Encyclopedia of World Trade

A series of ancient trade routes, collectively known as the Silk Road, that linked China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe for over 4,000 years.

The term “Silk Road” was first used in 1877 by the German explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. Silk and other valuable commodities traveled along the road, as did ideas, religions, and explorers. As the only permanent transcontinental conduit of Eurasia, the importance of the Silk Road cannot be overestimated.

In the East, the Silk Road originated in the important city of Xi’an in China, then proceeding west through the Chinese city of Lanzhou, it followed the Great Wall to the oasis town of Dunhuang. Shortly before Dunhuang, the road split into a northern route that passed through the oases cities of Turfan and Aksu, and the southern route through Miran, Cherchen, Khotan, and Yarkand, bypassing the great deserts of Lop Nor and Taklimakan. The routes met again in the important city of Kashgar in eastern Turkestan before splitting once more. The northern route headed through Kokand westward into the Central Asian oases cities of Samarkand and Bukhara and then farther north into Volga Bulgaria and eastern Europe. The southern route went through Herat and Merv into Persia and then into the Middle East, ending in the ports of Tyre and Antioch on the Mediterranean.

Until the development of all sea routes in the sixteenth century, the Silk Road—shown here in a woodcut from the Middle Ages— was the main transportation route between Asia and Europe. (© North Wind Picture Archives)

As the name suggests, the main commodity traded on this route was silk, which came from China and was in high demand in the Roman empire and later in medieval Europe and the Middle East. China enjoyed a monopoly on silk production and sales for many centuries, amassing enormous wealth in the process. Wool, gold, and silver went from the West to China along the same road. The eastern section of the Silk Road from Khotan to China used to be called the Jade Road because of the large quantities of jade transported from there to China.

The Chinese merchants frequently traveled as far as Central Asia to sell their silk. The middlemen, usually Sogdian traders or Persians, took it as far as the Middle East. Eventually, it was purchased at a generous premium by European merchants and sold in Europe at astronomical prices. Following the loss of China’s monopoly on silk production to Byzantium in 550 C.E., the importance of silk on the Silk Road decreased.

Silk Road, 1000 C.E. Prized by Europeans but manufactured in China, silk was perhaps the most valuable internationally traded commodity of the Middle Ages. Several overland routes led from Europe and the Middle East to China. (Carto-Graphics and Mark Stein Studios)

The Silk Road had reached its apogee around 750, and after that traffic along it declined slowly. Chinese suppression of Buddhism in the ninth century and Islamic persecution of it elsewhere on the Silk Road significantly reduced traffic.

China maintained control over much of the eastern section of the Silk Road until the decline of the Tang dynasty and the rise of the Tanguts in the late tenth century, who were in turn followed by the Mongol empire. The western section was far more volatile with the Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, and Turks, all of whom vied for control of its trade.

The decision by the new Ming dynasty in China to isolate the Middle Kingdom dealt a severe blow to the Silk Road. The last significant development that led to its demise was the improvement in naval technology that allowed the Portuguese to reach India in the fifteenth century, followed by the Dutch, French, and English.

Bibliography

Hopkirk, Peter. Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.

Whitfield, Susan. Life Along the Silk Road. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.