Advantages of Using Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean Trade essays

Advantages of Using Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean Trade essays Traveling merchants were a major vehicle for creating vast interregional networks and trade routes in the great overland oceanic networks increased in importance (Interregional Pp). Transportation was an important factor, whether meaning better ships and navigation, or the increasingly widespread use of the camel as a ship of the desert (Tropical Pp). Before the 1st millennium CE, the Sahara was an almost impassable barrier separating the North African coast from sub-Saharan Africa (Tropical Pp). And the Atlantic Ocean not a highway for travel, but a barrier (Tropical Pp). The only route connecting the two areas was the Nile, however, in its southern reaches travel was made difficult by both rapids and surrounding jungle (Tropical Pp). The monsoon winds were the propulsion for ships, the driving force for navigation in the Indian Ocean, blowing ships northeast in summer, and then back southwest in winter (Tropical Pp). Indian Ocean trade first increased under local groups from southern Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia, then outside groups, such as the Chinese became involved and a network establishing a link between East African commercial city-states and the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia (Interregional Pp). By the 16th century, the Portuguese dominated this system and linked it directly, rather than through Mediterranean intermediaries, with Europe (Interregional Pp). Although products, such as spices from Southeast Asia and other expensive goods, continued to be exchanged, bulk good such as sugar and textiles were increasingly involved (Interregional Pp). With the introduction of the camel, the Sahara was no longer a barrier and people and trade good as well as warriors, could travel quickly across the desert (Tropical Pp). This transformed life in the West African grasslands because camel caravans that crossed the Sahara came primarily to ...