The Silk Roads

When you think of the Silk Roads you usually think of trade but they also played a crucial role in the spread of new ideas, technology, and philosophy. Throughout the Classical and post-Classical periods the Silk Roads stretched all the way from China to the Mediterranean and beyond. From 200 B.C.E to 1450 C.E there were many changes due to geopolitical reasons, new modes of transportation, and outbreaks of disease; however, their importance remained constant as they continued to be conduits of information and ideas.

Throughout history a common factor that provides continuity is disease. Surely the bubonic plague, smallpox, and measles ring a bell. Whenever people, crops, and animals make their way from one place to another any parasites or diseases that they carry are transported as well; evidence suggests that the bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death, was brought to Europe by rodents that stowed away on the Silk Roads. While the people from point A had developed an immunity to the disease, the second that it reached point B that population was at risk. Entire civilizations were devastated by these diseases; during the reign of Augustus (r. 27 B.C.E-14 C.E), the Roman Empire traded extensively on the Silk Roads and was thought to have a population exceeding 60 million citizens, but by 400 C.E that number had plummeted to less than 40 million. Major outbreaks like that marked turning points in history; one of the earliest examples occurred in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E when diseases swept across Eurasia and helped set into motion the decline of the Classical period. With the dramatic decreases in population, trade on the Silk Roads, as well as any other, took a hit as the communities focused instead on recovering both socially and economically. Once life had begun to show a semblance of normalcy, trade would start to pick up again only to repeat the process when another outbreak popped up.

As with anything else, politics played a role in trade and trade changed accordingly. Interaction between cultures was largely influenced by existing political ties or lack thereof. Early river civilizations were small and isolated with dangerous terrain separating them and so trade between them was rare; once larger empires such as the Han and Roman Empires began to take power, trade became possible because citizens could travel in relative peace. Though at first trade was restricted to smaller neighboring regions, what began as a few, simple, unconnected trade routes eventually evolved sometime around 210 C.E, during the Han Dynasty, into the famous highway system that we know now. The Silk Roads grew larger and spanned a greater distance so that eventually commodities such as silk and porcelain from China could make it all the way past the Mediterranean where they were considered luxury items and in high demand. Around 500 C.E the Classical civilizations collapsed and economies became less stable,