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the explosion of world trade created vast pools of wealth

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colonization began the accumulation of resources above what was necessary for societies to subsist or survive

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no longer did wealth come from the skimming off of what a village could produce

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now societies were being constructed primarily for the production of goods for other societies and specializing in this goods

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we see this above all in the formation of colonies

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designed from the start to produce commodities for other peoples' consumption

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colonization was at the heart of global processes

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many global historians over look this

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colonies were once societies with village based structures

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there's something that happens to societies when they start producing goods and services that are not for themselves and that they specialize in that

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specialization is the opposite of self-sufficiency

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there is a connection between specialization of communities and a global division of labor

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artisans used to do every task to make a pin

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the division of labor

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what Adam Smith saw that something happens once we start to make things called factories

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provides two new relationships to the market: buy and sell your goods

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a pattern of dependency develops

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global interdependence

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the rise of the merchant capitalists

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it's in Europe that we are going to see the development of concentrated pools of capital

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indigenous people had to get their traditions access to networks and resources cut, and are forced to turn to the market place

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people begin to consume commodities which were once preciosities

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drugs

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the idea that we would all start to consume drugs on a mass scale is a product of the mercantile age

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tobacco

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Virginia was a colony created to produce tobacco for other people's consumption

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sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee clustered together

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people consumed these in cafes

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all of these were tropical, indeed, the whole cocktail was narcotic

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tea house or coffee house was place for public gathering for urbanites

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to produce

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coffee comes from the Arabic term "Kawa", domesticated in Yemen

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Ottomans brought it to Istanbul after Yemen was seized in the early sixteenth century, by 1615 the habit of of drinking coffee had moved to Vienna.

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what makes coffee drinkable is the sugar, and so sugar migrates, it has a biography

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this acquired taste and addiction trickles down

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increasingly becomes mass-produced

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drinking coffee, tea, with sugar, and smoking became part of the proper decor of a bourgeois family

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the consumption of sugar trickled down to everyday habits of mass consumption

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behind European sugar consumption was the Caribbean sugar plantation done by slaves imported from Africa