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EFFECTS OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

游客2025-02-03  21
问题                                         EFFECTS OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
    (1) In the third and the second millennia B.C., long-distance trade supposedly had the character of an expedition. By the start of the last millennium B.C., however, a new approach to engaging in such trade emerged. Based on the principle of colonization, it was pioneered by the Phoenicians and Greeks, who established colonies along the Mediterranean Sea. The new approach to long-distance trade, known as the commercial revolution, led to changes in a number of political and economic patterns.
    (2) For the first time, the planting of colonies in distant lands became possible. The Phoenician settlements in the central and western Mediterranean, such as Carthage, and the slightly later establishment of Greek colonies are early examples, while the settlement of south Arabians in Eritrea around the middle of the last millennium marks the subsequent spread of this sort of commercial consequence to the Horn of Africa. In the third or second millennia B.C., a state such as Egypt might colonize areas outside its heartland, such as Nubia. But this colonization comprised military outposts and ethnic settlements that were planted to hold the contiguous territories of a land empire, not distant localities far separated from the home country.
    (3) [A] The commercial revolution constructed the economic basis as well for a new kind of town or city, an center that above all serviced trade and was home to the crafts and occupational specializations that went along with commercial development. [B] The urban locations of earlier times commonly drew trade simply because their populations had included a privileged elite of potential consumers. [C] Such towns had arisen in the first place as political and religious centers of the society; they attracted population because power and influence resides there and access to position and wealth could be gained through service to the royal or priestly leadership. [D]
    (4) Wherever the effects of the commercial revolution penetrated over the last millennium B.C., kings and emperors increasingly lost their ability to treat trade as a royalty sponsored activity, intended to preserve the commodities of trade as the privileges of immemorial power and position. Instead, their policies shifted toward controlling geographical accessibility to the products of commerce and to ensuring security and other conditions that attracted and enhanced the movement of goods. No longer could kings rely on agriculturally supported and religiously based claims to an ability to protect their lands and people; now they also had to overtly support the material prosperity of their people compared to other societies. And rather than exerting a monopoly over prestige commodities, as Egyptian kings of the third and second millennia had, and redistributing such commodities in ways designed to reinforce the allegiance of their subjects and enhance the awesomeness of their position, rulers turned to the taxation of trade and to the creation and control of currency, more and more relying on duties and other revenues to support the apparatus of the state. It was no historical accident that the first metal coinage in the world began to be made in eighth-century Anatolia (modern Turkey) and that the use of coins rapidly spread with the expanding commercial revolution. The material bases and the legitimizations of state authority as we know them today had begun to take shape.
    (5) The commercial revolution tended also to spread a particular pattern of exchange. The early commercial centers of the Mediterranean most characteristically offered manufactured goods—purple dye, metal goods, wine, olive oil, and so forth—for the raw materials or the partially processed natural products of other regions. As the commercial revolution spread, this kind of exchange tended to spread with it, with the recently added areas of commerce providing new kinds of raw materials for familiar products of the natural world, and the longer established commercial centers—which might themselves have lain at the margins of this transformation—producing, or acting as the intermediaries in the transmission of manufactured commodities. India, for instance, had developed by the turn of the era into a major exporter of its own cotton textiles, as well as naturally occurring materials, such as gems of various kinds, and at the same time its merchants were the intermediaries of the silk trade. [br] An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth 2 points.
The commercial revolution of the last millennium B.C. resulted in both political and economic changes.
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Answer Choices
(A) New kinds of urban centers emerged that focused on commerce and encouraged craft and occupational specializations.
(B) Rulers in the last millennium began to promote the material prosperity of their people through support and improvement of commerce.
(C) More established commercial centers supplied final products to newer regions in exchange for raw materials.
(D) During the first millennium B.C., new political and religious centers arose that based their power on their ability to protect their lands and people.
(E) The focus on raw materials switched the balance of power from the manufacturing centers to the control of the exporters of the natural products.
(F) Military occupation of neighboring lands became a major means of expanding trade into new territories.
选项
答案 A,B,C
解析 本题属于文章总结题。A项“出现了以商业为中心，并鼓励手工艺和职业专业化的新型城市中心”符合第3段第1句的表述，是商业革命的一个经济上的变化，故A项正确。B项“在公元前第一个千年时期，统治者开始通过支持和改善贸易来促进入民的物质繁荣”是对第4段的整合，是商业革命对政治和经济的影响，故B项正确。C项“更多已建立的商业中心向新地区提供了成品，以换取原材料”符合第5段第2句的说法，是商业革命在经济上的影响，故选C项。D项“在公元前第一个千年间，新的政治和宗教中心出现了，它们的权力建立在保护自己的土地和人民的能力之上”，第4段第3句提到，国王再也不能依靠农业支持和基于宗教的主张来保护自己的土地和人民，故D项的说法与原文相悖。E项“对原材料的关注将权力从制造中心转移到对天然产品出口商的控制上”没有依据。F项“用军事手段占领邻国领土成为向新领土扩展贸易的主要手段”是利用第2段最后一句设置的干扰项。
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