when did china trade on the silk road
Silk Road The term refers to many similar routes taken by traders primarily between Arabia, India and China but also to Tanzania (Zanzibar) in the south, Asia Minor and Southern Europe. While the term is of modern coinage, the Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in silk (and horses) carried out along its length, beginning during the Han dynasty (207 BCE â€“ 220 CE). The Han dynasty expanded Central Asian sections of the trade routes around 114 BCE, largely through missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy, Zhang Qian.[4] The Chinese took great interest in the safety of their trade products and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route.[5]
History of the Ming dynasty After lying dormant and dilapidated for decades, the Grand Canal was restored under the Yongle Emperor's rule from 1411–1415. The impetus for restoring the canal was to solve the perennial problem of shipping grain north to Beijing. Shipping the annual 4,000,000 shi (one shi is equal to 107 liters) was made difficult with an inefficient system of shipping grain through the East China Sea or by several different inland canals that necessitated the transferring of grain onto several different barge types in the process, including shallow and deep-water barges.[97] William Atwell quotes Ming dynasty sources that state the amount of collected tax grain was actually 30 million shi (93 million bushels),[83] much larger than what Brook notes. The Yongle Emperor commissioned some 165,000 workers to dredge the canal bed in western Shandong and built a series of fifteen canal locks.[96][98] The reopening of the Grand Canal had implications for Nanjing as well, as it was surpassed by the well-positioned city of Suzhou as the paramount commercial center of China.[99] Despite greater efficiency, there were still factors which the government could not control that limited the transportation of taxed grain; for example, in 1420 a widespread crop failure and poor harvest dramatically reduced the tax grain delivered to the central government.[100]