Commerce

 Commerce

Trade the traffic in goods-has been a social and economic institution since prehistoric times. In the form of gift, barter, or sale, trade can take place between individuals, clans, companies, or countries. It is closely linked to transportation, so the people who have dominated world trade have typically dominated its trade routes as well. Phoenicians were among the world's great early trade powers. From about 1200 B.C., Phoenician galleys dominated shipping in the Mediterranean for more than a thousand years. Their wares, including bronze, gold, ivory and glass artifacts, textiles, and furniture, have been found from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. To the east, the Chinese of the Han Dynasty began to spread out across overland caravan routes. Flourishing from 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 and again about 1,000 years later, these routes eventually linked Asia to Europe and came to be known as the Silk Road. More than silk traveled these routes, however. Asian traders bought spices like cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg to Europeans; Mediterranean merchants traded wools, gold, silver, glassware, olive oil, and wine. The Vikings, better known as raiders, were traders as well. In the early Middle Ages they traveled along the coasts and rivers into what is now Russia. They carried furs, amber, jewelry, and glass throughout northern Europe. In the south, the Crusades opened up the Near East and the Silk Road routes to Venetian traders, among them the inimitable Polo family. With the age of exploration and the opening of sea lanes to Asia, commerce and national power became even more closely linked. In the 17th and 18th centuries, companies dedicated to trade with Asia were formed in Europe, most notably the Dutch and the English East India Companies. These organizations were practically countries in their own right, exercising sovereign powers, administering colonies, and waging war. The Dutch East India Company exercised a trade monopoly in Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula Ceylon, the Malabar Coast of India, Japan, and South Africa in the 1600s. In the 18th century the English revolution East India Company established a monopoly in India and China, maintaining face, but political control over most of India until the Indian Mutiny of 1857. New economic theories, industrialization, and revolutions in transportation and communications have begun to change the face, but not the underlying nature, of world trade.

What Is Currency?

In prehistoric times—and even in some contemporary African societies- cattle were used as currency. By 1200 B.C., the Chinese used cowrie shells; 200 years later, they began to circulate metal versions, the first coins. Round, stamped coins of precious metals appeared in Turkey, Greece, and the Roman Empire beginning in 500 B.C. In A.D. 806, China created the first paper money. Marco Polo described with admiration the Chinese paper money he encountered in the 13th century, Europe did not use paper currency until the 17th century. China also experienced the hazards of easily printed currency early on: Medieval Mongol rulers printed so much that it became virtually valueless, a problem still plaguing many inflation-racked countries today. 

Currency- Typically means metal coins and paper money to modern users, but any agreed upon item, arbitrary and consistent, can suffice as a symbol of monetary value.

Fast Fact

Bricks of compressed tea levels, sometimes glued with yak dung, once served as currency in parts of Asia.