# 2.1 The Silk Road

## Essential Question
What are the causes and effects of the networks of exchange after the year 1200?

## Relay Trade
Allow for goods to go from 1 place to another in an efficient manner. A system where goods are passed down the line from one place to othe next.

Idea that you're not going to go from Shanghai to Jerusalem, takes too much info and knowing language. To aid this they would make cities and make networks where you would pay someone to get the goods for you.

## Causes of growth of the exchange network
What allows trade to flourish and get as big as it gets.

### Why does it happen?
After the crusades the desire for products from the East(asia chinga) started to grow, they gained a desire for those goods and info since they were in the dark ages. China is happy to trade because they want gold and silver in exchange for giving things like silk, tea, and rhubarb.

These trade routes are not being newly found, they are simply growing in how significant and how populated they are, usually based on how the empire is doing.
- Trade routes tend to rise and fall based on the empire.

Encouraging trade routes allows you to get things like taxes and money so they would be protected and safe. You wouldn't want someone to bring back silk from China for it to be lost.
- When trade routes fall it tends to be due to the empire doing badly

### Luxury Goods
China would want everything from that outside world for a couple reasons.
- It's hard to get
- They don't have it.
- Cotten
- Stones
- Pomregates
- Horses
- Grapes

They would not provide the seeds to grow things or ways to easily get them, for example if you have corn seeds, why sell the seeds if it makes you lose money.

### The Mongols
They conquer the Abbasids and China in 1258, and they have one of the largest empires in the world, ever. They understand the importance of trade routes so they make the routes safe to travel.

## Improvements in transportation technologies in all of the trade networks.
New technologies allow more trade to happen across all trade routes and not just on the silk road.

### Land Technology

**Caravans** - while just people walking in a straight line, would allow for things like making a group harder to attack by splitting up groups and carrying more products in general.

**Camels** - They would be able to eat things that most other animals wouldn't be able to eat let alone digest. They can eat things like cactus, and digest it, and even live off of it.

**Saddles** - They would help spread the load for things like spices and fabrics that would make it easy to get goods from one place to the other.

### Naval Technology

**Rudder** - What allows you to do things like steer boats easily.

**Magnetic Compass** - The chinese figured it out and would help them navigate into South-East Asia and India

**Junk Ships** - As long as 400 feet, triple the size of boats that Europe was making, they would have a low possibility of sinking.
> These ships would be 3-4 times as big as the Santa Maria.

### Economic Exchange along the silk road
**China** - Silk, bamboo, mirrors, gunpowder, paper, rhubarb, and ginger.

**Siberia and Central Asia** - Furs, walrus tusks, amber, livestock, horses, falcons, hides, tents, saddles, and slaves.

**India** - Cotton textiles, herbal medicine, precious stones, and spices.

**Middle East** - Dates, nuts, almonds, dried fruit, dyes, lapis lazuli, swords

**Mediterranean Basin** - Gold coin, glassware, glazes, grapevines, jewelry, art works, perfume , wool, linen textiles, and olive oil.

### Effect of the Growth of Exchange Networks.
A series of oases turn into thriving cities. Usually near water, where people could go trade goods, where merchants would be able to rest.

**Kashgar** - Near the western edge of china, where northern and southern routes of the silk road would cross over. Along the Kashgar River, hence the name, Originally prodominently Buddhist but than became Islamic due to the amount of islamic traders coming in.

**Samarkands** - Center for cultural life as well as trade, multiple religions, and a big artistic and learning center.

## Commercial Innovations
Due to the increase of trade and money new innovations in commerce develop. China had long been using money instead of batering.
> Bartering - You have a cow, I have some wheat, how about we exchange?

Copper coins would be hard to bring money long distance due to their weight so they would come up with differnt forms of currency.

Things such as paper money, credit, bills of exchange which were essientiely an IOU.

### Innovation in Commerce, 500BCE to 1603 CE.
yeah imma just copy and paste this from google classroom. i should make this a table too, that's a very good idea.

## Other technological innovations along the Silk Roand and throughout.
Things such as paper.

Gunpowder would also be distrubuted by the Muslims and Mongols.

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###### tags: `AP World` `Unit 2`