The Silk Roads

Since the earliest humans migrated out of Africa, communities have maintained trade links with their neighbors and built new relationships across great distances. As transregional interactions increased over the last few thousand years, so did the transformation of human societies. The need for trade between communities comes from the uneven distribution of resources across the earth’s surface.

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. While commerce along the routes was indirect, and few distant civilizations directly interacted, these indirect trading systems were the primary connectors between societies spread across Eurasia.

What Were the Silk Roads?

The Silk Roads were a network of land-based trade routes that connected societies across Eastern and Western Eurasia. The following were significant features of the Silk Roads.

The routes connected nomadic pastoral peoples in Central Asia with agricultural civilizations across Eurasia.
The routes shifted throughout history as populations moved, and areas became more or less stable for trade to move across.
The routes were a relay trading system. Goods people did not travel the whole length of the trading network but only went partway before selling their goods to the next merchant who would move them further.
Trade mainly was in luxury goods meant for consumption by elite classes.
Transportation prices were high due to limits on how much trade volume animals could carry.
Culture, disease, ideas, and technology also moved along the routes.

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 generally 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, usually using camels to move their goods.

What Led to the Creation of the Silk Roads?

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

Eurasia consists of inner and outer zones that contain two very different environments. Outer Eurasia, Eastern China, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean regions exist within warm climates with enough annual rainfall to make agriculture possible. The environment of inner Eurasia is dry and experiences cold winters. As a result, agriculture was very difficult within the region. Many societies evolved to be pastoralists that were nomadic or semi-nomadic. People within this region obtained needed goods by trading with or raiding their agricultural neighbors in outer Eurasia. Products exchanged for agricultural goods by pastoral people included hides, furs, livestock, and wool.

Trade along the Silk Roads flourished when powerful states provided stable and safe environments for merchants to do business. Trade flourished in the 8th -11th centuries under the mighty Byzantine Empire, Abbasid Empire, and China’s Tang and Song dynasties.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongol Empire revitalized trade across the network as their territory grew to encompass nearly the whole Silk Roads trading network.

As states developed, their economies increasingly commercialized, leading to an increased surplus of goods. Long-distance trade proved the opportunity for eliminating excess goods that societies created. By the 13th century, commercialized economies had developed in China, India, and the Middle East. The commercialization of China, which had begun during the Tang dynasty and continued during the Song dynasty, was the Silk Road’s economic engine. With its large urban centers, the Chinese government promoted commerce to generate tax revenue and supply urban citizens’ needs.

The advent of new commercial technologies helped facilitate trade by making it easier for merchants and traders to move and sell their products.

Caravanserai

Caravanserais were roadside inns traveling merchants could stop, rest, relax, and resupply before moving further down the trading network. The buildings were usually four-sided and built around a courtyard lined with stalls to hold merchants, animals, and goods. Caravanserais developed throughout Afro-Eurasia.

Bills of exchange/credit

Bills of exchange and credit were documents that allowed merchants to deposit money in one place, receive a piece of paper verifying the deposit, and then use that piece of paper to pay for goods or withdraw the money in another location. China was one of the earliest adopters of this practice. In the 9th century, China developed a cash transfer system known as flying cash. Flying cash became an early form of paper currency when merchants began exchanging their deposit papers for goods. The merchant who obtained the flying cash paper would then swap the deposit paper for physical money. Early versions of bills of exchange also existed in India and the Islamic world.

Banking houses

Different forms of proto-banking services have been around for thousands of years. However, it was not until around the 11th century that banking services began to take on a recognizable format.

During the Song dynasty period in China, Chinese financial institutions took deposits, issued bills of exchange and credit, made loans, exchanged money, and issued currency.
By the height of Abbasid power in the 12th and 13th centuries, early banking and banking services began to develop in the Islamic world.
Modern banking began developing in Southern Europe in the Italian kingdoms during the 13th century. In Italy, banking started by providing loans to farmers and merchants to be paid back after selling their crops or products. Within a few hundred years, banks moved from just making loans to taking cash deposits and closing out transactions by transferring money between merchant accounts either at their bank or other banks.
By the 15th and 16th centuries, banking services in Italy had become some of the most advanced anywhere in the world. European global conquests that started in the late 15th century would not have been possible without the wealth created by Europe’s emerging banking systems.

Paper money

For much of history, trade and exchange happened through barter. When currency developed, many items, such as metal coins and many different objects, such as shells, were used as currency. The Chinese in the 11th century created the first paper money, Jiaozi. Paper money was simpler and cheaper to make, increasing the availability of funds within economies. More currency in circulation made commercial transactions easier to process, increasing the number of business transactions that could take place.

Impacts of Trade Along the Silk Roads

The lives of agriculture 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 their production of cotton and silk textiles.

The power and wealth of the merchant class increased. Over time, the power of the merchant class challenged the power of the landed aristocracy. Despite traditional Confucian views that reviled merchants as parasites that gained off others' hard work, the Chinese merchant class gained great wealth. In 12th century Persia, the merchant Ramisht accumulated a fortune worth millions of dollars. He used some of his wealth to engage in philanthropic activities, including building a hospice in Mecca and covering the giant Kaaba (the holiest site in Islam) with Chinese silk.

Historical trend: The landed aristocracy will continue to lose power as societies commercialize and merchant wealth surpasses wealth produced f

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

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

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

Ideas and philosophies, such as Buddhism and Islam, spread from their cultural hearths throughout new regions.

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.

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

Consumption patterns changed as new items and products became available first to elite consumers and later to lower classes.

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. It was Marco Polo who first introduced the concept of paper money to Europe.