Yesterday, you were broken into three groups and invited to "colonize" the New World in Room 215. I chose to break you into three groups for a reason, that being that North America was most extensively colonized by the major European powers of England, France, and Spain. Then last night, you had some homework defining the term "merchant" and outlining the concepts of raw materials and finished products (aka finished goods). Knowing that the Americas were the target of three important countries, and understanding what makes raw materials valuable, are both critical to understanding just exactly why England, France, and Spain were willing to sink huge amounts of money, time, and effort into their colonization efforts.
Today we reviewed the critical ideas of raw materials and finished products. Basically, a raw material is any naturally-occurring product that needs to be changed in some way (modified, refined, improved) in order to become more valuable/useful. For example, trees are valuable as they are - but if you cut a tree down, saw it into logs, saw the logs into planks, and then cut the planks into pieces and make them into a chest of drawers, it is much more valuable in that finished form than it was as a tree standing in the forest. The colonies were a very useful source of raw materials - keep this in mind as we move onward….
HOMEWORK:
This is your homework.
And I leave you with this quote:
I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/merchant.html#uMZ4pj4KJ0zHWGh3.99
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