Commerce and Culture 500-1500

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Commerce and Culture500-1500

• AP World History Notes
• Chapter 8

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Why Trade?

• Different ecological zones natural uneven
  distribution of goods and resources
• Early monopolization of certain goods
• Silk in China
• Spices in Southeast Asia
• I want what you have! Do you want what I have?
  Lets trade!

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Trade 500-1500

• Long-distance trade developed
• This trade shaped culture and society
• Trade mostly indirect
• Chain of separate transactions
• Goods traveled father than merchants

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Significance of Trade Economic

• Altered consumption
• Ex West Africans now able to get salt to flavor
  and preserve their food
• Changed the day-to-day lives of individuals
• Ex trade specialization --gt led to less
  self-sufficiency and more dependency

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Significance of TradeSocial

• Traders became their own social group
• Sometimes viewed suspiciously --gt why are they
  making money without making the goods?
• Trade became a means of social mobility
• Money land power and status
• Trade used by elite groups to distinguish
  themselves from commoners
• Only they could afford luxury goods from far away
  like silk or ivory

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Significance of TradePolitical

• Controlling and taxing trade motivated the
  creation of states and kingdoms
• Wealth from trade sustained these states and
  kingdoms and facilitated their growth

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What Else Was Traded?

• Religious ideas
• Technological innovations
• Disease-bearing germs
• Plants and animals

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The Silk Roads
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The Silk Roads Growth

• Eurasia often divided into inner and outer
  zones with different ecologies
• Outer Eurasia relatively warm and well-watered
• China, India, Middle East, Mediterranean
• Inner Eurasia harsher, drier climate
• Eastern Russia, Central Asia

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The Silk Roads Growth

• Result steppe products traded for agricultural
  products and manufactured goods from inner
  Eurasia
• Birth of the Silk Roads trade network

Hides, furs, livestock, wool, amber, horses,
saddles
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The Silk Roads Growth

• Construction of classical civilizations and
  empires added major players to this trade network
• Persian Empire, Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Han
  dynasty, Gupta Empire
• Result Silk Roads continued to grow

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The Silk Roads Goods

• Most goods traded luxury goods rather than
  staple goods
• Destined for an elite and wealthy market
• Only goods worth transporting with such high
  transportation costs

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The Silk Roads Goods

• Silk major product in high demand
• China had a silk monopoly until the 500s --gt then
  others gained knowledge of silk production
• Increased the supply of silk along the Silk Roads

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Silk Makes the WorldGo Round

• Used as currency in Central Asia
• Became a symbol of high status in both China and
  the Byzantine Empire
• Used in the expanding religions of Buddhism and
  Christianity
• Ex worn by Buddhist monks
• Ex silk altar covers in Christian churches

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The Silk Roads Goods

• Volume of trade small
• But social and economic impact of trade big
• Ex peasant in China produced luxury goods
  instead of crops
• Ex merchants could make enormous profits

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The Silk Roads Cultures

• Major result of trade along the Silk Roads the
  spread of Buddhism
• From India to Central East Asia
• Spread by Indian traders and Buddhist monks

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The Silk Roads Buddhism

• Spread to oases cities in Central Asia
• Voluntarily converted
• Buddhism gave these small cities a link to the
  larger, wealthy, and prestigious civilization of
  India
• Many of these cities became centers of learning
  and commerce

Buddhist temple in Dunhuang (an oases city)
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The Silk Roads Buddhism

• Transformation of Buddhism
• Original faith shunned the material world
• Now Buddhism filled with wealthy monks,
  elaborate and expensive monasteries, and so on

Buddhist monastery in China
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The Silk Roads Buddhism

• What type of Buddhism spread? MAHAYANA!
• Buddha a deity
• Many bodhisattvas
• Emphasis on compassion

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The Silk Roads Diseases

• Long-distance trade resulted in exposure to
  unfamiliar diseases

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The Silk Roads Disease

• Athens (430-429 BCE) widespread epidemic
  killed 25 of the army
• Roman Han Empires measles and smallpox
  devastated both populations
• Mediterranean World (534-750 CE) devastated by
  bubonic plague from India

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The Black Death

• Spread due to the Mongol Empires unification of
  most of Eurasia (13th-14th centuries)
• Could have been bubonic plague, anthrax, or
  collection of epidemic diseases
• 1346-1350 killed 1/3 of European population
• Similar death toll in China parts of Islamic
  world