What’s the Significance?
Silk Roads, 318–24
Black Death, 323–24
Indian Ocean trading network, 324–34
Srivijaya, 328–30
Borobudur, 330–31
Angkor Wat, 331
Swahili civilization, 333–34
Great Zimbabwe, 334
Sand Roads, 334–37
Ghana, Mali, Songhay, 335–37
trans-Saharan slave trade, 335–37
American web, 337–41
Thorfinn Karlsfeni, 338–39
pochteca, 341
Big Picture Questions
Next Steps: For Further Study
Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters (1993). A wonderfully succinct and engaging history of cross-cultural interaction all across Afro-Eurasia before 1500.
William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange (2008). A global account of “how trade shaped the world.”
E. W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (1970). A classic account of the trans-Saharan trade.
Nayan Chanda, Bound Together (2007). Places contemporary globalization in a rich world historical context.
K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean (1985). A well-regarded study that treats the Indian Ocean basin as a single region linked by both commerce and culture during the third-wave era.
Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (1984). Explores long-distance trade as a generator of social change on a global level.
Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (2010). A brief, accessible, and up-to-date account by a leading scholar.
Silk Road Seattle, http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/. A wonderful Web site about the Silk Road with many artistic images and maps as well as extensive narrative description of vast network of exchange.