9 sentences with 'precious'
Example sentences and phrases with the word precious and other words derived from it.
• « Throughout the ages, man has also tried to find a useful application for the precious or semi-precious stones that he marvelled at and that he sensed were more than just pretty decorative objects. »
• « Coffee traffickers: gold, precious stones and even drugs are overshadowed by coffee, the second most traded commodity in the world after oil. »
• « From the Turks, the Italians (especially the large merchant empire controlled by Venice) bought precious cargoes such as spices, silks, porcelain and coffee, in exchange for European wool, handicrafts and gold bullion. »
• « Columbus ended up spearheading everything the Spanish empire was to represent in the Americas: brutality against the native "Indians", attempts to convert the Indians by force, intense greed for precious metals and the introduction of pathogens against which the natives had no resistance. »
• « While Europeans at the time were obsessed with the vast mineral wealth to be found in the Americas, in historical retrospect it is clear that far more important than precious metals were the living things that were traded between the western and eastern hemispheres of the planet from 1492 onwards. »
• « Officially, all conquistadors were obliged to hand over the "royal fifth" - 20% of all precious metals discovered or mined - of all booty to the crown. »
• « Spain's vast empire continued to produce great wealth, but relatively little of it ended up in the monarchy's coffers, and the large-scale, slave-based extraction of precious metals from the New World clashed with simple economic laws: by the 17th century this bullion-based system was in dire straits thanks to the inflation of silver imports introduced into the European economy. »
• « According to this mentality, kingdoms could only increase their wealth by seizing more territory, especially territories that would somehow increase the flow of precious metals into the royal coffers. »