The Silk Route
The demise of the Silk Route
Despite the supportive presence of the Mongols in the 13th and 14th centuries, trade along the Silk Route was never as extensive as it had been during the Tang dynasty, and eventually it began to decline. The steady advance of Islam, temporarily halted by the Mongols (who were Shamanists), continued until it became a major force across central Asia, surrounding the Taklamakan desert as Buddhism had almost a millennium earlier.
Decline and death
The political powers along the Silk Route drew frontiers between themselves and became economically and culturally cut off from each other. The power of the nomads also declined, partly because of the interference of settled societies equipped with gunpowder, and partly because of the Black Death. This devastating pandemic began in the Gobi Desert in the late 1320s – or, according to some historians, in a Christian community at Lake Issyk-kul in Kazakhstan in 1338 – and travelled along the Silk Route, eventually killing two thirds of the population of China and millions of other people in western Asia, Africa and Europe.
The demise of the Silk Route was also caused by the growing maritime trade. It was easier and safer to transport goods by water than overland, where problems with 'tribal politics' between the different peoples along the route and with the intermediaries, all taking their cuts, took their toll. In fact, the Silk Route had stopped being a shipping artery for silk by the beginning of the 15th century.
Desertification
The encroachment of the deserts into the inhabited lands made life on the edges of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts particularly difficult. Any settlement abandoned even for a short while was swallowed by the sands, and resettlement became increasingly problematical. These conditions were only bearable in times of peace, when efforts could be spent on countering desertification and maintaining water sources.
The attitude of the later Chinese dynasties was the final blow to the trade route. The isolationist policies of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties did nothing to encourage trade between China and the rapidly developing West.
