Early Trading Systems

Grade 7 Social Science

Early Trading Systems

In this section you will learn about:

• Trade and what it means• Ancient trade and where it took place• The role of religion in ancient trade• How trade and religion played a role in the domination of one religion over another• The influence of technology on trade• Why some traders abused people in ancient times

In this section you will learn these skills:In this section you will learn these skills:

• How to identify trade routes on a map• How to find information from the past using different sources.• How to distinguish between fact and interpretation.• How to compare ancient and modern times.• How to read events on a timeline

In this section you will think about:

• Why and how people used religion to develop trade.• Why Western European technology didn’t develop as quickly as that of the Far East.• Why Western Europe didn’t try to develop it’s own trade routes to the Far East.

You've got the gold I need for my necklace and I've got the silk you need for your robe. What to do? Nowadays, if you need something, you go to the closest mall, shell out a few bucks and head home. Thousands of years ago, the process wasn't nearly as simple. If you or someone in your town didn't grow it, herd it or make it, you needed to abandon that desire or else travel for it, sometimes over great distances. For many towns, the effort of trade was too much. Those ancient towns make only rare appearances in our history books. When the first civilizations did begin trading with each other about five thousand years ago, however, many of them got rich...and fast. Trade was also a boon for human interaction, bringing cross-cultural contact to a whole new level.

Think about this…. Introduction

Luxury goodsWhen people first settled down into larger towns in Mesopotamia and Egypt, self-sufficiency – the idea that you had to produce absolutely everything that you wanted or needed – started to fade. A farmer could now trade grain for meat, or milk for a pot, at the local market, which was seldom too far away.

Cities started to work the same way, realizing that they could acquire goods they didn't have at hand from other cities far away, where the climate and natural resources produced different things. This longer-distance trade was slow and often dangerous, but was lucrative for the middlemen willing to make the journey.

The first long-distance trade occurred between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in Pakistan around 3000 BC, historians believe. Long-distance trade in these early times was limited almost exclusively to luxury goods like spices, textiles and precious metals. Cities that were rich in these commodities became financially rich, too, wetting the appetites of other surrounding regions for jewelry, fancy robes and imported delicacies.

It wasn't long after that trade networks crisscrossed the entire Eurasian continent, inextricably linking cultures for the first time in history.

By the second millennium BC, former backwater island Cyprus had become a major Mediterranean player by ferrying its vast copper resources to the Near East and Egypt, regions wealthy due to their own natural resources such as papyrus and wool. Phoenicia, famous for its seafaring expertise, hawked its valuable cedar wood and linens dyes all over the Mediterranean. China prospered by trading jade, spices and later, silk. Britain shared its abundance of tin.

Pit stopsIn the absence of proper roads, the most efficient way to transport goods from one place to another was by sea. The first and most extensive trade networks were actually waterways like the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates in present-day Iraq and the Yellow River in China. Cities grew up in the fertile basins on the borders of those rivers and then expandedby using their watery highways to import and export goods.

The domestication of camels around 1000 BC helped encourage trade routes over land, called caravans, and linked India with the Mediterranean. Like an ancient version of the Wild West frontier, towns began sprouting up like never before anywhere that a pit-stop or caravan-to-ship port was necessary. Many of the better-known satellite towns of Rome and Greece were founded this way, stretching those fabled empires further a field until their influences crossed continents. And in each of these places, foreign traders drank in port towns and shared stories and customs from back home, leaving more than just their parcels behind.

1 Early DevelopmentThe period extending from the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE to the beginning of the Common era saw the Western Asian, Mediterranean, Chinese and Indian societies develop major transportation networks for trade.One of the vital instruments which facilitated long distance trade was portage and the domestication of the beast of One of the vital instruments which facilitated long distance trade was portage and the domestication of the beast of burden. Organized caravans, visible could carry goods across a large distance as fodder was mostly available along the way. The domestication of camels allowed Arabian nomads to control the long distance trade in spices and silk from the Far East to the Arabian Peninsula. However, caravans were useful in long-distance trade largely for carrying luxury goods, the transportation of cheaper goods across large distances was not profitable for caravan operators. With productive developments in iron and bronze technologies, newer trade routes - dispensing innovations of civilizations - began to rise slowly.

The economy of the Kingdom of Qataban (light blue) was based on the cultivation and trade of spices and aromatics including frankincense and myrrh. These were exported to the Mediterranean, India and Abyssinia where they were greatly prized by many cultures, using camels on routes through Arabia, and to India by sea.

Activity 1: Look at the Map

1 Look at the map and identify the articles that were traded 2 What would the name of the country be today that produced brass and copper

3 Find out more about the use of Frankincense.4 Who were the Berbers? Name five facts about them. You can make use of Wikipedia.

Marco Polo (1254-1324)Marco Polo is famous for his travels through Asia. He was one of the first Europeans to travel into Mongolia and China. He became famous for his book that told the story of his travels along the Silk Road to China.Marco Polo was born in Venice, Italy around 1254. In 1271, when he was 17 years old, he traveled to Asia with his father and uncle. On this journey, he became a favorite of Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor. He roamed through Mongolia and China for 17 years. He traveled farther into China than any European had gone before. Finally, he took a ride to Persia and then back home. In all, he was gone for 24 years!When he returned to Venice in 1295, he became a popular storyteller. People gathered at his

The Polo family arrives

in a Chinese city

a popular storyteller. People gathered at his home to hear his stories of his travels in the Far East. In 1298, there was a conflict between Venice and Genoa. Polo was captured by the Genoese and imprisoned by them. While in jail, Marco dictated the story of his travels to a writer who published the book, The Travels of Marco Polo . The book helped to make Europeans very interested in trading with China and the Far East, and that led to the explorations of Columbus and many others who were searching for a quicker way to sail to China and India. When Marco was near death, a priest came in his room to ask him if he'd like to admit that his stories were false. Instead, Marco said, "I did not tell half of what I saw". Those were his last words.Marco Polo died in 1324.

Trans- Saharan trade

Around the fifth century, thanks to the availability of the camel, Berber-speaking people began crossing the Sahara Desert. From the eighth century onward, annual trade caravans followed routes later described by Arabic authors with minute attention to detail. Gold, sought from the western and central Sudan, was the main commodity of the trans-Saharan trade. The traffic in gold was spurred by the demand for and supply of coinage. The rise of the Soninke empire of Ghana appears to be related to the beginnings of the trans-Saharan gold trade in the fifth century.

From the seventh to the eleventh century, trans-Saharan trade linked the Mediterranean economies that demanded gold—and could supply salt—to the sub-Saharan economies, where gold was abundant. Although local supply of salt was sufficient in sub-Saharan Africa, the consumption of Saharan salt was promoted for trade purposes. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Arab merchants operating in southern Moroccan towns such as Sijilmasa bought gold from the Berbers, and financed more caravans. These commercial transactions encouraged further conversion of the Berbers to Islam. Increased demand for gold in the North Islamic states, which sought the raw metal for minting, prompted scholarly attention to Mali and Ghana, the latter referred to as the "Land of Gold." For instance, geographer al-Bakri described the eleventh-century court at Kumbi Saleh, where he saw gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords mounted with gold, and court at Kumbi Saleh, where he saw gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords mounted with gold, and dogs' collars adorned with gold and silver. The Soninke managed to keep the source of their gold (the Bambuk mines, most notably) secret from Muslim traders. Yet gold production and trade were important activities that undoubtedly mobilized hundreds of thousands of African people. Leaders of the ancient kingdom of Ghana accumulated wealth by keeping the core of pure metal, leaving the unworked native gold to be marketed by their people

Gold Trade and the Mali EmpireBy 1050 A.D., Ghana was strong enough to assume control of the Islamic Berber town of Audaghost. By the end of the twelfth century, however, Ghana had lost its domination of the western Sudan gold trade. Trans-Saharan routes began to bypass Audaghost, expanding instead toward the newly opened Bure goldfield. Soso, the southern chiefdom of the Soninke, gained control of Ghana as well as the Malinke, the latter eventually liberated by Sundiata Keita, who founded the Mali empire. Mali rulers did not encourage gold producers to convert to Islam, since prospecting and production of the metal traditionally depended on a number of beliefs and magical practices that were alien to Islam. In the fourteenth century, cowrieshells were introduced from the eastern coast as local currency, but gold and salt remained the principal mediums of long-distance trade.

The flow of sub-Saharan gold to the northeast probably occurred in a

The shaded portion indicates the empire of Mali in the fourteenth century.

The flow of sub-Saharan gold to the northeast probably occurred in a steady but small stream. Mansa Musa's arrival in Cairo carrying a ton of the metal (1324–25) caused the market in gold to crash, suggesting that the average supply was not as great. Undoubtedly, some of this African gold was also used in Western gold coins. African gold was indeed so famous worldwide that a Spanish map of 1375 represents the king of Mali holding a gold nugget. When Mossiraids destroyed the Mali empire, the rising Songhai empire relied on the same resources. Gold remained the principal product in the trans-Saharan trade, followed by kola nuts and slaves. The Moroccan scholar Leo Africanus, who visited Songhai in 1510 and 1513, observed that the governor of Timbuktu owned many articles of gold, and that the coin of Timbuktu was made of gold without any stamp or superscription.

Facsimile of a map drawn in Spain and dated to 1375, showing the King of Mali holding a gold nugget

During the High Middle Ages of 1000-1500, long distance trading became safer and thus more profitable. As a result, craftsmen moved into growing centers of trade, forcing lords and serfs to have to get their goods from these centers of trade. Towns formed leagues and urban federations, or communes, that worked together to fight crime or deal with monarchs and nobles.

The Rise of Towns and Commerce

Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, hit Europe in 1347. Transmitted primarily by fleas and rats, the bacteria Y. Pestis swept across the continent, killing one third of the population by 1351. The bacteria is thought to have been endemic among rodent populations on the Asian steppes, and jumped to humans in Europe with great virulence. The onset of the disease was sudden; the symptoms were fever, weakness. delirium, lung distress, and dark-colored swellings (buboes) in the neck, armpit and groin areas. Quite often, those infected died within 1-2 days, including young and previously healthy individuals

The Black Death

Activity 2

Study the map and answer the following questions

“It is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful truth… . The victims died almost immediately. Study the map and answer the following questions

1 Name 3 Major cities that were hit by The Black Death2 What is Constantinople known as today?3 Which country was first hit by The Black Death4 For how many years did this disease effect these areas ?5 Find out the number of people that perished in this time.

awful truth… . The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath the armpits and in the groin an fall over while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight… . In many places … great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night.”

European outbreak

The Black Death rapidly spread along the major European sea and land trade routes. In October 1347, a fleet of Genoese trading ships fleeing Caffa reached the port of Messina in Sicily. By the time the fleet reached Messina, all the crew members were either infected or dead. It is presumed that the ships also carried infected rats and/or fleas. Some ships were found grounded on shorelines, with no one aboard remaining alive.

Looting of these lost ships also helped spread the disease. From there, the plague spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347–1348. From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then proceeded to spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen). Finally it spread to north-western Russia in 1351; however, the plague largely spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and isolated parts of Belgium and The Netherlands.

Medieval trade fairs, such as the one in Hamburg, contributed to the growth of banking in a curious way: moneychangers issued documents redeemable at other fairs, in exchange for hard currency. These documents could be cashed at another fair in a different country or at a future fair in the same location. If redeemable at a future date, they would often be discounted by an amount comparable to a rate of interest. Eventually, these documents evolved into bills of exchange, which could be redeemed at any office of the issuing banker. These bills made it possible to transfer large sums of money without the complications of hauling large chests of gold and hiring armed guards to protect the gold from thieves.

Beginning around 1100, the need to transfer large sums of money to finance the Crusades stimulated the reemergence of banking in western Europe. In 1156, in Genoa, occurred the earliest known foreign exchange contract. Two brothers borrowed 115 Genoese pounds and agreed to reimburse the bank's agents in Constantinople the sum of 460 bezants one month after their arrival in that city. In the following century the use of such contracts grew rapidly, particularly since profits from time differences were seen as not infringing canon laws against usury. In 1162, Henry II levied a tax to support the crusades -- the first of a series of taxes levied by Henry over the years with the same objective. The templars and hospitallers acted as Henry's bankers in the Holy Land. The Templars' wide flung, large land holdings across Europe also

The beginning of Banking and Trade Fairs

hospitallers acted as Henry's bankers in the Holy Land. The Templars' wide flung, large land holdings across Europe also emerged in the 1100-1300 time frame as the beginning of Europe-wide banking, as their practice was to take in local currency, for which a demand note would be given that would be good at any of their castles across Europe, allowing movement of money without the usual risk of robbery while traveling.

By 1200 there was a large and growing volume of lon g-distance and international trade in a number of a gricultural commodities and manufactured goods in western Europ e, including corn, wool, finished cloth, wine, salt , wax , leather and leather goods, and weapons and armour. Individual trading concerns and combines often spec ialized in one or more of these, as did individual producers; because a large amount of capital was required to e stablish, e.g., a cloth manufacturing business, only the larg est firms could diversify. As a result, businesses and clusters of businesses tended to market fairly narrow product l ines.

Activity 3

1 List all commodities traded in the highlighted paragraph

2 Look up information on the Crusades and compile a summary that is no longer than one A4 page

Medieval LifeFeudalismThe Feudal System was introduced to England following the invasion and conquest of the country by William I (The Conqueror). The system had been used in France by the Normans from the time they first settled there in about 900AD. It was a simple, but effective system, where all land was owned by the King. One quarter was kept by the King as his personal property, some was given to the church and the rest was leased out under strict controls.

A simple plan showing how the Feudal System works

The King The King was in complete control under the Feudal System. He owned all the land in the country and decided who he would lease land to. He therefore only allowed those men he could trust to lease land from him. However, before they were given any land they had to swear an oath to remain faithful to the King at all times. The men who leased land from the King were known as Barons, they were wealthy, powerful and had complete control of the land they leased from the King.

Barons

Barons leased land from the King which was known as a manor. They were known as the Lord of the Manor and were in complete control of this land. They established their own system of justice, minted their own money and set their own taxes. In return for the land they had been given by the King, the Barons had to serve on the royal council, pay rent and provide the King with Knights for military service when he demanded it. They also had to provide lodging and food for the King and his court when they travelled around the country. The Barons kept as much of their land as they wished for their own use, then divided the rest among their Knights. Barons were very rich.

Knights

Knights were given land by a Baron in return for military Knights were given land by a Baron in return for military service when demanded by the King. They also had to protect the Baron and his family, as well as the Manor, from attack. The Knights kept as much of the land as they wished for their own personal use and distributed the rest to villeins (serfs). Although not as rich as the Barons, Knights were quite wealthy.

Villeins

Villeins, sometimes known as serfs, were given land by Knights. They had to provide the Knight with free labour, food and service whenever it was demanded. Villeins had no rights. They were not allowed to leave the Manor and had to ask their Lord's permission before they could marry. Villeins were poor.

Baron Knight Villeins

Word Search on Feudalism

I trust you have learnt

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Trading, may this inspire

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