Trade Networks of the World, c. 1200–1450

Why trade grew, c. 1200–1450

Trade grew for four main reasons:

1. Different resources: China had silk and porcelain, India cotton and pepper, Southeast Asia spices, West Africa gold, the Sahara salt, Central Asia horses.
2. Better technology: the magnetic compass, the astrolabe, larger ships (Chinese junks, Arab dhows), camel saddles, and caravanserais (inns along roads).
3. New ways to pay: paper money and "flying cash" in China, bills of exchange and banking houses in the Islamic world and Europe, and credit between merchant families. These made trade over long distances safer than carrying coins.
4. Protection by strong states: empires kept roads safe and collected taxes from trade. The Mongols' huge empire (13th–14th century) made the Silk Roads especially safe for a while.

Trade also created diasporic communities: merchants who settled in foreign ports, kept their own customs and also learned local ones (for example Arab and Persian traders in South and Southeast Asian ports, and Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia).

The Silk Roads

The Silk Roads were a web of land routes across Central Asia linking East Asia with West Asia and the Mediterranean. Mostly luxury goods travelled, because they were light and valuable: silk, porcelain, paper, spices, jade, horses, glass and silver.

• Goods were passed along in a relay; few traders went the whole way.
• Caravanserais gave travellers food, water, shelter and a market every day's journey or so.
• Trading cities such as Samarkand and Kashgar grew rich.
• The Mongol peace (Pax Mongolica) let travellers like Marco Polo cross Asia.

Exchange in the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean was the busiest trade network of the time, linking East Africa, Arabia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China. It carried more bulk goods than the Silk Roads: cotton cloth, pepper and other spices, rice, timber, ceramics, ivory, gold.

• Sailors timed voyages with the monsoon winds, which blow one way in summer and the other way in winter.
• Port cities grew: Kilwa and Mombasa (Swahili coast), Aden, Calicut, Malacca (Melaka). Malacca controlled a narrow strait and taxed passing ships.
• The Swahili language and culture mixed Bantu African and Arabic influences.
• China's Ming dynasty sent huge fleets under Zheng He (1405–1433) to show power and collect tribute.

Trans-Saharan trade routes

Camel caravans crossed the Sahara between North Africa and West Africa. The camel saddle and the camel's ability to go days without water made this possible.

• Gold went north; salt (vital for food and health) went south, along with cloth, horses and books.
• The Mali Empire grew rich by taxing this trade. Its ruler Mansa Musa made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 and gave away so much gold that its price fell in Cairo.
• Timbuktu became a centre of trade and Islamic learning.
• Elsewhere in Africa: Great Zimbabwe grew from trade in gold and cattle with the Swahili coast; Ethiopia was a Christian kingdom with rock-cut churches; the Swahili city-states were run by merchants.

States around the world, c. 1200–1450

• East Asia: Song China used civil-service exams, Neo-Confucian ideas, fast-ripening Champa rice, the Grand Canal and paper money; it was a world leader in iron and porcelain. Mongols ruled China as the Yuan (1271–1368), then the Ming restored Chinese rule.
• Dar al-Islam (lands under Muslim rule): the Abbasid caliphate weakened; Turkic states such as the Seljuks, Mamluks and the Delhi Sultanate rose. Scholars advanced maths, astronomy and medicine and kept Greek texts.
• South and Southeast Asia: the Delhi Sultanate in the north and Vijayanagara in the south; sea-based Srivijaya and Majapahit, and land-based Khmer (Angkor). Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam spread and mixed.
• The Americas (separate from Afro-Eurasia): the Mexica (Aztec) with tribute and the island city Tenochtitlan; the Inca with roads, terrace farming and the mit'a labour system; the Mississippian mound-builders at Cahokia.
• Europe: feudal kingdoms, the Catholic Church, trade fairs and the Hanseatic League; the Black Death (1347–1351) killed perhaps a third of the population.

Comparing

States everywhere used religion, taxes or tribute, and roads or waterways to hold power. Afro-Eurasian states were linked by trade; American states built large networks of their own without contact with them.

Consequences of connection

Cultural

• Religions spread: Islam to West Africa, East Africa and Southeast Asia; Buddhism across Asia.
• Technology spread: paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass moved west from China; Indian numerals (0–9) reached Europe through Arab scholars.
• Travellers wrote about the world: Ibn Battuta (from North Africa, travelled about 120,000 km), Marco Polo, Margery Kempe.
• Cities like Hangzhou, Baghdad and Cairo became meeting places of many cultures.

Environmental

• Crops moved: Champa rice to China, bananas to Africa, sugar cane and citrus to the Mediterranean.
• Disease moved: the bubonic plague (Black Death) spread along trade routes in the 1340s across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Try it: pick one thing in your kitchen (pepper, sugar, tea, rice) and find out where it first grew and how it reached you. Draw its route as a simple line of dots, with no borders.

Key formulas and definitions

• Key terms: caravanserai = roadside inn for traders
• Monsoon = seasonal wind that reverses between summer and winter
• Diaspora = merchants settled far from home who keep their culture
• Cultural diffusion = spread of ideas, religions and technology
• Price after n stops = starting price × (1 + profit rate)ⁿ
• Bill of exchange / flying cash = paper promises used instead of carrying coins

Worked examples

Common mistakes

• Thinking the Silk Road was one single road. It was a web of many routes.
• Imagining one merchant carried goods all the way from China to Europe. Goods moved by relay.
• Forgetting that ideas, crops and disease travelled along the same routes as goods.
• Assuming the Americas were part of these networks before 1492. They had their own separate networks.