trade routes
trade and empire in west africa
A major turning point in African commercial life occurred with the introduction of the camel to North Africa and the Sahara in the early centuries of the Common Era. This remarkable animal, which could go for ten days without water, finally made possible the long trek across the Sahara. It was camel-owning dwellers of desert oases who initiated regular trans-Saharan commerce by 300 to 400 c.e. What they sought, above all else, was gold, which was found in some abundance in the border areas straddling the grasslands and the forests of West Africa. From its source, it was transported by donkey to transshipment points on the southern edge of the Sahara and then transferred to camels for the long journey north across the desert. African ivory, kola nuts, and slaves were likewise in considerable demand in the desert, the Mediterranean basin, and beyond. In return, the peoples of the Sudan received horses, cloth, dates, various manufactured goods, and especially salt from the rich deposits in the Sahara. Thus the Sahara was no longer simply a barrier to commerce and cross-cultural interaction; it quickly became a major international trade route that fostered new relationships among distant peoples. As in Southeast Asia and East Africa, this long-distance trade across the Sahara provided both incentives and resources for the construction of new and larger political structures. This growing integration with the world of international commerce generated the social complexity and hierarchy characteristic of all civilizations. Royal families and elite classes, mercantile and artisan groups, military and religious officials, free peasants and slaves — all of these were represented in this emerging West African civilization. So too were gender hierarchies, although without the rigidity of more established Eurasian civilizations. Rulers, merchants, and public officials were almost always male, and by 1200 earlier matrilineal descent patterns had been largely replaced by those tracing descent through the male line. Male bards, the repositories for their communities' history, often viewed powerful women as dangerous, not to be trusted, and a seductive distraction for men. But ordinary women were central to agricultural production and weaving; royal women played important political roles in many places.
slavery in africa
As in all civilizations, slavery found a place in West Africa. Early on, most slaves had been women, working as domestic servants and concubines. As West African civilization crystallized, however, male slaves were put to work as state officials, porters, craftsmen, miners harvesting salt from desert deposits, and especially agricultural laborers producing for the royal granaries on large estates or plantations. Most came from non-Islamic and stateless societies farther south. Most of these slaves were used within this emerging West African civilization, but a trade in slaves also developed across the Sahara.
american network
Before the voyages of Columbus, the world of the Americas developed quite separately from that of Afro-Eurasia. Certainly, no sustained interaction between the peoples of the two hemispheres took place. Clearly, direct connections among the various civilizations and cultures of the Americas were less densely woven than in the Afro-Eurasian region. The llama and the potato, both domesticated in the Andes, never reached Mesoamerica; nor did the writing system of the Maya diffuse to Andean civilizations. The Aztecs and the Incas, contemporary civilizations in the fifteenth century, had little if any direct contact with each other. The limits of these interactions owed something to the absence of horses, donkeys, camels, wheeled vehicles, and large oceangoing vessels, all of which facilitated long-distance trade and travel in Afro-Eurasia. Geographic or environmental differences added further obstacles. The narrow bottleneck of Panama, largely covered by dense rain forests, surely inhibited contact between South and North America. Thus nothing equivalent to the long-distance trade of the Silk, Sea, or Sand Roads of the Eastern Hemisphere arose in the Americas, even though local and regional commerce flourished in many places. Nor did distinct cultural traditions spread widely to integrate distant peoples, as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam did in the Afro-Eurasian world.
disease in silk road
Each of the major population centers of the Afro-Eurasian world had developed characteristic disease patterns, mechanisms for dealing with them, and in some cases immunity to them. But when contact among previously isolated human communities occurred, people were exposed to unfamiliar disease for which they had little immunity or few effective methods of coping. Smallpox and measles devastated the populations of the roman Empire and Han dynasty, contributing to their political collapse. Outbreaks of the bubonic plague ravaged the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea as the black rats that carried the disease arrived via the seaborne trade with India, where they originally lived. The era of intensified interaction facilitated the spread of the Black Death-- identified variously with the bubonic plague, anthrax, or a package of epidemic diseases- from China to Europe. Despite the terrible human toll, some among the living benefitted. Tenant farmers and urban workers, in short supply, could demand higher wages or better terms. Some landowning nobles were badly hurt as the price of their grains dropped and the demands of their dependents grew.
silk roads
Eurasia gave rise to one of the world's most extensive and sustained networks of exchange among its diverse peoples. It was known as these, a reference to their most famous product. these land-based trade routes linked pastoral and agricultural peoples as well as the large civilizations on the continent's outer rim. None of its numerous participants knew the full extent of this network's reach, for it was largely a "relay trade" in which goods were passed down the line, changing hands many times before reaching their final destination. Nonetheless, these trade routes provided a certain unity and coherence to Eurasian history alongside the distinct stories of its separate civilizations and peoples
interaction in america
Partly, it was a matter of slowly spreading cultural elements, such as the gradual diffusion of maize from its Mesoamerican place of origin to the southwestern United States and then on to eastern North America as well as to much of South America in the other direction. A game played with rubber balls on an outdoor court has left traces in the Caribbean, Mexico, and northern South America. Construction in the Tantoc region of northeastern Mexico resembled the earlier building styles of Cahokia, indicating the possibility of some interaction between the two regions. The spread of particular pottery styles and architectural conventions likewise suggests at least indirect contact over wide distances. Commerce too played an important role in the making of this "American web." A major North American chiefdom at Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, flourished from about 900 to 1250 at the confluence of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. Another regional commercial network, centered in Mesoamerica, extended north to what is now the southwestern United States and south to Ecuador and Colombia.But the most active and dense networks of communication and exchange in the Americas lay within, rather than between, the regions that housed the two great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere — Mesoamerica and the Andes. During the flourishing of Mesoamerican civilization (200-900 c.e.), both the Maya cities in the Yucatán area of Mexico and Guatemala and the huge city-state of Teotihuacán in central Mexico maintained commercial relationships with one another and throughout the region. In addition to this land-based trade, the Maya conducted a seaborne commerce, using large dugout canoes holding forty to fifty people, along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Although most of this trade was in luxury goods rather than basic necessities, it was critical to upholding the position and privileges of royal and noble families. Items such as cotton clothing, precious jewels, and feathers from particular birds marked the status of elite groups and served to attract followers. Controlling access to such high-prestige goods was an important motive for war among Mesoamerican states. Among the Aztecs of the fifteenth century, professional merchants known as pochteca undertook large-scale trading expeditions both within and well beyond the borders of their empire, sometimes as agents for the state or for members of the nobility, but more often acting on their own as private businessmen. Unlike in the Aztec Empire, in which private traders largely handled the distribution of goods, economic exchange in the Andean Inca Empire during the fifteenth century was a state-run operation, and no merchant group similar to the Aztec pochteca emerged there. Instead, great state storehouses bulged with immense quantities of food, clothing, military supplies, blankets, construction materials, and more, all carefully recorded on quipus (knotted cords used to record numerical data) by a highly trained class of accountants. From these state centers, goods were transported as needed by caravans of human porters and llamas across the numerous roads and bridges of the empire. Totaling some 20,000 miles, Inca roads traversed the coastal plain and the high Andes in a north/south direction, while lateral roads linked these diverse environments and extended into the eastern rain forests and plains as well
southeast asia sea roads
Southeast Asia was situated by geography to play an important role in the evolving world of this trade. Many new societies were stimulated and decisively shaped by their interaction with the sea-based trade. Beyond the exchange of goods, commercial connections served to spread elements of Indian culture across much of Southeast Asia, even as Vietnam was incorporated into the Chinese sphere of influence. Southeast Asian rulers and elites found attractive the Indian belief that leaders were god-kings, perhaps reincarnations of a Buddha or the Hindu deity Shiva, while the idea of karma conveyed legitimacy to the rich and powerful based on their moral behavior in earlier lives. Hinduism too, though not an explicitly missionary religion, found a place in Southeast Asia. It was a matter of voluntary borrowing by independent societies that found Indian traditions and practices useful and were free to adapt those ideas to their own needs and cultures. Traditional religious practices mixed with the imported faiths or existed alongside them with little conflict. And much that was distinctively Southeast Asian persisted despite influences from afar. In family life, for example, most Southeast Asian societies traced an individual's ancestry from both the mother's and father's line in contrast to India and China, where patrilineal descent was practiced. Furthermore, women had fewer restrictions and a greater role in public life than in the more patriarchal civilizations of both East and South Asia
sand roads in west africa
Trans-African trade, like the commerce of the Silk Roads and the Sea Roads, was rooted in environmental variation. The North African coastal regions, long part of Roman or later Arab empires, generated cloth, glassware, weapons, books, and other manufactured goods. The great Sahara held deposits of copper and especially salt, while its oases produced sweet and nutritious dates. While the sparse populations of the desert were largely pastoral and nomadic, farther south lived agricultural peoples who grew a variety of crops, produced their own textiles and metal products, and mined a considerable amount of gold.
cultures in silk road
buddhism spread widely throughout Central and East Asia, owing much to the activities of merchants along this trade route. Buddhism appealed to merchants, who preferred its universal message that of a Brahmin-dominated Hinduism that privileged the higher castes. Indian traders and Buddhist monks brought the new religion to the trans-Eurasian trade routes. Buddhism quickly took hold. By the first century BCE, many of the inhabitants of these towns had converted to Buddhism, and foreign merchant communities soon introduced it to northern China as well. Dependent on long-distance trade, the inhabitants and rulers of those sophisticated and prosperous cities found in Buddhism a link to a large, wealthy, and prestigious civilization of India. Buddhist merchants could earn religious merit by building monasteries and supporting monks. As Buddhism spread across this route, it also changed. The original faith shunned the material world, but Buddhist monasteries in the rich oasis towns found themselves very much involved in secular affairs. Some of them became quite wealthy, receiving gifts from well-to-do merchants, artisans, and local rulers. Doctrines changed as well. It was the more devotional Mahayana form of Buddhism- featuring the Buddha as a deity, numerous bodhisattvas, an emphasis on compassion, and the possibility of earning merit- that flourished on the trade route, rather than the psychological teachings of the original Buddha. Buddhism picked up elements of other cultures while in transit too.
indian ocean trade
sea-based trade routes that connected distant peoples all across the Eastern Hemisphere. This exchange route linked the maritime commerce of the Mediterranean Sea to the much larger and more extensive network of seaborne trade in the Indian Ocean basin. It represented the world's largest sea-based system of communication and exchange, stretching from southern China to eastern Africa. They grew out of the vast environmental and cultural diversities of the region. Transportation costs were lower on the Sea Roads than on the Silk Roads because ships could accommodate larger and heavier cargoes than camels. These routes could eventually carry more bulk goods and products destined for a mass market Monsoons made this trade possible- alternating wind currents that blew predictably northeast during the summer months and southwest during the winter. An understanding of monsoons and a gradually accumulating technology of shipbuilding and oceanic navigation drew on the ingenuity of many peoples. It operated across an "archipelago of towns" (instead of between regions and countries) whose merchants often had more in common with one another than with the people of their own lands.
growth of silk roads
the movement of pastoral people for thousands of years also served to diffuse Indo-European languages, bronze metallurgy, horse-based technologies, and more all across Eurasia. The construction of the second-wave civilizations and their imperial states during the last five centuries BCE added another element to these earlier Eurasian connections. By the early centuries of the Common Era, indirect trading connections, often brokered by pastoral peoples, linked these . Eurasian civilizations in a network of transcontinental exchange. These networks prospered most when large and powerful states provided security for merchants and travelers. Such conditions prevailed during the second wave era when the Roman and Chinese empires anchored long-distance commerce at the western and eastern ends of Eurasia. Trade flourished again during the 7th and 8th centuries CE as the Byzantine Empire, the Abbasid dynasty, and Tangy dynasty China created an almost continuous belt of strong states across Eurasia. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongol Empire briefly encompassed almost the entire route of this trade in a single state, giving a renewed vitality to long-distance trade. Over many centuries, various technological innovations such as yokes, saddles, and stirrups, made the use of camels, horses, and oxen more effective means of transportation across the vast distances of the Silk Roads.
sand roads
this long-distance trade linked North Africa, and the Mediterranean world with the land and peoples of interior West Africa. These commercial networks had a transforming impact, stimulating and enriching West Africa civilization and connecting it to larger patterns of world history during the third-wave era.
goods in silk road
usually carried in large camel caravans that traversed the harsh and dangerous steppes, deserts, and oases of Central Asia. Most of these were luxury products, destined for an elite and wealthy market, rather than staple goods, for only readily moved commodities of great value could compensate for the high costs of transportation across such long and forbidding distances. Of all the luxury goods, it was silk that came to symbolize this Eurasian network of exchange. China: silk, bamboo, mirrors, gunpowder, paper, rhubarb, ginger, lacquerware, chrysanthemums, Siberia and Central Asia: furs, walrus tusks, amber, livestock, horses, falcons, hides, copper vessels, tents, saddles, slaves. India: cotton textiles, herbal medicine, precious stones, spices, pepper, pearls, ebony. Middle East: dates, nuts, dried fruit, dyes, lapis lazuli, swords. Mediterranean basin: gold coins, glassware, glazes, grapevines, jewelry, artworks, perfume, wool and linen textiles, olive oil
growth of indian ocean trade
various technological innovations also facilitated indian ocean trade- improvement in sails, new kinds of ships called junks with sternpost rudders and keels for greater stability, new means of calculating latitude such as the astrolabe, and evolving version of the magnetic needle or compass. The fulcrum of this growing commercial network lay in India itself. Its ports bulged with goods from both west and east. Two major processes changed the landscape of the Afro-Eurasian world, and wove the web of this trade even more densely than before. One was the economic and political revival of China (during tang and song). The impressive growth of the chinese economy sent chinese products pouring into the circuits of this trade, while providing a vast and attractive market for indian and southeast asian goods. Chinese technological innovations, such as larger ships and the magnetic compass, likewise added to the momentum of commercial growth. The other was the sudden rise of Islam and its spread to much of the Afro-Eurasian world. Islam was friendly to commercial life. Muslim merchants and sailors, as well as Jews and Christians living within the Islamic world, established communities of traders from East Africa to the south China coast. The expansion of Islam gave rise to an international maritime culture by 1000, shared by individuals living in the widely separated ports around this trade. The immense prestige, power, and prosperity of the Islamic world stimulated widespread conversion, which in turn facilitated commercial transactions.
east africa sea roads
what stimulated the growth of Swahili cities was the far more extensive commercial life of the western Indian Ocean following the rise of Islam. As in Southeast Asia, local people and aspiring rulers found opportunity for wealth and power in the growing demand for East African products associated with an expanding Indian Ocean commerce. Gold, ivory, quartz, leopard skins, and sometimes slaves acquired from interior societies, as well as iron and processed timber manufactured along the coast, found a ready market in Arabia, Persia, India, and beyond. Swahili cities were commercial centers that accumulated goods from the interior and exchanged them for the products of distant civilizations, such as Chinese porcelain and silk, Persian rugs, and Indian cottons. While the transoceanic journeys occurred largely in Arab vessels, Swahili craft navigated the coastal waterways, concentrating goods for shipment abroad. This long- distance trade generated class-stratified urban societies with sharp distinctions between a mercantile elite and commoners. Culturally as well as economically, Swahili civilization participated in the larger Indian Ocean world. Arab, Indian, and Persian merchants were welcome visitors, and some settled permanently. Swahili civilization rapidly became Islamic. Introduced by Arab traders, Islam was voluntarily and widely adopted within the Swahili world. Like Buddhism in Southeast Asia, Islam linked Swahili cities to the larger Indian Ocean world, and these East African cities were soon dotted with substantial mosques.
