Good question and one that is often answered a bit too narrowly. The key issue is whether trade routes promoted resource extraction and/or economic development, and if the latter, what sort of development. Of course, the most famous route, with the greatest impact on New World colonies, was the Triangular Trade, which had some variants. In addition, though, there were several versions of a simpler two-way transatlantic trade, from the UK to the northern colonies, from France to Quebec, and from Spain/Portugal to Latin American places. Last, and less known, a transpacific trade took shape in the 17th century, connecting the Philippines with Mexico through the west coast port of Acapulco. So here we have at least half dozen routes to assess in terms of impacts.

The core of the triangular trade, ca. 1600-1800, was the exchange of slaves for materials and goods – African captives brought to eastern Atlantic ports, exchanged for gold or British manufactured products, then transshipped brutally to colonial depots – Charleston, New Orleans, the Caribbean islands, and in smaller numbers, New York, for example. There, captives were again sold, for cash or goods (sugar, tobacco, timber) which returned to a UK starting point (often Liverpool). Yet this sequence was not the only one, particularly in New England, where merchants sent rum and other North American goods to Africa, secured slaves for auction to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and brought liquid sugar (molasses) to American shores for distillation into more rum. Though this sounds tidy, actually, rarely was either triangle completed by one ship in one voyage; each triangle stands more as a mythical model than a description of standard practice. Nonetheless these ventures, plus those made by Spanish and Portuguese slavers extracted over nine million Africans from their home terrains across the 16th through the 19th centuries. That’s quite an impact, creating slave economies from Virginia to Trinidad to Brazil. Another three-sided trade involved slavery indirectly, as when Yankees sent colonial goods to the sugar islands, shipped to Russia to exchange sugar for iron, which returned to New England.

Bilateral trade is simpler to grasp, and yet may depart from our current notions of exchange. The Kingdom of Spain extracted precious metals from Latin America, sending back goods for colonizers, especially through Veracruz, which became Mexico’s principal east coast harbor. By contrast, French trade with Quebec was a constant drain on the monarchy’s funds; often goods sent to sustain some 50,000 settlers cost more than double the value of furs gathered and sold. However, Virginia tobacco sold to Britain at times created high profits, but this single-crop economy proved vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations (Cotton’s southern surge came after the American Revolution.). Clearly trade did not automatically translate into sustained development, though port cities did prosper, not least because they became anchors for coastal shipping within and among colonies. At times, expanding trade could irritate the colonizing state, as when Mexican merchants created a long-distance 16th-18th century trans-Pacific route from Acapulco, trading an estimated 100 tons of silver annually for Chinese silks, cottons, spices, and pottery – resources the Crown thought should be sent to Madrid instead. Overall, my sense is that colonial trade routes deepened exploitation of people and nature appreciably more than they fostered investment and economic development.

The architecture of ancient Rome has inspired the design of many buildings around the world, including many in the United States.

The Roman Emperor Domitian built the Arch of Titus in Rome around 82 C.E. to honor his brother Titus’ sack of Jerusalem a dozen years before. It underwent restoration in the early 19th century.

Its design inspired that of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, built in 1806, which, in turn, has served as the inspiration for other buildings around the world, including the Washington Square Arch in New York City’s Greenwich Village, designed by architect Stanford White and erected in 1892. On a lighter note, its form appears again in the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino, opened in 1999, the design of which includes, among other things, a two-thirds-size reproduction of the Arc de Triomphe.

The Roman statesman Marcus Agrippa and the Emperor Hadrian built the Pantheon in Rome, which was finished around 126 C.E., as a temple to all the Roman gods. In the 7th century, C.E., it was converted into a Christian church, now known as Santa Maria dei Martiri.

The architecture of the Pantheon inspired the design of many buildings around the world, including the Panthéon in Paris, finished in 1790, and, in the United States, of Thomas Jefferson’s design for the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, that of his own home of Monticello, and that of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Many design elements of the Pantheon were also incorporated into the Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, and into the Great Dome, Killian Court, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The designs of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, of the National Gallery of Art, and of the California State Capitol in Sacramento, are also ultimately indebted to the Pantheon.

In the first century, B.C.E., Caius Cornelius Gallus, the Roman Prefect to Egypt, erected an obelisk, memorializing his own accomplishments, in the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis. The Roman Emperor Augustus moved it to the Julian Forum of Alexandria, and then, in C.E. 37, the Emperor Caligula had the Julian Forum demolished and the obelisk transported to Rome and set up in the Caligula (later Nero) Circus, where early Christians—including St. Peter—were martyred. In 1586, during the construction of the Basilica of St. Peter, Pope Sixtus V had the obelisk moved to the square in front of the basilica, where he consecrated it and had it re-inscribed.

Other ancient obelisks have found their way from Egypt to the West, including one in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and one in Central Park in New York City.

Some of the political writers of the Enlightenment imagined that their Rationalist philosophy was a revival of a timeless wisdom, the ancient center of which was in the architecture and science of Egypt. This conviction was especially strong among Masons, who, in turn, were quite influential in the American and French revolutions. George Washington was a prominent Mason, and this fact is reflected in the original and final designs of the Washington Monument, which takes the form of an Egyptian obelisk.

Nashville, TN, boasts a full-scale replica (built of poured concrete and finished in 1931) of the original Parthenon in Athens—as it would have looked when it was first built in the 5th century, B.C.E.

Lake Havasu City in Arizona is now spanned by the 1831 London Bridge over the Thames. It was dismantled, transported to America, and reassembled there in 1971.

The hamlet of Natural Bridge, Virginia, is the site of “Foamhenge,” a whimsical full-scale replica (built by pop artist Mark Cline in 2004 of Styrofoam) of the prehistoric stone monument in England.

I have been unable to find anything about an angry slave being responsible for the fire. And what I have found appears to make such a story highly unlikely.

Quebec suffered two major fires in 1845, exactly one month apart.

On the 28th of May, in the late morning of a scorchingly hot day, a fire began at a small tannery owned and overseen by a Mr. Richardson on Arago Street near Saint-Vallière Street in the St.-Roch district. The fire began when a boiler that was used to heat leather dye burst. Church bells in the St.-Roch section began ringing in alarm and a small crowd gathered outside the tannery and started “ill-directed efforts to extinguish the flames,” according to a military officer who happened onto the scene.

The intense heat of the day, combined with a very stiff wind, spread the fire quickly through the streets of St.-Roch, lined with small wooden buildings packed closely together. The district of St.-Roch lies in the lower section of the city between the river and a cliff leading to the upper section of Quebec City. The high wind blew into the heated air above the fire and swirled against the cliff into a shifting vortex that carried sparks in unpredictable directions, seemingly in pursuit of terrified people trying to escape the fire, blocking their escape. The fire was only stopped when the mayor ordered the military to blow up a line of houses as a firebreak to protect the warehouses and commercial district next to the river. In eight hours, the fire of May 28 killed 50 people, destroyed about 3,000 shops and sheds, roughly 1,650 houses, and left many thousands of people homeless. About a third of the city was left in ruin.

About 11 o’clock on the night of June 28th, another fire broke out in a shed in back of the house of a notary, M. Texsier, on d'Aiguillon Street, near d'Youville Street in the Saint-Jean Baptiste section of the city, which is located next to the St.-Roch section that had been destroyed the month before. According to the Quebec Mercury at the time, the fire “arose from the emptying of a can of hot ashes on a dunghill.” This strongly suggests that the fire was not deliberately set.

As before, the weather had been hot and dry that day and a gale wind once again blew over the city. Throughout the night of June 28th, the fire spread out and by morning the entire St.-Jean section, another third of the city, along with 1,300 houses, churches, and schools, had been destroyed. During the night, thousands of people who had fled the St.-Roch fire and had settled temporarily in the St.-Jean section again had to flee.

Joseph Légaré’s painting of this fire, a copy of which is now in the Art Gallery of Ontario, depicts “an apocalyptic vision of orange flames and fiery sparks heat[ing] up the black sky in an earthly inferno,” as art historian Anne Newlands says in her book, Canadian Art: From Its Beginnings to 2000. Many of the terrified residents the night of that fire did indeed see something like an apocalypse, a providential pursuit of the city. Newspapers reported that many people saw terrible angels of flame in the sky above the city that night, which skeptics attributed to reflected mirages playing across the layers of heated air. One month later, practically the entire city stayed awake and on edge during the day and night of July 28th, on the possibility that Quebec would be revisited by a third and final fire. But that did not happen.

In all, the two fires destroyed two-thirds of the city, but I have found no evidence that either of the fires was caused by anything other than accidents.