ABSTRACT
Long-distance trade has fascinated historians almost as long as history has been written. Herodotus described the “Silent trade” conducted on the north coast of Africa between Carthaginian and local merchants, exchanging goods for African gold (Herodotus 2003: Book 4). Merchants and trade have been motifs in historical accounts of nearly all world regions and across time periods with trade networks and interconnections used to explain the development of the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic worlds (Braudel, 1995; Riello and Roy, 2009; Williams, 1944).
