6.

What was the impact of long-distance trade on local

communities in the early medieval period?
While long-distance trade was not born on the Silk Routes connecting Europe, Asia and
Africa these paths carved out by merchants and interspersed by merchant cities and
oases revolutionised the practice. Trading of physical goods increased tenfold, bringing
economic prosperity to the communities it touched and transforming the nomadic
tribes that had previously lived across this route making them hugely relevant to the
changing world. Further, and perhaps even more critically, the trade of cultures, of
religion and ideas was facilitated and this was both unprecedented and opened up a
whole new world of globalised thought. Art, philosophy, music, technology, language
and craft all were practiced, taught, perfected and spread along the trading routes.
Buddhism too, with the help of the Kushan Empire, grew to have a tremendous
following and this was in many ways thanks to the support they enjoyed of merchants
and traders keen to find favour with the gods.
The Silk Route transformed the nomadic communities it touched, it bore entire cities
growing out of nothing along its paths and revolutionised the connectedness of the
Chinese Empire and the empires of the West. The Chinese people found they had a
need for goods they could not produce - either due to technological or natural deficit.
One of the first example of them going beyond their boarders along the Silk Routes to
source a product that they didnt have the correct natural surroundings to produce was
horses. Nomadic people who roamed the steppe beyond the boundaries of Chin bred
and controlled horses far more durable and tough than any in China and they were
thought as, by the Han military, to be key in winning the many wars China had with
foreign enemies at her borders. The Han ruling elite sent out explorers and merchants
to bring horses back.1 Silk was seen as a symbol of power and prestige on the steppe2
and so these explorers and merchants traded silk, which was so commonplace in
China that during the Han Dynasty every Chinese household paid them a tax in silk
cloth3, and also jade for the horses. By the time of the first century CE horses had
become even more desired - but now in a decorative sense. The most powerful
Emperors should be pulled by horse and chariot 4. The Han extended the Great Wall of
China to the Gate of Jade and the town of Dunhuang where increasingly merchants
would come to trade. It was a key piece of the routes leading off to the west where
caravans could stop, rest, negotiate and learn from other traders and restock supplies.
Although they brought goods from as far as Europe and India they were not typically
Europeans or Indians but instead middle men from the nomadic areas of the steppe
who began to settle in oases across the silk routes and trade with merchants coming
from the east or south. As the Silk Route expanded and the demand for exotic goods in

1 X. Liu, The Silk Road in World History (Oxford, 2010), p. 6.

2 Ibid., p. 4.

3 Ibid., p. 10.

4 Ibid., p. 17.

both the east and west grew these previously nomadic people settled into sedentary
communities near oases and built caravan parks, towns and even cities to
accommodate the huge rise of people settling down in these bustling merchant
villages. It was more than just the economic opportunity of trade that brought them
however. Chinese technologies had spread along the Silk Route that now allowed
proper irrigation of the land. It was now possible to support vastly larger numbers of
people on these areas and populations boomed, for example in the Takla Makan
Basin5. Regions of Asia that previously had been poor and isolated now boomed as
different economies took off thanks to the trade routes that opened up.
The Roman Empire, which by the early medieval period spanned Europe and called
millions of people its citizens, was filled with a growing number of prosperous people
who now they had found wealth in the new middle merchant classes, craved exotic
luxury items to exhibit their success. Spices, silk and perfumes all became incredibly
expensive and sought after. As the Silk Routes had made trading with the East so
easy, and there seemed to be a never ending market in Rome and the rest of Roman
Europe for these luxury items the money to be made from trading in the Roman
Empire was substantial. The Roman people were so enamoured with silk - it was
lightweight, cool in the hot Mediterranean summers but warm in the winters and has a
luxurious quality as well as a foreign mystique. In fact, the demand and purchase of
these silks was on such a huge scale that several prominent members of the ruling
classes expressed concerns that Rome could be bankrupted by all their gold bullion
being sent to the East by their citizens in search of silks 6. The demand pushed more
and more merchants onto the Asian continent, towards the oases towns of the Silk
Route to barter horses, glassware, grapes, wine, jewellery and metalwork for Eastern
goods. The Roman Empire were keen on protecting these missions exploring the
Middle East and securing routes and caravan towns for them to trade in 7. At the
expense of the Parthians they took control of parts of modern day Syria and Jordan.
The wealth that was brought into these area rejuvenated cities and merchant towns
that under the Parthian rule were somewhat neglected. Petra is a perfect example; the
Romans built a splendid merchant city here which became a hub of trading. As a
result the people who lived here became incredibly well-versed in cultures from across
Asia. The Romans encouraged this convergence of cultures, views were fairly
cosmopolitan and people could practice their own faiths, live life in ways that suited
them and as it was such an intersection of different cultures it was common for
residents to speak many languages, often including Greek and dialectal Arabic 8. The
Roman Empire has always been famous for the influences it made across its territory,
in modern day north-west Europe there are still many signs of their conquest but
during this period the Roman culture spread eastwards as they took control of these

5 Ibid., p. 13.

6 D. Lopez and F. Gonzalez, Mining and minerals trade on the Silk Road to the ancient literary sources: 2 BC to 10 AD
centuries (Madrid, 2011). p. 2.

7 Liu, The Silk Road in World History, p. 21.

8 Ibid., pp. 24-26.

cities and installed roads, baths and housing in the Roman style 9. The Roman
merchants increased their profits by not just dumping their wares at the closest
merchant cities to their eastern borders but instead exploring the lands themselves,
buying and selling goods from Egypt, Arabia, India and the steppe and thus cutting out
the middle men traders10.
The rise of Buddhism on the early medieval Eurasian trade routes was both thanks to
the increases the period saw in trade, travel and pilgrimage across the continents but
also did much to support trade, travel and pilgrimage. The early Buddhist disciples and
monks led very simple lives, travelling the trade routes from town to town preaching
their message and begging for food. However, this wasnt particularly sustainable
especially as the groups became larger. As the Buddhists became more involved with
the local traders and merchants who supported them in oases towns soon the religion
began to morph itself to fit in with their agenda. The Buddhist monks and the
commercial communities began to develop a symbiotic relationship by which the
commercial men benefited spiritually from their support of the faith and the Buddhists
had food to live on so they didnt have to go against the laws of their creed by
engaging in agricultural practices. As this symbiotic relationship grew the Buddhists
made more concessions to the traders. In order to encourage their generosity they
incorporated bodhisattvas into their practices. These were beings worthy of nirvana
but that had stayed on earth to aid the human population. Xinru Liu describes the
attraction of these new almost deities to regular trading people as [it] replaced the
old, monotonous, cyclical scheme of perpetual rebirth with a scheme that was totally
new and colorful[it was] no doubt much more attractive to the pragmatically
inclined. The impact of this increasingly mutually beneficial relationship was that
Buddhist began to settle in oasis towns in order to keep cultivating this relationship.
They began to host travellers and traders in their monasteries that were decorated to
look like paradises, in order to further indoctrinate the merchants to their way of
thinking, so they would support them. These monasteries became stop off points for
those making their way along the routes and thus became crossroads of language,
culture and artefacts. The monks had access to wealth and protection along the routes
and therefor could continue to create these safe havens in previously inaccessible
places. With monasteries in these areas people began to be able to use these paths
and so trading expanded even more 11. Buddhism could provide protection and security
that weakened governments across Eurasia no longer could 12.
The spread of Buddhism had further knock-on impacts that changed the early
medieval world. Ever increasing levels of literacy can often be attributed to people or

9 Ibid., p. 33.

10 Ibid., p. 36.

11 Liu, The Silk Road in World History, pp. 51-57.

12 Ibid., p. 85.

cities converting to a religion that encourages the studying of its holy books 13. Both
long-distance trade and Buddhism can take some of the credit for the huge growth in
literacy across Eurasia during the period. Furthermore, Buddhists can claim
responsibility for an early interest in commissioning and preserving many different
forms of art and creative expression. To take Dunhuang as an example, Buddhist
monks travelled along the Silk Routes to this garrison town controlled by the Chinese
where they settled bringing with them Buddhist art and scriptures from the West. They
used local caves as temples and filled them with the art and scriptures carried from all
over Eurasia14. They even kept lists of books they wished to acquire for their library.
One of the most interesting elements of these scripts is not what is actually written
but side-notes one can see on the back or in the margins. It is clear to modern
historians that as paper was such a treasured commodity they used it sparingly. The
backs and margins appear to be used for practising writing. It is clear that the
monastic schools were teaching reading and writing to students - not only those who
wished to become monks but a range of people from the area 15. Buddhist monks not
only in Dunhuang but along the Silk Route also committed considerable amounts of
time to teaching passing merchants Sanskrit, the original language of their scriptures.
This was especially useful to the Chinese communities who previously had some
difficulty communicating as their tonal and non-phonetic language made it impossible
for them to integrate new words from other languages successfully into their lexicon.
As more people from the East and West living in oases along the trading routes could
understand each other, so not only trade flourished but so did the spread of cultural
ideas.16
The Kushan Empire developed later than those of the Chinese and Romans but was in
many ways was even more successful in harnessing the economic opportunity of the
long distance trade routes across Eurasia. They used their ties with the Buddhist faith
to influence tradesmen and religious pilgrims across the trade routes, where they built
their empire, to work with them. They took over vast swathes of land from the Kabul
Valley to the Iranian plateau that had been controlled by the Parthians, onto Turfan in
the Tarim Basin and parts of India. The work of the Kushan Empire had a huge social
and cultural impact on regular people living within its boundaries. Traders from India,
China, Greece, Rome and Northern Africa were all coming to merchant cities creating
diverse ethnic and cultural centres. The Kushans didnt just allow the mingling of
language, religion, art and culture, they positively encouraged it. Arts, philosophy and
intellectual debate were so much more valued, partly as a result of the spreading of
literacy as mentioned before. It is argued it cannot be a coincidence that the uprisings
on the steppe during this period were almost always led by the increasingly well

13 C. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road (Oxford, 2009), p. 156.

14 S. Whitfield, The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (London, 2004).
http://idp.bl.uk/education/silk_road/index.a4d (Accessed: 15 November 2013).

15 V. Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford, 2012), ch. 6.

16 Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History, ch. 2.

educated merchant classes 17. They harnessed different religious groups to help spread
the languages of all the different converging people in order to accommodate foreign
settlers and traders. This cultural mixing pot is no more apparent than in the ruins of a
Buddhist monument where panels have been dug up that show a mixture of images
reflecting different cultures all together on these panels - men playing a harp, from
Greece, in a possibly Greek amphitheatre with Roman tunics but with steppe-style
trousers on beneath, further conical hats from animal-hide hint at the early nomadic
tribes18. This blending made Kushan Empire oases incredibly popular and commercial
traffic caused economic boom. The ruling elite had money to put into building
substantial housing, roads, houses of worship and schools for the local people 19. The
minted coins to use in markets, which is a more efficient way of trading for many
especially those involved in agriculture. The language that they compiled from the
dialects and practices of the settlers who made their home in the empire was used in
official documents and for many nomads was the first written language they had
experienced.
To conclude, the impact of long distance trade across Eurasia in the early medieval
time was of huge economic, political and cultural significance. It connected three of
the greatest empires of world history, allowing them to create a shared culture, a
mixing pot of religion, language, technology and art in the deserts separating them.
For both the elite of both Rome and China these products arriving at their border
piqued a curiosity for the cultures that spawned them and encouraged them to learn
their culture and their languages. For those stuck in the middle, the nomads who had
facilitated the early routes, they were given a chance to settle in the hundreds of
oases that sprung up along the routes to act as markets and stopping off points for
merchants. They could use the technologies from China to cultivate the land to the
best of its potential. Buddhism was both born of the silk roads and also symbiotically
grew the trading routes. It created physical markers for the routes; monasteries and
temples and monuments that sprung up in order to protect the travellers. The test of
the communities that sprung up along these routes came when the empires began to
crumble and governments lost control. When these oases stood the test of time it was
clear that they had developed an independence, they could support themselves
economically and socially.
Bibliography:
Beckwith, C., Empires of the Silk Road (Oxford, 2009).
Hansen, V., The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford, 2012).
Liu, X., The Silk Road in World History (Oxford, 2010).

17 C. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, p. 141.

18 Liu, The Silk Road in World History, p. 49.

19 Ibid., p. 42.

Lopez, D. and Gonzalez, F., Mining and minerals trade on the Silk Road to the ancient
literary sources: 2 BC to 10 AD centuries Mazadiego, L., (eds.) History of Research in
Mineral Resources.(Madrid, 2011).
Whitfield, S., The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (London, 2004).
http://idp.bl.uk/education/silk_road/index.a4d (Accessed: 15 November 2013).