History 2501E Lecture : Trade and the Spanish Empire.docx
Document Summary
There was a lot of regional specialization and legislation of 1631 prevented the colonies from trading together. There were diverse merchants in asia and spain tried to monopolize the market but they did not produce enough goods to satisfy the needs of the colonies which were mostly farming the same raw materials. There was one port in spain allowed to trade to the americas and this was in sevilla and visa versa. In spain the idea was that they were going to send back manufactured goods to the colonies but they were always lacking so they had to look to other european merchants and they became more of a middle man. When the other countries saw all of the silver coming into spain they got interested and piracy increased.