Lies My Teacher Told Me by James
Loewen, 1995, Excerpts
After 1500, Portugal, France, Holland, and Britain joined in
conquering the Americas. Columbus’s gold finds on Haiti were soon dwarfed by
discoveries of gold and silver in Mexico and the Andes. European religious and
political leaders quickly amassed so much gold that they applied gold leaf to
the ceilings of their churches and palaces, erected golden statues in the
corners, and strung vines of golden grapes between them.
Gold and silver from America replaced land as the basis for
wealth and status, increasing the power of the new merchant class that would
soon dominate the world. Where Muslim nations had once rivaled Europe, the new
wealth undermined Islamic power. American gold and silver fueled a 400 percent
inflation that eroded the economies of most non-European countries and helped
Europe to develop a global market system. Africa suffered: the trans-Saharan
trade collapsed, because the Americas supplied more gold and silver than the
Gold Coast ever could. African traders now had only one commodity that Europe
wanted: slaves.
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