All the way back in the 2nd century BC, the Han
Dynasty served as the 2nd Chinese imperial dynasty to date and had ambitions to accomplish more than
just that. Initially hoping simply to resolve the recurrent issue of conflict with the Xiongnu
tribes along the north and west borders, the Han emperor, Emperor Wu, decided in 138 BC to send
an envoy off to try and form some type of alliance or garner support from the Yuezhi in the west. As
he traveled through Central Asia, the emissary, Zhang Qian witnessed for the first time a variety
of new people and cultures and was particularly fascinated by the Da-yuan people. To be specific,
Qian was drawn to the horses of the Da-yuan. Although the Han Dynasty had long been using
horses in warfare, and even as far back as during the 11th century BC Shang Dynasty cavalry
and chariots were popular, the horses of Da-yuan appeared to Qian to be far superior to those
that were bred in China. Admiring their size, strength, and speed, Qian returned to Emperor
Wu and informed him of these magnificent beasts. As a result, Wu decided to purchase some of these
western horses and in a short matter of time, with the help of their new horsepower, the Han
Dynasty was able to address the Xiongnu threat. Impressed by the success of Qian’s journey
west and the collaboration it inspired, Emperor Wu decided to take things a step further,
triggering the official opening of the Silk Road in 130 BC, connecting the East to the West
through a network of trade routes spanning roughly 4,000 miles from end to end, reaching from
the Han in China to the tips of Europe… This was not the first such
road, or more accurately, roads, to create an international
trade route though. In fact, it was the Persians under Darius I and the
Persian Empire who had created the original. This was known as the Royal Road and it stretched
from Susa, which lies in modern-day Iran, all the way nearly 2,000 miles to
the west in Sardis, which is today a part of Turkey. The Persians would also add
smaller routes to the main one which reached parts of the Indian subcontinent and northern
Africa as well, and this network came to be roughly 300 years prior to the opening of the Silk
Road. Although later outdone by the Silk Road, the Persian Royal Road was quite impressive in
itself, and the writings about its messengers, provided to us by Herodotus, would later form the
basis of the United States Postal Service creed. Nonetheless, the Silk Road would soon be
the ultimate route or routes for messengers, merchants, and explorers alike. The
roads were used in a few manners, with the main being for commercial trade. Despite the fact that the term we know it by
now was not actually coined until the late 19th century, the Silk Road did, in fact,
serve as a major contributor to the trade of silks throughout the regions it spanned over.
For a long while, silk only came out of China due to the fact that it was the
Chinese who had discovered how to harvest the material from the cocoons of
silkworms and had strategically hidden this discovery from the rest of the world. Thanks to
the creation of the Silk Road network though, the material and products produced from it could
now be sold all throughout the path to Europe, and it was the far west Romans, in particular, who
really fell in love with this Chinese commodity… This near-obsession with silk that the Romans
developed would actually also prove to be a prime example of how the Silk Road not only
spread goods from west to east and east to west, but also brought culture and new ideas to each
state that it touched. In the case of Rome and silk, the remarkable demand for the product within
the empire eventually put Rome in a position of an “unfavorable balance of trade”, which deeply
bothered the emperors. While nothing would ever be done to rectify this before the 476 fall of the
Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantines, would take on the burden and it
would be their emperor who now put an end to it. After discovering the source of this
infatuating material, Emperor Justinian sent two men undercover as monks into China to
steal enough silkworms to start a new production stream of silk back in Byzantium. The expedition
worked, and now the Eastern Roman Empire could save itself from the same high-priced silk-induced
trade imbalance of their Western counterpart… Silk was still not the only popular
export along the Silk Road though. Additionally from East to West, products such as
teas, dyes, spices, porcelain, paper, gunpowder, and medicine were all frequently traded. Paper and
gunpowder would go on to make significant impacts in the contemporary European world, with gunpowder
changing warfare as they knew it, and paper soon becoming the primary canvas for writing. As
the Eastern trade changed the Western culture and world, the West did the same for the East.
Western merchants would sell goods like glassware, textiles, animal furs, certain foods such as
fruits or honey, live animals, rugs and blankets, armor, and horse-riding necessities. Here alone we
see the inspiration for new thinking and new ways of life being passed along the network of trade
routes, and this does not even include the spread of religions and ideologies that would occur
thanks to the merchants and travels themselves. And yet, all of this was done whilst
most merchants, messengers, and the like, never went across the whole Silk Road network.
In reality, the vast majority of the traders especially would only go part way, sell or trade
their goods to another merchant, and then that man would go and do the same. This created a large
system of middlemen and also allowed for the opening of new businesses. Inns and resting places
for the common caravans would soon begin popping up along the routes, and on the less legal
side, robbers became frequently employed. There was one man who would travel from one end
to the other though, and he would later make the road famous through his writing about the journey.
It was Marco Polo who spent three years alongside his father, aged only 17, traversing the Silk Road
until they finally reached the Chinese palace of Kublai Khan in 1275 AD. The Polos would stay
in Asia for years more, where the young man traveled to places, he’d never seen and met
people and cultures he’d never imagined. When Marco Polo yet again traveled along the Silk
Road, this time to return home to Venice in 1295, he brought back with him all of the knowledge
and experience that he had gained from his time in Asia and shared it all with the European
world in his book, “The Travels of Marco Polo”. Language, culture, religion, discovery, and so on
and so forth were all shared along the Silk Road, making the ancient trade network
an invaluable part of history and our world today. Even disease spread along
the routes, and many historians point to the Silk Road in particular as being the possible
culprit for the spread of the devastating Black Death in the 14th century. Yet, the Silk
Road only lasted for another hundred years… This is because after the Ottoman Empire
conquered Byzantium, the Ottomans all but entirely cut off any trade with the west and shut
down the Silk Road. Looking for ways around this, many Europeans began to explore the seas instead,
hoping for a means around the blockage on land. This birthed the Age of Discovery, lending soon to
the eventual European expeditions to the New World that would shape so many countries as we know them
today. In many ways, it was the Silk Road itself that can be credited for these monumental moments
in history, as it was the possibilities provided by the incredible trade network that would give
Europeans a craving for further exploration and global trade, which would send them to the
seas in response to the Ottoman intervention. Thus, the Silk Road worked in a plethora of ways.
It served, obviously, as a hub for international trade and commerce. Additionally, these routes
would open up new journeys for explorers, allow for easier passage of messengers from East
to West, and through all of this helped to share and exchange cultures, languages, religions,
ideas, development, and sadly even disease.
