Long Distance Trade and the Silk
Roads Network
 Long Distance Trade
 Brought wealth and access to foreign products
 Enabled the spread of religious ideas
 Facilitated the transmission of devastating diseases
 Dramatically altered social, political, and economic
traditions
Long Distance Trade
 Trade Networks and the Hellenistic Era
 Construction of roads, bridges, and imperial empires
during the classical era provided ease of movement and
safety.
 Increased safety lead to increase in volume and
accessibility of exotic goods throughout the eastern
hemisphere.
Long Distance Trade
 Trade Networks of the Hellenistic Era
 Used monsoon winds and roads to create trade networks
between Arabia, India, east Africa, Egypt, and then link
those expeditions to ones across the Mediterranean to
Europe.
 Trade routes had huge payback in the wealth of goods
and in taxes for Hellenistic governments.
 Spices, luxury fabrics, precious metals, jewels, grain,
oils, and slaves.
Long Distance Trade
 The Silk Roads
 Linked the extreme ends of the Eurasian landmass.

Linked Han Empire, Parthian empire (Persia and
Mesopotamia), Romans, and Kushan empire (India)
 Included water routes, sea lanes, and overland roads.
 Wide array of agricultural and manufactured goods
travelled over the Silk Roads

Silk (China), Spices (China and India), Cotton, pearls, coral,
and ivory (West), horses (Central Asia), Glassware, Jewelry,
woolen and linen textiles, bronze items, olive oils, wine, and
works of art (West)
Cultural and Biological Exchanges
 Buddhism
 Spread from India into Ceylon, Bactria, Iran, Central
Asia, southeast Asia, and China via merchants (traders)
 After entering China, Buddhism spread quickly into
Japan and Korea.
 Christianity
 Spread from Rome to Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt,
north Africa, and Southwest Asia
 Nestorian Christianity – Developed in the east, after the
teaching of Greek theologian Nestorius, who stressed
the human nature of Jesus rather than the divine.
Cultural and Biological Exchanges
 The Spread of Manichaeism
 Incorporated teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism
 Promoted strict ascetic lifestyle, turning away from the
material and physical temptations of classical
civilizations.
 Promised individual salvation and eternal association
with the forces of light and good.
Cultural and Biological Exchanges
 The spread of epidemic disease
 Smallpox, measles, and bubonic plague
 Devastated a quarter to a third of the Han and Roman
populations and also had huge impact on other
civilizations.
China after the Han Dynasty
 Internal problems weakened the Han dynasty,
dissolving the central government by the early third
century C.E.
China after the Han Dynasty
 Internal Decay of the Han State
 Land disputes and internal unrest lead to the decay of
the Han Empire.
 When the Han era ended, Chinese lands were divided
into three large kingdoms: Wei, Wu, and Shu.
 Northern nomads took advantage of Han disunity and
gain control of many northern borderlands for more
than 300 years from approximately 200 CE to 500 CE
China after the Han Dynasty
 Cultural Change in Post-Han China
 After the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE, War and
nomadic invasion characterized life in China.
 Population decreased and people left the cities.
 Nomad population increased and as they adopted
agricultural practices they started to form permanent
settlements


Intermarried with native Chinese and eventually began
adopting native Chinese practices and differences between
Chinese and nomads lessened.
Sinicization – Invaders assimilating to Chinese culture.
 Constant theme in Ancient China.
China after the Han Dynasty
 Confucianism fell out of favor (Had been used to
justify the Han Imperial rule due to emphasis on
relationships)
 Daoism and Buddhism became more popular.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
 Collapse of the Roman Empire, much like the Han
empire, was a result of internal troubles and growing
external pressures which coincided with major
religious and cultural changes.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
 Internal Decay in the Roman Empire
 Problems of ruling a large empire
 Diocleitan – attempted to restructure the empire by
dividing it into two parts and appoint a co-emperor
forestalled the disintegration for a few generations, but
nor for long.
 Constantine – Managed to hold back the fall of Rome by
recognizing that the wealth of the empire lay in the east
and by moving his capital to the former Greek city of
Byzantium, a strategic site and much more easily
defendable than the city of Rome.

Built new capital and named it Constantinople.
Fall of the Roman Empire
 Germanic Invasions and the Fall of the Western
Roman Empire
 Migratory Germanic people brought an end to the
western Roman empire in fifth century CE, but the
eastern Roman empire lasted until the fifteenth century
CE.

Pressure from the Hun, nomadic warriors in China, led by
Attila, pushed Germanic groups like the Visogoths,
Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Franks into the Roman empire
where they first set up permanent settlements and eventually
overtook western Rome in 476 CE
Cultural Change in the Late Roman
Empire
 Christianity, and hence the Roman Empire, underwent
many changes during the last centuries of the western
Roman Empire.
 Edict of Milan – Issued by Constantine offered legal
protection to Christians.
 Emperor Theodosius- Declared Christianity the official
religion of Rome
 Christianity was meshed with Roman and Greek
philosophy to make it more appealing to intellectual
elites.
 Pope came to power.