Reference: MA, Debin. “The Great Silk Exchange: How the World ...

thrived under the patronage of central powerful empires from Han and Tang China and to
Rome, Mongols, Ottoman, Safavid Persia and Russia, which offered security against
robbery and brigandage, maintained the roads, and levied predictable customs dues. 18
Viewed from this perspective, the superiority of the sea route became clear. The sea
wind that powered the ships was free and frequently traveled routes offered no problem,
since one vessel’s sails do not spoil the wind for another’s. The problem of congestion and
possible damage to the environment due to too many travels along the land route was not a
problem on the wide and open sea. Protection costs for ships at sea were usually less
troublesome than for caravans, if only because a ship traversed uninhabited expanses,
whereas a caravan was seldom far from populated places, and caravans concentrated wealth
in a way that tempted innumerable plunderers (McNeill 1971: 1119, 1123).
However, the early primitive ship-building and navigational technology, as well as
limited geographical knowledge, initially prevented full exploitation of the non-rivalry and
non-exclusive nature of the open sea. The early stages of ocean transportation shared many
characteristics of a peddling trade over land routes: sailing short stages with little cargo and
high crew costs (Curtin 1984: 119). However, according to Pierre Chaunu (1969), the pace
of technological progress in marine transport rapidly overtook that in land transport after
the thirteenth century. Continuous progress in nautical technology enabled ships to sail
farther, faster and cheaper on the open sea; and with the discovery of an all-sea route from
Europe to Asia and the crossing of the Pacific, it was only a matter of time before the sea
route dominated global long-distance trade.
The “chains of markets” and all their associated problems which had long
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