Relationship between commerce and culture in Early Modern Europe

This is the essay question: "Consider the relationships between commerce and culture in any two parts of Europe during the early modern period. How does the pattern of trade help to account for distinctive examples of cultural production in your two examples?"

The "early modern period" refers to the late 15th century to the late 18th century.

That's a very interesting question. What sort of help are you seeking? Have you settled in on which areas you will focus? Either way, you can use a compare-contrast style of organization. Or, you could use both places as case examples of the same over-arching theme. But you can't do anything until you choose the places and then do some brainstorming (or research, depending on how much you already know) to answer the question for each and then see how the two relate to one another.

I'm going to focus on the Netherlands and Italy. They were both booming centers of commerce and they both had their own Rennaissance.

Good! There are plenty of commonalities between those places at that time, although they took very different paths thereafter. What will be your thesis? Do you believe that commerce stimulated Renaissance in both cases? If so, how? Can we see the influence of commerce in the cultural productions of those times? And did culture then circle around and influence commerce? Why or why not?

Do some research and try to come up with a first draft, even if you just write out whatever you can think of without too much attempt at structuring your ideas. It will be much easier to help you once we can see where your own thoughts are leading you.