A Concise History of the World (Cambridge Concise Histories) by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

Author:Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks [Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

Shifting and lengthening trade routes

For Italian merchants the Crusades were a boon. Venetians and Genoese in particular profited from outfitting military expeditions as well as from the opening of new trade routes and the establishment of trading communities that did not disappear when the Crusader states themselves did. Venetian merchants set up permanent offices in Cairo, where they dealt in spices traded up the Red Sea, while Genoese merchants went to Constantinople and the Black Sea, where they met caravans carrying goods over the Silk Roads. A few Italians went to the coastal cities of western India, which were becoming cosmopolitan mixtures of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians (termed Parsis in India), and Christians, all intent on expanding their profits.

The rise of Italian merchants was one aspect of a general expansion of trade, invention of more sophisticated business procedures, and development of new forms of credit that historians have labeled the “commercial revolution.” Although this term was first proposed for Mediterranean Europe, it actually applies more broadly, as throughout much of Eurasia after about 1100 professional merchants moved larger cargoes of more varied commodities longer distances to more destinations serving a wider consumer base than could have been imagined several centuries earlier. Along with religion, trade created regional and transregional zones of exchange.

Most of these professional merchants were male, as trade requires access to trade goods and the ability to move about, both of which were more available to men. Male heads of household generally had control over the products of their household, including those made or harvested by female family members as well as slaves and servants of both genders. Because of this, and because women's ability to travel was often limited by cultural norms about propriety and respectability, men were the primary long-distance traders, sending or taking items of great value such as precious metals, spices, perfumes, amber, and gems, or large quantities of less valuable goods, such as grain, timber, and metals. In some places women did trade locally, handling small retail sales of foodstuffs and other basic commodities, though in others men handled this small-scale distribution of goods as well. In a few places, including West Africa and Southeast Asia, women were important traders at the regional and even the transregional level, handling both basic commodities such as cloth and luxuries such as pepper, betel, gold, and ivory. In many places, male traders established temporary or even long-term relationships with local women. Through such a relationship, the man gained a sexual and domestic partner and connections with groups who provided supplies and goods to trade, and the woman and her family gained prestige through their contact with an outsider. These marriages or other types of domestic arrangements also served as ways in which religious ideas and rituals or other cultural practices traveled and blended, as husbands, wives, and children converted or mixed elements from different traditions as these proved appealing or useful.

The largest trading network in this era was that across Eurasia, which encompassed Muslim, Buddhist,

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