Page 106 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

trading patterns, trans-saharan 1883

Flynn, D. O., Giráldez,A., & Sobredo, J. (Eds.). (2002). Studies in Pacific Mediterranean coast to the north, the Nile Valley to the
history. Economics, politics, and migration. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. east, and the western and central Sudanic grasslands to
Hsu, I. (1983). The rise of modern China (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford
University Press. the south. (Note that for the purposes of this article
Latham, A. J. H., & Kawakatsu, H. (Eds.). (1994). The evolving structure Sudan refers to these zones rather than to the eastern and
of the East Asian economic system since 1700: A comparative analy-
sis. Milan, Italy: Universita Bocconi. Nilotic region containing the present-day nation of
Latham, A. J. H., & Kawakatsu, H. (Eds.). (1994). Japanese industriali- Sudan.) However, the ancient trade in Saharan salt, cop-
sation and the Asian economy. London: Routledge. per, dates, and some slaves functioned only over short tra-
Legarda, B. J. (1999). After the galleons: Foreign trade, economic change,
and entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century Philippines. Manila, jectories in and out of the desert, never across its entire
Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press. north-south expanse. The major barrier was technologi-
Miller, S. M., Latham, A. J. H., and Flynn, D. O. (Eds.). (1998). Studies
in the economic history of the Pacific. London: Routledge. cal: Horses, oxen, and donkeys, to say nothing of human
Spate, O. H. K. (1979–1988). The Pacific since Magellan. Minneapolis: porters, could not move efficiently across the great dis-
University of Minnesota Press. tances between oases, the only sources of water within
Tarling, N. (Ed.). (1992). Cambridge history of Southeast Asia (Vols. 1–
2). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. the Sahara.
von Glahn, R. (1996). Fountain of fortune: Money and monetary policy When camels were introduced into Egypt and North
in China, 1000–1700. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Africa around the first century BCE, the technological
problem of desert transport was solved. Camels can
travel for as many as ten days without water while also
carrying heavy loads of trade goods as well as provisions
Trading Patterns, for the other members of a Saharan caravan—people and
often horses (a major import into the Sudan). Political
Trans-Saharan and cultural problems, however, delayed for many cen-

turies the utilization of this new transport system for reg-
rom about 800 to 1900 the Sahara served as one of ular trans-Saharan trade.When the Berber peoples of the
Fthe major highways of international trade. For the northern Sahara first took up camels, they became more
first seven hundred years of this era, Saharan camel car- difficult for the Roman colonizers of the Mediterranean
avans provided the only links between the world econ- coast to control and thus made desert trade between
omy and major sources of gold and slaves in West and Rome and the African interior more difficult. In the
Central Africa. Even after European navigation to the ensuing centuries Roman rule also suffered from internal
Atlantic coast of Africa broke this monopoly, trans- revolts, invasions by Germanic Vandal trades from Spain,
Saharan trade continued to flourish and even increase, conquest by the Byzantine empire, and finally, in the sev-
although its global significance shrank. Only in the enth century, conquest by Arab armies carrying the ban-
twentieth century, when colonial railways and roads ner of Islam. The Arabs were themselves a camel-using
diverted almost all export commerce to the ocean, did desert people, and under their regime the Sahara finally
the Saharan trade fall back into its earliest form as a became a route rather than an obstacle to international
purely local affair. commerce.

Early Saharan Trade True Trans-Saharan Trade
At some 5 million square kilometers, the Sahara forms Even with Islamic rule in North Africa, trans-Saharan
the largest hot-weather desert in the world. It is, never- trade began somewhat precariously as the enterprise of
theless, not an entirely barren place and held economic a dissident Muslim sect, the Ibadis, who exiled them-
attractions very early on for communities in the more selves to the northern edge of the desert in the ninth and
populated regions of Africa that surround it—the tenth centuries. For more orthodox Sunnis, commerce in