Su NovoScriptorum un lungo post – in lingua inglese – in cui si dettagliano i movimenti commerciali del periodo d’oro dell’Impero Romano verso l’est asiatico, Cina e India in particolare, ma credo anche Giappone. Un estratto:
The first two centuries of the Roman Empire witnessed the establishment and development of a profitable commerce between two great regions of the earth, the Mediterranean countries and India. We need not wonder at this. In the first place, the century after Christ was an era of new discoveries and enterprises, for the western world, after ages of struggle, was united under the firm rule of Rome, and, in the enjoyment of lasting peace and prosperity, was ripe and ready for fresh developments in the intercourse of men; in the second place, the welding of the races of the West and of the near East into one well-governed whole brought into sharp relief the prominent geographical feature formed by Asia Minor, Palestine, Arabia, and the north-eastern corner of Africa. By using the near East as a base, merchants filled with the western characteristic of energetic discovery and the will and power to expand, backed by the governing power of Rome and the prestige of her great name, and helped by Roman capital, were readier to push eastwards by land and sea than they had been before. The moving force from first to last came from the West; the little-changing peoples of the East allowed the West to find them out. We have, then, on the one side India of the Orient, then, a disjointed aggregate of countries and, while open to commerce, content generally to remain within her borders and to engage in agriculture. On the other side we have Rome, also at first agricultural, but now risen after centuries of triumph to be mistress of a vast empire of peoples, with whom and through whom she conducted all her commerce. The peculiar attitude of Indians and Romans towards commerce caused them to meet each other rarely along any of the routes which linked them over long distances, and to conduct their affairs over unexplored seas and dangerous solitudes on land by means of intermediaries.
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