The “decline” of the central Asian caravan trade

Abstract

The central Asian caravan trade linking Europe, the Middle East, and China, which had developed as early as the Han dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 220), began to decline during Sung (960–1279) times and truly collapsed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It flourished during the Han and T'ang (618–907) dynasties, but the turbulence in northwest China during the Sung period disrupted trade along the so-called Silk Roads. In the Mongol era (midthirteenth to midfourteenth centuries), trade across Eurasia witnessed a resurgence that continued through the first century or so of Ming (1368–1644) rule. By the late Ming, however, the long-distance trade between China and the Middle East and Europe had dwindled to a trickle.