The wealth of ancient trade routes

If Chinese people were asked to answer which cities were the richest before the Ming Dynasty, some would say Chang'an or Luoyang, others would say Metropolitan City (present-day Beijing), others would say Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and still others would name some famous cities in the West, such as Gaochang and Loulan. If you ask people familiar with Western history which cities were the richest before 1500 A.D., many people will think of Rome and Constantinople (today's Istanbul), while others will think of Venice, and probably Hamburg, Lisbon, Bruges, Copenhagen, and so on.　　In fact, all of these historically wealthy cities were located along three ancient trade routes. These three trade routes were the Silk Road across Asia and Europe, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal running north-south through China, and the European offshore port trade routes later controlled by the Hanseatic League.　　Treasure on the Silk Road The Silk Road was first conceived in 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen to describe transportation between China and the two river valleys of Central Asia and India. Later, Albart Herrmann (A. Herrmann) to expand this road to the core area of silk and other commodities to reach the geographic "Silk Road" extended to the Mediterranean Sea and Asia Minor, used to describe the whole of Europe, West Asia countries and the East of the main trade routes, and is generally accepted by scholars in the East and the West. The trade routes of the Silk Road in the broader sense were: from Xi'an, China (extending eastward to Beijing after the Yuan Dynasty), to the territory of Xinjiang, China, northward to the present-day Aral Sea, the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, and Europe, southward to India, and westward to Syria, across the sea to Greece, Rome, or southward through Damascus, Cairo, and to Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria, Egypt.　　The Silk Road across Asia and Europe was one of the most famous trunk routes of world trade before 1500 AD. Through the Silk Road, China's silk, tea, ironware, copperware, lacquerware, and almonds, Europe's woolen textiles, glass, and cosmetics, India's precious stones, onyx, and spices, and Central Asia's horses were widely exchanged along different trade directions.　　Due to the huge regional differences, the price difference of many commodities in India, China and Rome was more than 100 times, from which the international trade merchants at that time could make huge profits. Over the course of more than 1,000 years, the Silk Road nourished hundreds of wealthy ancient cities. In China, there were Luoyang, Taiyuan, Xi'an, Jiayuguan, Dunhuang, Gaochang, Jiaohua, Loulan, Turpan, Urumqi, Yining, Kucha, Aksu, Kashgar and so on. In West Asia, Europe within the territory of Tashkurgan, Islamabad, Kabul, Mashhad, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Constantinople, Lyon, Rome, Venice, Genoa and so on.　　Wealthy towns along the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal Since it was called the "Silk Road", it means that silk was the most important part of the trade between China, Arabia, India and Europe. According to historical records, Chinese silk was popular in ancient Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and Europe. Not only did the princes and concubines of the Sabaeans, Seleucids and Ptolemies use silk for decoration, but even in the city of Rome, the center of Western Rome, and Constantinople, the center of Eastern Rome, the emperors, the senators and even the powerful and the noble were all proud to wear Chinese silk.　　However, almost all descriptions of the Silk Road start from Chang'an and exclude inland cities such as Beijing and Luoyang, not to mention cities in southern China. But it is impossible to have a silk trade starting from the cities of Beijing and Luoyang alone. The Silk Road trade flourished without the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, an important trade route in the interior of China.　　The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, dug in the Spring and Autumn Period and completed in 610 AD during the Sui Dynasty, is a golden waterway in Chinese history. Starting from Beijing in the north and ending in Hangzhou in the south, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal connected the waterways of Huaihe River and Yangtze River, and was not only a trade route for silk and tea, but also the main channel for salt and waterway transportation in ancient China.　　Before the opening of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, silk from Jiangnan was mainly transported to Chang'an through Luoyang and Xianyang. After the opening of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, due to the high transportation efficiency of the canal, silk, tea and ceramics from Jiangnan began to arrive at Beijing in large quantities through the canal, and were transported to Europe by connecting the Silk Road through Taiyuan and Baotou. Until it was cut off in modern times, the major cities along the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal were rich and prosperous commercial cities in Chinese history, including Tianjin, Dezhou, Gaoyou, Xuzhou, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Wuxi, Changzhou, Suzhou, Jiaxing and Hangzhou. It is also not difficult to find in these cities goods such as furs, glass and spices that came to China via the Silk Road.　　The former wealth gathering place of Europe Before the Middle Ages, the wealth gathering place of Europe was not only the two political centers of Rome and Constantinople, but also included a series of commercial cities along the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea.　　In the north, the richest cities were the towns of the European Low Countries along the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (more than 200 towns united by the Hanseatic League), including Hamburg and Bremen in Germany, Lisbon in Portugal, Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, Stockholm in Sweden, Copenhagen and Der in Denmark, Bergen in Norway, etc. After the formation of the Hanseatic League, there was also a series of commercial towns along the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea, including Rome and Constantinople. After the establishment of the Hanseatic League, it also established permanent trading posts in London, England, and Novgorod, Russia, and had close commercial exchanges with Venice, Genoa, and Florence on the Italian peninsula. Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, they are not only an important commercial city for intra-regional trade in Europe, but also at the western end of the "Silk Road". Therefore, not only a variety of European goods through these Italian commercial city-state was transported to Central Asia, India, China, and Europeans can only buy from there to the East of silk, ceramics, tea and so on.　　The Rise and Fall of the Three Ancient Merchant Roads and the Transfer of Wealth From the 13th to 16th centuries, during the period of prosperity of the agricultural and pastoral wealth of Asia and Europe, the three great merchant roads were also basically connected. All cities and regions on the three great trade routes had vibrant economies.　　The massive export of silk and other commodities boosted the development of China's mulberry and silk industries. The famous "Qingming Riverside Scroll" is a true depiction of the economic prosperity of Jiangnan during this period. Cities along the Grand Canal such as Suzhou, Yangzhou and Jinan benefited from the prosperity of commerce and trade in different eras. Cities in the west were also positively influenced by the Arab and Indian civilizations. The Chinese merchants of Hui and Jin made great fortunes in the East-West trade.　　Central Asia, at the heart of the "Silk Road", also made huge profits from transit commerce. Malacandia (present-day Samarkand), the capital of the Sultans, once flourished because of the silk trade. After the collapse of Alexander's empire, the monopoly profits from the trade on the Silk Road played an important role in the financial income of the Seleucid dynasty. After Sabbath controlled Central and Western Asia, it also profited from transit and export trade; after the fall of Sabbath, the Persian Empire of Sassanid Dynasty prevented Central Asian merchants of Sut and Western Roman merchants from selling silk, and monopolized the profit of the trade by itself.　　At the other end of the East-West trade spectrum, Rome and Constantinople, as well as Mediterranean commercial cities such as Venice and Genoa, and more than 200 towns and cities up to the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts were operators and beneficiaries of long-distance trade. By the 12th century, many parts of the Italian peninsula had even learned the techniques of silkworm rearing and silk making, which later spread to France, and oriental ceramics manufacturing techniques were also developed in Germany.　　However, by the middle of the Ming Dynasty in China, in 1472, Mongol soldiers captured Hami and the Ming Dynasty retreated to the Jiayuguan Pass, leaving the Western states beyond the Pass in tatters. In Central Asia, the Persian Empire became a serious obstacle to the arrival of Chinese and Indian goods in Europe, thus forcing a portion of East-West trade to be diverted to the sea. In the West, the Silk Road, which had flourished for more than 1,000 years across Asia and Europe, had no choice but to decline after Da Gama reached India around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa at the end of the 15th century, even though Oriental goods were still traded on the Silk Road at various geographic stages.　　In the East, the caravan route across the Arabian Peninsula had been interrupted by 1502.1 As the demand for Chinese goods dwindled, the Shanxi merchants who "traveled to the west" lost a great deal of commercial opportunities and had to try to extend their business activities to Russia in the north and to southern China, while the Anhui merchants, who were at the crossroads of north and south China, further shifted their focus to the north and south of the country. Anhui merchants at the crossroads of China's north and south, the center of gravity of the business further shifted to the region of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. As the center of gravity of trade gradually shifted from the inland to the southeast coast, the Min and Zhejiang merchants gradually replaced the traditional Jin and Hui merchants as the new wealth gatherers.　　In the West, as the Portuguese obtained direct access to the East route, thus making the traditional East Mediterranean trade system (Venice, Genoa, Florence and other commercial cities) lost the link between the Black Sea, the European continent and Central Asia, India, China, the core of the commercial routes. No matter how shrewd the merchants there were, relying solely on the barren Italian peninsula, they could no longer continue to play a leading role in trade with the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the inland towns and cities of Europe, and forever lost their dominant position in world trade, unable to maintain their former prosperity. The Hanseatic League of Northern Europe, which had once maintained close ties with the Italian city-states, also soon lost its dominant role in maritime trade under the onslaught of the Dutch and the British.　　In Central Asia, West Asia, Eastern Europe, in the "Silk Road" on a commercial city, once as bright as the jewelry they have, but in the transfer of trade routes, but one by one fell. Some ancient cities in just a few hundred years, has been like the ancient road on the sound of camel bells no longer exist, leaving only a stupa, mosque to do the witness of history, and the ancient Arabian lamp and camel caravan stories are still circulating ......