Trade and commerce across Afro-Eurasia

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511667480.010

9 - Trade and commerce across Afro-Eurasia

from Part III - Growing interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015

Richard Smith

Edited by

Benjamin Z. Kedar and

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

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Benjamin Z. Kedar: Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks: Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

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Summary

A simple approach to imposing order on the study of trade and commerce for the Middle Millennium is to divide Afro-Eurasia into three categories: engines, passageways, and cul-de-sacs. Foreign trade became an important element in the overall Chinese economy under the Song and Yuan dynasties, which together are considered the great age of private commerce. By the end of the thirteenth century, Europe had re-emerged as an engine in Afro-Eurasian commerce, if not yet on the scale of other engines, at least with considerable potential as partner or competitor. The Afro-Eurasian world experienced two cataclysmic events that came as calamities in their immediate impact. In China paper money, which had been in use under the Song and Yuan, increasingly suffered bouts of inflation until the Ming ceased printing it altogether. Under the Song and Yuan, long-distance commerce had been largely in private hands, but this changed under the Ming.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge World History , pp. 233 - 256

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667480.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2015

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