How did The Silk Road Actually Work?

All the way back in the 2nd century BC, the Han 
Dynasty served as the 2nd Chinese imperial dynasty to date and had ambitions to accomplish more than 
just that. Initially hoping simply to resolve the recurrent issue of conflict with the Xiongnu 
tribes along the north and west borders, the Han emperor, Emperor Wu, decided in 138 BC to send 
an envoy off to try and form some type of alliance or garner support from the Yuezhi in the west. As 
he traveled through Central Asia, the emissary, Zhang Qian witnessed for the first time a variety 
of new people and cultures and was particularly fascinated by the Da-yuan people. To be specific, 
Qian was drawn to the horses of the Da-yuan. Although the Han Dynasty had long been using 
horses in warfare, and even as far back as during the 11th century BC Shang Dynasty cavalry 
and chariots were popular, the horses of Da-yuan appeared to Qian to be far superior to those 
that were bred in China. Admiring their size, strength, and speed, Qian returned to Emperor 
Wu and informed him of these magnificent beasts. As a result, Wu decided to purchase some of these 
western horses and in a short matter of time, with the help of their new horsepower, the Han 
Dynasty was able to address the Xiongnu threat. Impressed by the success of Qian’s journey 
west and the collaboration it inspired, Emperor Wu decided to take things a step further, 
triggering the official opening of the Silk Road in 130 BC, connecting the East to the West 
through a network of trade routes spanning roughly 4,000 miles from end to end, reaching from 
the Han in China to the tips of Europe… This was not the first such 
road, or more accurately, roads, to create an international 
trade route though. In fact, it was the Persians under Darius I and the 
Persian Empire who had created the original. This was known as the Royal Road and it stretched 
from Susa, which lies in modern-day Iran, all the way nearly 2,000 miles to 
the west in Sardis, which is today a part of Turkey. The Persians would also add 
smaller routes to the main one which reached parts of the Indian subcontinent and northern 
Africa as well, and this network came to be roughly 300 years prior to the opening of the Silk 
Road. Although later outdone by the Silk Road, the Persian Royal Road was quite impressive in 
itself, and the writings about its messengers, provided to us by Herodotus, would later form the 
basis of the United States Postal Service creed. Nonetheless, the Silk Road would soon be 
the ultimate route or routes for messengers, merchants, and explorers alike. The 
roads were used in a few manners, with the main being for commercial trade. Despite the fact that the term we know it by 
now was not actually coined until the late 19th century, the Silk Road did, in fact, 
serve as a major contributor to the trade of silks throughout the regions it spanned over. 
For a long while, silk only came out of China due to the fact that it was the 
Chinese who had discovered how to harvest the material from the cocoons of 
silkworms and had strategically hidden this discovery from the rest of the world. Thanks to 
the creation of the Silk Road network though, the material and products produced from it could 
now be sold all throughout the path to Europe, and it was the far west Romans, in particular, who 
really fell in love with this Chinese commodity… This near-obsession with silk that the Romans 
developed would actually also prove to be a prime example of how the Silk Road not only 
spread goods from west to east and east to west, but also brought culture and new ideas to each 
state that it touched. In the case of Rome and silk, the remarkable demand for the product within 
the empire eventually put Rome in a position of an “unfavorable balance of trade”, which deeply 
bothered the emperors. While nothing would ever be done to rectify this before the 476 fall of the 
Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantines, would take on the burden and it 
would be their emperor who now put an end to it. After discovering the source of this 
infatuating material, Emperor Justinian sent two men undercover as monks into China to 
steal enough silkworms to start a new production stream of silk back in Byzantium. The expedition 
worked, and now the Eastern Roman Empire could save itself from the same high-priced silk-induced 
trade imbalance of their Western counterpart… Silk was still not the only popular 
export along the Silk Road though. Additionally from East to West, products such as 
teas, dyes, spices, porcelain, paper, gunpowder, and medicine were all frequently traded. Paper and 
gunpowder would go on to make significant impacts in the contemporary European world, with gunpowder 
changing warfare as they knew it, and paper soon becoming the primary canvas for writing. As 
the Eastern trade changed the Western culture and world, the West did the same for the East. 
Western merchants would sell goods like glassware, textiles, animal furs, certain foods such as 
fruits or honey, live animals, rugs and blankets, armor, and horse-riding necessities. Here alone we 
see the inspiration for new thinking and new ways of life being passed along the network of trade 
routes, and this does not even include the spread of religions and ideologies that would occur 
thanks to the merchants and travels themselves. And yet, all of this was done whilst 
most merchants, messengers, and the like, never went across the whole Silk Road network. 
In reality, the vast majority of the traders especially would only go part way, sell or trade 
their goods to another merchant, and then that man would go and do the same. This created a large 
system of middlemen and also allowed for the opening of new businesses. Inns and resting places 
for the common caravans would soon begin popping up along the routes, and on the less legal 
side, robbers became frequently employed. There was one man who would travel from one end 
to the other though, and he would later make the road famous through his writing about the journey. 
It was Marco Polo who spent three years alongside his father, aged only 17, traversing the Silk Road 
until they finally reached the Chinese palace of Kublai Khan in 1275 AD. The Polos would stay 
in Asia for years more, where the young man traveled to places, he’d never seen and met 
people and cultures he’d never imagined. When Marco Polo yet again traveled along the Silk 
Road, this time to return home to Venice in 1295, he brought back with him all of the knowledge 
and experience that he had gained from his time in Asia and shared it all with the European 
world in his book, “The Travels of Marco Polo”. Language, culture, religion, discovery, and so on 
and so forth were all shared along the Silk Road, making the ancient trade network 
an invaluable part of history and our world today. Even disease spread along 
the routes, and many historians point to the Silk Road in particular as being the possible 
culprit for the spread of the devastating Black Death in the 14th century. Yet, the Silk 
Road only lasted for another hundred years… This is because after the Ottoman Empire 
conquered Byzantium, the Ottomans all but entirely cut off any trade with the west and shut 
down the Silk Road. Looking for ways around this, many Europeans began to explore the seas instead, 
hoping for a means around the blockage on land. This birthed the Age of Discovery, lending soon to 
the eventual European expeditions to the New World that would shape so many countries as we know them 
today. In many ways, it was the Silk Road itself that can be credited for these monumental moments 
in history, as it was the possibilities provided by the incredible trade network that would give 
Europeans a craving for further exploration and global trade, which would send them to the 
seas in response to the Ottoman intervention. Thus, the Silk Road worked in a plethora of ways. 
It served, obviously, as a hub for international trade and commerce. Additionally, these routes 
would open up new journeys for explorers, allow for easier passage of messengers from East 
to West, and through all of this helped to share and exchange cultures, languages, religions, 
ideas, development, and sadly even disease.