托福阅读tpo46R-2 原文+译文+题目+答案+背景知识

托福阅读tpo46R-2 原文+译文+题目+答案+背景知识

原文 .................................................................................................................................................. 1

译文 .................................................................................................................................................. 2

题目 .................................................................................................................................................. 3

答案 .................................................................................................................................................. 7

背景知识........................................................................................................................................... 8

原文

The Commercial Revolution in Medieval Europe

①Beginning in the 1160s, the opening of new silver mines in northern Europe led

to the minting and circulation of vast quantities of silver coins. The widespread use

of cash greatly increased the volume of international trade. Business procedures

changed radically. The individual traveling merchant who alone handled virtually all

aspects of exchange evolved into an operation involving three separate types of

merchants: the sedentary merchant who ran the "home office" financing and

organizing the firm's entire export-import trade; the carriers who transported

goods by land and sea; and the company agents resident in cities abroad who, on

the advice of the home office, looked after sales and procurements.

②Commercial correspondence, unnecessary when one businessperson oversaw

everything and made direct bargains with buyers and sellers, multiplied. Regular

courier service among commercial cities began. Commercial accounting became

more complex when firms had to deal with shareholders, manufacturers,

customers, branch offices, employees, and competing firms. Tolls on roads became

high enough to finance what has been called a road revolution, involving new

surfaces and bridges, new passes through the Alps, and new inns and hospices for

travelers. The growth of mutual trust among merchants facilitated the growth of

sales on credit and led to new developments in finance, such as the bill of

exchange, a device that made the long, slow, and very dangerous shipment of

coins unnecessary.

③The ventures of the German Hanseatic League illustrate these advancements.

The Hanseatic League was a mercantile association of European towns dating from

1159. The league grew by the end of the fourteenth century to include about 200

cities from Holland to Poland. Across regular, well- defined trade routes along the

Baltic and North seas, the ships of league cities carried furs, wax, copper, fish, grain,

timber, and wine. These goods were exchanged for finished products, mainly cloth

and salt, from western cities. At cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic

merchants secured special trading concessions, exempting them from all tolls and

allowing them to trade at local fairs. Hanseatic merchants established foreign

trading centers, the most famous of which was the London Steelyard, a walled

community with warehouses, offices, a church, and residential quarters for

company representatives. By the late thirteenth century, Hanseatic merchants had

developed an important business technique, the business register. Merchants

publicly recorded their debts and contracts and received a league guarantee for

them. This device proved a decisive factor in the later development of credit and

commerce in northern Europe.

④These developments added up to what one modern scholar has called "a

commercial revolution." In the long run, the commercial revolution of the High

Middle Ages (a d 1000-1300) brought about radical change in European society.

One remarkable aspect of this change was that the commercial classes constituted

a small part of the total population—never more than 10 percent. They exercised

an influence far in excess of their numbers. The commercial revolution created a

great deal of new wealth, which meant a higher standard of living. The existence of

wealth did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers. Wealth could be

taxed, and through taxation, kings could create strong and centralized states. In the

years to come, alliances with the middle classes were to enable kings to weaken

aristocratic interests and build the states that came to be called modern.

⑤The commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousands of

agricultural workers to improve their social position. The slow but steady

transformation of European society from almost completely rural and isolated to

relatively more urban constituted the greatest effect of the commercial revolution

that began in the eleventh century. Even so, merchants and business people did

not run medieval communities, except in central and northern Italy and in the

county of Flanders. Most towns remained small. The nobility and churchmen

determined the predominant social attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and

behavior. The commercial changes of the eleventh through fourteenth centuries

did however, lay the economic foundation for the development of urban life and

culture.

译文

中世纪欧洲的商业革命

①从12世纪60年代开始，北欧新银矿的开发导致了大量银币的铸造和流通。

现金的广泛使用大大增加了国际贸易额。商业流程发生了根本性的变化。单独

处理几乎所有交易的个体行商演变成涉及三种不同商人类型的经营：定居商人

经营内务，融资和组织公司的整个进出口贸易；经海路运输货物的承运人；以

及定居在国外城市的公司代理商，他们在内务部门的建议下负责销售和采购。

②当一个商人监督一切并与买卖双方进行直接交易时，商业信函就变得多余了。