The Great Silk Road - in ancient times and in the Middle Ages, a caravan road from China to the countries of Central and Western Asia. The trade and exchange route of enormous length, which went from the central regions of China to India and Western Asia, and in the first centuries AD. e. linking the great empires of antiquity - China, Parthia and Ancient Rome.
The total length of the Way is about 10,000 km. A trade caravan traveled an average of 23-26 km per day.
The founder of the Silk Road is the Chinese diplomat Zhang Qian, who opened the countries of Central Asia for the Chinese. And the merchant from Venice, Marco Polo, was the first to call this Route "Silk". They began to call him “great” because he connected the endless expanses of the eastern regions with the western countries, revived trade in many cities that were on the way of caravans. 1877 - the scientific term "Great Silk Road" was introduced by the German researcher Ferdinand von Richthofen in one of his famous works - "China".
How the Silk Road was formed
Although a single trans-Eurasian system of caravan communications took shape only at the end of the 2nd century BC. e., its individual segments appeared much earlier.
According to modern archeology, from the III millennium BC. e. functioned "lapis lazuli road", along it the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli was transported from the foothills of the Pamirs (from the Badakhshan region in the territory of modern Tajikistan) to very distant distances to the west and south, to the countries of the Middle Mesopotamia (Ur, Lagash) and India (Harappa, Mokhenjo- Daro). From the end of the II millennium BC. began to work "jade road" - trade in gems from Central Asia along the eastern route, in exchange for Chinese silk.
Middle of the 1st millennium BC e. - these two caravan routes began to merge: Badakhshan lapis lazuli begins to enter China, and Chinese silk clothes are spreading in Persia and in the Indus Valley. But the trade was conducted through a long intermediary chain, so that the Chinese and the peoples of the Mediterranean did not know about the existence of each other.
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Main routes
Because of such a loud name, one could imagine some kind of powerful highway. But, as historians note, the Great Silk Road was like a branched tree, because there were many routes. Thus, the trade cycle covered many cities.
Although the routes of the Silk Road have changed, it is possible to distinguish two main routes connecting East and West:
Southern road - from the north of China through Central Asia to the Middle East and North India;
The northern road - from the north of China through the Pamirs and the Aral Sea region to the Lower Volga and to the Black Sea basin.
The South and North roads were connected by several intermediate routes. Over time, the communication network became more and more dense, more and more branches appeared. The main routes shifted to the north, then to the south.
Long and hard way
Traveling along the Silk Road was quite dangerous. It has been a long and difficult journey. Not everyone was able to pass it. For example, to get from Beijing to the Caspian Sea, the travel time could be about 250 days, or even a year. The Great Silk Road has always been considered a conduit for culture and trade. The caravans often included not only merchants, but also poets, artists, scientists, pilgrims, and philosophers. Thanks to them, the world was able to get acquainted with such aspects of life as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam. The world has learned how to make gunpowder, how to make paper, silk. Appreciated music, dances, poetry, art of various nations.
A significant part of the Path passed through the desert territories of Asia. For the transportation of valuable goods, traders used, as a rule, camels, which were perfectly adapted to moving on the hot sand.
History
Middle of the 1st millennium BC e. - the rulers of Persia began to collect taxes from the inhabitants of Sogdiana and Bactria. Alexander the Great was the first to open the way from Europe to Central Asia. Traders walked along with his warriors. They brought goods and all sorts of outlandish things to their homeland. On the way, states appeared, which both reached their peak and were destroyed, being captured by a stronger conqueror. Thus, caravans paved new paths in history.
It cannot be said that the Great Silk Road functioned throughout its long history from the 2nd century BC. e. until the first half of the 20th century with the same intensity. From time to time the movement on it faded, sometimes it broke up into separate segments, within which the caravan trade proceeded normally, and between these segments there were insurmountable spaces for trade.
In the commodity exchange between East and West, goods went from East to West as a rule. In the Roman Empire, during its heyday, silk fabric and other oriental goods were very popular. From the 11th century, all Western Europe began to actively buy oriental goods. After the Arab conquests, they began to be consumed throughout the southern Mediterranean, up to Spain.
For the successful functioning of the Great Way, political stability was needed along its entire length. This could have been achieved in two ways - either to create a huge empire controlling all the most important Eurasian caravan routes, or by "dividing the world" between major powers that are capable of ensuring the security of trade. The history of the Great Silk Road has three short periods, when almost all of it was controlled by one state: the Turkic Khaganate at the end of the 6th century, the empire of Genghis Khan at the end of the 13th century, and the empire of Timur (Tamerlane) at the end of the 14th century. But due to the high length of the paths, it was incredibly difficult to unite them under a single control. More often, there was a "division of the world" between several large states.
China. The Great Silk Road (Hood. Zhang Hongniang).
Sunset of the Great Silk Road
The decline is associated primarily with the development of merchant shipping along the coasts of the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia. In the XIV-XV centuries. sea trade became more attractive than the dangerous overland caravan routes: the sea route from the Persian Gulf to China took about 150 days, while the caravan route from Tana (Azov) to Khanbalik (Beijing) took about 300 days; one ship could carry as much cargo as a very large caravan of 1,000 camels. As a result of these factors, the Silk Road finally ceased to exist by the 16th century. Only some of its parts did not stop functioning for a long time (for example, the caravan trade between Central Asia and China ceased only in the 18th century).
The historical significance of the Great Silk Road
The Great Silk Road not only favored the establishment and development of trade relations between peoples, but also contributed to the strengthening of diplomatic relations between the countries of the East and West.
Thanks to this path, the acquaintance of various peoples with new consumer goods occurred. Western Europe benefited from their proliferation. Silk fabric enhanced the personal hygiene of Europeans by ridding them of lice. Spices began to be widely used for the manufacture of medicines and for the preservation of long-term storage products. Paper made according to recipes from China and Central Asia began to supplant parchment and papyrus, thus reducing the cost of copying handwritten books.
Bazaar on the Great Silk Road.
But along the Great Path, not only the goods themselves were disseminated, but also information about their production and existence. At first, silk was produced only in China, but already in the 1st-2nd centuries AD. e. sericulture penetrated into East Turkestan, in the 5th century - to Iran. In the 6th century, the emperor of Byzantium organized silkworm breeding in Greece, persuading, as legend has it, the monks-travelers to secretly bring him silkworm eggs in a hollow staff. Buying paper first from merchants from the East, Europeans from the XIII century began to make it themselves.
The important role of the Great Way in the development of geographical knowledge. Only after the appearance of this end-to-end trade route, the Europeans and the Chinese for the first time were able to learn about each other's existence and get at least a rough idea of all the civilizations of Eurasia. Western Europe received relatively accurate knowledge about the size of Eurasia and about the characteristics of different countries of the East only at the end of the 13th - beginning of the 14th centuries, after some of the European merchants and missionaries (including the legendary Marco Polo) were able to walk the Silk Road from end to end and write books about it, which were very popular in Europe.
Thus, as a result of the functioning of the Great Silk Road, a tendency arose towards the convergence of cultures in the process of intense and permanent world economic ties. And in our time, the history of the Great Silk Road can be considered as an actual experience of mutually beneficial trade and peaceful cultural communication between different countries and peoples.