Americans would eventually get to share most of the advantages of Britain’s forced opening of China’s ports without any of the violence

As for the American traders at Canton, in some ways they were the war’s greatest beneficiaries, for they would eventually get to share most of the advantages of Britain’s forced opening of China’s ports without any of the violence or the lasting stain on their national character.

S. R. Platt, Imperial Twilight (2018), 416

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap.

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap. So for that matter was sea transport. In the 1920s, when the railways had largely superseded the canals as a means of internal freight haulage, it was cheaper for American farmers to send wheat 700 miles from St Louis to the port of New Orleans and thence across the Atlantic to Britain than it was for an English farmer to send his wheat by rail freight across three counties from Somerset to London, a distance of about 200 miles.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), 16

The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama

One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is 'ethnic' cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillis are incorporated into just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss cafe is thick ho chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of those foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin. They reached Europe and Asia only after the Spanish conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn't been invented), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama.

Y.N. Hariri, Sapiens (2011), 188-9

The greatest volume of any single product traded internationally in western Europe during the medieval period.

In the period 1305-36, when the city [Bordeaux] was prosperous under English occupation, it is estimated that wine exports from Gascony to England and Flanders reached 750,000 hectolitres a year. This represents the greatest volume of any single product traded internationally in western Europe during the medieval period.

B. Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean (2001), 51