Why didn't the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico produce a vast trading network the way the Mediterranean did? The size of the combined seas are almost identical to the Mediterranean.
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The United States represents a power vacuum. Any industrialist in the region that wanted a shipping empire simply did so between US ports instead as that would've made more economic sense do to the size of the US economy and the lack of import duties and tarrifs.
I think OP means prior to Columbus.
>Pre-Columbus
We know there were many trade networks between peoples on the mainland and islands, and between islands themselves of certain goods, and that many island or coastal peoples (Arawak, Kalinago/Carib, Taino) were fairly decent sailors.
>Post-Columbus
As resource extraction colonies, their only purpose was to export raw goods to the metropole, to then have manufactured ones from there imported back. Post-independence, you had all these places with virtually the same economy so they had nothing unique to offer, and little to no domestic manufacturing which could produce anything they wanted, and so relied on mainly Britain, the United States as time went by, and the remaining few ties to other former colonial powers left.
Only Mexico, the DR, Colombia, and Cuba (but for differing reasons) really got away from raw goods. Mexico however, (especially El Norte) is so integrated with the US road and rail network that it doesn't need ports, the DR and Colombia have established manufacturing or information niches for themselves, and Cuba through its post-Cold War isolation, and mainly trades with China or Europe.
They didn't have the fricking horse. No cattle either. Hard to build trade networks when you don't have beasts of burden.
>what is a boat
>what is a creature that allows for intensification of agriculture, thus increased land clearance, thus population growth, thus development, thus trade
The Tainos and Caribs only had canoes and things slightly larger than that, no big ships like the Mediterranean. I know what you're looking for here, they were dumb lazy beaners before they got colonized, yada yada, but it's a bit more complicated than that. They simply lacked a lot of things that Eurasia (and the Med at its western terminus) had. The geography is way more spread out compared to the Med too.
>I know what you're looking for here, they were dumb lazy beaners before they got colonized, yada yada, but it's a bit more complicated than that.
Didn't the Mississippi Valley Civilization have massive fields without livestock
So did the Aztecs, but loading and unloading a ship is backbreaking work. Then transporting the goods across thousands of miles of inland road networks with no horse or mule or camel or even a goddamn team of goats. Long distance trade did occur in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico but it was mostly small-scale and ad-hoc rather than organized large-scale regular Med trade. It's more comparable to the Pacific trade networks than the Med ones.
>but loading and unloading a ship is backbreaking work.
The Greeks and Romans solved that using slavery so much so that agricultural implements only saw significant improvement in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Aztecs should have thought about using their captives for forced labor instead of sacrificing them so the sun doesn't go out
They had them
are you implying you need beasts of burden for trading across the seas?
do you believe the romans navigated through dolphins or what?
American Indians are genetically inferior to Europeans
here OP, the response you wanted
it's true because I hate shitskins
The Mediterranean is extremely calm for most of the year, it has many good beaches and negligible tides, making it very easy for craft to be pulled up on beaches to replenish food and water, rest crews overnight etc. The negligible tides also mean that there is very little danger of being caught on a leeward shore.
The Caribbean has none of these things.
>spics
>doing anything noteworthy
anon, are you moronic?
No beasts of burden slowed down the progress of native Americans.
By the time Mexico and the andes entered the bronze age is exactly when Europeans showed up.
Still I don't think Peruvians or Mexicans are bitter about it. Same way coptic Egyptians aren't bitter for their collapse.
No iron tools.
There wasn't anything worth trading with the islands. Trade went from Mesoamerica down the coast to Peru