Trading Exchanges: c. 600 BCE - 600 CE
Trading Exchanges: c. 600 BCE - 600 CE
AP Concept: 2.3 Emergence of Transregional Networks of Communication and Exchange
Key Concepts
The Silk Road
Disease
Movement of People
AP Concept: 2.3 Emergence of Transregional Networks of Communication and Exchange
Key Concepts
- Trading networks allowed the exchange of people, religious and cultural beliefs, disease, crops, and animals as well as trade items
- Consisted of a network of roads connecting Central Asia with Europe; merchants would travel in stages with their caravans so that no one person made the entire journey
- Formally began during China's Han dynasty and operated until 1453, when the Ottoman Empire banned trade with the west
- Facilitated the exchange of belief systems, disease, crops, animals, and luxury goods, such as:
- Luxury goods:
- Silk - moved westward from China as a popular luxury good
- Spices - moved westward from India and China
- Cotton - westward
- Ivory - westward
- Paper - westward
- Olive oil - eastward from the Mediterranean
- Bronze - eastward
- Religion:
- Buddhism - spread from India to China in the fourth and fifth centuries CE
- Christianity - when the Roman church outlawed certain sects, they moved eastward
- Animals, such as horses - highly in demand in China, imported from the west
- Plants, such as China's cardamom
- People, such as slaves
- Trade often contributed to the spread of infectious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and the bubonic plague. People could rarely combat foreign diseases without immunity or proper medicine
- Outbreaks could weaken an empire's trade and social structure, and they often contributed to empires turning inward
- During the second and third centuries CE, the Han and Roman Empires suffered from epidemic diseases
- Rome's population dropped by 25% in the second century
- Trade could contribute to the movement of peoples from one region to another
- Once the banana arrived in Africa, thanks to Indian Ocean trade, around 500 CE, the Bantu people in sub-Saharan Africa began moving to forested regions of Africa, thus relieving the pressure of a growing population
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Related Links: AP World History Quizzes AP World History AP World History Notes Expansion of Trade and Exchanges: c. 600 CE - c. 1450 |