The overland Silk Road has a cousin, the Maritime Silk Route, which began much earlier, carried more cargo and visited more cities than the famous camel caravans that crossed the deserts of Central Asia.
The maritime route had an enormous impact on world affairs from the 16th century until the late 19th century, and has been revived in the past 30 years as traditional ports such as Ningbo fuel the modern global economy.
It all began with silk. The silk trade began in ports such as Ningbo, Guangzhou and Penglai before travelling south through the Malacca Straits, picking up spices along the way, and then sailing along the coasts of Malaysia, Thailand and India on their way to the Persian Gulf and East African ports.
The route eventually passed through the Red Sea to Egypt and into the Mediterranean, where great ports such as Venice and Damascus took Oriental goods deeper into Europe via alpine land routes. The route internationalised these ports and brought vast numbers of Malays, Indians, Persians, Arabs and Ethiopians to East Asia.
In 2006, Ningbo unearthed a Song dynasty cargo ship, restored it and then displayed the ancient vessel as evidence not only of the route itself but of Ningbo's major role in that ancient trade network. Europeans took part in the maritime trade route in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries as the overland route to China became more precarious. The first to arrive were the Portuguese and the Dutch.
The Portuguese were very active in Ningbo, going so far as to set up a permanent trade mission and settlement in about 1540. They were an unruly lot, however, and were eventually violently expelled by Ming dynasty forces for raping and pillaging.
