Definition
Trade networks are the routes and systems of exchange that connect distant regions, allowing goods to be bought, sold, and moved across long distances. They include overland routes such as the Silk Road and maritime routes such as those across the Indian Ocean and, later, the Atlantic.
Trade networks carry far more than merchandise. Along the same routes travel ideas, religions, technologies, languages, and — unintentionally — disease.
Why it matters
How it works
A trade network functions as a chain of connected exchanges. Goods rarely traveled the whole distance with a single merchant; instead they passed through many hands and markets, each adding cost and value, between their origin and final buyer.
Because routes carried whatever traveled with the traders, networks transmitted culture and contagion as readily as cargo. This dual nature — connection and consequence — made trade networks one of the great engines of historical change, drawing the world's regions ever closer together.