TY - JOUR
T1 - Trade and Political Fragmentation on the Silk Roads
T2 - The Economic Effects of Historical Exchange between China and the Muslim East
AU - Blaydes, Lisa
AU - Paik, Christopher
N1 - Funding Information:
Many thanks to Gary Cox, David Laitin, Alison McQueen, Ken Schultz, Hiroki Takeuchi, and Yiqing Xu for helpful comments and audiences at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE‐JETRO), King's College London, Kobe University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, the Korea Development Institute, Korea University, Kyoto University, the London School of Economics, New York University, New York University Abu Dhabi, Peking University, Osaka University, Princeton University, Shinsu University, Stanford University, University of California Davis, University of Tokyo, University of Wisconsin, and Yonsei University. Steve Bai, Han Li, Jie Min, Keshar Shahi, Emily Wang, Monica Lee‐Chen Yang, and Diana Zhu provided outstanding research assistance. Blaydes gratefully acknowledges a faculty fellowship from the Stanford Center at Peking University for supporting research on this topic.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Midwest Political Science Association
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - The Silk Roads stretched across Eurasia, connecting East and West for centuries. At its height, the network of trade routes enabled merchants to travel from China to the Mediterranean Sea, carrying with them high-value commercial goods, the exchange of which encouraged urban growth and prosperity. We examine the extent to which urban centers thrived or withered as a function of shocks to trade routes, particularly political fragmentation along natural travel paths. We find that political fragmentation along the roads to Aleppo and historic Chang'an — major terminus locations for cross-regional trade—damaged city growth. These conclusions contribute to our understanding of how a premodern international system operated through an examination of exchange between the two most developed world regions of the medieval and early modern periods, China and the Muslim East.
AB - The Silk Roads stretched across Eurasia, connecting East and West for centuries. At its height, the network of trade routes enabled merchants to travel from China to the Mediterranean Sea, carrying with them high-value commercial goods, the exchange of which encouraged urban growth and prosperity. We examine the extent to which urban centers thrived or withered as a function of shocks to trade routes, particularly political fragmentation along natural travel paths. We find that political fragmentation along the roads to Aleppo and historic Chang'an — major terminus locations for cross-regional trade—damaged city growth. These conclusions contribute to our understanding of how a premodern international system operated through an examination of exchange between the two most developed world regions of the medieval and early modern periods, China and the Muslim East.
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U2 - 10.1111/ajps.12541
DO - 10.1111/ajps.12541
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85088114321
VL - 65
SP - 115
EP - 132
JO - American Journal of Political Science
JF - American Journal of Political Science
SN - 0092-5853
IS - 1
ER -