ch. 14

     Chapter 14 starts around the time of the 1400's, which marks the beginning of the Early Modern World. The 1400's to the late 1700's was also known as the Late Agrarian era. The Early modern era started with the beginning of globalization, elements of distinctly modern societies, and growing European power in the world. Many things contributed to the rise of "modernity." Many things such as religion, people, and goods were expanded by trade. Growth of food was demanding because of the increase in population. Larger cities and stronger government emerged. Overall, it was a time of new global patterns.

     While reading through this chapter many things caught my attention. In the first few pages, I came upon the section The Great Dying. It caught my attention because of the large amount of people it wiped out. It made me think of when I was learning about the black plague and how it spread across the silk road. But in this situation, the diseases came from Europe and Africa which killed numerous Native Americans and other people living in the Americas. The Native American population lost 90% of its people and central mexico population dropped from around 10 million to 1 million. I was shocked looking at these statistics. The second thing that caught my attention was the colonies of sugar. Parts of Brazil and the Caribbean created societies from the surplus of sugar.  Europe was in high demand for sugar and these colonies provided Europe with almost all it needed. I thought it was interesting how it was the first modern industry. It was very large scale and was produced with slave labor. Slavery was a huge part of societies for decades. We just celebrated MLK day for this particular reason.