It's fairly amazing that goods managed to get from China to Europe, and vice versa, without any Chinese people visiting Europe for hundreds or years, or any Europeans visiting China.
This was not just in the middle ages, but reaching as far back as the Roman Empire.
I agree, I love thinking about the journeys that these objects made, like the Roman coins that ended up in a 12th century Japanese castle. [1]
There were a handful of individuals who made similar trips though - aside from the famous ones like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, there's also a few envoys sent on behalf of the Franco-Mongol alliance.[2]
Or the Spaniards who went to the court of Timur: “Timour Beg turned to the knights who had seated around him… and said, ‘Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the king of Spain, who is the greatest king of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world.’” [3]
> Clavijo recorded his entrance to the capital in great detail, noting the stores of “silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb” carried from China
Today, to me, rhubarb seems so mundane, and so British. And yet just a few hundred years ago, it was an exotic wonder from the east. Rather than from Yorkshire:
The UK supplies much of world's Rhubarb, most of it from the so called Rhubarb Triangle in Yorkshire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle where it is "forced", it apparently grows so quick you can hear it!
I don't think it is particularly British. It's just so commonplace here that i assumed it was - in much the same way as i imagine the Irish feel about potatoes, and the Italians about pasta!
There may have been a lot more cross-culture communication than you think.
Examples include Venetian and Florentine trading posts in Beijing/Dadu and other cities in the Mongol Empire, Caucasians living in Xinjiang, and so on.
The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Given how little we know about contemporary kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significantly more Europeans in China and SE Asia, and at least a handful of East Asians in Europe and the Near East, during that time.
> The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else.
Exactly. Until 300 years ago, unless you were a nobleman or a religious scholar, you likely didn't know how to write (bar a few numbers you might have required for trading activities). Long trips were tiring and extremely dangerous; travellers were, more often than not, hard men doing a hard job, mercenaries, fugitives, "rolling stones", and so on. These people didn't care for poetry, so to speak. Even Marco Polo didn't actually write anything -- he dictated to a fellow inmate who (somewhat miraculously) happened to be a professional writer, when they really had nothing else to do while imprisoned.
It's more widespread to be wary of people than goods. Goods could be handed off at trading posts and in fact were rarely carried end-to-end in one go.
There might have been a flow of goods, but it's doubtful there was free of movement of people, both as a practical matter of surviving a long journey, and having to explain oneself to authorities. The few documented adventurers and ambassadors travelled with an entourage, and news of their arrival often preceded them -- which was often necessary to avoid hostilities.
In Chinese history, free flow of goods was often prohibited -- notionally, if foreign goods were going to come in, they had to be given to the emperor as tribute. (And the emperor would make return gifts.)
There was a robust black market of tributaries coming in but not quite making it all the way to the palace.
I guess unless you know where you go to, leaving your home places are hard.
The question is Middle man.
And in this disintermediation getting rid of middle man has means. But if the middle man is really in the middle, not sure you want to do it too openly. They would be in the way.
But if the middle man visits both sides ... Mongolian whilst you do not think they are tradesman (army is a kind of export actually but). They do not go to both sides. In fact it seems the famous one go to the other side is actually via Mongolian empire.
I question the knowledge behind this map. The text states it depicts the state of affairs before "the rise of Mongols", but one can find on it Sarai city which was established by Mongols, and, for example, Arkhangelsk which didn't exist at those times either. Also some names are misspelled. Significant trade routes are omitted. No sources cited. Look too amateurish to me to take it seriously.
Update: there is a list if sources on the picture itself, I tried to look for it in the text at first. However, it doesn't save the work from being evidently incorrect.
Hello, i'm the author of the map. Sarai has been suggested to have existed before the mongols arrived, and was a strategic location on the route between europe and asia before the height of the "north" northern silk road.
The reason for why Arkhangelsk is there has been explained by earlier replies.
Names are misspelled. Sometimes it was my fingers that moved too fast, and sometimes i've experienced sources spelling names differently.
If i have omitted significant trade routes i would be happy to receive some notice.
This is a continuous passion project of mine, and i'm happy to improve it. I have already gotten a lot of good feedback, all from cities being placed in the wrong order to misspellings.
The purpose of the map is to make it interesting and engaging for people to look at. It's also meant as a road map to navigate the trade/communication networks of the old world that you otherwise could only get from overly general maps. It's a mammoth task, and i appreciate all help i can get.
Hi Martin! I respect your effort, and welcome it, because I'm a lover, and collector of maps, actually. You certainly made a lot of work. However (and please don't take it personally) if it's not just a decoration, and you claim it has an educational value, then, sorry, it falls short of even most relaxed standards of accuracy. Let's imagine there was a native settlement in place of modern Washington D.C. Do you really believe it would be correct then to have Washington on a map, which depicts pre-Columbian America? There was no Arkhangelsk, there was no Sarai. There's quite an established (and supported by chronicles) understanding that the former was founded by wish of czar Ivan The Terrible, and latter by order of khan Batu. Both possibly were predated by earlier smaller settlements (although there's no sound evidence for this in relation to Sarai), but, at first, they weren't major trading centers (and that's why you don't know their names), and second, you cannot freely use names from the future without making your map a historic mess, having essentially anti-educational effect. So, it's a noble attempt, but as you said it's a mammoth work, and one have to chew a whole library of historical literature, and look at numerous historical atlases to make it good. Maybe, it's just a chunk too big to digest quickly. Maybe, it would be better to try to start from a smaller part of the world. Btw, crowdsourcing doesn't work in such cases well, because you would still need to verify suggestions, and chose between them. Also because maps are by their nature very politically loaded. Even a question of proper spelling can ignite serious conflicts, and offend a lot of people. I would like to encourage you to continue map making, but I suggest to start from a less ambitious project, and extend it gradually.
I understand that errors like this can make one doubt the whole product. The content of the map is not made up and very well researched. The fact that i chose to name the settlements like i did (didn't have to be major, but notable or strategic) does not erase its educational value. i causght myself actually defending the location of sarai-juk, and not sarai. You are completely correct in the instance of Sarai. This will have to be corrected in future editions.
Instead of putting the settlements in quotes i should rather find another way of describing their lack of known name. There were trade links and settlements that were involved in international trade but that remains unnamed, simply referring to areas or islands. I wanted to depict these links as well.
The objective with the map is to not start from a smaller part of the world, but to remedy the fact that the maps out there are either local and detailed, or global and general. I want to strike a balance between the two, and the only way i can do that is to publish and republish my map for constant reviews, which is why i appreciate your effort of correcting the map.
This is a side passion project of mine that has been revised constantly during 2 years, there are other versions of this map out there significantly less accurate. And i plan to keep updating this project, because i think its usefulness definitely outweighs the drawbacks of small errors. Spelling errors are however a big drawback, and as you say, will make the map look less reliable.
You said earlier that i missed some major trade routes, do you have any of these in mind that i can work with?
I don't know the guy who put this map up here for crowdfunding. I was just told by someone that it was up here. I just like to track down wherever this map goes to see who comments on it in order for me to improve it. I give this map out for free to anyone who asks and have no commercial interest.
My sources tell the story this way: unknown village of Finnish-Ugric population -> Kholmogory (Novgorod outpost) -> Novokholmogory -> Arkhangelsk. I would be grateful if you share your source of information about alternative name. However, regardless the name, the place will not be a major trading center until establishment of regular sea route to England (when Ivan The Terrible granted trading privileges to English) which is XVI century. There was not a lot of sense in navigating Arctic waters to deliver those furs to the Western Europe before Swedes became rulers of North-Eastern Baltics and imposed tariffs. So map is not correct.
> С начала XII века на месте современных Холмогор располагался дальний новгородский «Ивани-Погост», впервые упомянутый в уставной грамоте Новгородского князя Святослава Ольговича 1138 года о поступлении дани с заволоческих владений.
Thank you! It could be true, but frankly I wouldn't trust ru.wikipedia too blindly, especially when it comes to small towns history, because there are lots of local lore gatherers with original researches, and nobody cares to verify their contributions. I can't check the mentioned act of Sviatoslav now, that would require to search for a real paper book :) But I'm quite sure it should be 1137, not 1138 for starters.
Pogost as administrative division is established in XV century in Northern Russia only. It was not used in that context at territory of Rus` at time of Olga.
> "Уроки" ("уставы") и "погосты" - законы княгини Ольги по налоговому праву. Введены в 945-947. Учреждение законов было вызвано восстанием древлян. Ольга отправилась в поездку по всему государству и установила везде твёрдые пределы и время сбора полюдья. "Урок" - определённое количество дани в определённом месте с определённого района - "погоста". Появление "уроков" и "погостов" означало перерастанию дани как формы военной контрибуции в дань как форму натурального налога, превращая полюдье (сбор дани) из военной операции в налоговую кампанию.
It's probably one of the few places on the net that exists almost purely for curiosity and isn't full of inane arguments. Well worth checking out. You can spend hours on it. Hopefully exposure to stuff like this helps people realize how interconnected we all are and have been.
I once read a memorable analogy for European explorers "discovering" Africa:
It's like (today or 18th century, does not matter) some African dude showing up in the middle of a busy European city center yelling "I discovered Europe!"
I fear I've mangled the analogy, in the original it also was pretty clear what was meant, of course the explorer discovered it from a European perspective. The original storyline included the self-important and presumptuous attitude of the Europeans that made it seem like there was nothing there of any consequence or sophistication.
Another story was about the African drums [0], ow they actually work, that saying "drums talking" was not a figure of speech, but that that actually was exactly what they were doing! The drumming follows some aspects of how you would actually speak the words (the languages are tonal), "The pitch of the drum is varied to mimic the tone patterns of speech". Since lots of information is lost most words are ambiguous, they compensate by embedding every word in a context, saying (drumming) longer phrases instead of one word for disambiguation. And they could just talk over long distances relaying information faster than anything the Europeans had at the time (like semaphores).
>It's like (today or 18th century, does not matter) some African dude showing up in the middle of a busy European city center yelling "I discovered Europe!"
Imagine you self-fund your own voyage to Mars. You descend into a cave and find a city full of humanoid Martians. Do you think it would be inappropriate for you to exclaim, "I discovered Submartia!"?
Go medieval enough, and South Africa is about as remote as Mars.
Your comment does not seem to have any connection to what I wrote. Please, read it again. It's kind of inane really. Why do you even bother to reply if you don't even care what I wrote? May I suggest not stopping after the second sentence already?
Maybe you could be bothered to read what I wrote, or maybe you need some additional English lessons? Your lack of either education or willingness to contribute constructively it out of my hands.
Hint: Don't stop after the second sentence.
I know I know, reading is hard in the Twitter age. Sorry for writing more than two sentences.
It doesn't help that your third sentence starts with "I've completely botched this attempt at communication, so I'm going to go completely off topic for the rest of this comment" which somehow translates into "why can't people understand what I wrote?"
You've come across a great way to start a conversation with 'dang though. The mods here really don't like comments like this, trust me. I've been on your side often enough. I would tone it down.
As I already said, if you have trouble with reading I cannot help you. This is something you have to manage on your own. If a few sentences really are such a problem for you, I think you can ask around, adult reading lessons should be available.
The lack of records for the Southern areas of Africa shows how unbalanced our historiographical studies have been for so long, and how much documentation we must have lost in our colonization efforts. I refuse to believe a huge continent with relatively large populations might have had no significant trade whatsoever over half its territory, less than a thousand years ago.
And of course, the same is true for South America - which was obviously disconnected from other continents, but still hardly a desert.
It's not that there was no trade, but rather there is no documentation. The civilizations of the Orient were built largely on trade, and thus had sophisticated accounting systems and wrote everything down. So we have a lot of surviving accounting. And lots of kingdoms were all minting their own coins, so we can find surviving coins in all sorts of archaeological sites that show the travel of money.
And the value of trade matters, too. It's not just sub-Saharan Africa that seemed like a backwater. Most of Europe was a backwater, too, outside of Italy and Constantinople (which is only half-European, really). Trade routes were weak there because they just didn't have much to offer in exchange for the valuable silks, porcelain, spices, and other luxury goods of the East. The Vikings were the only big traders of Europe, and their primary product was slaves, captured from impoverished backwaters like Great Britain and Germany.
Very few cultures were lucky enough to produce records on a medium which would outlast them. To be fair, it's not something our modern civilization gives much thought either
I sometimes imagine a thousand years from now where people are trying to figure out how to use USB-A flash drives and fry their contents since the voltage is wrong, after trying 5 times to get the correct orientation in the port.
Do we have good records for trade across North America? Australia?
There are "lost" tribes that still don't trade much; it doesn't seem impossible, especially if in times of famine/drought there were violent clashes over basic resources.
it is suggested that the Ottoman capture of Constantinople was instrumental in Christian countries seeking new routes as it made the capital and the Black Sea more of a tricky proposition. So if this is 1100-1200 we're still a couple of hundreds years off that event.
It's a question of product, too. Countries only got seriously into the trading game when they had something valuable to offer in return. Portugal's early contribution to the trade was slaves, captured from the west coast of sub-Saharan Africa. They were the first Europeans to really explore south of the Sahara. Pushing ever-farther south for new targets led to rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and opening a new route to India - bypassing the tariffs of the Constantinople and Alexandria routes.
I've had trouble finding sources this early when it comes to Portugal concerning trade. Portugal seem to have been more involved starting from when the strait of Gibraltar opened up to christians and ships from the Mediterranean sea could sail up to the north sea. An opportunity in itself that seem to have had a negative impact of the trade fairs of inland france and germany. Although, i'm unsure to what extent this damage had.
The link is there, but labelled as Dover-"Saint-Omer". Which is a little odd as that's inland behind Calais and Dunkirk.
You can still find "wool churches" from this period, although assigning a single date to a church that was assembled over centuries is a futile exercise.
Saint-Omer was heavily active in the wool and clothing trade at the end of the 12th century, it also was situated closer to the coast at this time. Sometimes, sadly, i have had to omit some locations in order to not clutt the map too much. Maybe i should look over the Calais region again. The port from France to England was probably in the Wissant region, as the Via Francigena went through here. I did not have a source of what city/port existed here at the time, some sources cites Sombre as an existing port. Calais existed during this time frame, but the extent to which it was used have been hard for me to establish. Saint-Omer was the only trading settlement i really had any good claims putting on the map.
Calais was a massive trading center during the English occupation, 1350 onward. It wasn't necessarily the port itself, but where most of the trade took place.
But if you're looking at before that, then Calais was less relevant.
This was not just in the middle ages, but reaching as far back as the Roman Empire.
There were a handful of individuals who made similar trips though - aside from the famous ones like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, there's also a few envoys sent on behalf of the Franco-Mongol alliance.[2]
Or the Spaniards who went to the court of Timur: “Timour Beg turned to the knights who had seated around him… and said, ‘Behold! here are the ambassadors sent by my son the king of Spain, who is the greatest king of the Franks, and lives at the end of the world.’” [3]
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/28/495821834...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance
[3] https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-samark...
> Clavijo recorded his entrance to the capital in great detail, noting the stores of “silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb” carried from China
Today, to me, rhubarb seems so mundane, and so British. And yet just a few hundred years ago, it was an exotic wonder from the east. Rather than from Yorkshire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle
Wikipedia says it was known simply as "pie plant" in the US in the 19th century.
Although strawberry-rhubarb pie is a common combination, I recall pies of my childhood being rhubarb alone.
Examples include Venetian and Florentine trading posts in Beijing/Dadu and other cities in the Mongol Empire, Caucasians living in Xinjiang, and so on.
The issue has more to do with the lack of written records than anything else. Given how little we know about contemporary kingdoms and empires in other parts of the world, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significantly more Europeans in China and SE Asia, and at least a handful of East Asians in Europe and the Near East, during that time.
Exactly. Until 300 years ago, unless you were a nobleman or a religious scholar, you likely didn't know how to write (bar a few numbers you might have required for trading activities). Long trips were tiring and extremely dangerous; travellers were, more often than not, hard men doing a hard job, mercenaries, fugitives, "rolling stones", and so on. These people didn't care for poetry, so to speak. Even Marco Polo didn't actually write anything -- he dictated to a fellow inmate who (somewhat miraculously) happened to be a professional writer, when they really had nothing else to do while imprisoned.
There might have been a flow of goods, but it's doubtful there was free of movement of people, both as a practical matter of surviving a long journey, and having to explain oneself to authorities. The few documented adventurers and ambassadors travelled with an entourage, and news of their arrival often preceded them -- which was often necessary to avoid hostilities.
There was a robust black market of tributaries coming in but not quite making it all the way to the palace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations
And I'm sure we'll only ever know at best maybe a tenth of what happened. (Wild guess.)
The question is Middle man.
And in this disintermediation getting rid of middle man has means. But if the middle man is really in the middle, not sure you want to do it too openly. They would be in the way.
But if the middle man visits both sides ... Mongolian whilst you do not think they are tradesman (army is a kind of export actually but). They do not go to both sides. In fact it seems the famous one go to the other side is actually via Mongolian empire.
Update: there is a list if sources on the picture itself, I tried to look for it in the text at first. However, it doesn't save the work from being evidently incorrect.
The reason for why Arkhangelsk is there has been explained by earlier replies.
Names are misspelled. Sometimes it was my fingers that moved too fast, and sometimes i've experienced sources spelling names differently.
If i have omitted significant trade routes i would be happy to receive some notice.
This is a continuous passion project of mine, and i'm happy to improve it. I have already gotten a lot of good feedback, all from cities being placed in the wrong order to misspellings.
The purpose of the map is to make it interesting and engaging for people to look at. It's also meant as a road map to navigate the trade/communication networks of the old world that you otherwise could only get from overly general maps. It's a mammoth task, and i appreciate all help i can get.
And thank you for your calm response!
Instead of putting the settlements in quotes i should rather find another way of describing their lack of known name. There were trade links and settlements that were involved in international trade but that remains unnamed, simply referring to areas or islands. I wanted to depict these links as well.
The objective with the map is to not start from a smaller part of the world, but to remedy the fact that the maps out there are either local and detailed, or global and general. I want to strike a balance between the two, and the only way i can do that is to publish and republish my map for constant reviews, which is why i appreciate your effort of correcting the map.
This is a side passion project of mine that has been revised constantly during 2 years, there are other versions of this map out there significantly less accurate. And i plan to keep updating this project, because i think its usefulness definitely outweighs the drawbacks of small errors. Spelling errors are however a big drawback, and as you say, will make the map look less reliable.
You said earlier that i missed some major trade routes, do you have any of these in mind that i can work with?
I don't know the guy who put this map up here for crowdfunding. I was just told by someone that it was up here. I just like to track down wherever this map goes to see who comments on it in order for me to improve it. I give this map out for free to anyone who asks and have no commercial interest.
Thank you again for your response.
First of all, this is great work, and fascinating!
Suggestion: for the "named roads", I think it'd be a good addition to actually add the names of the roads.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Холмогоры
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Погост
Sources are cited. Maybe we all should question your ability to read ;)
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8kf22u/new_version...
It's probably one of the few places on the net that exists almost purely for curiosity and isn't full of inane arguments. Well worth checking out. You can spend hours on it. Hopefully exposure to stuff like this helps people realize how interconnected we all are and have been.
It's like (today or 18th century, does not matter) some African dude showing up in the middle of a busy European city center yelling "I discovered Europe!"
I fear I've mangled the analogy, in the original it also was pretty clear what was meant, of course the explorer discovered it from a European perspective. The original storyline included the self-important and presumptuous attitude of the Europeans that made it seem like there was nothing there of any consequence or sophistication.
Another story was about the African drums [0], ow they actually work, that saying "drums talking" was not a figure of speech, but that that actually was exactly what they were doing! The drumming follows some aspects of how you would actually speak the words (the languages are tonal), "The pitch of the drum is varied to mimic the tone patterns of speech". Since lots of information is lost most words are ambiguous, they compensate by embedding every word in a context, saying (drumming) longer phrases instead of one word for disambiguation. And they could just talk over long distances relaying information faster than anything the Europeans had at the time (like semaphores).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum
Imagine you self-fund your own voyage to Mars. You descend into a cave and find a city full of humanoid Martians. Do you think it would be inappropriate for you to exclaim, "I discovered Submartia!"?
Go medieval enough, and South Africa is about as remote as Mars.
Hint: Don't stop after the second sentence.
I know I know, reading is hard in the Twitter age. Sorry for writing more than two sentences.
You've come across a great way to start a conversation with 'dang though. The mods here really don't like comments like this, trust me. I've been on your side often enough. I would tone it down.
The comment you are angry at is directly related to yours and provides a valid counter example.
And of course, the same is true for South America - which was obviously disconnected from other continents, but still hardly a desert.
And the value of trade matters, too. It's not just sub-Saharan Africa that seemed like a backwater. Most of Europe was a backwater, too, outside of Italy and Constantinople (which is only half-European, really). Trade routes were weak there because they just didn't have much to offer in exchange for the valuable silks, porcelain, spices, and other luxury goods of the East. The Vikings were the only big traders of Europe, and their primary product was slaves, captured from impoverished backwaters like Great Britain and Germany.
There are "lost" tribes that still don't trade much; it doesn't seem impossible, especially if in times of famine/drought there were violent clashes over basic resources.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eftu4fak6efngfr/AAAWuj-oJ5AmOn_O7...
Perhaps was it what pushed them into their huge head start into the age of sail ?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Staple
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_the_Staple
Calais isn't even featured in the map.
You can still find "wool churches" from this period, although assigning a single date to a church that was assembled over centuries is a futile exercise.
But if you're looking at before that, then Calais was less relevant.