МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ГУМАНИТАРНЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ им. М.А.Шолохова
Кафедра английского языка Курс ГАК
Наименование дисциплины Английский язык
Приложение к экзаменационному билету № 1
The beginnings of world trade
For thousands of years people produced most of what they needed for themselves. They grew or hunted for their own food, made their own simple tools. But little they learned that they could have more varied goods by trading.
Little is known about the beginnings of the trade. The earliest we do know something about is the caravan trade across the deserts of Asia around 2500 BC, to and from cities of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Arabia. These caravans had to carry fodder for the animals and food for the drivers and merchants. Not much space was left for the cargo. As a result, the goods carried were light but valuable, things such as gold and precious stones – that is luxuries and not necessities.
After this trade by sea started to become more common. The Phoenicians on the coast of Syria are thought to have been the first to develop commerce by sea around 1000 BC, trading from ports in Syria to Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes and other Greek islands, and also to North Africa. They were manufactures and thus traded their products for raw materials.
That was also at the times of the Greek and the Romans. Athens was the first big commercial city in Europe, and it was the first community to import and export necessities in big quantities. Grain was widely imported to support the increasing population from the shoes of the Black Sea.
The Roman Empire was the next big trading community. The city of Rome itself produced little, but imported a lot. Through the first centuries AD it was the political capital and financial centre of the Empire. Increasing quantities of luxuries were imported from the east and from the North Africa, but these were not bought by the Romans. They were the tax paid to Rome by the various peoples that it had conquered. The Romans traded with China and brought back silk worms to start a silk industry in Europe.
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In the 5th century AD Byzantium (later called Constantinople, and now Istanbul) became the political capital of the Roman Empire, and remained the world’s commercial capital until the 12th century. Its importance was founded on manufacturing – textiles, leatherwork, armor, pottery and artistic metal work. The Byzantine coin became the first single currency of European business.
In the 12th and 13th centuries Venice and Genoa became the world’s leading trade centres. They were well placed to trade both by land and sea. Later, Britain and other countries of Northern Europe formed big companies, and each was given a certain part of the world to explore and exploit. The new companies penetrated into distant lands and brought back products, many of which were new and unknown.
During the 19th century the industrial revolution led to greater production, and the pattern of world trade started to become what it is today.
Экзаменационный билет утвержден на заседании кафедры
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