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Chapter 4. Trade exchange on the Great Silk Road

4.1 West-East: Money-Commodity

Exactly as in the title, and almost never vice versa: the ancient and medieval West gave the East a voiced coin and bullion of precious metals, and in return received its goods. The history of those times does not actually know the opposite scheme. The Great Silk Road can also be called golden or silver, however, with one-way traffic. French traveler of the 17th century. François Bernier compared. For example, Hindustan with an abyss that swallows up a significant part of the gold and silver of the whole world, which, as he wrote, find many ways to penetrate there from all sides, and almost none to get out of there. The same is said about the gold and silver flows from the West to the East in the 1st century. Roman Prinius the Elder. He writes that annually 100 million sesterces left the Roman Empire in this direction, with 50 million going to India, and half of it was taken by trade with China and Arabia.

The dissatisfaction of the statesmen of Rome with such a leak of precious metals and high prices is an almost constant leitmotif of messages associated with Chinese, Indian or Arabian goods. There were prohibitions and restrictions on the import of specie and ingots, taboos on wearing silk clothes, and so on. But that didn't help much. Goods were needed to eliminate the passivity of trade. However, Europe had almost nothing to offer - its handicrafts are rough, of poor quality and are not in demand among the eastern consumer. The East provided itself with everything necessary. The only way in which the Romans subsequently managed to alleviate the trade deficit to some extent was the withdrawal of the handicraft products of Syrian and Egyptian masters as taxes and their subsequent sale to Arabia, India, etc. However, a considerable outflow of gold and silver still continued.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, craft was more developed in Byzantium than in Rome, and a number of products from Constantinople were in certain demand in eastern countries. But the Byzantine-Asiatic trade was again accompanied by the same feature that had previously been characteristic of antiquity: a passive balance. The reaction of the Roman authorities to the leakage of precious metals to Asia consisted of constant restrictions, and sometimes even bans.
Some of the prohibitions are not related to the export of these metals, but to the prohibition of private transactions. The state sought to take over trade with Asian merchants and monopolize the sale of precious metals to them. Only in the 19th century the European industrial revolution, having made a revolution in the production of commercial products, making them of high quality and very cheap, managed to stop this flow, and Western goods in the Eastern markets for the first time became more than competitive, which, in particular, was expressed in the decline of the previously famous crafts in China and India . But the entire previous history of international communication between West and East went under the sign of West-East: money is a commodity and the Great Silk Road - this symbol of connections between West and East - also symbolized by the gold-silver avalanche that rushed along it much more than the state of the trade balance of these macro-civilizations . Such a centuries-old situation reflected the comparative effectiveness of their economic achievements, the incomparability of the heights of the main spheres of material production, material cultures in general. The fact that the West paid the East for goods with precious metals, testified not to its wealth, but to its poverty. The wealth of Rome came to him not as a result of the development of productive forces, but due to the loot during the wars of conquest and the huge tribute received annually, especially from the eastern provinces of the empire.
European and Eastern conditions in the productivity of agriculture and, consequently, in the reproduction of cheap handicraft labor were incomparable. Moreover, the cheapness of labor in the climatic conditions of the East was also affected by the fact that a more productive natural factor did not at all pose a need for most Asian regions, which led to the possibility of lower costs for maintaining the life of a worker, satisfying his needs for clothing, housing. You can also add to this the enormous economic and technological experience accumulated in the East for thousands of years, which turned the Asian artisan with his simplest tools into a virtuoso; add the possession of a unique, excellent quality, local, inexpensive and commonly available raw materials (silk, cocoons, cotton, etc.) or products that could only be produced in the subtropics and tropics: (pepper, spices), and the reasons for the economic superiority of the East will become clearer. .
Subsequently, the West will have to make gigantic efforts to eliminate this superiority through scientific and industrial revolutions, a huge and interconnected system of inventions, and the introduction of fundamentally new industries. And in the Middle Ages, Western European society found it difficult to find any of the products that could somehow interest the East. It was mostly raw materials: some copper, some tin, some other metals; a small part of Asian goods was exchanged with Middle Eastern rulers for ship timber. Europeans did not disdain the slave trade either. Women were the hot commodity, and, apparently, Greek and Slav women were especially highly quoted. In any case, they fully knew how to make people appreciate their merits. Others, despite the status of slaves, reached the actual position under the later caliphs. Al- Muktadir and al- Mustakfi were put on the throne by their mothers, slaves, Greek women, and they ran state affairs as if they were family affairs. The Slav, the mother of Caliph al-Muti, who even passed on to her grandson the features of a northerner (white skin, blond hair, etc. ), was at one time more famous than her son.