Long-Distance Trade Routes

As humankind spread across the world, long-distance trade routes followed, connecting far-flung communities like lights strung over a darkened map. Studying these trade routes using these lessons and resources will help your students understand not only how commodities move, but also culture, as art, technology, and stories disperse throughout these economic webs.

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Explore the lesson plans

Exploration and Interconnection
Lesson 8.1
Big History Project
Expansion & Interconnection
Exploration & Interconnection
The explorations of this period linked the world zones, and the exchange of ideas, people, diseases, plants, and animals resulted in profound global changes. From what people ate to the gods they prayed to—no area of life was unaffected.
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Routes of Exchange
Lesson 2.3
1200 to Present
The Global Tapestry
Routes of Exchange
From c. 1200 to 1450 CE, new networks of exchange—including the Silk Roads—crisscrossed Afro-Eurasia. Physical goods and intellectual and cultural “goods” reshaped social structures. Much changed because of these networks, but much remained the same.
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Global Industrialization
Lesson 3.2
1750 to Present
Industrialization
Global Industrialization
Global industrialization didn’t happen all at once and it didn’t look the same everywhere. To one population, industrialization might have looked like glorious progress; to another, it might have appeared as the destruction of an entire culture.
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Economic Interactions in an Age of Intense Globalization
Lesson 9.3
1750 to Present
Globalization
Economic Interactions in an Age of Intense Globalization
Today’s global economy bears little resemblance to that of earlier centuries, and the allocation of power across the world reflects this new reality. China’s role as a dominant economic force is a key part of this story.
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Transoceanic Empires: Expansion and Resistance
Lesson 4.2
AP®
Transoceanic Interconnections
Transoceanic Empires: Expansion and Resistance
Maritime empires dominated much of the world from c. 1450 to 1750 CE. The expansion of these empires came at a great price: transatlantic slave trade, the disruption of economies, and the destruction of Indigenous peoples.
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Featured Materials

Indian Ocean Routes
13th century Arab manuscript illustration depicting a merchant’s sailing dhow.
Article

Indian Ocean Routes

From 1200 to 1450, the Indian Ocean was the center of world trade. Merchants from all over Eurasia, including the world’s largest empires, traded in this network.
World of Chaco
Video

World of Chaco

A thousand years ago, the Ancestral Pueblo made Chaco Canyon the center of their cultural world. Their networks stretched across the vast Colorado Plateau.
Zheng He (Graphic Biography)
Zheng He Graphic Biography
Article

Zheng He (Graphic Biography)

Zheng He was the great admiral of the Ming Dynasty. Were his expeditions peaceful trade voyages or threatening campaigns of conquest and imperialism?
Impact of the Slave Trade: Through a Ghanaian Lens
Sketch of the coast of Ghana with ships coming ashore
Video

Impact of the Slave Trade: Through a Ghanaian Lens

How did the Atlantic slave trade impact Africa? We can study a smaller region to try to determine bigger answers.
Crops That Grew the World
Painting of women harvesting potatoes in Italy
Article

Crops That Grew the World

After 1500, a biological exchange between the Old and New Worlds transformed global populations, trade networks, cultures, and environments.

Our Interconnected World
Activity

Our Interconnected World

In this activity, students will begin to understand how the world went from where it was in 1450 to how it is today.
Goods Across the World
A grid of colorful shipping containers.
Article

Goods Across the World

From your phone to a cup of coffee, thousands of people around the world are part of the design, production, distribution, marketing, and support of things you use every day.

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