Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, & Trans-Saharan Routes [AP World History Review]—Unit 2 Topics 1, 3, 4

Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History. In this video we’re going to be talking about trade routes throughout Afro-Eurasia in the period 1200-1450. [snore] I know.

I heard it come out of my own mouth. But trust me, the major trade routes during this time, which is to say the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean trade, and the Trans-Saharan routes have arguably more to do with the shaping of old cultures and the beginnings of new cultures than maybe anything else during this period. So if you’re ready, let’s get to it.

In this video we’re going to be talking about three major trading routes across Afro-Eurasia, two land-based and one sea-based. Let’s start with the most famous of all the trading routes, the land-based Silk Roads. The Silk Roads, which were named after their most famous commodity, stretched all the way from China to Europe and into North Africa.

Now the Silk Roads had been there since way before 1200, but they worked best as a conduit of trade when large empires controlled all the land across which they stretched. For example, if we go all the way back to the 200s we can see the Roman empire and Han China engaging in a robust trading relationship. And that’s because between the two empires they basically had all the land covered within their empires that the Silk Roads were on.

And later when our friends the Mongols took over everything in the known world, those trade routes flourished. During prosperous times a vast array of goods wound their way across the continent along these routes usually packed into the saddle bags of a camel caravan. However, most of those goods were luxury goods since it cost so much to transport those items over such a long distance.

The king of these luxuries was Chinese silk. It originated in China around 3000 BCE. And once people figured out how to make clothes out of it, the demand for silk spiked across the upper classes because it was considered a status symbol (which of course is why I wore silk shirts in elementary school, you know, for the status).

Okay, so that’s an example of the kinds of goods that traveled across the Silk Roads, but arguably the exchange of goods was the least significant effect of trade. What do I mean? Well, the Silk Roads were also a conduit for culture.

Buddhism, for example, spread widely throughout central and East Asia largely because of the Buddhist merchants who had carried it there. And even MORE significant, as the Buddhist faith spread, it also changed both inwardly and outwardly. First, let’s look at the outward changes.

The original teachings of the Buddha rejected the material world as illusion. But the Buddhist monasteries that were located along the Silk Roads were often the grateful recipients of lavish gifts from travelling merchants. So that’s one example of an outward change that Buddhism underwent, now let’s look at the inward change.

The inward changes were largely doctrinal. The oldest form of Buddhism, was strictly speaking, atheistic. But a new form of Buddhism called Mahayana Buddhism developed and spread along these trade routes.

In this new form of the faith, the Buddha became a deity and there was an increased emphasis on compassionate works and the earning of merit. And then across the continent in the Sogdian city of Samarkand, the Buddhists incorporated Zoroastrian fire rituals into their devotional patterns. So all sorts of syncretism and change is happening to the Buddhist faith as it spreads.

But it wasn’t only puppies and rainbows that found their way across the Silk Roads—diseases were transferred as well. And this is one of the downsides of having civilizations from different parts of the world connected. You see different civilizations have different diseases and so over time they develop immunities to their diseases and they figure out ways to fight them.

But when those diseases find their way into a culture that does not have those coping techniques, the results could be disastrous. Case in point: the Black Death (also known as the Bubonic Plague). Because of this deadly disease, nearly half of the European population died between 1346 and 1348.

And there were similar results in China and the Islamic world. And not surprisingly, death on a massive scale like this changed the entire course of history for these civilizations. Okay, let’s shift and talk about another set of trade routes, this time sea-based trade routes: the Indian Ocean routes.

So the Silk Roads linked societies by land and the Indian Ocean linked societies by sea. And until 1500 when people started sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, this was the largest sea-based system of communication and exchange that ever existed. It stretched from China all the way into East Africa.

As I mentioned earlier, the Silk Roads specialized in the exchange of luxury goods. But along the Indian Ocean trade routes there was a much greater variety of both common goods and luxury goods exchanged. And the reason is a ship can carry much more for cheaper than a camel can, and so if we opened the hull on one of these ships what would we find?

Well, among the luxury goods we’d find porcelain from China, spices from South East Asia, cotton and pepper from India, and ivory and gold from East Africa. And among the more common, bulk goods you’d find wheat, sugar, and rice. Now the success of these trading routes was made possible by predictable yearly storms called monsoons.

By this period everyone had figured out that in the summer the wind blew predictably northeast, and in the winter it blew predictably southwest. So you packed your ship full of goods, threw up a sail, and baby, you got a stew going. This also led to some significant maritime innovations like the magnetic compass which allowed sailors to hold their bearing without sight of the sun.

Also there was the astrolabe which allowed sailors to calculate latitude. And not to be forgotten is the introduction of Chinese junks. Not Chinese junk.

Chinese junks—way different. Junks were huge, flat-bottomed ships with six masts jutting out of their bellies, and enough room to carry 500 men. And there were big old trunks in those junks that could carry enormous payloads of goods for trade.

Now as with the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean trade routes existed long before 1200, but during this period of 1200-1450 they experienced massive growth for a couple of reasons. The first reason is the economic revival in China during the Tang and Song Dynasties. And as a result of this economic prosperity, the Chinese exported metric buttloads of goods across the Indian Ocean.

The second reason for the growth of these trade routes is the rise of Islam. Islam, as a faith, is very positive toward merchant activity. And the creation of Islamic empires during this time led to a vast swath of land being connected by Islam, and that made it easy to get their trade on.

And I’ll give you two examples of how the Indian Ocean routes changed culture as well. For the first we’ll head over to Southeast Asia. Since this network of islands and peninsulas was situated right smack in the middle of some of the major trade routes, this made them strategically important.

And as a result of this strategic importance, it created the necessary conditions for the rise of a new kingdom: the Srivijaya Kingdom. So Malay sailors had long navigated the waters around Southeast Asia, but when they opened a passage through the Straits of Malacca, many surrounding sea ports in the Malay peninsula began competing for the attention of traders and travellers. And out of this competition rose the Kingdom of Srivijaya, which dominated trade from 670-1025.

And for the second example, let’s go all the way across the Indian Ocean to Africa and consider the Swahili Civilization. This civilization emerged in the 8th century as basically a set of commercial city-states. The rulers of these city-states found abundant opportunities to trade goods native to their area like gold and ivory and yes, slaves.

And as a result of this an African merchant class developed and villages began turning into cities and between 1000-1500 the Swahili urban commercial centers flourished. Now it might make sense to compare them to the ancient Greek city-states. Each of these Swahili states was independent with its own king, so as a whole it wasn’t like a unified empire.

And finally because Muslims kept showing up on their shores and trading their goods, Islam eventually became the dominant religion of the area. Okay, we’ve talked about Silk Roads, we’ve talked about sea roads, and now we need to talk about sand roads, namely, the trans-Saharan trade routes. These routes linked North Africa and the Mediterranean world with the interior of Africa, specifically, West Africa.

And because the environments of these places varied so widely, they produced different goods, and therefore created the incentive for trade. In North Africa the folks mainly produced manufactured goods like cloth and glasswork and books. In Southwest Africa they were agricultural and therefore produced grain crops and yams and kola nuts.

Now a major turning point in the history of the trans-Saharan trade routes was the introduction of the Arabian camel. Now this happened centuries before the time period that we’re considering in this video, but their effects were still in force. You see camels could walk for up to 10 days without water and that made it possible to transverse that vast stretch of desert between North Africa and West Africa.

And as with the other trade routes we’ve looked at, the Trans-Saharan trade routes also did its fair share of culture changing, specifically political culture changes. Between 500-1600 west African civilization really began to take shape. A notable example of this is the rise of the Kingdom of Mali.

At its high point in the 14th century Mali held a monopoly on the trade of horses and metals. And to generate revenue they levied taxes on salt and copper. And when all those things start to take place, it’s not long before a social hierarchy forms.

In Mali the social hierarchy was stacked up pretty similarly in comparison with other civilizations. At the top sat the royalty, under them were the elite classes, under them were the merchants, under them were the military and religious folk, and under them were the peasants, and under all were the slaves. So I hope those explanations woke you up to the vast importance of those three major trading routes in the world from 1200-1450.

And if not, then there’s nothing else I can do for you. I’ll see you next time. Thanks for watching.

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