69 pages • 2 hours read
Charles C. Mann1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaPart 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Pacific Journeys”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Shiploads of Money (Silk for Silver, Part One)”
Mann shifts from the Atlantic to look at Pacific Ocean trade. In 1405, Zheng He led hundreds of ships across the Indian Ocean. The voyagers developed an astounding reputation, but in 1433, these journeys ceased. The Ming dynasty banned private sea trade for fifty years until a new emperor reopened private trade. Researchers speculate several reasons for the ban. Some suggest that the Chinese simply were not curious and were too bonded to tradition to increase travel and trade. Others believe that China had no incentive to continue these voyages because it was so wealthy and technologically advanced within its own structures. However, this limit in trade had profoundly negative effects for some parts of China, including Fujian, a province in Southeastern China that depended on seal trade to stave off famine. Zhu Wan, the governor of Fujian, drove out Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese traders and executed smugglers and Chinese elites who benefited from the trade.
China introduced the huizi, the first example of successfully established paper money. Because huizi was fiat money, China was able to then export metals that would have been used for coins to other nations. During the Ming dynasty, inflation took hold and the value of this paper money decreased. Coins were permissible by some emperors and banned by others. The resulting instability of Chinese coins led to the use of pieces of silver for purchasing. Raw silver became the currency of choice. Because China’s silver mines were quickly depleted, Beijing opened trade. Spanish ships ported in Philippines, loaded with silver for trade with China. This silver, brought from South America by Spanish colonists, turned the mountains of Potosí and Huancavelica into the richest cities in the world, bringing together many cultures but also inciting violence and inhumane conditions for mine workers. Despite conflict, the Americas mined and refined approximately 150,000 tons of silver for trade.
So much silver was sold and produced that it eventually lost much of its value. Mann asserts that the impact of this silver trade led to many widespread global events, including the Frond civil war in France and the Thirty Years’ War. While Europe was in turmoil, China—particularly Yuegang in Fujian—experienced the prosperity of its substantial portion of silver. The influence of Chinese trade with Spain led to a loss of Spanish artisans and tradesmen since goods could be purchased from Chinese shipments for much cheaper. Many Chinese immigrated to Parián in Manila within the Spanish-occupied Philippines. When the Spanish government attempted to control the increasing Chinese population, Chinese traders retaliated by withholding Chinese goods. Because Chinese traders were willing to pay twice as much for silver than other countries, Madrid found itself amid a silver shortage. Although Spain could produce its own silk, it could not compete with China’s efficient silk production. Despite riots and violent clashes, trade continued and paved the way for the Columbian Exchange.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Lovesick Grass, Foreign Tubers, and Jade Rice (Silk for Silver, Part Two)”
Chapter 4 explored the relationship between Spanish silver trade from the Americas with China. Chapter 5 investigates the impact of American crops on China’s political, ecological, and economical landscape. When Portuguese ships brought tobacco to southern China, the nation found a new obsession. Tobacco became an important part of Chinese culture. Poets wrote about it, soldiers were fueled by it, and aristocrats developed cultural etiquette centered upon it.
When the Ming dynasty banned overseas trade, halting the inflow of crops and silver, Japanese pirates illegally managed the trade. Zheng Chenggong, a Japanese pirate, realized the stronghold he had over Spanish tradesmen and insisted they hand over their silver or be killed. In turn, the Spanish government retaliated against Chinese men and women living in the Philippines. Consequently, the silver money supply was frozen. Coastal people in the Philippines flooded to the mountains, displacing the Hakka and other ethnic groups who lived in these areas. There, migrants planted the resilient American crops.
Already struggling with its increasing population and limited farmable land, American crops provided a tentative solution. Maize and sweet potatoes could grow easily where other crops failed in poor soil. Chinese farms were able to produce twice as much food; this, along with new farming technologies, added to China’s prosperity. As a result of these high yield crops, China’s population soared, and the Qing dynasty encouraged people to move West to alleviate issues with an increasing population.
As migrants moved to farm, farms were able to produce more food. As food production increased, population increased as well. This increase in population led one man—Hong Liangji—to develop an important philosophy which maintains its power today. Hong suggested that increasing food yields to support a population will eventually result in unsustainable population growth. Later, Rev. Thomas Malthus asserted the same argument. However, Hong was mostly left unremembered, while what is now referred to as the Malthusian trap is still referenced today. Mann suggests that Malthus’s theories have gone mostly unproven, as global populations continue to grow at high rates and food production has increased to not only match these populations but outperform them. However, there is one component of Hong’s theory currently playing out in this modern age: the never-ending need to increase food yields will eventually lead to an ecological disaster and, ultimately, “massive human suffering” (231).
In China during the Qing dynasty, populations continued to soar, and the cost of rice quadrupled, leading to rebellion. Farmers realized they could make more money growing American tobacco than rice or wheat. Because tobacco depletes the soil of nutrients, farmers continued to migrate to other, more fertile land, eventually retreating to the mountains. The agricultural development of mountain land led to massive flooding, leading to famine and civil unrest—and proving Hong’s theory.
Part 2 Analysis
In Chapter 4, Mann asks a similar question that he poses in Part 1. In Chapter 2, asks why the Virginia Company and other joint-stock companies continued to send shipments of people to the Americas, knowing that the majority would die from starvation and disease. Similarly, in Chapter 4, Mann asks why both Spain and China continued to engage in trade in the Philippines despite continuous violence and rioting. Mann suggests that there are two reasons why global trade occurs, providing the answer to both these questions. The first is comparative advantage. Each nation has a good that it can produce in great supply that the other nation wants; therefore, the trade is mutually beneficial. However, the trade also produces a political benefit. Both Spain and China found the trade politically beneficial, even though neither side was able to wrangle complete political control of the other. This set a precedent for future trade.
This pursuit of the expansion of wealth leads to a rising humanitarian cost, a major theme of the book. As the market became flooded with raw silver, the worth of the silver dropped, eventually leading to riot and revolution. Mann shows again the interconnected threads of the Columbian Exchange. Trouble with fiat money in China led to the desire for raw silver, a commodity that Spanish traders were happy to ship from the Americas. Despite successful trade between Spain and China, traders were constantly battling against one another. Mann suggests that the Parián Chinese killed approximately a third or more of the Europeans in the Philippines at the height of tension. The introduction of monocultural farming to enhance profit led to greater flooding and famine.
Mann turns away from the Atlantic in this section and focuses instead on the Pacific, showing the far-reaching effects of the Homogenocene. One of the largest imports from Spanish traders to China was tobacco. The crop became so central to the culture that poets devoted verses to it. Along with tobacco came maize, peanuts, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, pineapples, and cashews. Realizing that tobacco was a more profitable crop, farmers planted monocultural fields of tobacco, depleting the soil of nutrients. As each field became expended, farmers moved further and further into the mountains, transforming the mountains into tobacco farms. In turn, erosion occurred, and China suffered—and continues to suffer-from increased flooding. The Malthusian trap represents the way in which the Homogenocene will always create humanitarian and ecological disruption. As food production increases, human population increases to meet the supply. Ultimately, as pointed out by Hong Liangji, ecological disaster will ensue: “soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, consumption of groundwater supplies, climate change” (231).
