Okuzeka
History vocabulary · Economic History

Trade route

Meaning in history, with examples

nounCore term

In history, trade route means: A regular path by land, river or sea along which merchants carried goods between regions, such as the Silk Road or the spice routes of the Indian Ocean.

In Turkish: ticaret yolu

How it is used

Historians study how trade routes shifted, who controlled them and how they spread goods, ideas, religions and diseases. Routes are opened, controlled, protected, blocked or diverted, and caravanserais and ports grew up along them.

Example sentences

  1. After 1498, part of the spice trade moved to the sea route around Africa.

  2. Seljuk caravanserais were built at regular intervals along the main trade routes of Anatolia.

Common collocations

  • major trade routes
  • control the trade routes
  • overland trade routes
  • maritime trade routes
  • along the trade route
  • Silk RoadThe network of overland and sea trade routes that linked China with Central Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean from ancient times to around the fifteenth century.
  • mercantilismAn economic policy common in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century that tried to increase a state's wealth and power by exporting more than it imported and building up gold and silver.
  • guildAn association of craftsmen or merchants in the same trade that set standards, controlled training and prices, and protected its members, especially in medieval and early modern towns.
  • migrationThe movement of people from one place to another to live, either within a country or across borders, alone or in large groups.

More terms: Economic History

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