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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4067 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

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IIRC Chinese ships were capable of long range exploration? They would more have been bottlenecked by a lack of investment and especially by a non-colonialist/deshumanizing culture

e.g. Chinese went to sommalia a century before the europeans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exploration#/media/File:ShenDuGiraffePainting.jpg

The question is, could they have done it much earlier? When exactly did they developed such ships technology?

But there are much more potent historic anachonisms, such as the Indo-greek kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Greek_Kingdom

or the fact greeks went in the Xinjiang, China

What is less known is if those anachronic explorers managed to do knowledge/technology/culture/artefact transfers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_European_exploration_of_Asia

The radhanites seems remarkably interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite

The pop-sci explanation is that the Chinese had everything they wanted, while the Europeans lost access to the Asian spice market after the Ottomans took over the Near East. It made sense to send out armoured men on ocean-going ships in all directions to find and/or seize another trade route. And it turned out a few ships of angry European dudes could [roflstomp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Malacca_(1511)) most resistance.

I never thought about it but the disappearance of past african/asian trade routes with europe and therefore of key assets such as spices would have stimulated europe to rebuild those routes by itself.

The european exploration is often seen as an era of discoveries (new foods and kinds of tools/arts) but in a big part it was in fact a restauration of a previous state of wealth and cultural imports.

As shown the radhanite were the leading group maintaining the previous roman merchant routes from the year 700 to the year 900.

About their disappearance

The causes may have been the fall of Tang China in 908, followed by the collapse of the Khazarian state at the hands of the Rus' some sixty years later (circa 968–969). Trade routes became unstable and unsafe, a situation exacerbated by the rise of expansionist Turco-Persianate states, and the Silk Road largely collapsed for centuries

They were replaced by the Italian city states but the issue with your theory is that it has a gap of 500-600 years, although I have not studied exactly when was the silk road restored, especially for spices.

It seems it was still partly working for some assets such as slaves.

Had the europeans an active desire to restaure the silk road as early as the 900s but couldn't before the 1400-1500s because of technological limitations? (ships technologies?)

edit marco polo is in 1270 but still a 400 years gap

The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1207 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-established the Silk Road

300 years and not restored by europeans

I am talking about the next disruption: the Ottomans emerged as the biggest power in the Eastern Med that blocked Genoa and Venice from trading along the Silk Road, driving the prices up. Previous disruptions of the Silk Road happened before Europe had the technology to literally go around the problem.

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