Advantages of Using Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean Trade
Traveling merchants were a major vehicle for creating vastinterregional networks and trade routes in the great overland oceanicnetworks increased in importance (Interregional Pp). Transportation was animportant factor, whether meaning better ships and navigation, or theincreasingly widespread use of the camel as a ship of the desert (TropicalPp). Before the 1st millennium CE, the Sahara was an almost impassablebarrier separating the North African coast from sub-Saharan Africa(Tropical Pp). And the Atlantic Ocean not a highway for travel, but abarrier (Tropical Pp). The only route connecting the two areas was theNile, however, in its southern reaches travel was made difficult by both
Although products, such as spices from Southeast Asiaand other expensive goods, continued to be exchanged, bulk good such assugar and textiles were increasingly involved (Interregional Pp). Indian Ocean trade firstincreased under local groups from southern Arabia, India, and SoutheastAsia, then outside groups, such as the Chinese became involved and anetwork establishing a link between East African commercial city-states andthe Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia (Interregional Pp). These traders brought manufacturedgoods from Mediterranean ports, especially salt from Sahara mines (TropicalPp). As a result of these trade routes, societies began to exchange morethan salt and spices, as religious beliefs and cultural practices andtechnologies traveled the same routes (Silk Pp). By 1250 AD Africansocieties were greatly expanding their political and economic scope andIslam was spreading south across the Sahara from Mediterranean Africa, anddown the Indian Ocean coast (Medieval Pp). Moreover, donkey caravans departed from there for the forests to thesouth, bringing back gold which was eagerly traded for salt and farmlandsproduced surplus food for the area's traders (Tropical Pp). With the introduction of the camel, the Sahara was no longer abarrier and people and trade good as well as warriors, could travel quicklyacross the desert (Tropical Pp). The monsoon winds were the propulsion for ships, the driving forcefor navigation in the Indian Ocean, blowing ships northeast in summer, andthen back southwest in winter (Tropical Pp). By the 15th century, European domination had begun in Africa,establishing themselves a safe route to India and tapping the lucrativegold trade of the Sudan and the east coast trade in gold, slaves, and ivorychanging forever the lives on all the world's continents (Africa Pp). This transformed life in the West Africangrasslands because camel caravans that crossed the Sahara came primarily tothe Niger River cities where they found all the facilities needed bytravelling merchants (Tropical Pp). By the 16thcentury, the Portuguese dominated this system and linked it directly,rather than through Mediterranean intermediaries, with Europe(Interregional Pp).
Common topics in this essay:
Tropical Pp,
Medieval Pp,
Interregional Pp,
Southeast Asia,
Pp Moreover,
Indian Ocean,
,
AD African,
Pp Transportation,
tropical pp,
West African,
interregional pp,
indian ocean,
southeast asia,
desert tropical,
trade routes,
desert tropical pp,
india southeast,
india southeast asia,
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Acceptance Essays
