Silk Roads
This Song Dynasty innovation allowed merchants to deposit cash in one location and redeem credit elsewhere, reducing the burden of carrying heavy metal coins
What is flying cash (paper money/credit)?
Merchants relied on precise seasonal knowledge of these environmental weather patterns to time their voyages between East Africa, the Middle East, and India
What are the monsoon winds?
Introduced around 300–400 BCE, this piece of riding gear allowed pack animals to carry up to 600 pounds across desert terrain
What is the camel saddle?
This era of Eurasian stability under Mongol rule protected merchants, standardized trade taxes, and facilitated safe cross-continental travel
What is Pax Mongolica?
This historical process occurs when arriving religions or languages blend with local traditions, as seen in Zen Buddhism or the Swahili language
What is syncretism?
Increased merchant travel along land routes caused these roadside inn establishments to grow into major political, cultural, and educational cities like Kashgar and Samarkand
What are caravanserais?
The development of triangular lateen sails and this astronomical tool allowed sailors to catch wind from any direction and accurately determine their distance from the equator
What is the astrolabe?
Demand for West African mineral wealth by North African Muslim merchants in exchange for salt, copper, and textiles led to the rise of these wealthy monarchies
What were Ghana, Mali, and Songhai?
In ruling China, the Yuan Dynasty maintained traditional Chinese rituals, but broke with continuity by abolishing this ancient bureaucratic pathway
What is the Civil Service Examination?
Introduced from Vietnam, this fast-ripening, drought-resistant crop caused a massive population boom and rapid commercialization during the Song Dynasty
What is champa rice?
Despite changing political rulers across Eurasia between 1200 and 1450, this luxury textile remained a major, uninterrupted Chinese export along overland routes
What is silk?
Because foreign merchants settled in coastal cities while waiting for favorable seasonal winds, they created these permanent settlements that blended foreign customs with local cultures
What are diasporic communities?
While the expansion of Islamic trade increased long-distance commercial networks, this social institution remained a long-standing continuity in Sub-Saharan Africa before and after European arrival
What is slavery
To maintain control across their vast empire, the Mongols combined siege technologies like trebuchets with this rapid communication system
What is relay communication?
Travel accounts written by figures like Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta maintained a long-standing historical continuity by spreading interest in these two areas
What are foreign cultures and international trade goods?
Contact established during the Crusades and the unification of Eurasian routes under single empire protection caused a massive surge in long-distance trade
What were the Crusades and the rise of the Mongol Empire?
This state on the Malay Peninsula gained immense wealth and political power by charging fees and taxing maritime shipping passing through a narrow bottleneck strait
What is the Sultanate of Malacca?
The 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca by this Malian ruler showcased immense gold wealth and resulted in Timbuktu becoming a world-renowned center of Islamic learning
Who was Mansa Musa?
The Mongols controlled this vast network of exchange and rejuvenated it by protecting it with an established system of laws.
What is the Silk Road?
Transferred from East Asia through Islamic scholars to Western Europe, these two Chinese technological innovations transformed European literacy and warfare
What are paper making (woodblock printing) and gunpowder?
Commercial growth transformed financial transactions across Eurasia, shifting trade away from direct barter toward these organized financial structures
What are banking systems
Admiral Zheng He expanded Chinese prestige across the Indian Ocean in the early 1400s, but the Ming Dynasty abruptly ended the voyages due to this major political priority shift
What is Confucian concern over cultural dilution and the focus on domestic security?
As populations grew and trade expanded, inland West African societies shifted away from decentralized kin-based networks toward these governing structures
What are centralized kingdoms and empires?
What is loyalty?
Spreading along trade networks facilitated by Mongol protection, this 14th-century epidemic killed up to one-third of Europe's population, giving surviving serfs greater bargaining power with lords
What was the Bubonic Plague (Black Death)?