The Silk Road extends from Southern Europe through The Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Java-Indonesia, and Vietnam until it reaches China. Land routes are red, water routes are blue.The Silk Road is an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, as well as North and Northeast Africa and Europe.
The Silk Routes were important paths for cultural, commercial and technological exchange between traders, merchants, pilgrims, missionaries, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from Ancient China, Ancient India, Ancient Tibet, Persia and Mediterranean countries for almost 3,000 years. It gets its name from the lucrative Chinese silk trade, a major reason for the connection of trade routes into an extensive trans-continental network, which began during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).
Extending 4,000 miles, the routes enabled people to transport goods, especially luxuries such as slaves, silk, satin and other fine fabrics, ,other perfumes, spices, medicines, jewels, glassware as well as serving as a conduit for the spread of knowledge, ideas, cultures and diseases between different parts of the world such as Ancient China, Ancient India (Indus valley, now Pakistan), Asian Minor and the Mediterranean. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the great civilisation of China, India, Egypt, Persia, Arabia and Rome and in several respects helped lay the foundations for the modern world.
This is wonderful. To think of such extraordinary transnational connections such as the silk route makes one speechless.The cities that arose along the trade route were also quite unique.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking how contemporary dialogues about globalisation paint it as if it is a new thing. When you compare the global links of that were occuring in 200BC, is globalisation really new???
Indeed, the concept of globalisation has existed a long time ago. However, the literal word 'globalisation' may be a recent modern word, but the idea has long been used, with other words that express this concept such as 'commercial exchange of goods and services between countries'. This expression was commonly used in Vietnam when I grew up, and the word 'globalisation' was not commonly used until the 1980s.
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