East-West Trade
This unit is based on the Silk Road film outlined below. See example essays (click here). In addition to the essay due, you must relate this unit to the themes of this class on your Impact Chart–explain how his unit could fit into both themes #1 and #4 (the environment and economic systems). Click here to go back to the themes.
The Silk Road, film, major points for discussion:
a. origins of the silk road (Wu Di during the Han Dynasty) and the transmission of trade and culture (world religions, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism).
b. Mongols and revitalization of trade transmission of culture, ideas and disease
c. Europeans receive ideas, seek spices etc. (Remember Marco Polo? Look for Prestor John)
d. Swahili and peaceful Indian Ocean trade, then Europeans contest for control–Portugal, Spain, Dutch, British–etc.–culmination: the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Nanking 0f 1854
Here is another way to see this information (click on the picture to enlarge it):
You get to choose. You can write a 5-7 page essay on East-West trade or a 5-7 page essay on Afro-Eurasian trade (see next unit–click here).
In your essay please explain the major developments in East-West trade and its impact on world history, 600 C.E.-1850 C.E.
Impact on world history, 600 CE to 1850 CE!!!
Read the directions below please.
For the most part you are following the outline above; you will need to add information from your notes and from the on-line text. You need to include John Reader’s Africa, chp. 33, “In Search of Prester John” as well. (I also encourage you to look through encyclopedias or other reference works so as to solidify this information in your own mind.) Again, we will be covering most of this information several times in this course. Part of the challenge (and the fun, I think) is in trying to decipher and identify global trends over time. This is what you are trying to do here. Don’t forget to do a Miles Davis check before handing in the final draft .
In class, I will explain the skills stressed here.
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Musical instruments like the ney (a type of flute from Iran) spread throughout Eurasia along Silk Road trade routes. Yo-yo Ma started a program (the Silk Road project) to capture some of those ideas and to emphasize the value of cultural exchange and borrowing. See video below:
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[...] The song “La Ibkey” is performed on the oud. Here the influences of Arab culture and music are reflected. However, the percussion sounds underneath are African. The trumpet solo is in keeping with American jazz. Beginning by 900 CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa, spread via trade, as the nomadic Tuareg became the “middle men” of a trans-Saharan trade in salt, gold and books. Salt from the Sahara was traded for West African gold (in Mali and Nigeria in particular). Eventually a university arose in Timbuktu–as the written word (Arabic) became part of this vast exchange. Naturally, musical ideas and instruments made their way across the thousands of miles as well. Ahmed Abdul-Malik captures this rich heritage and combines it with straight-ahead jazz in the album Jazz Sounds of Africa, recorded in the early 1960s. Cultural diffusion of this type can be seen in other areas as well. Click here for musical instruments spread along the Silk Road. [...]