The form of maritime predation commonly called piracy has significant economic aspects. Unregulated predation on or from the sea may, for purposes of analysis, be classified as parasitic on maritime trade, or episodic, or intrinsic to the functioning of particular societies. Such predation has historically had deleterious effects upon commerce, production, and welfare. In this survey, the economic nature and effects of this form of predation are considered theoretically, principally in the contexts of the histories of the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean and South China seas. The silver market was key to this process.
Microeconomic analysis leads to startling conclusions.
Europeans were physically present in early modern Asia, but the economic impact of China on Western lands was far greater than any European influence on Asia. 223-236 Colin A. Palmer Scholarship on the formative period of the African presence in the Americas is still in its infancy. Historians know little about the ways in which Africans sought to recreate the cultural worlds from which they came, even as they responded to new challenges. This essay explores the role of ethnicity in the construction of the lives of African-born slaves in Mexico City during the years when slaves were present in relatively large numbers. Marshall G. S. Hodgson and the Hemispheric Interregional Approach to World History , pp.