How have the purpose and methods of trade changed since Medieval times? How have they stayed the same?

Question

modern movement and connectedness

Answer 1

Through the end of the Medieval Age in Europe, trade was seen as something that weakened the state. The main economic idea of the time was Mercantilism, which stipulated the following: The primary way to grow wealth is through agriculture, by taking a somewhat worthless seed and growing into useable commodities such as food, cotton, flax and so one. Next, land being required to grow food, meant that the best way to increase the wealth of the state was to take land from neighboring countries as it would either give access to mineral wealth or arable land. Lastly, because there is only a limited amount of land in the world, there is only a limited amount of wealth, and so the wealth of the world was a Zero sum game. Meaning that if you were to give another nation your resources, you were losing wealth. This is actually the cause of the rise of colonialism, as nations were looking to increase their land size, and hopefully become self sufficient on their colonies. Many colonizing nations would go on to set up a closed trade policy where the colonies would export natural resources to the motherland and they would export finished goods to the colonies. Nations would limit who their colonies could trade with, leading to the kinds of policies that led up to the American Revolution. This system was inherently very limiting, and mercantilism would begin to give way to capitalism, starting in the dutch republic when people would pay money for shares in trade expeditions, so that if those expeditions failed or was lost at sea, the investors would not lose all their money. Capitalism allowing for more people with less money (less money compared to the fabulously rich who could afford to singlehandedly finance multiple ships on their own) to invest in trade voyages. This concept would spread to other businesses and so over time, as nations we’re experiencing Industrial booms, economies would begin to grow and people would begin to specialize. And as nations began to create more finished goods (fueled by the resources of their colonies) they would begin to open their economies as to sell their goods. This opening of economies would lead to further growth and industrialization. In modern days, our economies become very interconnected to where many of our goods would see multiple countries before making it to your home. So in conclusion, trade would open up and feed into (and be fed by) industrialization, as history progressed from the middle ages to now.