2021年7月10日托福阅读回忆和解析：社会学

　　2021年7月10日托福阅读回忆及解析，本文内容由环球教育北京学校张泽老师提供整理，以供大家学习参考。更多托福资料以及备考托福的干货内容，请关注环球教育，环球教育托福暑假班正在火热报名中，感兴趣的同学欢迎随时咨询我们的在线客服老师 。

　　托福阅读

　　Passage one ：社会学

　　题目：北美的新英格兰地区经济发展

　　内容回忆：北美在整个的英国殖民地当当中，是很神奇的存在，他的发展出现了整个人口快速上升，同时人均GDP也在上升的情况，这在英国的其他殖民地是不存在的。

　　接下来就是在从各个角度进行证明。

　　分别从本杰明富兰克林的记录可以证明，人民的收入和生活是在上涨的。

　　从个人的用品也可以看到，就是人民除了吃喝等生活必需品之外，很多的家庭还有瓷器，茶叶，丝绸，调味料等比较贵的消费品也可以看出来。

　　美国作为英国的一个殖民地，从宾夕法尼亚地区和马里兰也可以看出来经济特别好。

　　除此之外，还可以从每个家庭掌握的土地也可以看出来，很多家庭都掌握土地，因此美国人民的生活特别好。

　　之所以在美国经济这么好是有很多的原因的，第一个原因就是美国人民很多都拥有土地。

　　第二个原因，就是他们的生产效率特别高。而且还都有土地，这就使得他们的农产品价格，燃油价格，运输价格一直都特别低，这就给了他们经济很大的竞争优势。

　　参考阅读：Seventeenth - Century European Economic Growth

　　In the late sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, Europe continued the growth that had lifted it out of the relatively less prosperous medieval period (from the mid 400s to the late 1400s). Among the key factors behind this growth were increased agricultural productivity and an expansion of trade.

　　Populations cannot grow unless the rural economy can produce enough additional food to feed more people. During the sixteenth century, farmers brought more land into cultivation at the expense of forests and fens (low-lying wetlands). Dutch land reclamation in the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provides the most spectacular example of the expansion of farmland: the Dutch reclaimed more than 36,000 acres from 1590 to 1615 alone.

　　Much of the potential for European economic development lay in what at first glance would seem to have been only sleepy villages. Such villages, however, generally lay in regions of relatively advanced agricultural production, permitting not only the survival of peasants but also the accumulation of an agricultural surplus for investment. They had access to urban merchants, markets, and trade routes.

　　Increased agricultural production in turn facilitated rural industry, an intrinsic part of the expansion of industry. Woolens and textile manufacturers, in particular, utilized rural cottage (in-home) production, which took advantage of cheap and plentiful rural labor. In the German states, the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) further moved textile production into the countryside. Members of poor peasant families spun or wove cloth and linens at home for scant remuneration in an attempt to supplement meager family income.

　　More extended trading networks also helped develop Europe's economy in this period. "English and Dutch ships carrying rye from the Baltic states reached Spain and Portugal. " Population growth generated an expansion of small-scale manufacturing, particularly of handicrafts, textiles, and metal production in England, Flanders, parts of northern Italy, the southwestern German states, and parts of Spain. Only iron smelting and mining required marshaling a significant amount of capital (wealth invested to create more wealth).

　　The development of banking and other financial services contributed to the expansion of trade. By the middle of the sixteenth century, financiers and traders commonly accepted bills of exchange in place of gold or silver for other goods. Bills of exchange, which had their origins in medieval Italy, were promissory notes (written promises to pay a specified amount of money by a certain date) that could be sold to third parties. In this way, they provided credit. At mid-century, an Antwerp financier only slightly exaggerated when he claimed, "One can no more trade without bills of exchange than sail without water." Merchants no longer had to carry gold and silver over long, dangerous journeys. An Amsterdam merchant purchasing soap from a merchant in Marseille could go to an exchanger and pay the exchanger the equivalent sum in guilders, the Dutch currency. The exchanger would then send a bill of exchange to a colleague in Marseille, authorizing the colleague to pay the Marseille merchant in the merchant's own currency after the actual exchange of goods had taken place.

　　Bills of exchange contributed to the development of banks, as exchangers began to provide loans. Not until the eighteenth century, however, did such banks as the Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of England begin to provide capital for business investment. Their principal function was to provide funds for the state.

　　The rapid expansion in international trade also benefitted from an infusion of capital, stemming largely from gold and silver brought by Spanish vessels from the Americas. This capital financed the production of goods, storage, trade, and even credit across Europe and overseas. Moreover an increased credit supply was generated by investments and loans by bankers and wealthy merchants to states and by joint-stock partnerships- an English innovation (the first major company began in 1600). Unlike short-term financial cooperation between investors for a single commercial undertaking, joint-stock companies provided permanent funding of capital by drawing on the investments of merchants and other investors who purchased shares in the company.

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