What will the next great invention do?
H ow h av e m a n’ s i nve n t i o n s c ha n ge d t he w ay w e i nt er ac t ?
The History of Trade
Trade provides mankind's most significant meeting place, the market. The process of barter brings a crowd together in a
more random fashion. New ideas, along with precious artifacts, have always travelled along trade routes. Agricultural produce and everyday household goods tend to make short journeys to and from a local market. Trade in a grander sense, between distant places, is a different matter. It involves entrepreneurs and middlemen, people willing to accept delay and risk
in the hope of a large profit.
When travel is slow and dangerous, the trader's commodities must be as nearly as possible imperishable; and they must be
valuable in relation to their size. Spices fit the bill. So do rich textiles. And, above all, precious ornaments of silver and
gold, or useful items in copper, bronze or iron.
By far the easiest method of transporting goods is by water, particularly in an era when towns and villages are linked by
footpaths rather than roads. The first extensive trade routes are up and down the great rivers which become the backbones of
early civilizations - the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and the Yellow River.
n the parched regions of north Africa and Asia two different species of camel become the most important beasts of burden the single-humped Arabian camel (in north Africa, the Middle East, India) and the double-humped Bactrian camel (central
Asia, Mongolia). Both are well adapted to desert conditions. They can derive water, when none is available elsewhere, from
the fat stored in their humps.
It is probable that they are first domesticated in Arabia. By about 1000 BC caravans of camels are bringing precious goods
up the west coast of Arabia, linking India with Egypt, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia. In 106 BC, for the first time, a caravan
leaves China and travels through to Persia without the goods changing hands on the way. The Silk Road is open. In the 1st
century BC theRomansgain control of Syria and Palestine - the natural terminus of the Silk Road, for goods can move west
more easily from here by sea. Soon a special silk market is established in Rome.
China,proudly self-sufficient, wants nothing that Rome can offer. And theHan rulers are unwilling to release silk - either as
thread or woven fabric - except in exchange for gold. It has been calculated that in the 1st century AD China has a hoard of
some five million ounces of gold. In Rome the emperor Tiberius issues a decree against the wearing of silk. His stated reason is the drain on the empire's reserves of gold. The Silk Road introduces global economics.
Jumping forward twelve hundred years, the profitable trade in eastern spices is cornered by the Portuguese in the 16th century to the detriment ofVenice, which has previously had a virtual monopoly of these valuable commodities - until now
brought overland through India and Arabia, and then across the Mediterranean by the Venetians for distribution in western
Europe.
By establishing the sea route round the Cape, Portugal can undercut the Venetian trade with its profusion of middlemen.
The new route is firmly secured for Portugal by the activities of Afonso de Albuquerque, who takes up his duties as the Portuguese viceroy of India in 1508. The early explorers up the east Africa coast have left Portugal with bases in Mozambique
and Zanzibar. Albuquerque extends this secure route eastwards by capturing and fortifying Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in 1514, Goa on the west coast of India in 1510 (where he massacres the entire Muslim population for the effrontery of resisting him) and Malacca, guarding the narrowest channel of the route east, in 1511.
The island of Bombay is ceded to the Portuguese in 1534. An early Portuguese presence in Sri Lanka is steadily in-
creased during the century. And in 1557 Portuguese merchants establish a colony on the island of Macao. Goa functions
from the start as the capital of Portuguese India. On the last day of the year 1600 Elizabeth I of England grants a charter to a 'Company of Merchants trading into the East Indies'. Early voyages prove successful; by 1614 the East India
Company owns twenty-four ships. But competition with the Dutch and the Portuguese in the East will lead to war for
trade., this is a war that Britain will eventually win making it the world’s dominant trading state.
By the middle of the nineteenth century Great Britain has a far flung empire over which the “sun never sets”. To maintain speedy communication and travel between its many colonial bases and the mother country, British inventors build
increasingly quicker ships able to move larger and larger quantities of cargo. British investors and adventurers jump on
a plan to build a canal at Port Said in Egypt to further reduce travel times between the British isles and the markets they
have created in the colonies around the globe.
Questions:
What is the purpose of trade?
How has trade changed over the centuries?
Advances and detriments man has made to trade.
200 BC_______________________
Built too keep out the barbarians this is
the only man made structure visible from
space.
1400__________________________
One of the earliest European ocean going
vessels, the caravel began the long history of worldwide European trade.
1867___________________________
The first major canal, this connected the
Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean shaving
almost 10,000 miles off the trip between
Europe and India and back
1912_________________________
The This “American” Canal cult through
Central America allowed ships to get
from the East coast to the West coast
without traveling around South America
1945_____________________________
It might not look like much, but the universal shipping container has done much
to make trade faster and cheaper
1961___________________________
The symbol of the Cold War, unlike its
older cousin in China this wall was meant
to keep the citizens of the Eastern Bloc in..