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and North Africa. A lot of this had to do with trade. Because people are willing to trade, people won't be as closed off to other cultures. Another example of this is gunpowder. After it was introduced into Europe by a diplomat for Mongolia of (forgot the place's name) gunpowder was spread across Europe and was fashioned into guns. So remember: trade helps facilitate cultural diffusion, which is the spread of a culture from one group of people to another group of people.

2. Economic Prosperity
How wealthy do you think the merchants got off of trade? To spare some moments, they got so much money that the middle class was made by the merchant classes in Europe. The merchants more than likely kept a portion of what was traded to them, like spices or artwork or textiles. This made them have more stuff than the average person, and thus able to sell it. With more money circulating the system, more people will have some or the people who had money will have more, making them richer. But that's economics, this is history!

3. Rebirths
That's right, we're going right into the Renaissance! Here's a brief run down: Europe was in the middle of the dark ages. Not a lot of cultural ideas flowing around and not a lot of science (in fact there was no science). Venice, Florence, and other coastal Italian cities were big trade hubs for the Mediterranean, considering they were right in the middle of the sea. Good stops for any traders, Arabian, European, and African alike. This pulls in the Arabians, who translated the works of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and the other intellectuals into Arabian/whatever language they were using because the Arabians were pimps when it comes to intellectual stuff, and had a lot of goods that the Venetians and other Italians wanted. Because trade was so frequent between the Ottomans/Arabians and Venice, intellectual works and important resources were traded/shared with the Venetians. This got Venice super duper rich, rich enough to fund artists and scribes for poems and artwork. This also leads into the Mediccis, perhaps the most famous and rich Italian family at the time, but that's another lesson.

4. Disease (Spreading)
So as it happens being in contact with humans beings of a different immune system than you can be a bit dangerous. Even the rats on the ships used for trading can indeed spread disease. This means that a lot more vectors for disease spread were open. This is believed to have caused the Black Death/Bubonic Plague Epidemic (the more famous one, which was 1346 or so). The rats on the ships and other containers carried the fleas with the disease. The fleas then got to the humans, and the epidemic begun. The Mongols usually get a bad rap for this because they opened up a lot of trade routes during their conquests.

Those are the basics of what trading has to offer! Thank you for reading, and enjoy