
Medieval trade networks - benbreen
https://imgur.com/MsXaOdV
======
toomanybeersies
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.

~~~
benbreen
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]

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/09/28/495821834...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2016/09/28/495821834/coins-from-the-roman-empire-are-found-in-ruins-of-
japanese-castle)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-
Mongol_alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance)

[3] [https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-
samark...](https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-spaniard-in-
samarkand-1404.html)

~~~
twic
One of my favourite historical surprises:

> 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle)

~~~
perl4ever
I wasn't aware of it being British either. It was just something that grew in
the backyard of the house I grew up in, in upstate New York.

~~~
dreen
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](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb_Triangle)
where it is "forced", it apparently grows so quick you can hear it!

~~~
perl4ever
I didn't know it needed "supplying" because it just grew year after year by
our back porch, with no special encouragement.

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.

------
kingofhdds
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.

~~~
MartinMansson
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.

~~~
kingofhdds
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.

And thank you for your calm response!

~~~
MartinMansson
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.

Thank you again for your response.

------
aaron-lebo
Not sure whether it originated there, but this kind of stuff is pretty common
on the mapporn subreddit. The author posted and commented on it:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8kf22u/new_version...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8kf22u/new_version_medieval_trade_networks_of/)

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.

~~~
ItsMe000001
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).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum)

~~~
xamuel
>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.

~~~
ItsMe000001
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?

~~~
freehunter
Maybe you can explain what you meant a little bit better, because I thought
the exact same thing as the reply when I read your comment.

~~~
ItsMe000001
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.

~~~
freehunter
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.

~~~
ItsMe000001
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.

------
toyg
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.

~~~
dreen
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

~~~
kridsdale1
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.

------
stephengillie
Added to my Maps of the World image folder.

[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eftu4fak6efngfr/AAAWuj-
oJ5AmOn_O7...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eftu4fak6efngfr/AAAWuj-
oJ5AmOn_O7M7971Oda?dl=0)

~~~
speps
Would be awesome if it wasn't littered with memes.

------
HugoDaniel
I wonder why there are not any trade routes in Portugal which was also under
the peninsula caliphate during those dates.

Perhaps was it what pushed them into their huge head start into the age of
sail ?

~~~
Quarrelsome
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.

~~~
beat
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.

------
jrbancel
It is Toulouse[0], not Tolouse.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse)

~~~
_0nac
Many of the spellings seem to be historical and/or purposely antiquated.

~~~
Rexxar
The occitan/latin name is Tolosa. I never saw other intermediate form.

------
ucaetano
One correction: missing the massive London -> Calais wool trade that drove
most of the English economy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Staple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Staple)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_the_Staple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_the_Staple)

Calais isn't even featured in the map.

~~~
pjc50
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.

~~~
MartinMansson
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.

~~~
ucaetano
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.

------
cafard
If you are ever in Lubeck, there is a most interesting museum dedicated to the
Hanseatic League.

------
montrose
This is an interesting map, but it seems implausible that there is no route
between Cirencester and Gloucester.

------
fiatjaf
See this in IPFS:
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTf4EBfik9iH7w2DeW3pZyiqMfnxqtZ3jL5S4t...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTf4EBfik9iH7w2DeW3pZyiqMfnxqtZ3jL5S4tMXRxzaN/medieval-
trade-networks.jpg)

