The term "Great Silk Road" itself entered historical science at the end of the 19th century, after the publication of the book China by the German historian K. Richthofen in 1877. This caravan trade route was the longest (over 7 thousand km) in the pre-capitalist era. He played the role of a connecting link between countries of different civilizations and socio-economic systems.
Although a single trans-Eurasian system of caravan communications took shape only at the end of the 2nd century. BC, some of its segments arose much earlier.
According to the data of modern archeology, from 3 millennium BC. functioned "lapis lazuli road", along which the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli was transported from the foothills of the Pamirs (from the Badakhshan region in the territory of modern Tajikistan) over very long 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 2nd millennium BC. the "jade road" began to work - trade in gems from Central Asia (from the Kunlun region in the territory of modern Chinese Xinjiang Uygur region) along the eastern route, in exchange for silk from China.
In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. These two caravan routes began to merge: Badakhshan lapis lazuli gets to China, and clothes made of Chinese silk are spread in Persia and in the Indus Valley. However, the trade went through a long chain of intermediaries, so that the Chinese and the peoples of the Mediterranean had no idea of each other's existence.
The ancient Chinese official Zhang Qian played a decisive role in the formation of the Great Silk Road as a through trans-Eurasian highway. In 138 BC. he went on a dangerous diplomatic mission to the nomads of the Yuezhi tribe to persuade them to become allies of the Chinese Han Empire in the fight against the Xiongnu nomads who attacked the empire from the north. Zhang Qian became the first Chinese to visit Central Asia - in Sogdiana and Bactria (in the territories of modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan). There he learned about the great demand for Chinese goods, and saw many things that the Chinese had no idea about. Returning to China in 126 BC, he presented to the emperor a report on the benefits of direct trade between China and the states of Central Asia.
Although Zhang Qian could not obtain military assistance from the Yuezhi who controlled Bactria in the fight against the Hsiungnu, the information he collected was considered extremely important. In 123-119 BC. Chinese troops independently defeated the Xiongnu, securing the path from China to the west. It was from the end of the 2nd century. BC. we can talk about the functioning of the Great Silk Road as a through route that connected all the great civilizations of the Old World - China, India, the Middle East and Europe. This huge system of caravan routes existed for more than one and a half thousand years - much longer than other long-distance land trade routes (such as the route "from the Varangians to the Greeks").
Although the routes of the Silk Road have changed, there are two main routes connecting East and West:
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- the 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 Pamir and the Aral Sea region to the Lower Volga and to the Black Sea basin.
There were several connecting and intermediate routes between the southern and northern roads. With the passage of time, the communications network became more and more dense, including more and more branches. The main routes shifted to the north, then to the south.
In the commodity exchange between East and West, goods went mainly from east to west. The purchasing power of Europeans was volatile. In the Roman Empire during its heyday, silk fabrics and other oriental goods were in great demand. The decline of ancient society and the naturalization of the economy of the countries of Western Europe led to the fact that goods from the East began to reach, as a rule, only to Byzantium. Only in the period of mature feudalism, from the 11th century, in Western Europe again began to actively buy oriental goods. Since the countries of the Middle East and India were also consumers of goods on the Great Silk Road, this road did not stop even in the early Middle Ages. After the Arab conquests, Eastern goods began to be consumed throughout the southern Mediterranean, up to Spain.
The development of the Great Silk Road was highly dependent on the geopolitical confrontation of different countries for control over the caravan routes.
For its successful operation, political stability was necessary all the way, from the eastern Mediterranean to China. This could be achieved in two ways - either by creating a huge empire controlling all the most important Eurasian caravan routes, or by "dividing the world" between major regional powers capable of ensuring trade security. The collection of duties from merchant caravans gave a high income to the rulers of the Asian states along which the caravan routes ran. Therefore, they sought, on the one hand, to ensure the merchants' safety, and, on the other, to gain control over as much of the route as possible. Internecine wars and the decline of the central government led to the ruin of cities, hubs on trade routes, and the plunder of caravans. This led to the destruction of individual sections or even the entire Great Silk Road.
There were three short periods in the history of this path, when it was almost completely controlled by one state: the Turkic Kaganate in the last third of the 6th century, the empire of Genghis Khan in the second quarter of the 13th century. and the empire of Timur (Tamerlane) in the last third of the 14th century. However, due to the high length of the tracks, it was extremely difficult to unite them under a single control. More often, there was a "division of the world" between several large countries.
Up to 3 c. AD almost all of Eurasia was controlled by four regional empires - the Roman (Mediterranean), Parthian (Middle East), Kushan (India, Afghanistan, Central Asia) and Han (China). Although there was a struggle between them for control over key points of trade routes (for example, for Armenia between the Romans and Parthians), on the whole this "quartet of empires" managed to ensure the stability of the caravan routes. Then this system collapsed: only Byzantium remained from the Roman Empire, the Sassanid state replaced the Parthian Empire, the Kushan and Han empires disintegrated into many states at war with each other. The period of deterioration in the functioning of the Great Silk Road lasted until the 6th century, when strong regional powers began to form in Eurasia again.
Taking advantage of the temporary weakening of agricultural civilizations, various sections of the Silk Road were controlled for several centuries by various nomadic tribes (Huns, Avars, Oguzes, etc.). In the second half of the 6th century. the most powerful of them, the tribe of the Turks, tried to conquer the entire Silk Road. In 570–600, the Turkic Khaganate united the territory of Central Asia and all the Eurasian steppes, from the Black Sea region to North China. As a result of the Turkic expansion, Sogdian merchants began to play a leading role in trade. However, this period of centralization was short. A number of nomadic states (Khazar Kaganate, Western Turkic Kaganate, East Turkic Kaganate, Uygur Kaganate, etc.) were formed on the ruins of the disintegrated Turkic Kaganate, which controlled only local segments of the route.
Over the next approximately one and a half centuries, the Chinese Tang Empire played the leading role in control of the Central Asian routes of the Great Silk Road. Waging war with nomadic tribes with varying success, the Chinese brought under their control almost all of Central Asia, up to Samarkand and Bukhara. This period (7th - first half of the 8th centuries) is called by many as the period of the highest flourishing of trans-Eurasian trade.
In the first half of the 8th century. all western routes of the Great Silk Road fell under the control of the Arab Caliphate. The Chinese attempt to maintain control over Central Asia failed: in the Battle of Talas 751, the Arabs defeated the Chinese army. From that time until the end of the functioning of the Silk Road, the caravan trade was almost completely monopolized by Muslim and Jewish merchants. China was unable to retain control even over the eastern section of the route, which first came under the control of the Tibetans (at the end of the 8th century), and in the 9th century. captured by the Khitan nomads. The fragmentation of control over trade routes and frequent wars for its redistribution led to a weakening of the trade route.
The last rise of the Great Silk Road experienced in the 13-14 centuries. Having conquered the countries from China to Russia and Iran in the 1210s-1250s, the Mongols were able to ensure a single control regime for almost the entire length of the Eurasian trade routes for a century and a half. Although after the death of Genghis Khan his empire quickly disintegrated, the Chinggisid states formed a "quartet of empires." The Silk Road was again controlled by four empires - the Yuan Empire in China, the Central Asian Empire (Dzhagatai Ulus), the Iranian Hulagid Empire, and the Golden Horde in the Caspian and Black Sea regions. These states disputed certain sections of trade routes from each other (for example, Transcaucasia became the arena of constant struggle between the khans of the Golden Horde and the il-khans of Iran). In general, the rulers usually sought to ensure the safety of merchants, regardless of their faith and nationality.
In the second half of the 14th century. The Great Silk Road went into decline. The "quartet" of the Mongol empires fell apart into many states at war with each other. Timur's (Tamerlane's) attempt to reunite the main Eurasian trade routes within his state had only a temporary effect. In the empire of Timur that emerged in the 1370s and 1380s, merchants following the southern road again received reliable protection. However, during the campaigns against the Golden Horde in 1389-1395 Timur practically wiped out all the trading cities of the Caspian and Black Sea regions, as a result of which the northern road was abandoned. Timur's descendants were unable to preserve the centralized Central Asian state subsequently, so the southern road also almost ceased to function.
The decline of the Great Silk Road is associated primarily with the development of merchant shipping along the coasts of the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia. In the 14-15 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 transported as much cargo as a very large caravan of 1,000 pack animals.
As a result of these geopolitical and geoeconomic factors, by the 16th century. The Great Silk Road finally ceased to exist. However, local segments of the Silk Road continued to function for a long time (for example, caravan trade between Central Asia and China ceased only in the 18th century).
The Silk Road promoted the development of trade and many institutions ("rules") of the market economy.
The functioning of the Great Silk Road required the creation of a developed system of international division of labor in the production of goods for export and in providing the infrastructure of transport communications.
Silk fabrics and raw silk were the main commodities on the Great Silk Road. They were most convenient for long-distance transportation, since silk is light and very valuable - in Europe it was sold for more than gold. China, the birthplace of silkworm breeding, maintained a monopoly on silk products until about the 5th – 6th centuries. AD, but even after that it remained one of the centers of silk production and export along with Central Asia. During the Middle Ages, China also exported porcelain and tea. The countries of the Middle East and Central Asia specialized in the manufacture of woolen and cotton fabrics that went along the Silk Road to the east, to China. From the countries of South and Southeast Asia, merchants brought to Europe spices (pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, etc.), which were used by Europeans for preserving food and making medicines.
Western Europe in trade with the East has always had a passive balance of trade: when buying expensive eastern goods, the Europeans could not offer in exchange goods of equal quality and were forced to pay in gold and silver. From ancient times to the end of its functioning, the Great Silk Road acted as a channel for "pumping" precious metals from Europe to the East. As this leak of high-grade money worsened the monetary system, European rulers tried to impose restrictions on the consumption of eastern goods and on the export of gold and silver to the east. However, these administrative measures had a low impact. It was only after the industrial revolution that it was possible to achieve the competitiveness of its products in comparison with eastern Western Europe.
The organization of long-distance trade required the creation of special conditions for caravan trade - transshipment points, specialized bazaars, a regime of stable monetary settlements and the protection of property rights of foreign merchants. All this market infrastructure has been maintained along the Eurasian highways for over 1,500 years.
If in Western Europe cities served mainly local markets, in Asia - international trade, playing the role of transit points on caravan routes. These cities (Tabriz, Hormuz, Bukhara, Samarkand, Khorezm, Otrar, Kashgar, Turfan, Khotan, Dunhuang, etc.) necessarily had caravanserais that combined the functions of hotels and storage facilities. For foreign merchants, special markets for the most popular goods were organized. People of many professions worked to service trade caravans - translators, money changers, prostitutes, camel drivers, caravan guards, tax collectors, etc.
The "attachment" of the trading cities of continental Asia to servicing long-distance caravan trade led to the destruction of the Silk Road leading to the decline of these cities as well. Some of them have completely disappeared.
The Italian merchant republics of Venice and Genoa, which in the 13th and 15th centuries, became a special type of trading cities. almost monopolized the transit trade between Europe and the East. The most successful were the Genoese, who created many colonies and trading posts at the end points of the Silk Road in the Eastern Mediterranean (Kafa, Tana, Tabriz, Tarsus, Constantinople, etc.). For the first time in Western Europe such institutions of market commerce as trading companies on shares (the prototype of joint-stock companies) and banks that give loans to such companies arose in Italian trading cities. When the Great Silk Road disintegrated, the trading cities of the West also decreased their business activity.
The regular conclusion of large commercial transactions between merchants from different countries required the use of generally recognized banknotes. Not every country that actively participated in the trans-Eurasian trade could issue gold and silver coins, which were only appreciated then in all countries of the Old World. Therefore, merchants throughout Eurasia actively used the full-value money of a few "strong" countries. So, in the early Middle Ages, along the entire Great Silk Road, up to and including China, gold Byzantine and silver Sassanian and Arab coins were used in the calculations.
Despite all the measures, there was still not enough cash for payments to the merchants of the Silk Road. Therefore, they widely practiced barter transactions (goods for goods), paying in money only the difference in the cost of parties.
Since it was dangerous to transport large amounts of cash over long distances, the merchants of the Silk Road began to use checks (“check” in Persian means “document, receipt”). Going to the East, the merchant handed over his cash to one of the reputable money changers in exchange for a receipt. The merchant could present this receipt in those cities of the Silk Road, where the trusted people of this money changer-banker worked, and receive cash again minus the service fee. The bearer check system could only work if money changers from the distant cities of the Silk Road personally trusted each other as members of the same religious community. Therefore, checks began to be used only from about the 10th century, when trade along the entire Silk Road began to be controlled by Muslims and Jews.
The main condition for the functioning of the Great Silk Road was the protection of the property and life of merchants.
The merchants themselves sought to minimize the dangers of doing business not alone, but in confessional and ethnic groups. To protect themselves from robbers, merchants set off on a dangerous path from city to city in large caravans, consisting of hundreds and thousands of armed people. It is known, for example, that under Timur, when the caravan trade was already on the decline, a caravan from China of 800 pack animals came to Samarkand once a year.
Self-defense measures of merchants, however, could protect them only from petty robbers, but not from the arbitrariness of the rulers and not from the attacks of nomadic tribes. However, both states and nomads were objectively interested in preserving trade communications.
The rulers of the lands received income from customs duties levied in cities along the caravan routes. In order not to lose these profits, the rulers of the countries of Asia passed strict laws that protected merchants. So, in the empire of Timur, the province on the territory of which the merchant was robbed was obliged to compensate him for his losses in double the amount and also to pay a fine to Timur himself in five times.
Nomads constantly needed many goods of sedentary farmers, but could not offer them equivalent goods, and therefore were forced to obtain the necessary goods by force, in dangerous predatory raids. The Great Silk Road gave them the opportunity to find a place in the peaceful division of labor. They began to act as guides for merchant caravans through the deserts and steppes, charging a fee for help and security. The Silk Road has become a unique manifestation of long-term mutually beneficial cooperation between sedentary and nomadic peoples.
The era of the Great Silk Road gave birth to many institutions similar to international trade in modern and modern times (international division of labor, check system, extraterritorial protection of property rights). However, it also had many features typical of pre-industrial societies, when market relations remained secondary in comparison with natural economic ones.
Western Europe received mainly expensive luxury items (silk fabrics, spices, carpets, china, etc.) along the Silk Road, which were used only by the upper classes. The consumption of these goods had little effect on the development of the economies of the countries of Western Europe themselves, with the exception of the merchant republics of Italy specializing in trade with the East. True, it stimulated a gradual transition from feudal rent in kind (corvee and food rent) to cash, since the nobility needed cash to buy oriental goods.
Despite all the measures to protect the lives and property of merchants, the caravan trade along the Silk Road routes has always been associated with high risk. The journey from the Eastern Mediterranean to China and back usually took several years. Many died on the way from disease, an unusual climate, attacks by robbers or the arbitrariness of the rulers. Caravans traveled through the deserts, guided by the skeletons of people and camels that lie everywhere along the routes of the Silk Road. When a merchant died in a foreign land, his property was usually seized by the local ruler, unless the relatives or companions of the deceased had time to quickly declare their rights to inheritance.
The daredevils paid very high profits. A medieval Arabic proverb said that a merchant travels from Arabia to China with a thousand dirhams, and returns with a thousand dinars (a dinar was equal to about 20 dirhams). Fearing for their lives, however, merchants rarely traversed the Great Silk Road from end to end (like Marco Polo); more often they changed their goods in some of the intermediate trading cities.
The functioning of the Great Silk Road shows a picture of international commerce, typical of pre-capitalist eras, associated mainly with luxury goods, not protected by insurance, and highly dependent on the political environment.
The role of the Great Silk Road in the diffusion of innovations among the civilizations of Eurasia. The Great Silk Road became a channel through which there was a constant exchange of cultural achievements - new goods, knowledge and ideas.
Dissemination of goods and technologies. The functioning of the Great Silk Road led to the acquaintance of different peoples with new consumer goods. Western Europe benefited most from the spread of new goods as a form of cultural contact. Silk fabrics enhanced the personal hygiene of Europeans by ridding them of lice. Spices were widely used for the manufacture of medicines and for the preservation of shelf-stable products. Paper made according to recipes from China and Central Asia began to supplant parchment and papyrus, reducing the cost of copying handwritten books.
Along the Silk Road, not only the goods themselves were distributed, but also information about their production and existence. Initially, silk was produced only in China, but already in the 1st or 2nd centuries. AD Sericulture penetrated into East Turkestan, in the 5th century. - to Iran. In the 6th century. The emperor of Byzantium was able to organize silkworm breeding in Greece, persuading, according to legend, the monks-travelers to secretly bring him silkworm eggs in a hollow staff. Buying first paper from merchants from the East, Europeans also began from the 13th century. make it yourself.
Some new products have emerged as a result of a kind of "collective creation" of different peoples of the Silk Road. So, gunpowder was discovered in China in the 9th century. In the 14th century. a gun was invented that shoots with gunpowder - a cannon. The place and time of their invention are not known exactly - experts name China, Arab countries, and Western Europe. Information about a new type of weapon quickly passed along the Silk Road, and already in the 15th century, before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, artillery was used in all countries of Eurasia, from Europe to China.
We got acquainted with many new goods during the functioning of the Great Silk Road and the countries of the East. When the Chinese traveler Zhang Qian returned from Central Asia, he brought information about the Fergana argamaks - tall horses unseen in China. At the initial stage of the development of the Silk Road, the Chinese received from Central Asia, in addition to horses, also alfalfa seeds (fodder grass for horses) and a grape culture (previously in China they did not know either grapes or grape wine). Later, the Chinese mastered several more agricultural crops through the caravan trade - beans, onions, cucumbers, carrots, etc.
Thus, if the West in the course of cultural contacts along the Silk Road borrowed mainly industrial "innovations", then the East - agricultural ones. This demonstrates the pre-existing technological superiority of the East over the West, which persisted until the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of the technical secrets of oriental artisans (damask weapons, porcelain dishes) were never adopted by Europeans in the era of the Silk Road.
Dissemination of knowledge and ideas. The Great Silk Road played an important role in the development of geographical knowledge. It was only after the formation of this end-to-end trade route that Europeans and Chinese first learned about each other's existence and got at least a rough idea of all the civilizations of Eurasia.
If at the end of the 3rd century. BC. the Greek geographer Eratosthenes considered India the most extreme eastern country, then in the 2nd century. AD in the Geographical Guide of the Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the path to Serica (from the Roman serica - silk), as China was then called, is already described. Western Europe received relatively accurate knowledge about the size of Eurasia and about the features of various countries of the East only in the late 13th - early 14th centuries, after some European merchants and missionaries (including the famous Marco Polo) were able to walk the Silk Road from end to end and to write books about it, which enjoyed great interest in Europe.
The role of the Great Silk Road in the spread of world religions is also great. The most successful was the expansion of Buddhism in the first centuries AD. Buddhism was the state religion of the Kushan Empire. Together with merchant caravans, Buddhist monks went from India to Central Asia and China, spreading the new religion. In the 2-3 centuries. Buddhism penetrated into the states of Central Asia and East Turkestan. In the 4th and 7th centuries, when Buddhism was actively spreading in China, Indian missionaries traveled to China, and many Chinese monks made pilgrimages to India along the Silk Road routes. Regular travel of Buddhists from India to China and back continued until the first half of the 11th century. As a result, Buddhism literally found a second home in the countries of the Far East, becoming one of the elements of traditional Chinese religious syncretism.
Islam, which was actively spreading in the 8-14 centuries, also had a great influence on the civilizations of Central Asia. If initially it was imposed by the force of the armies of the Arab Caliphate, then later it spread along the Silk Road mainly in a peaceful way. In the 14th century. Islam reached the borders of China, displacing Buddhism from East Turkestan (now the Chinese Xinjiang Uygur region). The Mongol rulers initially viewed Islam as only one of the equivalent religions, but in the 14th century. all Mongolian states, except for the Chinese Yuan Empire, adopted the Muslim faith as the state religion. Only in China, Islam did not spread, although there were large communities of Muslim merchants in this country.
Christianity penetrated the East least of all. The first wave of the spread of Christianity is associated with the activities of the Nestorians. After the condemnation of the teachings of Nestorius as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431, his followers began to migrate to the East - to Iran and Central Asia. In 635, the Syrian Nestorian missionary Raban (Aloben), after an audience with the Chinese emperor, ensured that Christianity was officially allowed in China. In the 13th century. along the Silk Road there was a new wave of spread of Christian teachings associated with the activities of Catholic missions, which took advantage of the high religious tolerance of the Mongol rulers. On behalf of the Pope, Franciscan Giovanni Montecorvino founded in Khanbalik, the capital of China under the Mongols, a permanent mission in the 1290s, which functioned for several decades. However, the fall of the Chinggisid Mongol states led in the middle of the 14th century. to the virtual closure of Asia for Christians. The results of the preaching of Christianity in the medieval East were ultimately very modest. A few Nestorian communities survived only in the countries of the Middle East.
Along the Great Silk Road, there was a spread of other faiths - Judaism (adopted in the 8th and 10th centuries by the state religion in Khazaria), Manichaeism (adopted in the 8th century by the state religion in the Uyghur Kaganate), Zoroastrianism. None of them, however, could become popular among Asian peoples for a long time.
As a result of the functioning of the Great Silk Road, for the first time in history, there was a tendency towards the convergence of cultures in the process of intensive and regular world economic ties. Along the entire route of the Great Silk Road, there was a gradual unification of cultural components. Researchers note that in the trading cities of Asia, common features of the layout of temples even developed, although they belonged to different denominations.
This convergence, however, remained only a trend. Borrowing of cultural achievements was limited. For example, such inventions of the Chinese as printing and paper money did not become an object of borrowing even in the Asian countries of the Silk Road close to China. Innovations in the socio-economic sphere were not adopted at all. The Europeans showed a much more active interest in the study of the countries of the East than the inhabitants of the East in Europe. The collapse of the Great Silk Road led to the practical elimination of the experience of peaceful trade and cultural contacts, which were replaced by the colonial aggression of European countries.
