Travel and Exchange along the Silk Roads

INDIA, THE INDIAN OCEAN BASIN, and EAST ASIA HIST 1301 | History Travel and Exchange along the Silk Roads China had solidified its position as the eastern terminus of the Silk Roads by the first century BCE, with Rome serving as the western terminus. Along with trading through important hubs in Syria like the great caravan cities of Petra and Palmyra, the Nabatean city renowned as the main entry point for Chinese silk and eastern incense, the Romans also travelled by sea to secure the goods that came through the ports of western India, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Through middlemen in the Middle East, central Asia, and even India, the Roman provinces of North Africa sold Roman glassware, wool, gold, and silver for these kinds of items. Trade commodities from the East were mostly controlled by the Kushan Empire prior to reaching the Romans. After uniting to establish this empire, the Yuezhi confederacy in Bactria traded with both China and the Indian subcontinent, acting as a conduit between the two, especially from Taxila. Spreading its dominion halfway down the Indian subcontinent, the Kushan Empire was ideally positioned to handle trade between India, China, and the Mediterranean. It was able to stabilise the trading routes that connected the Parthian western leg of the road with that of the central Asian steppes. The Roman, Kushan, Parthian, and Han empires were among the several that had started to crumble by the third century CE and used the Silk Roads. The Sasanids, who also seized control of the northern region of the Kushan Empire, supplanted the Kushans and Parthians in Persia. Soon, the Guptas ruled over the southern region of India. The Mediterranean region was also undergoing change; as Roman rule in western Europe ended in the late fifth century, the Eastern Roman Empire— also known as the Byzantine Empire—became the new Silk Road trading hub. The trading network was maintained and expanded by these new participants. During the early and later Middle Ages, long-distance trading was dangerous. The Silk Roads were a network of interconnected, frequently poorly maintained roads that were built up over time and eventually connected dozens of oasis towns and market cities like Palmyra in the west and Bactria in the east. They were not a superhighway stretching thousands of miles connecting eastern and western markets from Rome to China. The best approach to conceptualise it is as a network of "legs" on a journey where traders and merchants moved with their goods in caravans and stopped at caravansaries along the route. Over these vast distances, goods were traded often between merchants who each only travelled a portion of the "road," and the further they were from their point of origin, the more expensive they became. Sometime between 220 and 589 CE, during the Six Dynasties, Buddhism made its way to China. Monks who travelled the Silk Roads between northern India and Afghanistan conveyed their message of salvation to anybody who would listen, and they found many merchants travelling between China and central Asia to be amenable to receiving it. Buddhist monks eventually settled in tiny villages and founded monasteries at a series of oasis along the Taklamakan Desert, extending as far north as the Great Wall of China. Weary travellers arrived at one of them, Yungang, to find five enormous Buddhas carved out of the cliffs, encircled by tens of thousands of figurines symbolising Buddhist patrons and deities. This magnificent religious structure provided a place to recuperate as well as a gateway to the Chinese market. A great deal of the Silk Road was quite dangerous. For example, travellers almost immediately encountered the Gobi Desert, the biggest desert in Asia, upon leaving Chang'an, the Tang capital and the eastern end of the network. The region's stony and compacted topography makes it perfect for long-distance camel travel, but the scarcity of water forced the development of caravansaries along the road that connected China to the interior of central Asia, generally spaced a day apart. Travellers may also face risks from warring tribes, wandering bandits, and thieves in addition to environmental and topographical dangers. Robbers, a threat from the start of the Silk Roads, preyed on convoys carrying valuable goods as they travelled over exposed and undefended ground. Although some bigger and betterfunded caravans were followed by small armies and squads of archers, and caravans occasionally united into "super-caravans" for protection, these were the anomalies rather than the rule. The majority of travellers went on a caravan voyage at considerable personal and cargo danger. The overland path was nevertheless more desirable to many than the riskier and more expensive sea travel, despite its hazards. On the Maritime Silk Roads, pirates lurking in coastal seas harassed ships, and even the toughest merchants and warships faced significant hurdles due to changing weather patterns and inadequately mapped waterways. Not only might a ship's loss to an unexpected storm or shallow reef kill its crew and passengers, but it could also bankrupt the merchants whose goods were lost. This has happened on several occasions in Indonesia's Gelasa Strait. Of the two Silk Road routes available to them, seaborne commerce was less tempting to most merchants and traders due to the hazards involved and the expense of renting a ship and crew. The overland route gained even greater appeal when land empires, like the Sasanian Persians' territory in central Asia, grew more solid. Greater security was made possible by the Sasanian Persians, which made trade more efficient and tranquil. In actuality, this commerce was the foundation for and the source of much of their power. The desire for Chinese silks persisted, but the Sasanian Empire was quickly replaced by the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate, which started to dominate commerce and develop its own textiles and other items to sell along the route. The Abbasids (749–1258), a new Islamic dynasty that aimed to advance eastward from the Middle East while the Tang dynasty advanced westward from China, overthrew the Umayyads in 750. Along the Tigris River in what is now Iraq, Baghdad became the capital of the Abbasid dynasty. With the ability to use the Persian Gulf to successfully avoid the Red Sea, which was the seaborne commerce route closest to the previous Umayyad capital in Syria, this development simplified their domination of the Silk Roads. The Abbasids' aspirations were dashed in 751, however, when Tang soldiers and an Arab-Tibetan army clashed at the Battle of Talas River, close to the town of Atlakh. After a first deadlock, Turkic armies supporting the Tang retreated and joined the Abbasid troops, turning the tide of the conflict in the Abbasids' favour. The battle signalled the end of both empires' growth even though the Abbasids prevailed. In the emergence and collapse of this and other empires, command of trade routes —especially the Silk Roads—was crucial. For instance, peasants from the steppes of central Asia traded animals, skins, and wool for Chinese-made items like lacquerware, silk, floss, paper, porcelain, and iron tools. Along the way, these commodities and things were exchanged for other comparable items until they were finally purchased by people as far away as the Egyptians and Ethiopians in East Africa and the Sanhaja tribes in West Africa. But compared to other economies, the Chinese economy never relied on the Silk Roads to the same extent. Long into the modern era, European nations hoping to gain a foothold in the Chinese economy found themselves thwarted by the size of the domestic Chinese economy, which was sufficient to support the demands of the state and its citizens without requiring imports. The western world had a strong thirst for Chinese commodities at the same time, which meant that commerce was virtually always biassed in favour of East Asia. Although China may have been the source of the silk that gave rise to the Silk Roads, many other kingdoms soon started cultivating silkworms and turning the silk thread from their cocoons into opulent fabric. According to tradition, Christian monks travelling to China in the sixth century smuggled some cocoons away in hollowed-out walking sticks, which is how the Byzantines came to own silkworms. Women did much of the work in the silk industry; they cultivated the mulberry trees that the silkworms required to eat, unwound the cocoons, and woven the threads into fabrics. They were essential to the commerce that made China the dominant force in the market for luxury goods, which was the main reason for the Silk Roads' notoriety. The guys were in charge of maintaining the tree farms as well as trading and selling the final goods. In this way, the production of silk cloth allowed many rural and even metropolitan places to exist, much like the cottage industries that sprang to prominence later in Europe.