• Read: Overview of New Economic Systems
    • No questions for credit but read for this week’s activities. If you prefer having questions to help with notetaking, here you go:
      1. In what ways was the European use of credit in this period a continuation of older practices? In what ways was it a change?
      2. What was the impact of Fibonacci’s book, according to the author?
      3. Why was a bill of exchange useful?
      4. What financial innovation did the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company rely on?
      5. What was the economic role of colonies, for Europeans in this era?
  • Watch: Capitalism and the Dutch East India Company
    • No questions for credit but read for this week’s activities. If you prefer having questions to help with notetaking, here you go:
      1. 3:45 Why did the Dutch enter into trade in southeast Asia?
      2. 6:02 What was the VOC and why was it formed? What powers did it have?
      3. 6:56 How did low interest rates help the Dutch?
      4. 7:36 Why was it easy for Dutch citizens to invest?
      5. 8:15 What were some important financial technologies used by the Dutch?
      6. 9:03 What key advantage did the VOC have over British companies?
      7. 12:29 How did the Dutch control trade in Southeast Asia?
      8. 13:30 What caused the VOC to decline and eventually go bankrupt?
      9. 13:51 Why isn’t the VOC a good example of modern free market capitalism, according to John Green?
      10. Does the example of the VOC support or contradict the argument, made elsewhere in this unit, that capitalism was the main system supporting European overseas trade in this period? Why?
      11. John Green closes the video by claiming that, “the VOC provides a chilling example of what has happened in the past when corporations become more powerful than states.” Is this convincing? What other sources or facts support, extend, or challenge this assertion?
  • Read: Race and Coerced Labor I – How did People Become Property