仮定法過去
今ありえないこと、つまり、「もし今～なら」と、今の妄想を言うときに、「過去形」を使います。これが「仮定法過去」ということ。文法用語がややこしくてわかりにくいですが、英語自体は簡単なので覚えましょう。
If S did/were ..., 「もし（今）～なら」 (be動詞は、主語に関係なくwereを使うことが多い）
S would do ... 「(今)～だろう 」
wouldだけでなく、以下のような助動詞も使います。ニュアンスが違ってきます。
might do「～かもしれない」／could do「～できるだろう、～ありえるだろう
If I had money, I would buy an iPad.
もし(今)お金があれば、(今)iPadを買うだろう。
If I were you, I would marry her.
もし(今)俺がおまえなら、(今)俺は彼女と結婚するだろう。
演習 Attack On Titan Episode 1, To you, 2000 years from now
本文はこちら
Don't suddenly raise your voice like that...
①rise ②be risen ③raise ④be raised
Kill it without ( ) !
①failure ②failing ③fail ④being failed
( ) makes you think I'm crying?!
①Why ②How come ③What ④For what
What ( ) doing?
①are you thinking ②are you thinking about
③do you think you're ④you think are you
Why don't you have your dad ( ) you?
① to examine ②examined ③examine ④examining
Then you're not even (A) to fight them (B), are you?!
①prepared / in the first place ②prepared / at the beginning
③preparing / in the first place ④preparing / at the beginning
If only they (A) inside the wall, they (B) safe and sound.
①(A)had stayed (B)would all be ②(A)would have stayed (B)would have all been
③(A)had been stayed (B)would all be ③(A)would be stayed (B)would have all been
Were you really (A) sound asleep (B) you were still dreaming when you woke up?
①(A)being (B)until ②(A)feeling (B) when ③(A)so (B)that ④(A)such (B)that
His death [ ] them back, right?!
[beating / brought / closer / humanity / one step / to]
All [ ] of my incompetence!
[did / because / get / killed / my soldiers / I / was]
So basically our taxes [ ] them with "snacks."
[ by / used / fatten up / to / are / being / providing / those bastards]
When you become a soldier, you [ ] outside the wall while you're on wall defence duty or whatever...
[around / get / hanging / your chance / see / them / to]
早稲田政経 2010 大問II
It's generally assumed that the entrance of women into the workforce is responsible for the collapse of home cooking, but that turns out to be only part of the story. Yes, women with jobs outside the home spend less time cooking―but so do women without jobs. The amount of time spent on food preparation in America has fallen at the same steep rate among women who don't work outside the home as it has among women who do: in both cases, a decline of about 40% since 1965. (Though for married women who don't have jobs, the amount of time spent cooking remains greater: 58 minutes a day, as compared with 36 for married women who do have jobs. In general, spending on restaurants or takeout food rises with income. Women with jobs have more money to pay corporations to do their cooking, yet all American women now allow corporations to cook for them when they can.
Those corporations have been trying to persuade Americans to let them do the cooking since long before large numbers of women entered the work force. After World War II, the food industry labored mightily to sell American women on all the processed-food wonders it had invented to feed the troops: canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant everything. As Laura Shapiro recounts in “Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America,” the food industry strived to “persuade millions of Americans to develop a lasting taste for meals that were a lot like field rations.” The same process of peacetime conversion that industrialized our farming ― giving us synthetic fertilizers made from the chemicals used to develop weapons―also industrialized our eating.
Shapiro shows that the shift toward industrial cookery began not in response to a demand from women entering the workforce but as a supply-driven phenomenon. In fact, for many years American women, whether they worked or not, resisted processed foods, regarding them as a failure in their "moral obligation to cook," something they believed to be as important a parental responsibility as child care. It took years of clever, dedicated marketing to overcome this attitude and persuade Americans that opening a can or cooking from a mix really was cooking. In the 1950s, just-add-water cake mixes remained on supermarket shelves until the marketers figured out that if you left at least something for the "baker" to do ― specifically, crack open an egg―she could take ownership of the cake. Over the years, the food scientists have gotten better and better at simulating real food, keeping it looking attractive and seemingly fresh, and the rapid acceptance of microwave ovens―which went from being in only 8% of American households in 1978 to 90% today―opened up vast new horizons of home-meal replacement.
Research by Harry Balzer, a food-market specialist, suggests that the corporate project of redefining what it means to cook and serve a meal has succeeded beyond the industry's wildest expectations. People think nothing of buying frozen peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their children's lunchboxes. (Now how much of a timesaver can that be?) "We've had a hundred years of packaged foods," Balzer says, "and now we're going to have a hundred years of packaged meals." Already today, 80% of the cost of food eaten in the home goes to someone other than a farmer, which is to say to industrial cooking and packaging and marketing. Balzer is unsentimental about this development: "Do you miss sewing or darning socks? I don't think so." So what are we doing with the time we save by outsourcing our food preparation to corporations and 16-year-old burger flippers? Working, commuting to work, surfing the Internet, and (perhaps most curiously of all) watching other people cook on television.
But this may not be quite the paradox it seems. Maybe the reason we like to watch cooking on TV is that there are things about cooking we miss. We might not feel we have the time or the energy to do it ourselves every day, yet we're not prepared to see it disappear from our lives entirely. Why not? Perhaps because cooking―unlike sewing or darning socks―is an activity that strikes a deep emotional chord in us, one that might even go to the heart of our identity as human beings.
原文はこちら（長い！）
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?_r=0
早稲田政経 2010 大問I
When cars run on electric power they not only save fuel and cut emissions but also run more quietly. Ordinarily, people might welcome quieter cars on the roads. However, as the use of hybrid and electric vehicles grows, a new concern is growing, too: pedestrians and cyclists find it hard to hear them coming, especially when the cars are moving slowly through a busy town or maneuvering in a parking lot. Some drivers say that when their cars are in electric mode people are more likely to step out in front of them. The solution, many now believe, is to fit electric and hybrid cars with external sound systems.
電気自動車の問題は、音が静かになり、歩行者が車が近づいていることに気づかなくなること。解決策としては、音を出すシステムを取り付けること。
A bill going through the American Congress wants to establish a minimum level of sound for vehicles that are not using an internal-combustion engine, so that blind people and other pedestrians can hear them coming. The bill's proponents also want that audible alert to be one that will help people judge the direction and speed of the vehicle. A similar idea is being explored by the European Commission.
アメリカで、電気自動車に音を出させるような本案が審議されている。
Although there is little data on accidents, the latest research suggests there is cause for concern. Vehicles operating in electric mode can be especially hard to hear below 20 mph (32 kph), according to experiments by Lawrence Rosenblum and his colleagues at the University of California, Riverside. Above that speed, the sound of the tires and of air flowing over the vehicle starts to make it more audible. The researchers made sophisticated recordings of hybrid cars running on electric power and gasoline- engine cars approaching at 5 mph from different directions. These were played to a group of subjects wearing headphones. The subjects were asked to press one of two buttons to identify which way the vehicle was coming from as quickly and accurately as possible. As expected, they were able to determine the direction of the gasoline-engine cars much faster. When everyday background sounds―like the humming engine of a car that had stopped nearby―were added, the hybrids' direction sometimes could not be detected until they were dangerously close. Both sighted and blind subjects gave similar results. Rosenblum and his colleagues recently repeated the experiment outside in a parking lot. This time, blindfolded subjects stood 3 meters away from the point where the vehicles passed. The researchers found that the hybrid vehicles had to be around 65% closer to someone than a car with a gasoline engine before the person could judge the direction correctly.
実験の結果、ハイブリッド車は近づいてくるのがわかりにくい（距離も方向も）ことがわかった。
What sort of noise should electric-powered cars make? They could, perhaps, beep as some pedestrian crossings do, or buzz like a power tool. Having worked with blind subjects, Rosenblum is convinced of a different answer: "People want cars to sound like cars." The sound need not be very loud; just slightly enhancing the noise of an oncoming electric vehicle would be enough to engage the auditory mechanisms that the brain uses to locate approaching sounds, he adds.
じゃあどういう音を出せばいいか→車らしい音がいい。
Systems to do this are already being developed. Lotus Engineering, the consultancy of a British sportscar maker, recently signed an agreement with a producer of audio systems to commercialize one. Lotus has worked on a number of hybrid and electric vehicles, and it was while these were being used in its factory that the engineers thought they would be safer if they made a noise.
現在そういうシステムが開発されている。
The system Lotus uses was originally developed for a different reason: to cancel out excess noises inside a car. Sound-cancelling works by analyzing any unwanted frequencies and then producing counteracting ones. Lotus modified its system so that it could produce sounds that change with speed, providing a familiar audible “feedback” to drivers of vehicles with a silent engine. Adding external speakers allows pedestrians to hear the noise too.
元々は音を消すシステムを開発していたが、それを逆に音を出すように変更した。
It is possible to create a different sound within a car from the one that is heard outside, says Colin Peachey, a chief engineer with Lotus. Manufacturers could create their own sounds according to how they perceive their models. Drivers of electric cars might in the future even be able to select different engine sounds, and maybe download them as we currently do with ringtones for our cellphones.
実際にはいろんな音を作ることができるので、好みを音を選んで使うことも可能。
Although some drivers might want to cruise in an electric car thundering to the sound of a mighty V8 engine, it is not necessary―and traffic police may have something to say about it. Synthesized engine noises could even help reduce noise pollution. For instance, sound from the speakers at the front of an electric car (or the rear if reversing) is highly directional. This means it is more likely to be noticed by pedestrians in front of or behind the vehicle. The noise from an internal combustion engine, however, travels out in many directions―including upwards into offices and bedrooms. Unique engine noises would still be possible. A sound generator has already been planned for one new car, a plug-in electric hybrid in the early stages of production. It will both alert pedestrians and enhance the "driver experience." Since the car will use new technology, perhaps the sound itself should also be new.
原点はこちら
文法など．．．（【 】の文法用語はわからなくてもいい。検索用。）
1) Pedestrians and cyclists find it hard to hear them coming, especially when the cars are moving slowly through a busy town or maneuvering in a parking lot.
・find it C to do ...「...することがCだとわかる」【形式目的語】
←find O C「OがCだとわかる」【第５文型】
・hear O do 「Oが～するのを聞く」【知覚動詞】
「歩行者と自転車の人は、車が近づいているのを聞き分けるのが難しいとわかる、特に交通量の多い交差点を車がゆっくり動いていたり、駐車場で止めようとしているときなどは。」
2) A bill (going through the American Congress) wants to establish a minimum level of sound for vehicles that are not using an internal-combustion engine, so that blind people and other pedestrians can hear them coming.
・A bill→S、wants→V
・so that S can do.. 「Sが～できるように」
「アメリカ議会で審議中の法案は、内燃エンジンを使用していない乗用車に対して最低減出さなければならない音量を設定することを狙って（←ほしがって）いる。目が見えない人や歩行者が車が近づいているのを聞き分けられるように。」
The bill's proponents also want that audible alert to be one that will help people judge the direction and speed of the vehicle. A similar idea is being explored by the European Commission.
・want O to do「Oが～することを願う、Ｏに～してほしいと思う」
（O = that audible alert）
「法案に賛成している人々は、また、その警告音が、車がいる方向と速度を判別するのに役立つものになることを願っている。」
早稲田国際教養 2010 II
Imagine watching a train go by. You are looking for one face in the window. Car after car passes. If you become distracted or inattentive, you risk missing the person. Or, if the train picks up too much speed, the faces begin to blur and you can't see the one you are seeking. "That's what primary care medicine is like," Victoria Rogers McEvoy told me. McEvoy is a tall, lean woman in her fifties with short-cropped blond hair and steady eyes. She practices general pediatrics in a town west of Boston. "It's much harder than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, because the haystack is not moving. Each day there is a steady flow of children before your eyes. You are doing baby checks, examinations for school, making sure each child is up to date on his vaccinations. It can become routine and you stop observing closely. Then you have the endless number of kids who are irritable and have a fever, and it's almost always a virus or a throat infection. They can all blur. But then there's that one time it's a life- threatening disease."
"The blessing of pediatrics, but also its curse, is that almost all of the children who come to the office turn out to be healthy or to have a minor problem," McEvoy continued. A blessing, of course, that the kids are fine, but a curse because the continual flow of minor problems can cause you to lose concentration. With that in mind, she asks herself one key question each time she sees a child, in essence the same question doctors who work in emergency rooms ask about each patient: Does he or she have a serious problem? "Every pediatrician" should consider that as soon as the child comes into the room." And because many of the patients are infants and small children who cannot communicate what they are feeling, "your powers of observation have to be particularly acute."
Essentially the doctor gets all the information from the parents, which means she has to consider both the parents' degree of familiarity with their child and their emotional reaction to the possibility that something is wrong. This reaction can be extreme: some parents deny the existence of a serious problem; others exaggerate what is normal because of their anxiety. Parents have reported that their child was lacking in energy and not eating, information that would trigger a high level of concern in the doctor: but with one glance she would see the child playing happily on the examining table and grinning. "The story was completely exaggerated, and you knew immediately that the kid was not seriously sick." Then there was the opposite, where a mother said that her baby felt a little warm but was otherwise okay. McEvoy was stunned to see the child breathing rapidly and lying weak in her mother's arms. The child had pneumonia. McEvoy, like all pediatricians, looks for certain key features. Does the child smile, play with toys, actively walk or crawl, or is she passive, not resisting when a medical instrument is placed on her chest?
Pattern recognition in pediatrics begins with behavior. And the art of pediatrics is to further study the child while simultaneously interpreting what the parents report. This combining of data, McEvoy said, is not a skill that comes from a textbook, because it requires a level of awareness by the doctor about his own feelings towards the family. While first impressions are often right, you have to be careful and always doubt your initial response. "It's a foolish pediatrician who does not listen closely to the parents and take seriously what they are saying," McEvoy said. "But you need to filter what they say with the child's condition." I told her the story of my first child, Steven. My wife, Pam, and I had returned from living in California to the East Coast. It was the July Fourth weekend, and we stopped in Connecticut to visit her parents. Steven was then nine months old, and had been irritable and not feeling well during the cross-country flight. When we arrived at Pam's parent's house, he was restless in his crib. We took him to an older pediatrician in the town; the doctor glanced at Steve and quickly dismissed Pam's worries that he was seriously ill. "You're over-anxious, a first-time mother," the pediatrician told her. "Doctor parents are like this." By the time we arrived in Boston, Steve was grunting and drawing his legs up to his chest. We rushed him to the emergency room of the Boston Children's Hospital. He had an obstruction in his intestines and required an operation immediately. Pam and I could only conclude that despite his many years in practice, the pediatrician in Connecticut had made a hasty judgment ― that Pam was irrationally worried about her first-born child, not a reliable reporter of a meaningful change in her baby's behavior and condition.
The pediatrician in Connecticut watched the train go by, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, for decades. I asked McEvoy, who had also been in practice for decades, "How do you keep your eyelids open?"
"I prepare myself mentally before each session," she replied, just as she used to prepare herself mentally before a competitive tennis match. In 1968, when she was in college, McEvoy was ranked third in the nation in tennis, and played at Wimbledon. As an athlete, she learned to focus her mind, to anticipate the unexpected spin, and not to become overconfident despite her expertise. But beyond the skill from sports, "you simply have to control the volume," she said. "And the truth is that most pediatricians stay afloat by seeing large numbers of children each day."
Before McEvoy took her current job, she worked in a busy group practice in another Boston suburb. At the time she had four children of her own at home. She spent each day tending to dozens of patients and their parents. "But it was the night calls that were killing me," she said. She was contacted every twenty or thirty minutes, and the calls continued until the next morning. If there was serious concern based on the telephone contact, then McEvoy returned to the office and saw the child, regardless of the hour. "After doing this for a few years, I was beginning to burn out. I just couldn't stand it." McEvoy found herself becoming irritable and bitter. "I was so exhausted from this hard schedule that at times I said things to parents that were rude and sharp, and later regretted saying them," she told me. "Pediatrics was no longer fun. Most worrisome, it affected my thinking. I would immediately assume that the parent was telephoning inappropriately. I was just so exhausted."
McEvoy left that practice. In the course of a day, a full-time pediatrician may see two dozen or more children. Now she limits the number of patients she will see in. any single session, despite the pressure to schedule brief visits and maintain a high volume. Many doctors who provide primary care do this because they feel they cannot function properly otherwise. Some suffer a fall in income. Others move into administrative roles, seeing fewer patients but sustaining their income. McEvoy chose this last path. Her group is associated with Partners Healthcare and the Massachusetts General Hospital. This association largely fixed the problem of relentless night calls; the Partner group hired experienced pediatric nurses who take the phone calls at night. These nurses offer advice to the parents, but if a family insists on speaking directly to the doctor, then the doctor will be paged. "This is the only way to maintain one's sanity," McEvoy said. "And the care is much better, because the doctors are not burned out."
早稲田国際教養 2010 I
In the sixteenth century, coffee came to enjoy considerable influence on a number of spheres of urban life in the Middle East, in the economic sphere, production of and trade in coffee helped breathe life into many areas that only shortly before had been commercially weak. To the Yemenis, it was vital, and they took steps to preserve their monopoly. Much of what was grown in the mountains and shipped from the ports of the Yemen had as its ultimate destination the great warehouses of Cairo, where spice and coffee merchants also saw considerable profit. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Cairo merchants made up for much of what they had lost when Europeans cut them out of the India spice trade, by dealing in coffee.
The single most striking and significant result of the growing use of coffee in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, was its effect on the social life within the city, town, or village, for around the preparation and sale of this commodity was born a hitherto unknown social institution, the coffeehouse. By the early 1500s coffee's use was no longer restricted to Sufi orders in the Yemen. It had become familiar to and popular among a variety of classes, at least in the Hijaz and Egypt. But most significantly, taking it had become a public pastime: the habit struck far deeper roots in the public places intended for that purpose than it did in the home. These public houses where it was served are mentioned immediately and in the closest possible connection with coffee itself, as though an essential part of the definition of coffee is that it is served in these places.
The massive importation of coffee to areas outside the Yemen was most likely undertaken by merchants interested in profit. Sometime after the beverage, or even just its reputation, initially reached an area through the agency of Sufi connections, it must have been realized, by those more concerned with profit than religion, that this might be a very profitable undertaking. They were aware of the warm reception coffee had received in the limited circles into which it had been introduced, and some must have seen the tremendous commercial potential for such a product. But one can imagine that they were faced with something of a marketing problem. Had they merely dumped sacks of coffee in the marketplaces of the larger cities, demand would probably have been very sluggish indeed. Who would buy such a product whose properties, uses, and preparation were a complete mystery to him? Far better to start by selling the already brewed beverage from little stands or shops, in order to build up a demand. This was precisely the course pursued in Istanbul. It is likely that most people first tasted coffee in a coffee shop.
The form these new establishments took, their physical arrangement, was in great part determined by that of the already existing places after which they were patterned, or of the actual premises on which they had been built. We thus see three distinct types of coffee outlet emerge early on, which for want of better terms we can label as the coffee stall, the coffee shop, and the coffeehouse. The coffee stall is distinguished from the other two in that it is not designed for the on-premises consumption of coffee. It was in essence a 'take-out' shop, usually located in a commercial area, for the convenience of those doing business in the markets. The coffee shop is the small, local shop, which sometimes shared the same function as the coffee stalls, acting as a 'service' cafe in a quarter, a take-out. There was, in addition, usually some space in the shop for customers to sit and consume their beverages. Far different from these strictly functional shops were the grand-style coffeehouses found in many cities in the Middle East. Certainly not all the six-hundred-odd coffeehouses found in Istanbul in the time of Selim II (1566- 74) were of the grand sort, and perhaps most of them were of the stall type. These small shops exist in Istanbul to the present day. But those coffeehouses located in the most important places in town were apparently quite luxurious. There seems to have been an attempt, especially in Syria and Iraq, to create a park or gardenlike atmosphere, to surround the patron with refreshing sights and sounds unlike those of either the city or the desert. Quite often there would be great lamps placed along the ceilings of the coffeehouses, because of their popularity at night, particularly at two times of the year: in summer, when the cool of the evening would draw people out; and in Ramadan, when many would choose to break their fasts with a cup or two, and when there were the most frequent performances by story-tellers.
It may seem that, in making the assumption that the coffeehouse sprang logically from the commercial need to sell the prepared beverage we are overlooking another obvious possibility. One still finds in Istanbul and the cities of the Levant street vendors who sell everything from kebabs and grilled fish to sour cherry juice and even water. Why 'was this type of sale not applied to coffee as well? Coffee, quite simply, has to be prepared and consumed in a particular manner, one that rules out a completely mobile operation. Coffee, particularly in the form in which it was and is drunk in the Middle East, must be served and drunk hot. European accounts emphasize that Arabs and Turks liked their brew very hot. If coffee is to be served at such a temperature, a strolling coffee vendor would not be able merely to prepare it in large quantities ahead of time and carry it around, selling it as he went, without some sort of elaborate apparatus for keeping it warm. Similarly, the customer cannot merely have a steaming cup of coffee put in his hands and be expected to swallow it down. Turkish coffee, when first poured, is full of powdery grounds which, left undisturbed, settle in about a minute into a thick mud at the bottom of the cup, leaving an inch and a half or so of clear coffee on top. This may well be what accounts for the fact that the Turks sip their coffee more slowly. All this is best accomplished with a stationary and relatively protected place of consumption. Coffee demands that you take your time.
If we grant that the tavern provided the most convenient model for those wishing to introduce coffee to the public at large, why then would people continue to frequent such shops once they became familiar with the methods of preparation? In the Middle Eastern context, we are speaking of a society without any significant restaurant culture. The inhabitants of the sixteenth-century Muslim city were, even by the standards of their contemporaries from Europe, short on dining spots. Eating outside the home was a habit alien to most.
The answer is not to be found solely in relation to the drink itself. It is likely that the owners of the coffeehouses successfully created the demand for a kind of taste which they, with their specialist skills, were best prepared to duplicate. Yet it is not primarily in this that we must look for the answer, but rather in the fact that the coffeehouse provided the sixteenth-century city resident with an excuse to do something that he obviously had a desperate urge to do: to get out of the house. One went to the coffeehouse not merely because one wished to drink coffee. One went to the coffeehouse because one wished to go out, to spend the evening in the society of his fellows, to be entertained, to see and be seen.
The coffeehouse, introduced out of commercial motives, given its general shape by imitation of taverns and considerations determined by its method of preparation, thrived because it catered to a real social need. The very fact that it offered something different, something which was indeed innovation, allowed it to take its place without disturbing already established patterns of life. It was in some way part of the proper life of a decent person to take his meals at home. If it had even occurred to somebody to establish such places where one went to have meals, it would have seemed very odd. But the coffeehouse in no way disrupted this aspect of life. Rather, it offered something extra, outside previous experience, and as such could fit into one's routine.
In the long run what kept the coffeehouse jammed was the fact that its facilities for sitting and having a cup offered the perfect setting for socializing with one's fellow patrons. This role of the coffeehouse as a center of social intercourse was clearly what fueled the controversy surrounding coffee. The moral question had nothing to do with what one drank in the coffeehouse, but rather with social anxieties concerning why one came, with whom one associated, and what one did alone or in groups in these places.
早稲田文化構想 2016 I (B)
One characteristic of the Renaissance was a new expression of wealth, and the related consumption of luxury goods. The belief in the flowering of the spirit of the Renaissance is strangely at odds with the general belief that the 14th and 15th centuries experienced a profound period of economic depression. Prices fell and wages slumped. The impact of the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 only intensified these problems. However, one of the consequences of widespread disease and death, just like warfare, is often radical social change and upheaval. Such was the case in Europe in the aftermath of the plague. As well as disease, warfare ravaged the region. The incessant wars disrupted trade and agriculture, creating a recurrent pattern of inflation and deflation. One consequence of all this death, disease, and warfare was a concentration on urban life, and an accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small but rich elite.
As in most, periods of history, where some people experience depression and decline, others see opportunity and fortune. States like Venice capitalized on the growing demand for luxury goods, and developed new ways of moving larger quantities of merchandise. Their older galleys, narrow oared ships, were gradually replaced by the heavy, round-bottomed masted ships, or 'cogs', used to transport bulky goods such as timber and iron between northern European ports. These cogs were able to transport more than three times the amount possible aboard the older galley. By the end of the 15th century, another new type of ship, which was able to transport more merchandise considerably faster than the cog, was developed.
As the amount and speed of distribution of merchandise increased, so ways of transacting business also changed. The complexity of balancing the import and export of both essential and luxury international goods and calculating credit, profit, and rates of interest sounds so familiar to us today that it is easy to see why the Renaissance is often referred to as the birthplace of modern capitalism.
