9781422281222

Pedestrians crowd a shopping district in Hong Kong. In 1500, the world population was approximately 500 million people. Today, over 7 billion people live on this planet.

Africa to Indonesia, buy spices, and return to Europe. The route to China or Japan and back took even longer. In the past five hundred years, global trade has expand- ed in every direction. Technology is the largest contributor to this growth. Today, machines are used to draw oil up from the ground, chop down trees, and harvest cotton. Robots process and assemble goods in factories. Airplanes carry products across oceans in a matter of hours. All these developments make trade faster and cheaper. As a result, the world market has exploded. Industries have developed. The population has increased. These fac-

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Global Trade in the Modern World