托福TPO是托福备考小伙伴们最重要的参考资料，并且这个是在备考时候一定要认真多多练习，托福TPO是非常重要的希望大家一定要重视起来，小编为广大的托福考生整理了TPO10(试题+答案+译文)第3篇:Seventeenth-Century European Economic Growth，下面就来跟小编一起来看下面精彩内容吧!
托福阅读原文
In the late sixteenth century andinto the seventeenth, Europe continued the growth that had lifted it out of therelatively less prosperous medieval period (from the mid 400s to the late1400s). Among thekeyfactors behind this growth were increasedagricultural productivity and an expansion of trade.Populations cannot grow unlessthe rural economy can produce enough additional food to feed more people.During the sixteenth century, farmers brought more land into cultivation at theexpense of forests and fens (low-lying wetlands). Dutch land reclamation in theNetherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provides the mostspectacular example of the expansion of farmland: the Dutch reclaimed more than36.000 acres from 1590 to 1615 alone.Much of the potential forEuropean economic development lay in what at first glance would seem to havebeen only sleepy villages. Such villages, however, generally lay in regions ofrelatively advanced agricultural production, permitting not only the survivalof peasants but also the accumulation of an agricultural surplus forinvestment. They had access to urban merchants, markets, and trade routes.Increased agricultural productionin turn facilitated rural industry, an intrinsic part of the expansion ofindustry. Woolens and textile manufacturers, in particular, utilized ruralcottage (in-home) production, which took advantage of cheap and plentiful rurallabor. In the German states, the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)further moved textile production into the countryside. Members of poor peasantfamilies spun or wove cloth and linens at home for scant remuneration in anattempt to supplementmeagerfamily income.More extended trading networksalso helped develop Europe's economy in this period.English and Dutch shipscarrying rye from the Baltic states reached Spain and Portugal. Populationgrowth generated an expansion of small-scale manufacturing, particularly ofhandicrafts, textiles, and metal production in England, Flanders, parts ofnorthern Italy, the southwestern German states, and parts of Spain. Only ironsmelting and mining required marshaling a significant amount of capital (wealthinvested to create more wealth).The development of banking andother financial services contributed to the expansion of trade. By the middleof the sixteenth century, financiers and traders commonly accepted bills ofexchange in place of gold or silver for other goods. Bills of exchange, whichhad their origins in medieval Italy, were promissory notes (written promises topay a specified amount of money by a certain date) that could be sold to thirdparties. In this way, they provided credit. At mid-century, an Antwerpfinancier only slightly exaggerated when he claimed, “0ne can no more tradewithout bills of exchange than sail without water." Merchants no longerhad to carry gold and silver over long, dangerous journeys. An Amsterdammerchant purchasing soap from a merchant in Marseille could go to an exchangerand pay the exchanger the equivalent sum in guilders, the Dutch currency. Theexchanger would then send a bill of exchange to a colleague in Marseille,authorizing the colleague to pay the Marseille merchant in the merchant's owncurrency after the actual exchange of goods had taken place.Bills of exchange contributed tothe development of banks, as exchangers began to provide loans. Not untilthe eighteenth century, however, did such banks as the Bank ofAmsterdam and the Bank of England begin to provide capital for businessinvestment. Their principal function was to provide funds for the state.The rapid expansion in internationaltrade also benefitted from an infusion of capital, stemming largely from goldand silver brought by Spanish vessels from the Americas. This capital financedthe production of goods, storage, trade, and even credit across Europe andoverseas. Moreover an increased credit supply was generated by investments andloans by bankers and wealthy merchants to states and by joint-stockpartnerships—an English innovation(the first major company began in1600). Unlike short-term financial cooperation between investors for a singlecommercial undertaking, joint-stock companies provided permanent funding ofcapital by drawing on the investments of merchants and other investors whopurchased shares in the company.
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