EARLY TRADING CONDITIONS Seminarski rad

ibenik, oujak 2013.

CONTENT:

1. INTRODUCTION 2. EARLY DEVELOPMENT 3. MARCO POLO 4. GOLD TRADE AND MALI EMPIRE 5. THE FAIR-TRADE SYSTEM 6. FEUDALISM 7. CONCLUSION LITERATURE

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. INTRODUCTION
You've got the gold I need for my necklace and I've got the silk you need for your robe. What to do? Nowadays, if you need something, you go to the closest mall, shell out a few bucks and head home. Thousands of years ago, the process wasn't nearly as simple. If you or someone in your town didn't grow it, herd it or make it, you needed to abandon that desire or else travel for it, sometimes over great distances. For many towns, the effort of trade was too much.Those ancient towns make only rare appearances in our history books. When the first civilizations did begin trading with each other about five thousand years ago, however, many of them got rich...and fast. Trade was also a boon for human interaction, bringing cross-cultural contact to a whole new level.

2. EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The period extending from the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE to the beginning of the Common era saw the Western Asian, Mediterranean, Chinese and Indian societies develop major transportation networks for trade. One of the vital instruments which facilitated long distance trade was portage and the domestication of the beast of burden. Organized caravans, visible could carry goods across a large distance as fodder was mostly available along the way. The domestication of camels allowed Arabian nomads to control the long distance trade in spices and silk from the Far East to the Arabian Peninsula. However, caravans were useful in long-distance trade largely for carrying luxury goods, the transportation of cheaper goods across large distances was not profitable for caravan operators. With productive developments in iron and bronze technologies, newer trade routes - dispensing innovations of civilizations began to rise slowly.

Picture 1: Egyptian camel transport1

3. MARCO POLO

Marco Polo is famous for his travels through Asia. He was one of the first Europeans to travel into Mongolia and China. He became famous for his book that told the story of his travels along the Silk Road to China. Marco Polo was born in Venice, Italy around 1254. In 1271, when he was 17 years old, he traveled to Asia with his father and uncle. On this journey, he became a favorite of Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor. He roamed through Mongolia and China for 17 years. He traveled farther into China than any European had gone before. Finally, he took a ride to
1

http://memphistours.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/camels_egypt1.jpg

Persia and then back home. In all, he was gone for 24 years! When he returned to Venice in 1295, he became a popular storyteller. People gathered at his home to hear his stories of his travels in the Far East. In 1298, there was a conflict between Venice and Genoa. Polo was captured by the Genoese and imprisoned by them. While in jail, Marco dictated the story of his travels to a writer who published the book, The Travels of Marco Polo. The book helped to make Europeans very interested in trading with China and the Far East, and that led to the explorations of Columbus and many others who were searching for a quicker way to sail to China and India. When Marco was near death, a priest came in his room to ask him if he'd like to admit that his stories were false. Instead, Marco said, "I did not tell half of what I saw". Those were his last words. Marco Polo died in 1324.

4. GOLD TRADE AND MALI EMPIRE

By 1050 A.D., Ghana was strong enough to assume control of the Islamic Berber town of Audaghost. By the end of the twelfth century, however, Ghana had lost its domination of the western Sudan gold trade. Trans-Saharan routes began to bypass Audaghost, expanding instead toward the newly opened Bure goldfield. Soso, the southern chiefdom of the Soninke, gained control of Ghana as well as the Malinke, the latter eventually liberated by Sundiata Keita, who founded the Mali empire. Mali rulers did not encourage gold producers to convert to Islam, since prospecting and production of the metal traditionally depended on a number of beliefs and magical practices that were alien to Islam. In the fourteenth century, cowrie shells were introduced from the eastern coast as local currency, but gold and salt remained the principal mediums of long-distance trade. The flow of sub-Saharan gold to the northeast probably occurred in a steady but small stream. Mansa Musa's arrival in Cairo carrying a ton of the metal (132425) caused the market in gold to crash, suggesting that the average supply was not as great. Undoubtedly, some of this African gold was also used in Western gold coins. African gold was indeed so famous worldwide that a Spanish map of 1375 represents the king of Mali holding a gold nugget. When Mossi raids destroyed the Mali empire, the rising Songhai empire relied on the

same resources. Gold remained the principal product in the trans-Saharan trade, followed by kola nuts and slaves. The Moroccan scholar Leo Africanus, who visited Songhai in 1510 and 1513,observed that the governor of Timbuktu owned many articles of gold, and that the coin of Timbuktu was made of gold without any stamp or superscription.

Picture 5: The Trans-Saharan gold trade2

5. THE FAIR-TRADE SYSTEM

Medieval trade fairs, such as the one in Hamburg, contributed to the growth of banking in a curious way: moneychangers issued documents redeemable at other fairs, in exchange for hard currency. These documents could be cashed at another fair in a different country or at a future fair in the same location. If redeemable at a future date, they would often be discounted by an amount comparable to a rate of interest. Eventually, these documents evolved into bills of exchange, which could be redeemed at any office of the issuing banker. These bills made it possible to transfer large sums of money without the complications of hauling large chests of gold and hiring armed guards to protect the gold from thieves. By 1200 there was a large and growing volume of long-distance and international trade in a number of agricultural commodities and manufactured goods in western Europe, including corn, wool, finished cloth, wine, salt, wax ,leather and leather goods, and weapons and armour. Individual trading concerns and combines often specialized in one or more of these, as did individual producers; because a large amount of capital was required to establish, e.g., a cloth manufacturing business, only the largest firms could diversify. As a result, businesses and clusters of businesses tended to market fairly narrow product lines.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hg/hg_d_gold_d2map.jpg

6. FEUDALISM

The Feudal System was introduced to England following the invasion and conquest of the country by William I (The Conqueror). The system had been used in France by the Normans from the time they first settled there in about 900AD. It was a simple, but effective system, where all land was owned by the King. One quarter was kept by the King as his personal property, some was given to the church and the rest was leased out under strict controls.

Picture 6: Medieval Life - Feudalism3

We also had the classic Franois-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism which describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service.

7. CONCLUSION

When people first settled down into larger towns in Mesopotamia and Egypt, selfsufficiency the idea that you had to produce absolutely everything that you wanted or needed started to fade. A farmer could now trade grain for meat, or milk for a pot, at the local market, which was seldom too far away. Cities started to work the same way, realizing that they could acquire goods they didn't have at hand from other cities far away, where the climate and natural resources produced

http://historyonthenet.com/Medieval_Life/images/feudalsystem.gif

different things. This longer-distance trade was slow and often dangerous, but was lucrative for the middlemen willing to make the journey. We had two ways of trade: fair trade system way of feudal system

Before the trade was more complicated than today, but today we have STC. Standard Trading Conditions (STC) are terms and conditions for accepting cargo by shipping lines, airlines and logistics services providers like freight forwarders and customs agents. They are usually printed as the fine print behind the shipping documents like bill of lading, air way bill, or consignment note. These standard trading conditions state the general contract terms and conditions between the two contracting parties who do a contract of transportation or storage or otherwise handling of goods.