Answer:
B or C
Explanation:
B: During the period 1500-1800 Asian commodities flooded into the West. As well as spices and tea, they included silks, cottons, porcelains and other luxury goods. Since few European products could be successfully sold in bulk in Asian markets, these imports were paid for with silver. The resulting currency drain encouraged Europeans to imitate the goods they so admired. In Asia, there was no comparable mass importation of western goods. However, there was a great fascination with European scientific and artistic technologies. These influenced local lifestyles and inspired Asian scholars, artists and craftsmen.
The East occupied an important place in the western imagination. The reverse was also true. European objects and artifacts, sometimes reworked to suit Asian lifestyles, created a corresponding vision of a mysterious and exotic West.
C:Spice trade, the cultivation, preparation, transport, and merchandising of spices and herbs, an enterprise of ancient origins and great cultural and economic significance.Seasonings such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, and turmeric were important items of commerce in the earliest evolution of trade. Cinnamon and cassia found their way to the Middle East at least 4,000 years ago. From time immemorial, southern Arabia (Arabia Felix of antiquity) had been a trading centre for frankincense, myrrh, and other fragrant resins and gums. Arab traders artfully withheld the true sources of the spices they sold. To satisfy the curious, to protect their market, and to discourage competitors, they spread fantastic tales to the effect that cassia grew in shallow lakes guarded by winged animals and that cinnamon grew in deep glens infested with poisonous snakes. Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) ridiculed the stories and boldly declared, “All these tales…have been evidently invented for the purpose of enhancing the price of these commodities.”
