INTRODUCTION

The practice of trading goods can be traced back to before recorded history. Trade was important for people to buy and sell their goods for an agreed upon sum of money or an equivalence of value in goods. Throughout history, food, tools, ideas, and practices have been exchanged across the globe. Traders and merchants historically specialized in the sale and exchange of these traded goods by learning the craft from other merchants and attempting to find the next “big thing” that could get them rich. With so much being bought and sold, we can ideally assume that everything has a value of exchange, therefore setting a price based on supply and demand.

This aspect of trading begs the question of why we put a value on goods to begin with. While some items can be argued as being essential or required, some goods can be argued to be used for leisure or as a future investment. Some of these goods resulted in the decline and fall of kingdoms and empires due to their perceived value. For others, it resulted in a social or cultural experience that benefited the country to some extent. For now, let’s take a look into some of these goods to help us understand the history of trade and its history of valuing a tradable good.

ACTIVITY

For this activity, let’s start by looking at the complex trade networks that existed historically:

Next, let’s read one of the following items below. These are items that have been deemed valuable historically:

Tea & Sugar

Ivory

Silk

Now that we have gone through this activity, let’s answer the following questions in the comment section:

1) How and why do you think people make items valuable? 

2) Based on the item you picked, what about the item made it valuable historically?

3) Based on the maps, what other factors you think contributed to the value of these items?