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How China’s first ‘silk road’ slowly came to life – on

David Abulafia
Professor of Mediterranean History, University of Cambridge

Few images are more enduring in the historical imagination than the train of two-humped Bactrian
camels plodding across desert sands from west to east, or vice-versa, across the vast open spaces of
Eurasia. Now that China is edging towards a modern incarnation of the “silk road” it is worth
remembering how this emblem of the ancient world actually came into being.

There is no doubt that these overland trading routes existed in the early and late Middle Ages. There
is also no doubt that these treks across deserts brought massively important cultural influences from
the west to the east while carrying goods in the other direction.

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But there is another side to this tale, and it is one which the Chinese government acknowledges with
its huge One Belt One Road (OBOR) transcontinental infrastructure project to link East Asia to the
Middle East and Europe. Simply put, the story of the silk road, ancient or modern, is as much the
story of the sea as the dunes.

Trade in ideas

The overland routes carried spices and gems and other non-bulky items as well as bolts of silk and
packages of unwoven silk thread. They also helped to bring the ideas and art of both Islam and
Buddhism to East Asia.

That is why Indian art, already impregnated by Greek influences since Alexander the Great, had so
great an impact on the art of China and even Japan. It is curious indeed to see motifs in medieval
sculptures of the Buddha that survive in Japan that can, ultimately, be traced back to the ancient
Mediterranean.

Sands of time. Andrea Moroni/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

In the eighth century there were merchants – many of whom were Jewish and known by the still
unexplained title “Radhanites” – who set out from France and in some cases managed to reach China
overland. But they were not the true pioneers, as they attached themselves to existing camel caravans.
At this point, the route cannot seriously be seen as an example of proto-globalisation. The effects on
the economy of Western Europe from very small amounts of high-cost luxury goods were minimal.

Routes right across Asia could only flourish when political conditions were right, and the 11th and
12th centuries were a relatively quiet period. However, with the rise of the Mongols, a new political
order imposed peace from Russia to China and made long-distance travel easier. This was particularly
the case when the Genoese and Venetians installed themselves in trading centres along the Black Sea,
notably at Caffa (modern Feodosiya) in the Crimea, and Tana on the Sea of Azov.

The most famous European visitor to medieval China – Marco Polo – was not, if his account is to be
believed, typical: he spent many years in the Mongol administration during the 13th century before
returning to Venice by sea. But there were Genoese and Venetians who travelled out to Quanzhou on
the coast of China and lived and died there. And there were certainly bolts of Chinese silk that found
their way to Western Europe; at least one item in the ceremonial regalia of the Holy Roman Emperor
was made from Chinese silk.

Modern artwork at the site of Xanadu, Inner Mongolia. Yavuz Sariyildiz/Shutterstock

Primacy of the sea routes

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As the Mongol Empire broke up in the 14th century, the primacy of the maritime route linking China
to lands further west became more obvious, though in fact it had continued without a break for many
centuries.

Indeed, there were already elements in place in the days of the Roman Empire, when Greek
merchants from Egypt reached the Bay of Bengal and massive quantities of pepper reached the port of
Rome at Ostia.

But in the days of the Roman Empire, maritime links to China were tenuous in the extreme, and
Roman embassies to the rival great empire tended to be dismissed without much interest. Moreover,
Chinese governments tended to look away from the sea, concentrating on the exploitation (and
taxation) of the rich resources of their own country.

The great transformation occurred from the seventh century as the area now known as Malaysia and
Indonesia was opened up to maritime trade. Under the Song dynasty, based in southern China around
1100, Chinese merchants were encouraged to head across the water. Trade in camphor out of the East
Indies pointed in two directions: upwards to the coast of China, but also westwards into the Indian
Ocean.

A trading network developed in the East Indies, under the auspices of the rulers of Sri Vijaya in
Sumatra, which linked the world of the Chinese traders to that of the Malay and Indian traders.

A trade route was emerging that was worthy of the name. This was a “silk route of the sea”.

Gingerbread

Along the sea routes, increasing quantities of spices filtered westwards, passing India and flowing up
the Red Sea, where they were moved on to Alexandria in Egypt, and collected by merchants from
Genoa, Venice, Barcelona and other western ports. Sometimes they made their way across Europe by
land, or eventually around Iberia by sea, and ended up in the gingerbread of Hanseatic burghers in
Lübeck, Riga or Tallinn.

Spiced up. Ugis Riba/Shutterstock

Ships also carried enormous amounts of Chinese porcelain, much in demand in the Islamic world,
which keeps turning up in shipwrecks in and around the South China Sea. The Cirebon shipwreck
found off Java carried half a million pieces of porcelain, part of a cargo weighing 300 tons.

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Eventually, with the foundation of Melaka at the start of the 15th century the Chinese established a
base on the edges of the Indian Ocean. This was the result of the short-lived period of vigorous
maritime activity around 1420, when the Ming emperors sent large fleets out into the Indian Ocean
under the command of Admiral Zheng He to show the Chinese flag and to collect information about
the world beyond the Middle Kingdom.

These routes linking east and west long preceded the coming of the Portuguese, Spaniards and Dutch,
who transformed the trade of the world after 1500. And it was the maritime (rather than the overland)
silk route that can be seen as a very early case of what might be called proto-globalisation. It is
interesting to note that much the same applies today: the quantities of goods carried by train across
Asia under the OBOR project cannot hope to match the enormous amount of containerised goods a
revived Chinese merchant marine will be able to carry by sea.

This article has been published as part of the World Economic Forum series, The State of Trade.

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