taxing trade and in return provided protection and built roads. At the same
time maritime commerce brought shiploads of goods by wind and current
across huge bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
Long-distance systems merged into a system of systems tying parts into a
single whole so goods couldflow over land and sea from the Atlantic to the
Pacific and the Siberian tundra to Madagascar and New Guinea. Overland its
backbone was the so-called Silk Road, actually a complex of roads that
reached its mature form in the early centuries of thefirst millenniumCE.At
sea a great maritime route linking the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Indian
Ocean, and South China Sea coalesced at about the same time.
In its plan this book offers a blend of chronological and geographical
organization with topical, thematic, and conceptual elements embedded
within. Its principal focus is on the emergence of a great exchange system
ultimately spanning parts of three continents, a process that took several
thousand years. The themes that emerge from this study center on a series of
interrelated questions. First, who did the trading, and what motivated them
to do so? Second, what goods were traded and why, meaning what was the
purpose for exchanging these particular goods? Third, how was the trade
conducted, meaning how were goods transported, and what methodology
did people employ in the act of exchange? Andfinally, what were the long-
term consequences of this activity, particularly as they related to political
matters (since there are excellent studies available on the cultural impact)?
Too often in general surveys the political tail wags the economic dog, but
not in this book.
Several points of clarification may be in order. First, the focus of this book
is on long-distance trade, what in a modern sense may be thought of as
foreign or international trade except that in the premodern context long-
distance trade was possible within the Roman or Chinese empires while
trade between independent Sumerian city states may have been foreign or
international but was hardly long distance. Terminology can be a sticky
point on other matters as in, for example, the use of words like trade, com-
merce, exchange, traffic, business, barter, and market or, in another example,
goods, commodities, merchandise, wares, products, items, articles, and
vendibles. Sometimes such words are interchangeable, and sometimes they
refer to something very specific. In choosing words I have tried to be precise
without being fussy, generally deferring to common usage with help from
Webster’s Third International when necessary. In place names I provide the
name as it was in the period under consideration with the modern name, if
available, in parentheses.
In matters of time this topic allows for a relatively loose framework, which
is why I often refer to millennia or centuries rather than attempt more pre-
cise dates. I have used the somewhat awkward term of“premodern”(for lack
of a substitute) to designate that period of human history extending from
earliest times to the beginning of our era, marked off by the fundamental
Preface ix