Officials were said to have normally extorted from merchants between 20
and 30 percent of goods passing through.
During thefirst half of the third centuryCEthe Han dynasty fell, and
China became divided into north and south. To the west, the Parthian
Empire was conquered a few years later, and soon thereafter the Kushan
Empire was also invaded and subsequently collapsed. In the far west the
Roman Empire struggled into the fourth century with much of its energy
sapped. These events profoundly shook the Eurasian overland trading net-
work collectively referred to as the Silk Road and the various arteries that fed
into it. Long-distance overland travel became less secure as nomadic peoples
moved into the power vacuums created by the fall of the great states. As
Chinese trade to the northwest dried up, Chinese trade to the south
increased. If overall this was not a good time for long-distance trade, problems
on the northern overland route did create opportunities on the southern
maritime route.
From the third centuryCEon, direct Roman commercial activity on the
international scene began to recede. In the southeast, focus became increas-
ingly confined to the Red Sea area itself, beyond which Roman commercial
contact became more indirect. This had an impact on India, where some
cities in the north and west declined. Others, however, prospered as trade
shifted rather than collapsed, with the beneficiaries being those cities that
were plugged into the Bay of Bengal, Southeast Asian, and Chinese trades.
Eventually the Byzantine Empire would replace the Roman, at least for the
eastern Mediterranean, and more quickly the Sassanian Empire replaced
the Parthian as consumers at the western end of the maritime route. At the
eastern end, Southeast Asia seemed to be in the proverbial catbird’s seat;
with direct links to two systems, it could adjust upward or downward,
depending on which side was expanding or contracting. It could also reap
the maximum benefit at optimal times when both sides were expanding.
Beginning in the fourth centuryCE, the highway through Southeast Asia
changed, becoming more efficient in response to increased market pressures.
Ships began using a new route through the Straits of Malacca between the
Malay Peninsula and Sumatra or through the Straits of Sunda between the
islands of Sumatra and Java instead of drudging across the overland portage
on the Isthmus of Kra. In nautical miles this was a longer trip, but it was all
water, making it faster and cheaper. In theory, a ship could leave south-
eastern India or Ceylon and not touch land until Canton (Guangzhou) in
south China although most ships would continue to lay over in Southeast
Asia to await the change in winds but now at ports in Sumatra, Java,
Borneo, or on the tip of the Malay peninsula rather than at Kra or Funan.
Malay sailors are usually credited with engineering this shift, which was
gradual if irreversible.
A major factor in the shift to the all-water route was the continued success
of substitute products, many of which, like camphor and benzoin, came from
118 The all-water route