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Seminar on Expansion of Trade and Materials. The Silk Road.
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The Silk Road • The Silk Road or Silk Route is a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa. • Extending 4,000 miles the Silk Road gests its name from the lucrative Chinese silk trade and began during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE)
Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe and Arabia. • Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the "Black Death"), also traveled along the Silk Routes. • The main traders during Antiquity were the Indian and Bactrian traders, then from the 5th to the 8th century the Sogdian traders, then afterward the Arab and Persian traders.
Roman Empire • Soon after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, regular communications and trade between China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. • The Greco-Roman trade with India started in 130 BCE kept on increasing. • The Romans had the aim of regularizing contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome's intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organized, and protected by the 'Great Powers.' Intense trade with the Roman Empire soon followed, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees. • The Roman Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the importation of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral. Roman Empire, and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, crumbled in the West around the 5th century.
The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1207 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road (via Karakorum). • It also brought an end to the Islamic Caliphate's monopoly over world trade. Because the Mongols had dominated the trade routes, it allowed more trade to come in and out of the region. • Merchandise that did not seem valuable to the Mongols was often seen as very valuable by the west. As a result, the Mongols received in return a large amount of luxurious goods from the West. However, they never abandoned their nomadic lifestyle. • The 13th century also saw attempts at a Franco-Mongol alliance, with exchange of ambassadors and (failed) attempts at military collaboration in the Holy Land during the later Crusades, though eventually the Mongols in the Ilkhanate, after they had destroyed the Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties, eventually themselves converted to Islam, and signed the 1323 Treaty of Aleppo with the surviving Muslim power, the Egyptian Mamluks. • Some research studies indicate that the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the late 1340s, may have reached from Central Asia (or China) to Europe along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire.
The fragmentation of the Mongol Empire loosened the political, cultural and economic unity of the Silk Road. Turkmeni marching lords seized land around the western part of the Silk Road, belonging to the decaying Byzantine Empire. After the Mongol Empire, the great political powers along the Silk Road became economically and culturally separated. Accompanying the crystallization of regional states was the decline of nomad power, partly due to the devastation of the Black Death and partly due to the encroachment of sedentary civilizations equipped with gunpowder. • Gunpowder and early modernity in Europe led to the integration of territorial states and increasing mercantilism. Meanwhile on the Silk Road, gunpowder and early modernity had the opposite impact: the level of integration of the Mongol Empire could not be maintained, and trade declined (though partly due to an increase in European maritime exchanges). • The Silk Road stopped serving as a shipping route for silk about 1453 with the Ottoman supremacy at Constantinople. Ottoman rulers of the day were anti-western, countering the crusades, and aware of the loss of Andalusia in the west, so expressed their displeasure by embargoing trade with the west.
East India Trading Company • The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, tea and opium. The Company was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600,making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Shares of the company were owned by wealthy merchants and aristocrats. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The Company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. • At this time, Britain and France became bitter rivals. Frequent skirmishes between them took place for control of colonial possessions. In 1742, fearing the monetary consequences of a war, the British government agreed to extend the deadline for the licensed exclusive trade by the Company in India until 1783, in return for a further loan of £1 million. Between 1756 and 1763, the Seven Years' War diverted the state's attention towards consolidation and defense of its territorial possessions in Europe and its colonies in North America.
In contrast, the Company, fresh from a colossal victory, and with the backing of a disciplined and experienced army, was able to assert its interests in the Carnatic region from its base at Madras and in Bengal from Calcutta, without facing any further obstacles from other colonial powers.
British Mercantilism • Mercantilism is the economic doctrine that government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the military security of the country. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries. • With respect to its colonies, British mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants – and kept others out – by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling – which became a favorite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The government spent much of its revenue on a superb Royal Navy, which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the colonies of the other empires, and sometimes seized them.
Over all, however, mercantilist policies had a positive impact on Britain helping turn it into the world's dominant trader, and an international superpower. One domestic policy that had a lasting impact was the conversion of "waste lands" to agricultural use. Mercantilists felt that to maximize a nation's power all land and resources had to be used to their utmost, and this era thus saw projects like the draining of The Fens. • Adam Smith and David Hume were the founding fathers of anti-mercantilist thought. A number of scholars found important flaws with mercantilism long before Adam Smith developed an ideology that could fully replace it. Critics like Hume, Dudley North, and John Locke undermined much of mercantilism, and it steadily lost favor during the 18th century. In 1690, John Locke argued that prices vary in proportion to the quantity of money. Locke's Second Treatise also points towards the heart of the anti-mercantilist critique: that the wealth of the world is not fixed, but is created by human labor (represented embryonically by Locke's labor theory of value). Mercantilists failed to understand the notions of absolute advantage and comparative advantage (although this idea was only fully fleshed out in 1817 by David Ricardo) and the benefits of trade.
In specific instances, protectionist mercantilist policies also had an important and positive impact on the state that enacted them. Adam Smith himself, for instance, praised the Navigation Acts as they greatly expanded the British merchant fleet, and played a central role in turning Britain into the naval and economic superpower from the 18th Century onward.
As a general term, triangular trade is a system involving goods from three locations, each of which has a demand in one of the others. Goods from location 1 are transported to location 2, where they are traded for local goods; the goods from location 2 are transported to location 3, where they are traded for local goods; then the goods from location 3 are transported to location 1, where they are traded for local goods. The trade goes on and on, to the benefit of the traders, the shippers, and, hopefully, the people in the locations involved. • As a specific term, the Triangular Trade was a system in which African slaves were traded for agricultural produce, which was traded for New World manufactured goods, which was traded for European manufactured goods, which was traded for slaves. • Typically, the slaves were taken by ship from Africa to the Caribbean, where they were traded for molasses. This was taken to New England and traded for rum and ironware. These were taken to Britain and traded for weapons, beads, copper, cloth, and whatever else traders though might appeal to people who sold slaves in Africa. And these were traded for more slaves. • In the triangular trade route, there were 3 main points of trading- Africa, Europe, and America. Manufactured goods went from Europe to Africa, slaves went from Africa to the Americas, and luxury goods from the Americas to Europe.
Legacy of Trade • It is important to note that the triangle trade was not an “official” or rigid system of trade, but instead a name that has been given to this triangular route of trade that existed between these three places across the Atlantic. Further, other triangle-shaped trade routes existed at this time. However, when individuals speak of the triangle trade, they are typically referring to this system. • This system created large-scale system of slavery that plagued the colonies in the century following the American Revolution. Leading to the creation of social stigmata, stagnation, and an inability to reconcile racial relations. • However, the transition of goods between the Colonies and Great Britain allowed for the development of Industry in both countries. This industrial advancement would spurn the revolution in both technology and development following the revolution.
