Trade Networks and Cultural Diffusion

600-1450

A New Era in Trade

• Trade exploded on the world scene between 600 and 1450.

• Trade was aided through better boats, better roads, monetary systems, lines of credit, and accounting methods.

• People began to keep records and lend money which established a business trade relationship.

Major Trade Routes

• Mediterranean Trade: between western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Empire

• The Hanseatic League• The Silk Road (1200-1600)• Land routes of the Mongols• Between China and Japan• Between India and Persia (Indian Ocean Trade)• Trans-Saharan trade routes between west Africa

and the Islamic Empire

Hanseatic League

• Collection of city-states in the Baltic and North Sea regions of Europe

• Banded together in 1241 to establish common trade practices, fight off pirates and foreign governments, and make a trade monopoly

• More than 100 countries joined• Created a substantial middle class in northern

Europe• Set a precedent for large, European trading

operations that affected the Dutch and English

Silk Trade

• Connected China to the Mediterranean cultures

• Established in the early Roman Empire

• Used heavily during the reign of the Mongols (1200-1600)

• Carried silk, porcelain, paper, food, and religious ideas

• Spread Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity

Indian Ocean Trade

• Between 600 and 1450, the Persians and the Arabs dominated I.O.T.

• The trade routes connected ports in western India to ports in Persian Gulf, which in turn were connected to ports in eastern Africa.

• Boats were resilient to large waves• Used the monsoon seasons and direction

of winds to schedule their voyages

Indian Ocean Trade (cont.)

• This route tended to be safer than Mediterranean Trade because there was less warfare

• Sailors often married the local women at the ends of their trade routes, so cultures spread and intermixed rapidly

Sub-Saharan African trade

• The Bantu people spread their culture throughout sub-Saharan Africa during their migrations.

• Religion (Christianity) was spread along the trade routes from Ethiopia to sub-Saharan Africa.

• By the fifteenth century the spread of Islam was associated with the spread of literacy.

• Islamic learning centers were established along the trade routes during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

A Global Network?• After 1200 the world was very interconnected• If you link the trade routes, goods could make

their way from England to Persia to India to Japan.

• Goods could travel from Muscovy to Mali• The network was a web of interconnected but

highly-independent parts. • No one person managed it, but all major

civilizations (except those in the Americas) were a part of it.