The stability of the Han empire in unified China, the
Kushan Empire
of Central Asia, the
Parthian Empire
to its west and the waxing Roman
Empire completed a chain of trade zones which for the first time sent
Silk Road trade into high gear. Several factors must have been at work
in this. The formation of such empires must have for the first time led
men to think in terms of large polities and their relations and travel
to the outside. At the same time, travel within and through the
areas of the newly-constituted empires could finally be accomplished.
Civil and military authority could be expected to enforce peace and
some semblance of fairness in dealings. Roads and way stations had
a better chance being maintained. There was less chance of being captured
by raiding nomads who typically coerced merchants into tribute or worse,
held them for ransom. Tribute had been a problem too in the pre-empire
days when each tiny kingdom and satrapy had demanded a large fee for
the privilege of trade, or even traversal. Finally, the standardization
of weights and measures, even if different in each empire, must have been
incredibly useful in helping traders to receive a fair price from station
to station.
Golden Ages of Trade
For these reasons, the best days for the Silk Road are certainly
to be found in four distinct periods: (1) the one already mentioned
which lasted until the Han disintegration in about the third century,
(2) the period under Tang unification, with Islamic polities and the
Byzantine Empire providing the other links, roughly the seventh to the
early tenth centuries, (3) the "Pax Mongolica" after 1250 when the
Mongols had conquered most of the route up to the Byzantine Empire, to
1368 and (4) the final, lesser flowering of the short period of the
Timurid Empire in the fourteenth century despite Ming resistance in
China. In most cases, all the empires named were quite conscious of
the benefits of trade and actively encouraged and supported it,
although not always in the wisest fashion.
Trade brought wealth, not just to the few hundred or perhaps low
thousands of individuals who partook in it, but to the entire region in
which they operated. Traders passing through oasis towns left some
fraction of their wealth there in exchange for stabling for their
animals, shelter for themselves, food, drink and entertainment after a
long and dusty day on the road. In towns like Dunhuang which was no
doubt a terminus for traders of Chinese origin, they endowed vast
sculptures and artworks such as those at the Mogao Caves and this must
have been true in many places along the road. Besides being difficult,
long distance trade was dangerous work and many a trader must have
inwardly promised a large donation to the local deity if only he could
survive the next day's journey through nomadic territory or through a
dangerous Pamir mountain pass. There were also taxes and border tolls
to pay even in the imperial period and before one could start trading
in a town for the first time, a visit to the local potentate to pay
tribute was necessary. Finally, a long distance trader brought wealth
in the form of rare items which might have much greater value than they
did in the land of their origin, taking back with him items of similar
value for his own country. In this way, the trader performed a true
service for both lands in increasing the values of their economies.
This was the the basis of the flowering of civilization, of advances in
the arts, the sciences and the humanities, of which the Mogao Caves are
but one example. However, as we shall see, all too often the polities
involved could not leave well enough alone and attempted to have their
cake as well as eat it.
Threats to Trade
One such group would seem to have purer motives in the sense that
they seemed excluded from trade and sought to remedy it. These were
the Xiong Nu nomads. In the first two centuries AD they provoked
constant turmoil in northwestern China. In the early days of the road,
they simply made trade more dangerous since their presence north of the
Tien Shan tended to discourage journeys in that area, forcing use of
the more perilous desert travel skirting the Taklamakan. But in 39
they occupied Shanxi, in 46 Yarkand, Lou-lan, Turfan and Kucha and in
74 even dared to attack Gansu. Chinese counterattack drove them back,
but after 150, the western marches were simply written off. Actually,
earlier in their history the Xiong Nu had been the beneficiaries of
trade – they seem to have been providers of camels, the backbone of
Serindian trade itself, to the traders, but seeing that they might take
more, they not only overran the newly-grown up settlements and seized
their wealth, they also attacked trade caravans and exacted tribute or
worse. Since in the event they did not provide the civilizing effects
of empire, the end result was a net loss for all concerned including
the Xiong Nu as silk road trade virtually ceased for a few centuries.
Persian Interference
When the land route dried up, some trade found its way over the sea.
This trade is mostly beyond the scope of this paper, except to point out
that it was to the partial benefit of the Persian empire as even though
the volume of trade had probably decreased, the fact that ships could not
avoid stopping at ports for fresh supplies of food and water and most of
the ports were in Persian control meant that for the first time Persia
could usually maintain total control over long distance trade. In addition,
more profits could be realized by Persians and for greater Persia as well
since the sea route meant fewer middlemen whereas Rome and the Byzantine
Empire would continue to pay the same prices.
The
Parthians,
predecessors of
Sassanid Persia,
had been, like the
Kushans,
solicitous of trade. The rulers even caused to be set up along
the route caravanserais at various intervals, but they did tend to reserve
these same facilities for traders of their own country, preferring
foreigners to remain at the border. In the cases of both empires, this
was probably to their overall detriment since it meant that trade was
less than it might otherwise have been and that hardy traders would seek
their way outside their borders. When the Parthians were weak, they took
a southern detour and arrived at Petra in the West, bypassing the Parthians
altogether. Similiarly, when the Persians refused to deal with the
Turks or the Sogdians who belonged to their kingdoms, the traders found
a northern way which took them over the Caucasus and thence into Anatolia.
Byzantine Interference
Imperial interference in trade was also to be found in the West. The
same Justinian who is considered so wise for his books of law and so great
for his reconquest of barbarian-occupied Roman lands, tried not only to
gain all the wealth from the silk trade by monopolizing it, but tried to
limit the flow of the gold used to pay for it. As later practitioners of
price controls have discovered, it is a difficult trick to make work and
the results were that all the silk and silk-oriented businesses in the
Byzantine Empire promptly went out of business or moved over the border
into Persia, which could not have been a favorable development for the
treasury, and, the Persians, faced with an import quotas, simply did as
did the Japanese automakers in our own era, they raised their prices to
make up the difference.
Chinese Interference
But such apparently self-immolating practices were not unique. In
Canton in 878, a coup left a certain Hung Ch'ao holding the reins of
power. His first move was to chop down all the mulberry trees and
expel foreign traders. As a result, the pendulum swung and the silk
trade that had gone overseas now returned to the land routes. This
development had been made possible because the Sui and then the Tang
Dynasty (618-907) had managed to reunite China and in particular extend
power back out to the northwest and even to Tibet. The states of Central
Asia were in a tributary relationship and China welcomed foreigners to
its markets. In 731, the Tang had officially recognized money which was
must have been a boon to traders as they now could receive payment in
a universally acceptable medium. A new tax system which permitted payment
in money assisted them in similar ways. Silk road trade was in its golden
age.
Again, greed was not to permit a long duration. Eventually the Tang
must have felt it was not getting sufficient worth from trade and started
to institute monopolies of the type we have already seen, this time on
salt, iron, and even wine. Sales of some items to foreigners began to
be prohibited. Arabs started having to surrender fully one-third of their
cargoes in China, a steep tax indeed. Declining wealth and governmental
control as well as an increasing inwardness in China might well be
studied in this context. At the same time, control of the mountain
fastnesses of Tibet was not easily maintained and having had a taste of
trade, its raiders struck and threatened it. In 763 they overran
China and in 800 exerted virtual control over the northwest area.
Their power continued well into the 1100's. In a sense, it was the
story of the Xiong Nu all over again. Trader expenses mounted as they
were forced to hire out troops of archers to escort their expeditions.
And some switched back to use of sea routes.
Arab Interference
These sea routes were still monopolized by the Persians, but then
the arrival of the Arabs restricted trade even more. More religious in
their statecraft than the Persians had been, the Arab states looked askance
at any non-Islamic traders. Chinese and Western traders alike were
excluded from the new states. Alone among all groups, the Jews, being
neither Christian nor Moslem, could take advantage of this situation.
Generally tolerated by the usually intolerant West (Charlemagne was an
explicit patron of Jewish groups), they were allowed to trade in Islamic
lands with only the hindrance of a special tax enacted by the Abassids
in the eighth and ninth centuries. Jewish traders became so important
that they came to exert a controlling influence in the government of
Khazaria, perhaps the only case of traders having a direct influence on
a government rather than the reverse.
Turkish Interference
At the same time however, Silk Road trade had been fundamentally changed
because of the exclusion of Western Christendom. It may be that this
effect was fundamental to the "European Dark Ages" and perhaps should be
further investigated. In the meantime, however, states such as Morocco
and Spain which had not much participated in Silk Road trade now became
involved as they represented full-fledged components of the Islamic
world. This reality was in turn disturbed by the Turks who in the
ninth century entered Central Asia, initially behaving much as did the
Xiong Nu. Their innovation, however, was to adopt the sedentary life
and rule as established kingdoms, no doubt advised by an Islamic
bureaucracy already present. Thus after the Seljuq invasion of the
eleventh century, trade was able to resume much as normal.
The Mongols
The Mongols have a terrible reputation as the horsemen of the devil
himself, but perhaps this needs revision. Their invasions of the early
thirteenth century gained them Central Asia in 1230 and a reunited
China by 1260. This put the entire Silk Road in Mongolian hands right
up to the Syrian coast. And even if Syria was closed to them,
Trebizond was anyway available. As attested by the writings of Marco
Polo, foreigners and their ideas (even religious ones) and products
were welcomed by the khans leading to a rejuvenation of the route and
also to the Eurasian Steppe Route as a reflection of the northern
orientation of the Mongols. The Pax Mongolica even supported a postal
system with all the way stations and supports that this implies,
certainly of no small assistance to traders. The mini-Renaissance in
Europe, sometimes termed a renascence, during this time, 1250-1368,
might profitably be studied in this context as the Mongols, despite
their depredations in Europe, proved to be an effective ally with the
West against the Moslem states.
The Mongolian empire was too unwieldy to survive and there was some apparent decline in silk road trade with its passing. There was a final flowering however under the aegis of Timur who demonstrated that he understood quite well the benefits of long distance trade, in fact conquering much of the traditional route. His empire however was even shorter-lived and anyway, the silk road was at last in its decline as Henry the Navigator and a small school in the southwestern corner of Europe prepared to discover a sea route from Europe to China and change the world forever.
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