Silk Route

Also called: Silk Road · Topic: The Making of a Global World · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 6 "The Age of Reorganisation"; Class 9, Ch 4 "Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation"; Class 10, Ch 3 "The Making of a Global World"; Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"; Class 11, Ch 2 "An Empire Across Three Continents"; Class 11, Ch 5 "Changing Cultural Traditions"

Meaning

The Silk Routes (also called the Silk Road) were a network of many land and sea trade routes. They linked different parts of Asia with each other, and joined Asia to Europe and northern Africa. They were in use from before the Christian Era until almost the 15th century.

They matter because they show that globalisation is very old. These routes carried goods and money, and also religions, ideas and disease, across three continents.

Explanation

Background: globalisation before modern times

• Globalisation did not start after the 1950s. It is a long story made of many phases of trade, migration and movement of money.
• Travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims carried goods, money, skills and ideas. They also carried germs (disease).
• The links began well before the silk routes:
• From c. 3000 BCE, an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with West Asia.

• Cowries (sea shells used as money) from the Maldives reached China and East Africa. This trade went on for more than a thousand years.

• The silk routes are the best-known example of these old connections.

Main features

• There was no single road. There were many routes. Some went over land and some went by sea.
• Why they are called "silk" routes: the name comes from Chinese silk, which travelled west along them.
• The main land route:
• It began at Chang'an (today's Xi'an) in north-central China.
• It went west along the Great Wall, crossed the Pamirs and passed through Afghanistan.
• It ended in the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean coast) and Anatolia (modern Turkey). In all, it was about 6,400 km long.

• From there, goods crossed the Mediterranean to Europe. [2]

• What went west: Chinese silk, Chinese pottery, and textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia.

• What went east: precious metals, gold and silver, from Europe to Asia.

• Goods mostly moved one way and money moved the other way.

• Silk was only one of many goods. The routes also carried textiles, spices, grain, fruit and vegetables, animal skins, tools, wood and metal goods, religious objects, art and precious stones. [3]

How the routes changed over time

• Rise: traders began using the route more than 2,000 years ago. [2]
• Revival: the Mongols brought the route back to life in the 13th–14th centuries. Marco Polo of Venice used it to travel to China. [2]
• Decline: the routes were busy almost till the 15th century. The land route fell out of use in the 1400s. [2]

Results: culture and germs travelled with the goods

• Religion spread along the trade routes.
• Early Christian missionaries travelled on these routes. Muslim preachers came later.
• Buddhism spread out of eastern India through the points where the routes crossed.

• Assyrian Christians took their faith to Central Asia and China. Merchants from the Indian subcontinent took Buddhism to China. [2]

• Disease spread along the same routes. Disease moving over long distances can be traced from the 7th century. By the 13th century, the link was "unmistakable".

• Food spread too.
• Noodles may have gone west from China and become spaghetti.
• Or Arab traders may have taken pasta to Sicily in the 5th century.
• Similar foods already existed in India and Japan, so no one can say for sure who made them first.
• NCERT's point is not to solve this puzzle. The fact that the puzzle exists shows how much contact there was in pre-modern times.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: from before the Christian Era to almost the 15th century. The routes were revived under the Mongols in the 13th–14th centuries. The land route fell out of use in the 1400s. [2]
• Places: Chang'an (Xi'an) at the eastern end, then the Great Wall, the Pamirs, Afghanistan, the Levant and Anatolia, and from there across the Mediterranean to Europe. [2] Sea routes linked India, Southeast Asia and China with the West.
• Key people:
• Marco Polo of Venice, a traveller who reached China along this route. [2]
• Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers.
• Assyrian Christians.

• Indian merchants, who carried Buddhism to China. [2]

• How we know about it:

• Travellers' accounts, such as Marco Polo's journey.
• The way religions spread: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam all appear along the routes.
• The goods themselves: silk, pottery, gold and silver.
• Shared foods across China, India, Japan and Sicily. These point to contact for which no written record survives.

Don't confuse with

• Indus–West Asia coastal trade: this was a sea trade from c. 3000 BCE between the Indus valley and West Asia. It came long before the silk routes and was a separate network.
• Cowrie trade: this was the movement of sea-shell money from the Maldives to China and East Africa. It did not carry Chinese silk.
• Food exchange after Columbus: potato, soya, groundnut, maize, tomato, chilli and sweet potato came from the Americas, and only after Columbus reached there, about five centuries ago. They did not travel along the silk routes.
• Marco Polo / the Mongols: they did not create the route. The routes were already more than a thousand years old. The Mongols revived them in the 13th–14th centuries, and Marco Polo travelled on them. [2]

Prelims Hooks

• The silk routes existed before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the 15th century.
• The land route started at Chang'an (modern Xi'an), crossed the Pamirs, and ran about 6,400 km to the Levant and Anatolia. [2]
• Direction of flow: silk, pottery, textiles and spices went west; gold and silver went east (from Europe to Asia).
• Buddhism spread out of eastern India through the points where the routes crossed. Indian merchants carried it to China. [2]
• Mongol revival (13th–14th centuries): Marco Polo of Venice reached China by this route. [2]
• Trap: the "silk routes" were many routes, by land and sea, not one road. They carried far more than silk, for example grain, animal skins, tools, religious objects and precious stones. [3]

Mains Points

• Globalisation is old. The Indus–West Asia trade (c. 3000 BCE), Maldivian cowries in China and East Africa, and silk routes active from before the Christian Era to the 15th century all show that the world was connected long before modern capitalism. This argues against the idea that globalisation began in the 20th century.
• A trade route also carries culture and disease.
• The same routes carried Chinese silk, Christian missionaries, Muslim preachers and Buddhism from eastern India.
• They also carried germs. The link was "unmistakable" by the 13th century.

• A GS-I answer can connect this to the later exchange that followed Columbus, when foods and diseases crossed between the Americas and the rest of the world.

• India's part in the network: India sent textiles and spices west, received gold and silver from Europe, and sent Buddhism to China through its merchants. [2] This makes the silk routes useful evidence for Indian heritage questions on India's cultural reach into Central and East Asia.

Related concepts

• Globalisation
• Christopher Columbus
• Columbian exchange
• Irish potato famine

Read more

• The pre-modern world: silk routes and food travels