Trade and Political Fragmentation on the Silk Roads: The Economic Effects of Historical Exchange between China and the Muslim East

Lisa Blaydes and Christopher Paik ()

No 2019-12, CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: The Silk Roads stretched across Eurasia, connecting East and West for centuries. At its height, the network of trade routes enabled merchants to travel from China to the Mediterranean Sea, carrying with them high-value commercial goods, the exchange of which encouraged urban growth and prosperity. We examine the extent to which urban centers thrived or withered as a function of shocks to trade routes, particularly political fragmentation along natural travel paths. We find that political fragmentation along the roads to Aleppo and historic Chang'an - major terminus locations for cross-regional trade - damaged city growth. These conclusions contribute to our understanding of how a pre-modern international system operated through an examination of exchange between the two most developed world regions of the medieval and early modern periods, China and the Muslim East.

Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-gro and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/30963/wp2019-12.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade and Political Fragmentation on the Silk Roads: The Economic Effects of Historical Exchange between China and the Muslim East (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:hitcei:2019-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEI Working Paper Series from Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Reiko Suzuki ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).