The Silk Roads

cash (2)

AP Theme

Economic Systems

Learning Objective 2.1A

Explain the causes and effects of growth of networks of exchange after 1200.

Historical Development 1

The Silk Roads were the primary land trade and communication networks that connected Eastern and Western Eurasia.

Historical Development 2

Improved commercial practices and technologies led to an increased volume of trade and expanded the geographical range of the Silk Roads.

Historical Development 3

The Silk Roads led to to the growth in power of trading cities and the diffusion of goods, knowledge, and technology across Afro-Eurasia.

The Silk Roads linked societies across Eurasia. The trade was indirect and worked as a relay system.

The Silk Roads arose from various causes, including a growing number of elites within growing civilizations and empires with excess labor to produce goods and extra wealth elites used to buy foreign goods. New commercial practices and technologies promoted this new trade.

The Silk Roads spread ideas, belief systems, technologies, foods, animals, and diseases between civilizations. This exchange led to the rise of powerful civilizations and empires and the end of others.

Contents

The Silk Roads Were Crucial Trades Routes Across Eurasia

Main idea

The Silk Roads linked societies across Eurasia. The trade was indirect and worked as a relay system.

The Silk Roads were one of the major global trade networks. By 1200, merchants had been traveling along the Silk Roads for 1300 years. The name of the trade routes refers to the trade of Chinese silk; however, silk was only one of many products that moved within the Silk Road network.

What were the Silk Roads?

The Silk Roads were land-based trade routes that connected societies across Eastern and Western Eurasia.

Significant features of the Silk Roads

Connected nomadic pastoral peoples in Central Asia with agricultural civilizations in East, South, and Central Asia

Shifted throughout history as populations moved and areas became either safer or more dangerous for merchants

A relay trading system (see below)

Moved mostly luxury goods meant for consumption by elite classes

Also spread culture, disease, ideas, and technology

Relay Trade

The Silk Roads was a relay trade network. Like in a relay race where no one person runs the entire course length, relay traders do not travel the whole distance of trade routes. Trade was indirect. Many civilizations that bought and sold each other’s goods did not directly interact. Instead, they move goods between a series of relay stations within a region. Merchants operated between the same relay stations within areas where they knew the people and landscape. 

  • When merchants arrived at a large relay station, they would sell their goods to the next merchant, who would then carry them to the next relay station, where the process would begin again. 
  • Merchants moved between relay stations in caravans of multiple traders, using camels to move their goods.

Causes of Silk Roads trade

Main idea

The Silk Roads arose from various causes, including a growing number of elites within growing civilizations and empires with excess labor to produce goods and extra wealth elites used to buy foreign goods. New commercial practices and technologies promoted this new trade.

The growth of the Silk Roads resulted from a combination of political, economic, social, and environmental factors that created an environment in which trade could thrive.

The Effects of the Silk Roads

Main idea

The Silk Roads spread ideas, belief systems, technologies, foods, animals, and diseases between civilizations. This exchange led to the rise of powerful civilizations and empires and the end of others.

The Silk Roads impacted the development of societies across Afro-Eurasia.

Effect 1: The production of goods expanded

The lives of agricultural peasants and artisans changed as they modified their economic production to produce trade and export goods. For example, in China's Yangzi River delta, many peasants switched from growing food crops to producing silk, paper, porcelain, and iron tools. In Persia and India, artisans expanded the production of cotton and silk textiles.

Effect 2: Merchants' wealth and status increased

The power and wealth of the merchant class increased. Over time, in many societies worldwide, wealthy merchants replaced traditional elites, like large landowners.

Effect 3: Decreased economic self-sufficiency

Increased trade encouraged increasing economic specialization (expertise in producing a specific good) and decreased self-sufficiency as societies bought increasing amounts of goods outside their borders.

Effect 4: Increased urbanization

Urbanization increased as economies commercialized, and growing numbers of people lived in cities producing products, engaging in commerce, or providing services.

Effect 5: The spread of revolutionary technologies

New technologies like gunpowder, paper, and the printing press changed civilizations as they diffused from the areas of their invention worldwide.

Effect 6: The spread of ideas and belief systems

Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity diffused widely along the routes. Linguistic, mathematical, and scientific concepts also moved between civilizations.

Effect 7: The spread of crops and animals

Crops and animals expanded into new locations. For example, camels, which are native to Central Asia, spread with traders to the desserts of the Middle East and North Africa. Grapes moved from the Mediterranean west to China.

Effect 8: The spread of disease

Diseases like the plague spread across regions killing millions in their path.

Effect 9: Increased interactions between distant peoples

Increasing numbers of people and groups interacted. The Italian merchant, explorer, and writer Marco Polo traveled through Asia along the Silk Roads between 1271 and 1295. When Marco Polo returned to Europe, Rustichello de Pisa wrote down his stories in The Travels of Marco Polo, which introduced Europe to concepts like paper money.