The process of moving goods from one location to another through the use of animals, wheeled vehicles, boats, trains, or airplanes.
Inventions and adaptations in the transportation of goods evolved as trade expanded from local to global markets and as technology has advanced. Sometimes, technology developed for other purposes has been applied by merchants and traders to transportation to shorten the travel time, and therefore the costs, of shipping goods from one place to another.
In ancient times, rivers gained paramount importance for transporting goods. Thus civilizations developed around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile Rivers. The earliest vessels that carried grain and other foodstuffs were constructed as rafts or inflated skins with a timber deck. Large baskets made watertight with animal hides were also used in ancient Babylon. On the Nile River, Egyptians used reed baskets or other forms of rafts. Mesopotamians developed a dugout canoe vessel that relied on square sails to help them travel the Red Sea. The Phoenicians improved on the design by constructing larger vessels with cargo holds.
Starting around 3000 B.C.E. where, no navigable rivers existed, animals were used to move goods and people. The camel was ideally suited for traversing the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa. Capable of traveling for nine days without water, the camel became even more widely used after 500 B.C.E., when the camel saddle was invented. Caravans would depart the Far East with each camel carrying up to 500 pounds of luxury items across the deserts to the Mediterranean Sea. Other animals, such as donkeys and mules, were used to transport goods over shorter, more hospitable, routes.
Wheeled vehicles, which have a wheel rotating around an axle, are known to have existed as early as 3000 B.C.E. in Sumer. However, their use was limited because of the lack of roads and the expense of constructing and maintaining them. Before them, a sledge on wheels would have been used to move extremely heavy objects such as stone.
As the Egyptian empire expanded, the importance of larger sailing vessels grew. Wheat and other foodstuffs were traded for cedar from the Phoenicians (inhabitants of present-day Lebanon). These ships would have resembled the typical Aegean galley with its square sails. Although Egyptian shipping existed, it was the Phoenicians, with their ready supply of cedar, who engaged in shipbuilding and sailing throughout the Mediterranean world. Regular shipments were sent to Mycenae, Cyprus, Greece, Sicily, Egypt, and even as far as Rome and Spain. The Phoenicians dominated the sea trade between 1200 and 800 B.C.E.
Eventually, the Greeks began to assert control over the islands of the Aegean, challenging the Phoenicians for the lucrative trade. The rise of the Greek city-states, in particular Athens with its well-protected harbor, changed trade patterns. The Greeks dominated much of the Mediterranean trade, reaching its height in the fifth century B.C.E. The most important product shipped from Greece was olive oil. All types of goods were imported to Greece. Transportation was the key to the development of both trade and the Greek hegemony of the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
During the Roman empire, transportation served a number of purposes. Travel by boat was still common, and shipwrecks were frequent. Larger or heavier goods were loaded in cities such as Tyre and Sidon and shipped to Rome or other port cities. Amphora filled with wine, olive oil, or exotic spices were commonly traded. Since Rome lacked an adequate supply of grain for its growing population, it purchased wheat from Egypt on a regular basis. Even after Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople, the need for wheat from Egypt continued. Eventually, wheat was shipped from the Black Sea region to Constantinople as well.
The vast road system of the Roman empire facilitated trade between Rome and its distant provinces. The construction of Roman roads was highly organized. Usually built in straight lines, the roads sometimes veered around obstacles. Consisting of four layers, the surface was made of hard, flat stones, concrete, or pebbles set in mortar. Ditches were dug into the road and on the side of the road for drainage purposes. The roads were used primarily for moving the Roman legions by land, but they also contributed to the development of long-distance trade as merchants, often traveling with the military, could assume they would arrive safely at their destination along with their wares. From Rome, roads ran in every direction. The Ostiense Road connected Rome with the port at Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber River. The Latin Way connected the imperial city with Capua, and from there Romans could connect to the Appian Way. The Praenes-tina Way headed southwest from Rome to Praeneste. To the north were three major roads. The Flaminian Way, the most widely used road, headed northeast to Ariminum (Rimini) and then on to Milan. Another road, the Aurelian Way, connected Rome with Pisa, and later with Genoa af ter the road was extended. The Appian Way, one of the first Roman roads, was constructed in 312 B.C.E. and extended over 340 miles. All roads had to be at least 16 feet wide, with some, such as the Portuensis Way, wide enough for two carriages to travel side by side to the harbor. When Rome was at its peak, the road system extended nearly 50,000 miles. Goods could move from Africa, Asia, and Europe to all points within the empire, including Britain. “All roads lead to Rome” became the common saying.
After each road was constructed, it was the responsibility of the district through which it ran to keep it in good repair. The system worked well until after the fall of the Western Roman empire. The roads were no longer maintained, and the construction stones were often removed and used for other purposes. Travel became perilous without the protection of the army, and merchants restricted much of their trade to a local area or shipped their goods by boat—but even this method of transportation was risky, as pirates scouted the Mediterranean Sea.
During the Middle Ages, several technological developments occurred that assisted land transportation, especially of agricultural produce from the rural hinterlands into the cities. In 800, the modern horse harness had been invented, making it possible to use horses for both plowing and hauling goods. When Europeans realized that by walking on tilled fields horses’ hooves became too soft, the horseshoe was developed. In the eleventh century, the whippletree—or cross-barred harness for multiple animals—was invented to stabilize the pull of the load. By the twelfth century, large carts were used. However, for people to travel over long distances with some degree of comfort, it was necessary to develop a springed carriage.
In Europe, water transportation was also expanded during the Middle Ages. The first canal and lock system was built at Bruges in 1236. Others were built along the major rivers of Europe, linking one region to another. Goods floated down the canals, usually on flat barges. Developments occurred in the area of saltwater travel as well. The lateen sail, which was much better for tacking into the wind than the traditional square sail, had first been seen in Marseilles in the sixth century. By the thirteenth century, ships in the North Sea were relying on a rudder to steer, instead of lateral oars, which frequently broke. At the end of the twelfth century, the magnetic compass was introduced to Europe from Asia. By constructing the ribbed hull and then nailing the boards to the skeleton of the hull, the time and expense of shipbuilding were reduced. Technologically, Europe was ready to begin searching for a sea route to India—a goal of European merchants who did not want to pay the Arab middlemen. But then the Black Death reduced Europe’s population by up to two-thirds in some regions. Exploration would not resume until after the plague had run its course and an agricultural revolution in the fourteenth century helped increase the population to its pre-plague level.
Portugal was among the first countries to consolidate as a nation-state. Poised on the Atlantic side of the Iberian Peninsula, the ruling family, especially Prince Henry the Navigator, became interested in navigation. He established a navigation school, and gradually exploration of the western coast of Africa began. Of great importance were the mapmaking efforts of these early explorers, who often would label the regions along the coast not with the name of the city or port but by listing the commodity that could be purchased there.
For the next several centuries, Europeans relied on caravel ships with their lateen sails and rudders to establish trade routes between Europe and the rest of the world. As trade increased, cities grew and roads became important once again. Taxes were often levied in districts throughout Europe to pay for the construction and maintenance of the roads. Often, tolls were charged as well.
The next major change in transportation occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the introduction of the steamboat. The develop ment of the steam engine in England in the early eighteenth century was originally designed to pump water out of the coal mines. By the late eighteenth century, James Watt had improved the efficiency of the steam engine, and in 1807 American Robert Fulton constructed the first steamboat, the Claremont, which traveled between New York and Albany in thirty-two hours. In 1813, Scottish inventor Henry Bell constructed the steam-powered Comet. Within four years, steamboats were operating on most major rivers in England and the United States. Transatlantic crossings, using a combination of wind and steam power, began in 1819 when the Savannah crossed from Savannah, Georgia, to Liverpool, England, in twenty-nine days. Further improvements in the steamships led to their widespread use between the Far East and Europe as well.
Despite these technological breakthroughs, geography remained an obstacle. Goods from India and China were sent through the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where the goods were reloaded onto shallow-draft vessels that carried the items north to the Mediterranean Sea. The cost of unloading and reloading the cargo and the time needed to cross through present-day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey were greatly reduced after the construction of the Suez Canal. In 1859, the French consul to Egypt, Ferdinand de Lesseps, convinced the pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali (who ruled under the authority of the Ottoman sultan), of the need for a canal that would eliminate the bottleneck for travel between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. He founded the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez and began construction of the canal. Difficulties arose because of disease, the desert terrain, and the need for a new harbor at the north end of the canal. The completion in 1869 of the Suez Canal, according to Daniel R. Headrick, shortened the voyage from Bombay to London “by fifty-one percent, to Calcutta by thirty-two percent, and to Singapore by twenty-nine percent. It’s most important impacts were upon the East-West trade and shipbuilding.” In 1870, traffic through the canal totaled 486 ships with over 436,000 tons of capacity. By 1900, that number had risen to 3,441 ships with a total capacity of 9.7 million tons. Three-quarters of all ships using the Suez Canal were of British registry.
While the steam engine revolutionized water transportation, it transformed land travel as well. George Stephenson built his first steam engine in 1814. Within the next fifteen years, many improvements were made, culminating with the completion of the Rocket by Stephenson and his son Robert. England began building railroads across the country, and by 1841 more than 1,600 miles of track had been laid. France developed a railroad system under the control of the government after 1850. In the United States, the railroad helped to link the eastern seaboard to the interior regions, such as the Ohio Valley. By the end of Andrew Jackson’s second term as president, the United States had 1,450 miles of track. With the expansion of the United States after the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848, the merchants and industrialists of the East Coast sought a way to link the two coasts of the United States by constructing the transcontinental railroad. The gold rush of 1849 stimulated the need for faster transportation of goods and people to California. At the same time, railroad construction created many jobs in the iron industry as the need for rails increased throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.
The railroad helped the British to consolidate control over India and ship goods across vast areas with reduced costs. The British East India Company, still in control of operations on the Indian subcontinent, began constructing a rail line in 1854 that linked Calcutta with Delhi when it was completed twelve years later. Other lines connected Bombay with Madras and Delhi with Bombay. By 1872, approximately 5,000 miles of track had been laid in India. By the turn of the nineteenth century, nearly 26,000 miles of railroad linked all parts of India. The number of rail miles exceeded that in Asia and Africa. One major problem encountered in India was the frequent flooding of its large rivers—a problem solved by engineers who constructed massive bridges to span the floodplains. With the hinterland of India connected to its major trade centers and ports, goods moved faster and in greater quantity than ever before.
Ocean travel was shortened again in 1914 with the opening of the Panama Canal. The idea for a canal across the isthmus had originated in 1535 but began to become a reality in 1881 when de Lesseps, the French consul who arranged for the construction of the Suez Canal, reached an agreement for its construction with the Colombian government (since Panama was at the time a province of Colombia). However, the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama ran into a number of obstacles during construction, including the death of many of its workers from diseases such as malaria as well as technological problems created by the need to bridge the continental divide between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
After years of attempts, the French company was near bankruptcy when it approached the United States with the idea of purchasing its assets and contract with Colombia for the rights to construct the canal through Panama. President Theodore Roosevelt approved of U.S. involvement, but negotiations had to be conducted first with Great Britain to release the United States from the 1903 Hay-Herran Treaty guaranteeing that neither side would pursue the construction of a canal without the other. After the British agreed to release the United States from its agreement, negotiations between the United States, the French company, and the Colombian government resulted in the signing of an agreement. The United States bought the rights in 1904. The Colombian government refused to ratify the treaty. After a U.S.-supported uprising in Panama, the United States recognized Panama as an independent country, and a new agreement, the Hay– Bunau-Varilla Treaty, granted the United States the rights to a ten-mile strip of land from the Atlantic to the Pacific in exchange for a down payment of $10 million and an annual rent of $250,000 beginning in 1913.
The United States did not experience the same difficulties as the French did, since a U.S. Army medical research team had discovered that mosquitoes were the carriers of malaria and that spraying to kill the insects could prevent the disease. The Army Corps of Engineers overcame the technological difficulties by constructing a lock system over the continental divide. The opening of the canal reduced the travel distance between the U.S. East and West Coasts by 8,000 nautical miles around the tip of South America. Voyages between Europe and the Orient were reduced by 2,000 miles and from one coast of North America to the other coast of South America by 3,500 miles. The United States maintained control over the Panama Canal, until December 31, 1999, when control was returned to Panama. In 2000, approximately 4,359 ships containing 230 million tons of goods went through the Panama Canal.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, transportation underwent another transformation after the invention of the combustion engine and its use in the automobile. It was only after Henry Ford invented the assembly line and paid his workers high enough wages so that they could afford the Model Ts that the automobile industry really took off.
During the prosperous 1920s, American families bought cars, which in turn created a ripple effect in the economy of the country as well as the world. The rubber industry expanded as more people needed to purchase tires; glass was needed for windshields; and gasoline stations opened in large numbers to meet the growing demand. As more people left the city for the countryside for the weekend or on vacation, Americans required motels, roadside restaurants, and other services.
In 1916, the government passed the Federal Highway Act, which created a system of farm-to-market roads to help move produce to consumers, and state highways. The creation of concrete-or asphalt-surfaced roads encouraged the use of trucks instead of the train to move goods from one point to another. By the late 1920s, just before the Great Depression, the railroad industry was already experiencing difficulty, with many lines forced into bankruptcy. The next major highway program was initiated under the adminis tration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 established the interstate highway system. By 1996, the National Highway System contained more than 528,000 miles of highway connecting all parts of the country, ten times the distance of roads of the entire Roman empire.
Although the airline industry, developed primarily in the post–World War II period, has expanded to include mail and freight services, its impact on trade has been mostly in the service sector. Businesspeople traveling to conferences or trade conventions account for a large proportion of air travel. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, business travel declined, but it has since recovered. Overnight package services such as United Parcel Service, Fedex, and Airborne make it possible to ship goods globally within twenty-four hours. What used to take months to arrive from the Orient can now arrive the next morning.
Cynthia Clark Northrup
See also: Babylonian Empire; British Empire; Roman Empire; United States.
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“Roman Road Network, 200 A.D.” (http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch1en/conc1en/romannet.html, accessed November 2003).