The Silk Road was a major pre-modern trade route, which linked the east with the west along a major land route and by land-based methods of transportation. The overarching connection with historical kingdoms and empires is traditionally based on the movement of silk and other luxury goods from China to the Roman Empire and throughout the Mediterranean. The effect of this trade brought about a major internationalization of trading partnerships with China, India, and other nations that would connect with Europe.
The development of the Silk Road from China began during the Han Dynasty, but it quickly expanded into Central Asia during the 2nd and 1st centuries B. C. For instance, the shipment of silk to Europe brought about a major demand for luxury textiles, which linked China to the Roman Empire and other regions in the west from 30 A. D. to the 8th century A. D.
This type of exchange would bring about major economic and political changes that would vastly expand the wealth and status of Romans and Chinese trade officials: “Chinese silk and other luxuries from distant parts of Asia were being purchased in Roman markets that the treasury of the empire was bleeding” (Liu 20). In this manner, the success of the Silk Road brought great demand for silk products, which created a massive increase in trade relations between the east and the west.
One of the problems of the Silk Road wads the threat of invasion from Asia due to the newly opened trade routes, which gave access to Europe and the Roman Empire. The alliances between China, Persia, and other Central Asian regions brought about a clash of civilizations, which often involved the Byzantine Empire and/or the Roman Empire as a result of increased trade relations during the first centuries A. D. During this time, the struggle to control the trade routes became a geopolitical struggle that created military conflicts between civilizations.
For instance, the Nisibis War of the 290s A. D. defines the restrictions to Roman power over the Silk Road: “The Nisibis War interfered with merchant traffic along the Silk Road, and Persian merchants took the Indian Ocean to compete with Romans in the Indian markets” (Harrell 53). These are some of the international conflicts that occurred due to the Silk Road and the access that it provided those that controlled and regulated these trade markets.
In this way, the benefits of exotic goods from Asia provide a massive economic stimulus for European and Roman markets, yet the continual struggle to dominate trades routes by these competing civilizations also caused a great deal of strife and war. II. The Incense Route The Incense Route provided land and sea routes throughout the Mediterranean and into Asia from the 7th century B. C. to the end of the 2nd century A. D. The primary source of this type of product was defined through the high demand of Arabian frankincense and myrrh, which became a highly sought after trade-good in Egypt and the Saudi Arabian peninsula.
In return, Arabian merchants could trade for Indian spices, jewels, and silks as a recompense for the incense that made its way eastward on the land routes and sea routes. More so, the use of incense in religious rites made this a very valuable product throughout the Greek and Roman Empires: “They were highly prize for religious ceremonies, as well as being used to fumigate clothes, and in medicine, cosmetics, and cooking (Middleton 120).
In this manner, the incense route became a powerful economic system of trade throughout Arabia, which then became expanded by entering the southern European market and the Indian and Chinese markets abroad. This type of trade affected an increasingly international exchange of goods across the west and the east as a foundation for diplomacy and political agreements between these competing civilizations. Certainly, the incense route provided the Arabians with a specific product to achieve greater ambitions of economic dominance throughout the Mediterranean.
This period of history defines one of the reasons why the Arabians became so powerful from the 3rd century A. D. to the 6th century A. D. because of this valuable product and the trade routes that brought them great wealth and great armies. Certainly, the Incense Route was a major trade route, which the Arabs controlled through the value of exports goods, such as frankincense and myrrh, to Europe and Asia. One of the major problems with the Arabian “incense route” was that it was slowly being co-opted by the Indian merchants as a source of international trade.
Most importantly the incense route laid the foundation for the Indian Spice Route, which fomented a continual struggle to maintain dominance between the two competing civilizations: “The Incense Route along the Western part of the Arab Peninsula was the predecessor of the Indian Spice Route” (Mimouni and Metcalfe 297). This inter-civilizational conflict often interrupted the Incense Route, which formed military conflict over the vast wealth of the goods being transported on land and at sea.
Surely, the Incense Route defined a period in which Arabian merchants wielded great control over the movement of these luxury items, but it was the conflict with the Indian civilization that often made these routes unstable and hostile to the merchant traveler. Once again, it is the clash of civilizations over valuable trade products that caused so much war and economic destabilization over access to these trade routes to the East and to Europe. III. Spice Route The Spice Route was primarily controlled through Indian and Ethiopian sea routes, which acted as a countermand the land route of the Silk Road.
These ancient sea routes provided the Indian economy with vast array of spices, which could be shipped to China, Central Asia, and Europe by having access to the Red Sea and Egyptian ports. The shipment of Indian spices laid the foundation for an ever-expanding diet for the Ptolemaic Dynasty and other empires that followed. The movement of these spices across the sea provided a more fluid and less dangerous method of travel than the highly contentious Silk Road: “From Malabar, the spices were ferried across the Indian Ocean, around the Horn of Africa, and north up the Red Sea” (Turner 104).
This new way of moving spices on the sea helped to expand trade beyond the land-bound parameters of the Silk Road. These developments allowed for the building of large merchant fleets and navies to help move the spices, but to also protect them from marauding pirates and smugglers. Certainly, the Spice Route was a viable alternative to shipping goods from Europe to China by Indian spice merchants working in this market. The Spice route was a major competitor for the Silk Road, since it relied on the sea to move products across the world.
The one major problem of the Spice Route was it was being used to smuggle goods that would have been regulated through the Silk Road. The conflict over sea routes provided more pirating and smuggling operations, so that Roman traders and other empires could circumvent the Parthian dominance over the Silk Road: “The Romans, too, encouraged the Spice Route trade from the Red Sea to India in an attempt to bypass the Parthians…The Romans and the Parthians were long-time rivals for power in Western Asia (Reid 8).
Much like the Silk Road and the Incense Route, the Spice Route created a highly hostile and combative maritime environment for merchants, navies, and other persons traveling the Indian Ocean. Again, the Indian and Ethiopian navies often hindered the struggle for dominance of these routes, but during the late 6th and 7th centuries, the Arabs retook the Spice Route from what was previously known as the Incense Route. These problems often negated the highly profitable spices being shipped in these seafaring endeavors, which made travel very dangerous.
More so, the volatility of the world’s ocean made it dangerous to ship these items over such long distances. Surely, the Silk Road was an immobile route that could be ambushed or controlled y various empires along its span, but the dangers of the sea made navigation on the Spice Route a very dangerous option. However, the Indian merchants often took these risks as a means of overcoming the tariffs and land-based dangers of the Silk Road to promote and sell their valuable spice products.