Everything you need to understand or teach Trader to the Stars by Poul Anderson.
Trader to the Stars opens with remarks by "Le Matelot" (The Sailor), who declares in part: "Because today we are sailing out among the stars, we are more akin to Europeans overrunning America or Greeks colonizing the Mediterranean littoral than to our ancestors of only a few generations ago. We, too, are discoverers, pioneers, traders, missionaries, composers of epic and saga."
This represents the principal theme of the book: that those who will...