Trade Route: Did you mean...?

Between c. 700 and 350 BCE, the Mediterranean formed part of a broad and increasingly interconnected system of maritime and overland exchange linking...

Sub-Saharan Africa was explored by Roman expeditions between 19 BCE - 90 CE, most likely in an effort to locate the sources of valuable trade goods and establish routes to bring them to the seaports on the coast...

The Hanseatic League (c. 13th–17th centuries) was a powerful network of merchant guilds and cities that dominated trade across northern Europe for centuries. Emerging in the late Middle Ages, the League...

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their...

The prosperity of the Roman Empire (27 BCE-476 CE in the West) rested not only on military power and administration but also on an extensive network of maritime...

Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) was an English navigator and maritime explorer. He is known for his four voyages between 1607 and 1610 in search of a northwest passage via the Arctic Ocean to the Far East. The lure of a northwest passage...

The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands of camels...

Nagasaki, on the northwest coast of Japan’s Kyushu Island, was an important Portuguese trading base from c. 1571 to 1639, and the most eastern outpost of the Portuguese empire. The Portuguese presence transformed Nagasaki from...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage...

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is an eyewitness account of ancient travel to Africa and India via the Red Sea written by an unknown Greek-speaking Egyptian author in the 1st century CE. In this detailed account...