Compare And Contrast Silk Road And Indian Ocean Trade

As empires progressed in the ancient world, trade became necessary for expansion to continue. Towns and villages developed along the trade routes and became wealthy and powerful. Two specific routes, the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean trade network, were able to spread different aspects of culture, such as religion, but they both differed in the transfer of these ideas.
As more Europeans wanted Chinese silk, a basic route developed between the Chinese and Roman empires. The roads were not made of actual roads, but were simply areas that many people travelled along to get to major urban centers (Frankopan). This route mainly involved camels and donkeys, as opposed to wheeled vehicles, to travel across narrow mountain passes. Towns soon

emerged where goods passed from one person to another instead of a single group travelling the entire route. As goods were exchanged, the price of them went up. When the goods finally made it to Rome, the price had drastically increased to make up for the number of times it changed hands. This limited the types of goods able to make the distance to those of luxury goods. If common goods made the trip over, the price would have been so high, and they would not have been worth the price they would have had to pay (Strayer 318-324).
Over time, other societies learned how to make the silk. Exactly who did it and how it was done is unknown. This made the Silk Road economically decline because some products could be made in multiple places compared to how only one group had control over the production. One story of how silk spread describes a Chinese princess hiding silkworms in her turban when she went off to marry a Central Asian ruler. Another tale describes a Christian monk hiding some silkworms in a bamboo cane and sending it back to the Byzantine Empire where the industry moved (Strayer 318-324).
As the goods were spread, ideas went along with them. When the Han Empire fell, Buddhism was able to infiltrate China and take advantage of the disunity to allow the religion to grow. They finally became a world religion as they extended into other states and gained influence there. From China, Buddhism got a foothold on one end of the Silk Road and travelers built monasteries along the route to better help the religion spread (Tignor 344).
In the Indian Ocean, an exchange between Chinese porcelain and Indian spices took place.

With the invention of the compass and an understanding of winds from monsoons, port cities emerged along the coast of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea (Concise Atlas of World History 52-53). Ships could hold more cargo than that of donkeys and camels. The cost of goods decreased with the availability of more space on ships. The cost also decreased with the ability to travel directly to the destination instead of goods transferring from person to person. Goods could then travel to the market quicker and more efficiently to where items could be sold for less (Strayer 324-334).
Both routes allowed states to grow. The Silk Road allowed states to grow in Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean allowed states to grow in Southeast Asia. These states allowed for more trade along the route to where a variety of goods could be traded instead of mainly just the important items. Where a group of traders are, ideas are bound to be exchanged and then rapidly spread throughout the state (Strayer

318-334).
In Southeast Asia, certain states gave benefits to whomever passed by their islands.

The island of Srivijaya attracted Indians with their gold, wanting of Indian spices, and their taxes on ships with merchants. This allowed the Indian language to spread to the islands. As it spread, the original Buddhist and Hindu origin stories that took place in India were moved to Southeast Asia which showed how the native religion and the spread of ideas intermixed with each other. The degree of influence Buddhism and Hinduism had there led to the building of some of the largest monasteries in the world in that time period. The largest Buddhist structure in the world, Borobudur, was ten stories tall and contained carvings of the journey to enlightenment. One of the largest religious structures during that time, Angkor Wat, was a Hindu temple complex that later was used by both Hindus and Buddhists (Strayer 328-332).
As the people became involved in long-distance trade and settled down, they started to convert to Buddhism. Various forms of it spread to Southeast Asia due to their native beliefs (Haywood 27). Rulers liked the idea of themselves being gods and elites liked the idea of karma where they were rewarded based on their morality from a past life. Religion could not spread in Central Asia because of its dependence on a written language (Strayer

322-323).
Even though the Silk Road and Indian Ocean brought many good things, including goods like silk and ideas like Buddhism and Hinduism, there is always something bad that hitches a ride. With so many people interacting with each other in such densely populated areas, disease can spread rapidly. At first, no one is harmed because usually when it starts, a foreigner goes to a place and catches it. No one in the area will get it because they have been around it for so long that they had become immune to it. The further it goes, the more people get infected and the more deadly it becomes. When it finally spread to the other end of the trade route, it spread like wildfire. The low sanitation levels allowed disease to thrive until the middle of the second millennium when we finally learned about microorganisms (Strayer 323-324).
The Silk Road had many limitations because of the goods it could trade and with the way they were transported, but it is one of the most notable trade routes in history. The Indian Ocean trade route was more efficient than the Silk Road because it could get goods to their destinations quicker, more efficiently, and cheaper. The Indian Ocean trade route also sparked Southeast Asian states to grow as Indian merchants began to trade there on their way to China. Both routes were culturally diverse and spread many great ideas. However, the two trade routes had a strong impact on the spread of disease across the Eurasia.