History Of The Silk Road

Tonight, I take you on a journey along the Silk Road. We explore how and why this route from China to the Mediterranean opened at the time of the Han Dynasty and Ancient Rome. Given the distances and costs, long-distance trade was limited to light, expensive, and exotic goods, like silk, glassware, fine crafts, perfumes, and spices. It adapted to changes over centuries: the rise and fall of dynasties in China, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the struggles of Byzantium, the Muslim conquest, the Mongol invasion, the rise of Italian merchant republics... I also tell you about the rediscovery of land routes to the Far East by European travelers of the Middle Ages, especially Marco Polo.