commerce and culture

For this blog Ive decided to do the main point and key ideas of each section:

This chapter addresses the role of exchanging goods and its effects on human history, for example:

• trade diminished the economic self- sufficiency of local societies even as it altered the structure of those societies as well.
• trade had the capacity to transform political life.
• trade became a vehicle for the spread of religious ideas, technological innovations, disease-bearing germs, and plants and animals. 

Silk roads: exchange across Eurasia:

The growth of the silk roads:

• Eurasia gave rise to one of the world's most extensive and sustained networks of exchange among its diverse peoples. 
• products of the forest and semi-arid northern grasslands were exchanged for the agricultural products and manufactured goods of adjacent civilization.
• silk road trading networks prospered most when large and powerful states provided security for merchants and travelers. 
• the Mongol empire briefly encompassed almost the entire route of the silk roads in a single state. 

Goods in transit:

• During prosperous times, luxury goods were often carried in large camel caravans. most of the luxury products were destined for an elite and wealthy market.
• Chinese woman were responsible for for every step of the ingenious and laborious enterprise of silk production.
• beyond China, many woman in many cultures sought Chinese silk for its comfort and its value as a fashion statement. 
• the volume of trade on the silk roads was modest and its focus on luxury goods limited its direct impact on most people. 

Cultures in transit: 

• Buddhism spread widely through central and east Asia owing much to the activities of merchants along the silk roads.
• conversion to Buddhism in the oasis cities was a voluntary process without the pressure of conquest or foreign role. 
• Buddhism picked up elements of other cultures while in transit on the silk roads. 

Disease in transit: 

• beyond goods and cultures, diseases travelled too and the trade routes of Eurasia, and with devastating consequences. 
• even more widespread diseases affected the Roman Empire and Han dynasty china as the silk roads promoted contact all across Eurasia.
• the most well-known dissemination of disease was associated with the mongol empire, which briefly unified much of the eurasian landmass during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Sea roads: exchange across the Indian Ocean

• until the creation of a genuinely global oceanic system of trade after 1500, the Indian Ocean represented the world's largest sea-based system of communication and exchange, stretching from southern china to Eastern Africa.
• what made Indian ocean commerce possible were the monsoons.
• the urban centers strung out around the entire Indian Ocean basin provided the nodes of this widespread commercial network. 

Weaving the web of an Indian Ocean world:

• the tempo of the Indian Ocean commerce picked up in the era of second wave civilizations during the early centuries of the common era, as mariners learned how to ride monsoons.
• Two changes: one was the economic and political revival of china and second was in the world of Indian Ocean commerce involved the sudden rise of islam.
• the expansion of islam gave rise to an international maritime culture of 1000. shared by individuals living in the widely spread rated port cities around the Indian Ocean. 

Sea roads as a catalyst for change: southeast Asia:

• in both regions trade stimulated political change as ambitious or aspiring rulers used the wealth derived from commerce to construct larger and more centrally governed states or cities. 
• both areas likewise experienced cultural change as local people were attracted to foreign religious ideas from confucian, hindu, buddhist, or islamic sources. 
• traditional religious practices mixed with the imported faiths of existed alongside them with little conflict.

sea roads as a catalyst for change: east Africa: 

• What stimulated the growth of Swahili cities was the far more extensive commercial life of the western Indian Ocean following the rise of islam. 
• Swahili cities were commercial centers that accumulated goods from the interior and exchanged them for the products of distant civilizations such as chinese porcelain and silk.
• islam sharply divided the Swahili cities from their African neighbors to the west for neither the new religion nor Swahili culture penetrated much beyond the coast until the nineteenth century. 

commercial beginnings In west Africa:

• the earliest long distance trade within this huge region was not across the Sahara at all but largely among the agricutlutral people themselves in the area later known to arabs as the Sudan or the land of black people. 

Gold, salt, and slaves: trade and empire in west Africa:

• a major turning point in African commercial life occurred within the introduction of the camel to North African and the Sahara in the early centuries of the common era. 
• what was sought above all else was gold which was found in some abundance in the border areas straddling the grasslands and the forests of west Africa. 
• as in all civilizations, slavery found a place in west Africa. 
• most of these slaves were used within this emerging west African civilization but a trade in slaves also developed across the Sahara. 

An American network: commerce and connection in the Western Hemisphere:

• direct connections among the various civilizations and cultures of the Americas were less densely woven than in the afro-eurasian region. 
• commerce too played an important role in the making of this "American web". 
• although most if this trade was in luxury goods rather than basic necessities, it was critical to upholding this position and privileges of royal and noble families.
• despite the general absence of private trade, local exchange took place at highland fairs and along the borders of the empire with groups outside the Inca state.