Trading Empires and trade routes
Road Trip Through History: Crow Wing State Park and the Red River Ox Cart Trail (with a brief aside on ghost towns)
My Own True Love and I almost didn’t stop at Crow Wing State Park. It was late on a dreary afternoon. We’d had a long history nerd day already. And it wasn’t entirely clear that there would be anything to see. But all the (very vague) descriptions of the park said it was the site…
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How the Trans-Saharan Trade Routes Work
In the eighth century CE, after camels were introduced into North Africa, Muslim merchants of North Africa began to organize regular camel caravans across the western Sahara. North African merchants carried luxury goods from across the Islamic world and salt purchased from the desert salt mines to the great trading cities of the Sudan: Timbuktu,…
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Asia’s Inland Trade, or How the Spice Trade Worked
The way we learn the story in elementary school in the United States, European trading companies sailed East in search of spices and other luxury goods. What those merchants took with them to trade is generally left unmentioned–perhaps because it makes it clear that Europe was a backwater in the global marketplace until well into…
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