Hot answers tagged trade
18
The nature of the silk road meant that it had to pass through commercial centres.
"The Silk Road was largely fragmented and very few merchants travelled the whole route. Goods were passed from one merchant to another until it reached the final buyers" source
So deviation over the steppes wasn't really possible as it was not the intermediaries goal to ...
16
Well there were a few reasons
They pretty much had all they needed resource-wise in the country, trade was not a prerogative and even though Zheng He did go out exploring they were not interested in colonies or mercantilism.
Mercantilism was pretty much frowned upon within the Confucian system, merchants did not produce goods they moved them around and ...
12
From "The origin of metallic currency and weight standards" By Sir William Ridgeway (Google books); University Press, 1892
... We saw that the Arabs of the Soudan down to the present day prefer silver to gold whilst in the earlier part of the present century when Japan was opened to European commerce the Japanese eagerly exchanged gold for silver at the ...
11
There were a few successful instances of mercantilism by countries that started behind others, and needed to "catch up."
These include Russia under Peter the Great in the 18th century, and later, under Count Witte early in the 20th century.
Another example was Japan after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and again, right after World War II.
China may be ...
10
I will not interpret intercontinental in modern terms but rather view it as trade among distinct civilisations. Such trade dates back to Ancient Egyptian civilisations, Babylonians and Indus Valley Civilisation.
Proofs exists in form of archeological excavations of, for example, potteries of Indus Civilisation in Iran and other parts of central Asia.
The ...
10
During the era when the Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean sea and surrounding territories (cerca 1550 - 300 B.C.), salt was indeed a highly precious commodity. After this, the Romans became the dominant force in the Mediterranean, though the value of salt did not immediately decline by any means. Whether it was pound-for-pound as valuable as gold, I think ...
9
Papyrus was known to the Greek world since the 8th century BC, as it's mentioned in the Odyssey:
[Hom. Od. 21.390] Now there lay beneath the portico the cable of a curved ship, made of byblus plant, wherewith he made fast the gates, and then himself went within. Thereafter he came and sat down on the seat from which he had risen, and gazed upon ...
8
Just take a look at any political map, let it be Classical period, or early Medieval times. When travelling to China you need water, supplies of food, fodder, etc. Also it's safer to spend a night in a city or some kind of inn instead of open steppe spaces. Then what Joe mentioned, between the cities you've got roads, which again - are safer.
South of Black ...
8
The Mexican economy flourished in the middle 20th century, transforming the country from a primarily agrarian economy to an industrial one. To achieve this, mining, oil, electricity and many other industries were nationalized, stiff taxes on imported goods were set, and tax cuts and other economic incentives were given to national industries. Monopolies were ...
8
I don't think that gold and salt ever were equal in value, that's an exaggeration. Salt was very valuable however, particularly because of its use for conservation - valuable enough to make one very rich. This allowed cities that sold salt (e.g. Lüneburg) to get very wealthy and influential. The Wieliczka salt mine supposedly was responsible for one third of ...
7
All the sources I've perused can, just as Wikipedia does, only surmise on the how and why gunpowder made its way to Europe.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology offers a nutshell overview of the possible routes that might have been taken:
Just how the secret of gunpowder traveled west-ward to Europe will probably never be ...
7
The first evidence of usage of currency dates back to the code of Lipit-Ishtar, a set of laws dating to about 2000 BC. In this code there is mention of shekels of silver paid in compensation for various infractions. Since this is stated so clearly in a law created by a king, it must be presumed that such currency was in common use already by the people of ...
6
The first evidence we have for the usage of actual coinage as currency is the "Lydian Lion", a stamped coin of electrum from, as the name would imply, the region of Lydia in Anatolia. Herodotus indicates these started showing up in the early 7th Century BCE.
See here for more info on the history of the first Lydian coinage: ...
5
There is direct evidence of truly intercontinental trade dating back to approximately 1700 BC. Jack Turner, in his book Spice: The History of a Temptation, writes that a handful of cloves were found in a charred vessel in Syria. The find was remarkable in that, until modern times, cloves only grew on five tiny islands that are part of the Moluccas in ...
5
It's difficult to give a proper answer, because during any century of Middle Ages there could be many reasons for closing trading routes for European merchants as outsiders in various parts of Islamic world (which is huge). And it didn't need to have anything in common with religion - it could be the level of civilization (early medieval Europe), an economic ...
4
You are confusing money supply with inflation. Increasing the money supply can sometimes (but not always) increase prices right along with it - this is called inflation. Inflation devalues the currency, and if it devalues too much, smaller denominations, like the penny in the US, becomes an impractical medium of exchange.
Increasing the money supply is a ...
4
Currency comes in many different forms, and since you mention "abstract" currency here, that excludes coins that were traded for their metal value, which is the case of most early coinage, where the stamp was an mark guaranteeing that it was reasonably pure metal.
The first abstract coinage is probably dependent on your opinion on what "abstract" means. The ...
4
The Silk Way was not a single road, but rather a net of roads. And the ways Amudarja/Uzboj (Amudarja went to Caspian Sea till 16 Century, for example) - Caspian Sea - Volga - Don - Azov sea - Black sea - Konstantinople (variant: Aral-Caspian Sea by foot) was in use -especially for long periods when Amudarja was switched to the Caspian Sea and some stable ...
3
My family came from Western Ukraine and my grandfather attended University in Chernotsy and Vienna. He said that historically our family were merchants on a branch of the Silk Road that ran through Ukraine. Ukraine was a bulwark in the hundreds of years of warfare between Europe and Turkey and it is absurd to think that a substantial amount of trade did ...
3
It is sometimes argued, albeit farcically in the manner of "For the want of a horseshoe nail", that WWII was started over Germany's inability to deliver telegraph poles it owed to France and Belgium.
For the want of a telegraph pole, the Ruhr was occupied. For the want of a free Ruhr, a shaky economy was sent into a death spiral. For the want of a ...
3
I am skeptical as well. One could argue that debt (internal and external) is inversely correllated with state strength, and that war is a way of reinforcing state strength. One might argue that this is part of the grounds for the war of 1812 (the segment of the population that backed the war was motivated in part by their loathing for British creditors).
...
3
The process of wrapping purchases in paper and twine is called packaging, and the resultant wrapped item is called a package. (You will hear purchases sometimes referred to as packages in old books, TV shows and movies.) It was replaced by self-service shops and sturdy paper bags beginning in the '30s.
To begin with, paper was used as flexible packaging as ...
2
I know this question is old, but the previous answers did not touch on truly intercontinental trade.
The first example of intercontinental trade has to be during the Age of Discovery. From the 15th-17th century the European nations explored beyond their borders in search of trade, and subsequently subjugation. The interaction between them and other cultures ...
2
To further detail Lev's example -- there is some evidence of cultural exchange between the Maadi culture of the Nile delta region in Lower Egypt somewhere during the middle of the Naqada period of predynastic Egyptian history, in the neighborhood of 3900-3500 BCE.
Some of the evidence for this in the archaeological record is a type of blade (referred to as ...
2
Barter, gifts and payments - same as now.
I'll swap you a sheep for half of that pig I just slaughtered.
Head of the tribe gives weapons, jewelry to people to both bind them in his debt and to show his wealth and power.
I'll work on your fields for a day in return for food and lodging.
ps. the Celts had coins before the romans, rather better quality ...
1
I am rather skeptical of the theory that leaders go to war to get people's mind off debt, but it's certainly a discussionable matter. However, I do have an example for you of a debtor invading his creditor to write off the debt : here. Spoiler: it backfired rather spectacularly.
1
In those days, most of the people of the "Ukraine" lived in the western part of the province (around Kiev). The eastern part, which abuts on Kazakhtstan, was mostly "deserted," except for the fierce nomads that later became the "Cossacks."
The easiest route from Persia (the main "terminus") to Kiev was via northern Turkey, and from there by water across ...
1
There was actually a trade route through Ukraine - "из варяг в греки" - that is "From Varangians to the Greeks". You could travel from Byzantine Empire to Scandinavia through Kiev and back. But traveling further East would be problematic: You'll face first the warlike Turkic tribes (Kipchaks and Pechenegs) then the warlike Circassians and Chechens and then a ...
1
"The grass family is one of the most widely distributed and abundant groups of plants on Earth. Grasses are found on every continent, and are absent only from central Greenland and much of Antarctica"
Wikipedia page It seems unlikely that grass seed would ever have been really all the prized given it's natural abundance basically everywhere. Grass also ...
1
The Celts were using "ring money" as early as 800bc, up until 300bc, when they picked up the idea of using coins from the Greeks.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
