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Emily Loeb
Mrs. Bennett
Humanities 2
19 January 2016

The Smart Way To Trade; The Positive Benefits to Ignoring Europe

To benefit ourselves, we often look for help from others. But seldom do we consider
whether the help provided is worth accepting. Weve all been faced with the difficult decision
before; a test or assignment catches us by surprise, and we find ourselves in a state of panic. For
many, the solution is to simply phone a friend and ask for answers, thus ensuing a profitable
grade, but, unknowingly, hurting us in the long run. When students cheat, they often lose an
opportunity to assess their knowledge, which leads students to believe that they understand the
topic covered. This false knowledge then later leads to lower test scores as students discover that
their brains did not retain the information provided. The consequences of borrowing anothers
answers can have devastating consequences, as well as trading with egotistical nations. At the
dawn of the 1450s, Europes position as a global power was just beginning to get underway.
Their main entrance was in trade, and with their new territories in the Americas, this meant trade
with everyone in the world. But among the positive benefits that came from this, it was seldom
that people recognized or considered that this mass trade with Europe could be a negative
process. Trade with Europe was often only beneficial to the people in Europe, while it often led
to the destruction of culture and peace elsewhere.
For one example of the unbeneficial trade with Europe, we can look to Japan, where trade
with Europe led to led to fragmentation and eventually war between the Japanese peoples. In

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Was Early Modern Japan Culturally Integrated, Mary Elizabeth Berry states, the disintegrating
power of change is no less apparent in the tallies. The figures all speak to the multiplication of
differences (Berry 549). The change that Europe brought also meant more conflicts in social
order. While Japan had contact with the many nations in Europe, religion and culture seeped into
their previously unified culture, causing more conflict and growing even more tension than had
previously been in their country. But with the realization of the negative impact came the
decision to close off from Western Europe. This led to a happier, more stable Japan that grew to
not rely on the wealth that came from European trade. As stated by Fujio Ikado in The Origin of
the Social Status of Protestant Christianity in Japan, the resentment of the West led them to an
opportunity to overcome much internal divisiveness by using the feeling against the West as a
tool to unify the national ideology and build a solid foundation for the emperor system (Ikado
32). Therefore, if Japan would have rejected Europe interaction all together, they could have
avoided the years of struggling through trade with a country that wasnt looking for mutual
benefit. Japan also would have avoided the many years of Christian prosecution if they had never
interacted with Christians at all. Europe really had one goal, and that was to obtain as much
wealth as possible.
Furthermore, another example of the negative impact of European trade was the awful
impact it had on the native tribes in America. Trade with Europe brought a strangely new product
into the lives of natives- alcohol. Even though alcohol had many medical uses, the natives had
had no experience with such a product before. Thus it was like giving a small toddler a power
drill; it was dangerous, and they had no idea how to handle it. Yet Europe did not even care to
think of these outcomes before trading them alcohol. Alcohol has been associated with the
medical, social, and economic problems of Native Americans, and is well documented in

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history (Hornbuckle 275). As well as disrupting their culture, the effects of alcohol led some to
undertake even more drastic measures. Alcohol is a factor in 75-80 percent of all Native
American suicides and about 90 percent of all homicides (Hornbuckle 275). All of these
horrifying effects could have been avoided if the Natives and Europeans had never come in
contact with each other.
Some may argue that even though trade with Europe had its consequences, as all things
do, it was mainly positive, as technology and information was spread around the world. Though
this is true, innovation and knowledge would have eventually found another way to spread to
through nations, either through other countries in general or through conquest. This viewpoint
comes from the common Eurocentric position of history. One cannot accurately depict history
from knowing just one side. Therefore, there needs to be a more balanced viewpoint of history so
we can give justice to the nations that have been ignored. In conclusion, interaction with Europe,
though it had its positive outcomes, was mainly negative on societies in the corrosive effects it
had on cultures and peoples.