Alt.history - What trade could Europe and China have in the middle ages?

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

See, I heard that was how you became a slave in the first place - hence the implications of betrayal ... fall out with the wrong person in the old country and you were sold down the river to those weird foreign guys in the fort by the coast with a nice line in luxury goods.

That did happen, of course, but the great majority of the African trade were war captives sold to coastal slavers, and later on as the trade ramped up, mercenary bands that'd raid villages.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

See, I heard that was how you became a slave in the first place - hence the implications of betrayal ... fall out with the wrong person in the old country and you were sold down the river to those weird foreign guys in the fort by the coast with a nice line in luxury goods.

That's how it happens today in some corners. There was one story I remember on the news of a Portland girl who got a cushy job offer as a luxury hotel servant or something of the kind in Hawaii. She got on the plane flew there and found herself snatched by a pimp ring. Apparently they weren't even that good at that trade which is sort of a pitiful comment to give to a person. In any case they left her an opening before they had managed to properly brainwash her into docility. She escaped, ducked into a local Church and told the pastor or whoever was in charge at the time. He called the cops. The cops made a swoop and made a brilliant catch of the bottom dwelling species of humanity. While the girl went free if more then a bit shaken up and had a happier ending then many of those sorts of things.

[SolemnGolem]

OP here. I decided to bump this thread just to give an idea of where the concept ultimately is going. I apologize that it's mostly fluff and flavor text.

The campaign setting is mostly Western European, but there is a small minority of very obviously East Asian/Chinese style merchants from afar. They keep to themselves ever since their leader vanished a few years back. They are the "second generation" wave sent over from the Feuding Kingdoms - the "first generation" was sent over about forty to fifty years beforehand.

50 years ago, Li Jianfeng and his treasure ship from Que came aground in the Principality. They brought with them moveable type printing blocks, paper currency, gunpowder (for fireworks), and silk. They came to some sort of agreement with the local merchants and landowners, and then left, promising to return in many years' time.

In the interim, two other European nations fomented rebellion in the Principality, leading to a libertarian movement (the "Eleuthiarchy") among the peasants and supported by the idealistic scholars of the University. Armed with crude firearms, printed creeds, and a paper scrip that challenged the landowners' stranglehold on currency, they led a bloody revolution that took a full decade to quell. By the time the barons crushed the Eleuthiarchy, the Prince was already overthrown, the Universities were burned-out husks, and the entire land was thrown back to near-subsistence farming levels.

It took several decades to recover some semblance of national unity for the Principality, now renamed Nortenmark (the "Northern March" for one of their neighbors, who devoted troops to a police action). Fifty years later, Li Jianfeng's heir, Li Zhiwen, came to Nortenmark to collect on his contract.

He had not imagined that fifty years' passage and the introduction of trade goods could have nearly toppled the entire Nortenmarker social structure.

The Diversion: Li Zhiwen was lured into the neighboring kingdom by an unscrupulous guild and given a magical forgetfulness. He forgot his trade mission and prior contract, and lived in obscurity in the capital city's botanical gardens, brewing various elixirs and poisons and antidotes. The PCs eventually came back to the Principality, assassinated a foreign trader who was secretly growing a drug crop, and brought Li Zhiwen (since Romanized to "Leadger Wynn") back to Nortenmark.

Li Zhiwen has still not regained his memories, but the PCs have a possible side quest to help him. They serve the guild that sapped his memory, and they may have a side quest to restore certain items to his possession, including a silk brocade robe. The robe is an ancestral robe, embroidered with scenes and tales of key events in the past. The most recent scenes, which Li Zhiwen himself embroidered prior to losing his memory, reveals that his trade mission was one of considerable urgency to prop up his homeland's crumbling kingdom against its other Eastern rivals. The one trade good of any note that made it back home was the opium crop that was tested in the Principality, and that merely hastened the demise of his kingdom's ruling class.

If the PCs give this robe to Li Zhiwen, they will create an implacable enemy against their own mother organization (although he will honor their honesty in restoring his memory and spare them from any retribution). If the PCs do not give him this robe, Li Zhiwen retains a largely symbolic sinecure in the Nortenmark trading scene, never quite grasping the significance of his trade mission and never knowing of the collapse of his homeland back East.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I would think that sailing all the way around the large continent of Africa would still be quite slow and expensive jacking up prices and eating profits.

From what I've read, before the emergence of steam powered vehicles, ocean-going transportation cost was about 1/25 that of overland. Wikipedia estimates the overland distance for the Silk Road at 4000 miles; if you multiply that by 25 you get 100,000 miles, which would be good for two or three planetary circumnavigations.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

From what I've read, before the emergence of steam powered vehicles, ocean-going transportation cost was about 1/25 that of overland. Wikipedia estimates the overland distance for the Silk Road at 4000 miles; if you multiply that by 25 you get 100,000 miles, which would be good for two or three planetary circumnavigations.

Steam was hampered for a long time because of the need to stop to refuel. The China Trade wasn't taken over by steam until late in the 1800's.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Steam was hampered for a long time because of the need to stop to refuel. The China Trade wasn't taken over by steam until late in the 1800's.

Yes, but the point that I had in mind was that railroads made overland travel substantially cheaper per ton-mile.

[FireTigeris]

Hum no mention of the cheaper Irish slaves in the US... I'd thought that would have come up.

[mindstalk]

Originally Posted by malloyd

As for what Europe supplied China, the bulk of the value was usually silver. European states being superstitiously attached to their silver (and in fairness this was less silly in the days before anybody understood monetary policy well enough to manage a fiat currency) they were always looking for an alternative, but by and large didn't find one until they hit on opium.

The Spanish hit on an 'alternative': use someone else's silver. Plausibly half the silver of Peru got sent to China to pay for imports (which did not go around Africa. They went across the Pacific, got shipped overland across Mexico, and then sailed to Spain. And silk shipped that way was *still* cheaper than domestic Spanish production.) The other half went to Spain, to prove that you could cause massive inflation even without paper money.

(According to Charles Mann in 1493, the Song Dynasty invented paper money but didn't get to invent naive hyperinflation because the Mongols conquered them first, so the Yuan dynasty got to invent instead. The Ming dynasty went back to copper cash, but for some reason new emperors kept invalidating their predecessor's money, so merchants resorted to silver in self defense. Enter the Spanish, with lots of stolen silver. Amusing me traveler tipping point: teach the Ming basic monetary theory, so that Europeans have no major 'exports' until opium and brute force.)