TRADE ROUTE

A 'trade route' is the sequence of pathways and stopping places used for the commercial transport of cargo. Trade routes can be land or water-based.
Trade routes have existed since the begining of civilization and — due to their importance — have often influenced the political policies of the regions involved.

Contents

Important trade routes

Early trade

Incense Route

Silk Route

Spice Trade

King's Highway

Via Maris

Amber Road

Volga trade route

Significance of trade routes

Cultural

Strategic

Notes

References

External links

Important trade routes

Early trade

Anatolia lay on the land routes to Europe and the sea route from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.Stearns 2001: 37 Records from the 19th century BCE attest to the existance of an Assyrian merchant colony at Kanesh in Cappadocia. The domestication of camel allowed Arabian nomads to control long distance trade in spices and silk from the Far East.^[1] The Egyptians had traded in the Red sea, importing spices from the "Land of Punt" and from Arabia.^[2]
The period from 1500 BCE-1 CE saw western Asian, Mediterranean, Chinese and Indian societies develop transportation networks.Denemark 200: 274 The main networks included The Royal Road of Persia, the Grand Trunk Road of India, the Yellow river system of China, the Incense Road of Arabia and, the Phoenician sea lanes of the Mediterranean.

Incense Route

Main articles: Incense route

The Incense Route served as a channel for trading of Indian, Arabian and East Asian goods. Traders of the Gold and Incense Road The incense trade flourished from South Arabia to the Mediterranean between roughly the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Incense Route - Desert Cities in the Negev This trade was crucial to the economy of Yemen and the frankincense and myrrh trees were seen as a source of wealth by the its rulers.^[3]
According to Kenneth Anderson Kitchen (1994) Ptolemy II Philadelphus may have forged an alliance with the Lihyanites in order to secure the incense route at Dedan, thereby rerouting the incense trade from Dedan to the coast along the Red Sea to Egypt.^[4] I. E. S. Edwards connects the Syro-Ephraimite War to the desire of the Israelites and the Aramaeans to control the northern end of the Incence route, which ran up from Southern Arabia and could be tapped by commanding Transjordan.^[5]

Tiglath-Pileser III attacked Gaza in order to control trade along the Incense Route.^[6]

Gerrha controlled the Incense trade routes across Arabia to the Mediterranean and exercised control over the trading of aromatics to Babylon in the 1st century BC.^[7] The Nabateans exercised control over the routes along the Incense Route.Eckenstein 2005: 86 In order to release the Incense Route from the Nabatean control military expeditions were undertaken, without success, by Antigonus Cyclops, emperor of Syria and Palestine. The Nabatean control over trade increased and spread in many directions.
The replacement of Greece by the Roman empire as the administrator of the Mediterranean basin led to the resumption of direct trade with the east and the elimination of the taxes extracted previously by the middlemen of the south.Lach 1994: 13 The Romans sacked Ptolemaic Egypt and controlled trade with India.^[8] The monopoly of the middlemen weakened with the development of monsoon trade, forcing the Parthian and Arabian middlemen to adjust their prices so as to compete on the Roman market with the goods now being bought in by a direct sea route to India. Indian ships sailed to Egypt as the maritime routes of Southern Asia were not under the control of a single power.

Silk Route

The trading routes along the Silk Road

Main articles: Silk Route

The Silk Route connected — commercially and culturally — the civilizations of Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China.
The goods traded along the Silk Route included silk, lapis lazuli, Wine, woven goods, metalwork, glassware, salt, ceramics, wool rugs, textiles, dates, crystal, tea, saffron, horses, lapdogs, jasmine, sandalwood, brassware, camels, almonds, jade, oil, amber, gold silver, sugar, hemp and cotton.^[9]
Buddhism was transmitted from India to various other countries occurred along the Silk Road. The Silk Route additionally was a pathway for combining artistic influences from Central Asia, Greece, Persia, India and China to give rise to unique schools of art such as the Greco-Buddhist school.

Spice Trade

This figure illustrates the path of Vasco da Gama heading for the first time to India (black) as well as the trips of Pêro da Covilhã (orange) and Afonso de Paiva (blue). The path common to both is the green line.

Main articles: Spice trade

The Spice Trade revolved around trading of spices from India and the Moluccas, with prominent trading partners including Europe, Arabia, Persia, China and Africa. During the middle ages, explorers Pero da Covilha and Vasco da Gama charted out sea routes to India thereby ushering an age of European colonialism.
The Spice Trade was chiefly centered around the sea routes, and made use of ports such as Muziris, Puri, Alexandria, Damietta, Aden, Siraf, Calicut, Malabar, Macao, Banda, Surat, Penang, Sumatra, Grenada and later stretching to Japan and Salem, Massachusetts. The goods traded along the Spice Route included pepper, mace, nutmeg, sandalwood and clove. Additionally, the early transpeninsular routeway was a part of the Spice Route in the Malay Peninsula.

King's Highway

Main articles: King's Highway (ancient)

The King’s Highway stretched from Egypt to Aqaba and led to Damascus to the north. The highway connected Edom, Moab, Ammon, Heliopolis, Mitla Pass, Eilat, Aqaba, Aravah, Petra, Ma'an, Sela, Shaubak, Gerasa, Bozrah, Damascus and Tadmor, ending at Resafa on Euphrates.
The Israelites and the Nabateans exercised control over this route. The King's Highway was also a pilgrimage route for both the Christians and the Muslims.

Via Maris

Main articles: Via Maris

Via Maris, literally the ''Way of the Sea,'' connected Egypt with the ancient Middle East. It was one of the main trade routes connecting Egypt to the Middle East, the other being King's Highway. The Via Maris was also connected to the King's Highway to as far as the Euphrates River.

Amber Road

Main articles: Amber Road

The Amber Road, consisting of waterways and ancient highways, connected Europe to Asia and the Mediterranean.

Map showing the major Varangian trade routes: the Volga trade route (in red) and the Trade Route from the Varangians to the Greeks (in purple). Other trade routes of the 8th-11th centuries shown in orange.

The main component of trade along this route was amber, used as a decorative and ornamental material. Several amber finding locations were also located strategically along the trade route.

Volga trade route

Main articles: Volga trade route

The Volga trade route connected Northern Europe with Northwestern Russia via the Caspian Sea. The merchants from the Islamic world also traded with the Rus using this route.
As a series of land and sea routes, this route was established by the Norsemen in the 9th century. Both the Sassanid and the Arabs had traded along this route, and the route finds mention in the works of the Persian geographer ibn Rustah.
This route was soon overshadowed by the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, which ran down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and the Byzantine Empire.

Significance of trade routes

Cultural

The activities along trade routes led to a complex series of cultural exchanges — notably involving religion and art — between various civilizations.
According to Philip D. Curtin (1984):^[10]

Successive religious changes in Southeast Asia also followed from the work of later commercial missionaries. Just as Mahayana Buddhism spread along the trade routes of Central Asia from India to China and Japan, Hinayana Buddhism was to spread, mainly from Ceylon, to become the dominant religion of Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. Even later, the conversion to Islam of Malaya, Indonesia, and the Southern Philippines was also the work of people who came with a Muslim trade diaspora.

Greek scroll supported by Indian Yakshas, Amaravati, 3rd century CE.

The introduction of Buddhism from North east India through the Silk Route revolutionized art and thought throughout the Far East. Buddhist missionaries traveled between China, Central Asia and India to propogate Buddhism.
The penetration of Buddhism in China gave rise to a unique school of art known as Serindian art, literally ''Seres'' (China) and India. Another artistic revolution to have occurred along the Silk route was the founding of the Greco-Buddhist school of art.
Hindu priests traveled along trade routes and introduced their religion, rituals, mythology, script, literature and language to Southeast Asia.^[11] Jesuit missionaries, such as St. Francis Xavier, followed the Portuguese to spread Roman Catholic Christianity to Asia.

Strategic

The economic position of a trade route attaches strategic importance to the protection of commercial activities by diplomatic and military means. Historically, trade routes have attracted the attention of invaders seeking to benefit from the prosperity of the route.
Due the Turkish hold on the Levant during the second half of the fifteenth century the traditional Spice Route shifted from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.Tarling 1999: 10 This led to the search for a new route to Asian Spice Trade pioneered by Vasco Da Gama's voyage to the west coast of India in 1498. In 1504, Manuel I of Portugal decreed a restriction on leaking of information with regard to the new discovery of Asian trade routes, not a single book on the subject was published during the first fifty years of the sixteenth century a a result.
According to Nicholas Tarling (1999):

Affonso de Albuquerque became the architect of the Portugese Asian empire, or the ''Estado da India'', with its administrative centre at Goa. It was he who conceived of strategy to control the vital nodes of the Spice Route. This meant seizing Melaka, the principal collecting port of cloves, nutmeg, mace, and Southeast Asian pepper; controlling maritime traffic along the west coast of India; capturing Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf; and conquering Aden, which was strategically located at the entrance to the Red Sea. This grand plan nearly succeeded; the island of Goa fell in 1510, to be followed by Maleka if 1511 and Hormuz in 1515. Only Aden successfully resisted a Portugese attack in 1513 and remained outside direct Portugese control.

The growing competition among the nations involved in trade along the Spice Route led to armed conflicts for control of the spice trade. In 1641, Portuguese Molucca was captured by the Dutch.Donkin 2003: 169 This capture saw concentrated plantation on cloves and nutmegs and then

SMS Dresden passing through the Kiel Canal

— using the Treaty of Batavia (1652) — an attempt to destroy trees on all other islands. This was done to keep the supply in check in order to control the important markets of spices.
The seventeenth century saw military disturbances around the Ottawa river trade route.^[12] During the late eighteenth century, the French built military forts at strategic locations along the main trade routes of Canada.Easterbrook 1988: 127 These forts checked the British advances, served as trading posts which included the native Americans in fur trade and acted as communications posts.
During the First World War, Germany planned to attack the trade route between Trinidad and Barbados by entering the South America.Halpern 1994: 79 German ships ''SMS Karlsruhe'' and ''SMS Emden'' attacked allied trade, despite British and French preventive measures. Another German ship ''SMS Dresden'' attacked the South American trade, sinking two ships before being assigned to naval operations in the Pacific theater.

Notes

1. Stearns 2001: 41
2. Rawlinson 2001: 11-12
3. Glasse 2001: 59
4. Kitchen 1994: 46
5. Edwards 1969: 329
6. Edwards 1969: 330
7. Larsen 1983: 56
8. Shaw 2003: 426
9. [1]
10. Curtin 1984: 103
11. Elisseeff 2000: 273
12. Easterbrook 1988: 75

References

★ The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged, , Peter N., Stearns, Houghton Mifflin Company, ,

★ Intercourse Between India and the Western World: From the Earliest Times of the Fall of Rome, , Hugh George, Rawlinson, Asian Educational Services, ,

★ Life and Land Use on the Bahrain Islands: The Geoarcheology of an Ancient Society, , Curtis, Larsen, University of Chicago Press, ,

★ Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam, , Patricia, Crone, Gorgias Press LLC, ,

★ Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, , Philip D., Curtin, Cambridge University Press, ,

★ The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce, , Vadime, Elisseeff, Berghahn Books, ,

★ The Cambridge Ancient History, , I. E. S., Edwards, Cambridge University Press, ,

★ The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, , Ian, Shaw, Oxford University Press, ,

★ The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, , Nicholas, Tarling, Cambridge University Press, ,

★ Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans, , Robin A., Donkin, Diane Publishing Company, ,

★ Canadian Economic History, , William Thomas, Easterbrook, University of Toronto Press, ,

★ A Naval History of World War I, , Paul G., Halpern, Routledge, ,

★ World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change, , Robert Allen, Denemark, Routledge, ,

★ The Cambridge Ancient History, , I. E. S., Edwards, Cambridge University Press, ,

★ Documentation for Ancient Arabia, , Kenneth Anderson, Kitchen, Liverpool University Press, ,

★ The New Encyclopedia of Islam, , Cyril, Glasse, Rowman Altamira, ,

★ A History of Sinai, , Lina, Eckenstein, Adamant Media Corporation, ,

★ The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, , Ian, Shaw, Oxford University Press, ,

★ Asia in the Making of Europe: The Century of Discovery. Book 1., , Donald Frederick, Lach, University of Chicago Press, ,

★ The Indian Ocean in World History, , Milo, Kearney, Routledge, ,

External links

★ Old World Traditional Trade Routes (OWTRAD) Project.

★ Trade Routes: The Growth of Global Trade.

★ The obsidian trade in the Near East, 14,000 to 6500 BC. ArchAtlas, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2003.