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Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 17: Transregional Trade: the Silk RoadThe Silk Road
An overview of how the early Silk Road(s) facilitated trade and the spread of ideas, technology, disease and religion across Eurasia in the beginning of the Common Era.
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- So... why is the name Silk Road deceiving? I get that the main trade item on the route was silk, but why is the term misleading?(9 votes)
- The name Silk Road is deceiving because many other things were exchanged besides material goods, including ideas, technology, and religion. Some scholars have argued that the exchange of ideas was far more influential than the exchange of goods such as silk.(6 votes)
- was there a country that made the silk road, or was it just a trade route that people from many countries used?(5 votes)
- It's hard to even say that there were "countries" during the times of the silk road, but, if there were, the route itself traversed several of those countries. It wasn't a paved road anyway, just a series of places where people could stop and water their camels.(13 votes)
- How inter country/state trade was coordinated for security, taxing and so along the route?(11 votes)
- The Silk Road is to trade silk with the other nations.(6 votes)
- It did include silk, but there were also many other things traded like spices, tea, wool, ivory, precious metals, and most importantly, ideas and theories which helped shape and modernize the world.(4 votes)
- How does contact with other cultures create change or affect continuity?(4 votes)
- That's a big question. Let's try a few examples.
Contact with other cultures expands languages on both sides of the contact, as each adopts words from the other.
Contact with other cultures expands diets, as each side adopts recipes from the others.
Contact with other cultures leads to discontinuity. Cultures that seek to never change create rules to prohibit contact with outsiders.(5 votes)
- what events happened on the silk road that involved the military(3 votes)
- Among the many things there were patrols, skirmishes, boredom, abuses, defense, offense and outright insubordination. Typical military life (I had a lot of it between 1969 and 1972. It hasn't changed for millenia.)(6 votes)
- the silk road why is it called that ??(4 votes)
- The cloth "silk" was not produced west of China. Some or even "Much" of what was carried overland to the west from China was silk fabric. The trade route got its name from the material that was carried. Kind of like how the West African nation of the Ivory Coast got its name, or the West African colony "the gold coast" got its pre-independence name.(4 votes)
- what cultures were connected by the silk road?(4 votes)
- East, Central and West Asian cultures were connected.(4 votes)
- How long did it take to travel the Silk Road?(4 votes)
- A round-trip journey taken in ancient times along the Silk Road from China to Rome took two years.(4 votes)
- How come he does not talk about the various Islamic empires even though they were a big part of the empire?(4 votes)
- Sal only mentioned some of the influential empires at that time period, and as Sal said, there were other empires (e.g. islamic) that he did not mention that were impacted by the silk road. I hope that this reply answers your question.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In our
study of world history we have looked at many different empires and several of them are depicted on this map right over here. We spent a lot of time on the Roman Empire and in the highlighted yellow
you see the Roman Empire at roughly its maximum extent. And on this timeline you
see the Roman Kingdom and then the Roman Republic
and then the Roman Empire which ends in the fifth century although the Eastern Roman
Empire, the Byzantine Empire, continues on for roughly
another thousand years. Now we also have depicted here a significant Persian Empire. You have the Parthian Empire and they were preceded
by the Seleucid Empire and they were succeeded
by the Sasanian Empire but I have the Parthians depicted here on the timeline and on the map. I also show Han China, both the Eastern and Western Han Dynasties both the Eastern and Western Han Dynasties you can see on this timeline as well. And in India, I show the
Maurya Dynasty on the timeline I don't depict it here on the map but on the map I show the Kushan Empire and I also show it on the timeline. Now the reason why I
wanna depict these empires at this specific time in the world is to highlight the fact that they weren't operating
in complete isolation. In fact, as we get to the
second and first century BCE, In fact, as we get to the
second and first century BCE, especially as we get into the Common Era, we start seeing a significant amount of trade and interaction
between these empires. Not to say that there wasn't trade and interaction before that time but it started to get accelerated and to a large degree it got accelerated because you had these continuous empires that at least within their borders were able to provide
some level of stability for someone to travel across roads or travel across borders. And so you start to see the emergence of these trading networks. In red you see trading
roads or paths in red and in blue you see those paths by sea. And this isn't even comprehensive. And even what I show on the empires are many other smaller kingdoms that also existed in the world that I just don't have depicted here. But what this contiguous
block of empires allowed is for the trade of goods and ideas and sometimes collectively the routes that were used for this trade is referred to as the Silk
Road or the Silk Roads is referred to as the Silk
Road or the Silk Roads or really you could say, the Silk Routes. And so it's a collective number of paths that people used to trade things. Now why call it silk? Now why call it silk? Well it all boils down to silk being a major commodity of
trade at this time period. So if you wanna think
about the different things that were traded around the world that were traded around the world this is just a sample of it. Silk which comes from
cocoons of these silk worms Silk which comes from
cocoons of these silk worms that eat mulberry leaves was considered a sign of wealth. It was considered the finest cloth and China had a monopoly
on how to make silk for many hundreds of years even after the period that we
were talking about right here. So you can imagine around the world people were interested in getting access to that Chinese silk. But silk wasn't the only
thing that was being traded. In fact, in order to trade you need to give something in
exchange for even that silk. One of the Chinese motivations
for trading with others is having access to horses. is having access to horses. Horses were valuable not
just for transporting goods but also in wars especially fighting some
of their northern enemies who had access to horses. They also were able to
get gold from Europe, be able to get cotton from India. In Europe you also had
other manufactured goods. So you had this fairly
vast trading enterprise emerge between these
different parts of the world. And to be clear, some of
the things that were traded allowed or facilitated the trade itself. I mentioned horses were a
source of transportation but camels in particular were very powerful
sources of transportation especially across Central Asia and as you get into the
Middle East and Africa because you have these
large swaths of desert. Camels can not only carry a lot but they had a lot of stamina and they did not have to
stop for water as frequently. In a lot of world history, we focus on the large non-nomadic empires like the Roman Empire and Han China but as trade became more important especially as you go through Central Asia, you could imagine that many of the people who were very good at trading who were good at moving things were people who were good
at moving themselves, in particular, the nomadic
people in Central Asia. Many of their cities
along these trade routes became more and more wealthy became more and more wealthy and more and more powerful. Now as I mentioned, goods
were not the only thing that were transported along these routes. One of the not so good things
was the spread of disease. So in the historical record, we have two major plagues in
Rome during the Roman Empire we have two major plagues in
Rome during the Roman Empire and we believe these
plagues were small pox although some people believe
it might have been measles. And it is believed that
it came from traders. It came from Asia, from the Middle East, and these were significant plagues. And the reason why we think
that it was due to trade is that there's some evidence in Han China during this first plague of similar symptoms of a similar plague. But it really affected Rome. In these plagues, it's estimated that as much as 10% of the
population might have died. In certain cities it might have been 25,
30% of the population. Some historians even
point to these plagues as destabilizing the Roman Empire. And this is a theme that you'll
see often in world history where if you have a population that doesn't have exposure
to something, say small pox, and all of a sudden they encounter a population
that does have exposure well that small pox might wreak havoc. But it wasn't just disease, you also have the spread of ideas and technology and religion. And the two religions that perhaps benefited the most from the early trade along the Silk Route or the Silk Roads were Christianity and Buddhism. And Buddhism, in particular
was very appealing to many of these Silk Road merchants. The Kushan Empire, in particular started to significantly spread Buddhism. In previous videos we talk about
Ashoka sending missionaries but the Kushan Empire help
spread Buddhism into China and into the Far East. So what we talked about in this video was the very beginning of the Silk Road. As we get into the first few centuries BCE or the first few centuries
of the Common Era. But as we'll see, the
Silk Road will continue on for many hundreds or really
over a thousand years.