Use the passage below to answer all parts of the question that follows. “Europe’s Dutch and English East India Companies are often viewed as prototypes of modern multinational corporations. The scholarly literature recognizes that huge quantities of silver flowed to Asia, but this phenomenon is considered a reflection of Europe’s balance-of-trade deficit with east Asia; Europeans developed a far greater taste for Asian finery than the other way around, according to conventional wisdom, so treasure had to flow from west to east to pay for Europe’s trade deficit. In short, all the key issues are normally framed in terms of European perspectives. Acceptance of a global perspective instead of the predominant Eurocentric view outlined above yields a startlingly different view. It becomes clear that Europeans did indeed play an important role in the birth of world trade, but their role was a middleman in the vast silver trade; they were prime movers on neither the supply side (except Spain in America) nor the demand side of the worldwide silver market. Europeans were intermediaries in the trade between the New World and China. Massive amounts of silver traversed the Atlantic. After it had reached European soil, the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and Dutch in the seventeenth century became dominant distributors of silver by a multitude of routes into Asia.”
Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez,
historians, born with a “Silver Spoon”: The Origin of World Trade in 1571, 1994

1. Explain ONE historically specific example of Europeans’ role in global trade in the period 1500-1750 C. E. that supports the authors’ assertion in the passage above.

2. Explain ONE piece of evidence about global trade in the period 1500-1750 C. E. that undermines the authors’ assertion in the passage above.