Chapter 14

There were several interesting points that were brought up in the chapter 14 reading. I thought it was really interesting that the modern era is described as an age of empire and empires within the same borders mixed and mingled allowing diversity to come about.

I thought it was intriguing to read about how the Europeans were so much more motivated to explore the different areas compared to other groups of people like the Chinese or Indians for example. The motives that encouraged people to explore was another interesting factor. For example, people were interested in starting a new life, people wanted to gain wealth, and noble people wanted to gain status in new areas.

Furthermore, the influences for development were the lands of the Aztects and Incas, the colonies of sugar, and settler colonies in North America. I thought it fascinating to read how sugar had such a large impact during this time period. It was an essential need for people to have sugar therefore resulting in the production being high and costly.