Flows between societies

Trade routes carried far more than cargo. Merchants brought their faiths, languages, recipes and ideas with them, and sometimes they also brought disease. Trade could turn things into 'goods' that should never have been bought and sold, above all human beings. Aid is one more kind of flow, with help (and sometimes conditions) moving from richer societies to poorer ones.

Cultural exchange

The sharing of beliefs, languages, customs, food and ideas between societies that come into contact, for example through trade.

Figure 3.1 puts three very different 'goods' side by side. Silk is a luxury cloth. Enslaved people are human beings. Opium is an addictive drug. The caption puts the word 'goods' in quotation marks, which signals that the authors want you to question whether all three belong in the same category.

Caravan Silk Road — A caravan of camels and traders on the Silk Road, from the Catalan Atlas, 1375. Abraham Cresques, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Enslaved people yoked to a pole driven by a man with a whip — 'Band of captives driven into slavery', nineteenth-century engraving. Unknown (Wellcome Collection), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Cartoon of European man over kneeling Chinese man with OPIUM crate — 'Commerce anglais', French cartoon of Britain forcing opium on China, by Grandville, 1840. J. J. Grandville, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As you work through the images and sources, keep two questions in mind. What moved along these routes besides goods? Who gained from each flow, and who paid the cost?

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