The silk route was a network of trade route between the Asia and the Europe energy of Chang' year (current Xi' year) in China until Antioche, in medieval Syria. It owes its name with the most invaluable goods which forwarded there: the Silk, whose only Chinese knew the trade secret. This denomination, forged at the 19th century, is due to the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.

History

The Romains became large silk amateurs after they had acquired some, towards the beginning of the Christian era, of the Parthes: those organized the trade then of it. Many other products travelled on the same roads: stones and noble metals, fabrics of Wool or flax, Amber, Ivory, Lacquer, spice S, Glass, Coral, etc

Xi' year is the end is silk route considered as “having been opened” by the Chinese general Zhang Qian with

The convoys of caravans started from Xi' year, Lanzhou or Xining and borrowed the Corridor of Gansu then circumvented by north or the south the Désert of Taklamakan, which is one of most arid world. These two principal branches had various alternatives, and were marked out cities and Caravansérail S whose names and importance varied with the wire of times. But all these tracks connected between them oases located at the periphery of the desert and the foot of the high mountains of the Tian Shan or Kunlun:

Starting from Kashgar and Yarkand, the tracks joined the Perse or the India through the high mountains of the Central Asia (Pamir, Hindū-Kūsh and Karakoram), then by the Sogdiane (Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv), the Bactriane (Balkh) or the Cachemire (Srinagar). In fact, very rare were those which traversed the entirety of the way. Marco Polo, her father and his uncle was those. The goods come from the East or Occident were exchanged in the Oasis, become of important counters attended by, in addition to the tradesmen, of the pilgrims, the soldiers and the spies. This area of the “Chinese Turkestan” was under the theoretical sovereignty of the emperor of China, but this domination underwent frequent eclipses due to its great distance and the difficulty of maintaining there garrisons sufficient.

The road was also used by the pilgrims who sought to remake the peregrinations of the Buddha. Among most famous, one can quote:

  • the monk F-hien in 399 (the account of its pilgrimage is in the “Memories on the Buddhist kingdoms”)

  • the Hiuan-Tsang Monk in 629 who travelled during 15 years
  • In 964,300 Chinese monks will seek the lesson of the mahayanists

The length of the course, the multiple dangers incurred by the travellers on these tracks subjected to the incursions of quarrelsome people, the attacks of the brigands, and the extreme rigor of the climate (torrid in summer and icy in winter), made very expensive the products which forwarded thus between the Mediterranean basin and the the Far East. It was one of the reasons which encouraged the Européens to seek a sea route towards the countries of the East. The Silk route was gradually abandoned at the 15th century. Moreover manufacture of silk had developed little by little in Europe, so that Chinese silks interested less Europeans.

It was also the way by which several foreign religions penetrated in China: Buddhism, Christianity nestorien, Judaism, Manicheism and Islam were transported through these areas until Xi' year.

The Buddhist art, influenced by the Greek art which had arrived until in the valley of the Indus following the conquests of Alexandre Large the, left in many sites given up later and buried under sands of the desert, of the vestiges redécouverts starting from second half of the 19th century, and which testify to the cultural influences conveyed with the Moyen-âge. This area thus saw a single synthesis of the influences Indian, Persians, Western and Chinese art known as “sérindien”.

Between 1860 and 1925, this area was explored and often plundered by Western explorers and scientists with the profit of the museums of London, Berlin, Paris or Saint-Pétersbourg. The apogee of the Silk route corresponds at the time of the Byzantine Empire to the west and that which goes from the Three kingdoms to the Dynastie Yuan in the Chinese zone to the east. In addition to the continental road, the historians also speak about the “way of the porcelain” or the “way of silk” through the Indian Ocean. The continental road diverges between a road from north and a road from the south. dhatier :)-->

It is a subject interesting for those which want to observe an early of political integration and cultural phenomenon, caused by the international business. It maintained a culture international which bound people as various together as the Turks, the Tokhariens, the Sogdiens, the Perses, the Byzantine and the Chinese. It had a strong impact of integration in the areas which it crossed on the tribes which lived isolated before. These people were attracted by the richnesses and opportunities which arised to them and became petty thieves or mercenaries. Many of their members became thus warriors frightening, able to conquer rich cities, fertile grounds and to forge empires.

It caused the gathering of military States rested by nomads of China of North, brought the Nestorianisme, the Manichéisme, the Bouddhisme and the Islam in Central Asia and China, caused the powerful empire of the Turks Khazars. At the end of its glory, it still contributed to the establishment of the greatest continental empire of all times: empire of the Mongolian , with its political centers distributed on all the road (Beijing in China of North, Karakorum in Eastern Mongolia, Samarkand in Transoxiane, Tabriz in the west of Iran, Astrakhan on the Volga, Bahçesaray in the Crimea, Kazan in central Russia, Erzurum in Anatolia Eastern). This empire succeeds in unifying these zones before dependant intermittently by commercial reports/ratios.

However, the political unit of this area does not survive the fall of the Mongolian Empire. The culture and the economy of the area also suffered from it. The lords Turkish took the western end of the road to the declining Empire Byzantine and posed the foundations of what was going to be later the Ottoman Empire.

Reopening of the 21e century

July 6th, 2006, the China and the India proceeded to the official reopening of the collar of Nathu the, between the Tibet and the Indian state of the Sikkim. This collar had been closed following the frontier conflict between the two countries in 1962, whereas 80  % of the trade sino-Indian forwarded there until the beginning of the 20th century.

It is thus the silk route which Chinese Qiangba Puncog (president of the Autonomous region of Tibet) and the Indian Pawan KUMAR Chamling (chief of the regional government of the state of Sikkim) symbolically reopened this day there.

See too

Related articles

External bonds

  • Page of UNESCO on the Silk route

  • Silk route (Site of the Day)
  • Chart of the network
  • the various silk routes

Sources

  • Luce Boulnois, the Silk route , Olizane Editions, 3e edition, 1992, Geneva. ISBN 2-88086-117-9

  • Edouard Chavannes, Documents on Tou-kiue (Turks) Western , Bookstore of America and the East, 1900, Paris. Reprinting: Cheng Wen Publishing Co., Taipei, 1969.
  • Edouard Chavannes, Countries of Occident according to Wei lio , You oung CAM, No 6,1905.
  • Edouard Chavannes, Three Chinese Generals of the dynasty of Han Eastern (Side Tch' ao (32-102 PC); - his/her son Side Yong; - Leang K' in (112 PC). Chapter LXXVII of Heou Han cabbage), You oung CAM, No 7,1906, p. 210-269.
  • Edouard Chavannes, Countries of Occident according to Heou Han cabbage , You oung CAM, No 8, pp. 149-244.
  • Peter Hopkirk, Buddhas and prowlers on the silk route , Philippe Picquier, 1998. ISBN 2-87730-215-6
  • Edith and François-Bernard Huyghe, " The silk route or empires of the mirage" , Small Payot library, 2006, Collective ISBN 2-228-90073-7
  • , the silk route, arts of the old Central Asia, published at the time of the exposure of the large palace of 1976, p29

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