Two developments that turned the silk road into a backwater:
— when the portuguese and spanish started blue-water sailing (~1500), they opened alternative, cheaper, channels for goods which had once passed mostly overland
— when the british industrialised (~1780), textiles went from being an expensive trade good (provided by a decentralised "cottage industry": anyone with a loom and labour could make them) to cheap stuff (provided by centralised factories).
[consider the fates of Old West towns not on the railroad, or Red America towns in "flyover country" not on the freeway: there were some choices to make at the Taklamakan Desert, but otherwise cities of the time were either on the Silk Road, or they were off of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#/media/File:Seidenst... . These days, instead of places like Palmyra or Bagdad or Samarkand, what's "on it" are no longer cities but strategic points like Suez or Hormuz or Malacca]
Don't forget Suez Canal (1869). Russian officers who took Ottoman city Doğubayazıt in 1854 and 1878 wrote that that Silk Road crossroad city flourishing in 1854 was in decline in 1878 because of the trade through it vanishing due to the Canal.
True, and looks like the portuguese may only have been inspired to sink the initial R&D into disruption because the ottomans, having taken Constantinople, were charging* too much as gatekeepers:
EDIT: note also how the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) drew a line across the Atlantic which is still largely conserved by the sea boundary between USEUCOM and USAFRICOM
* EDIT2: could they have charged just enough to make the age of exploration look risky and too expensive, not risky but potentially cheaper?
Don't forget when FBI nabbed Dread Pirate Roberts (2013). This single event is said to have instantly annihilated The Silk Road. The feds got a sweet 3 billion+ in bitcoin as of 2021!
It's actually amazing how even as early as the 16th century Europeans had the superior naval power. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
It wasn't until the battle of Tsushima that the tide shifted.
The 16th century is too early to claim superiority, especially considering what the Ottoman navy was able to achieve then. The turning point in the overall military power balance between the Ottoman Empire and Europe occurred in the late 17th century (~1680) in my opinion. The Portuguese lost every naval battle they waged against the Ming in the 16th century. Even towards the middle of the 17th century the Dutch were unable to hold Taiwan against Ming navy remnants.
There's an alternative take--namely that the silk road has dominated recent imagination but was never very dominant compared with sea routes. At least during the era of Roman-Indian shipping lanes: https://youtu.be/xw4Wb2v-6yk?si=8uAixLGUCt4Yl9sE
I've bought William Dalrymple's new book The Golden Road for my dad's birthday, which I plan to borrow and read before seeing the new British Museum and Library's exhibitions. I wonder if these will prompt more articles like this.
I really enjoyed reading "City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas", which taught me that the main thing Venice had going for it was controlling much of the Silk Road trade until Vasco da Gama doomed it in 1498.
That's also my headcanon for the Renaissance: when Constantinople fell in 1453, there was a lot of impetus for skilled emigration, and as the italian cities had been the traditional trade partners, they were a logical place for incoming high human capital "Martians"* to wind up, fresh off the boat but rapidly reconstituting their networks:
I assumed that the Sogdian script iself was the cheeky part. I imagine if they had just lost a war to the Khotanese it would've been quite the inside joke of the time.
This is a great book to learn about the Silk Road in particular Central Asia and the role Russia and UK played in its transformation. It reads like a Game of Thrones novel.
Interesting note is Russia colonized Central Asia with the end goal of invading India.
There is a really cool documentary on Amazon Prime about the Silk Road that I recommend. The guy goes to cities that were on it and tours them in the present. You can see how they have changed and how powerful they used to be.
i never understood the concept of the Silk Road, isn't it just meant to roughly refer to the conceptual east-west trade links through time. There isn't an "everyday life on the Silk Road" since that concept spans millenia and constantly changing landscape of nations and peoples
The article talks about how the Silk Road was created as a concept out of nothing by a historian. Interesting how a century and a half later most of us accept that man's framing without ever questioning it.
— when the portuguese and spanish started blue-water sailing (~1500), they opened alternative, cheaper, channels for goods which had once passed mostly overland
— when the british industrialised (~1780), textiles went from being an expensive trade good (provided by a decentralised "cottage industry": anyone with a loom and labour could make them) to cheap stuff (provided by centralised factories).
[consider the fates of Old West towns not on the railroad, or Red America towns in "flyover country" not on the freeway: there were some choices to make at the Taklamakan Desert, but otherwise cities of the time were either on the Silk Road, or they were off of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#/media/File:Seidenst... . These days, instead of places like Palmyra or Bagdad or Samarkand, what's "on it" are no longer cities but strategic points like Suez or Hormuz or Malacca]
EDIT: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2L2U32-BvQ