Camel Caravans as a Mode of Production in Postclassical Afro-Eurasia. An Interview with Richard W. Bulliet

Abstract

Objective/Context: This interview discusses the expansion of the camel caravan trade between roughly the sixth and sixteenth centuries. Wheeled transportation—used in West Asia during the Roman and Sasanid periods—basically disappeared around 500 CE, when camel caravans took over the transport business. Since the domestication of camels in Southern Arabia, sometime between 4000 and 3000 bce, and its adaptation over centuries to carrying loads in the sparsely vegetated desert, the network of camel caravan activity gradually extended way beyond its original center. The caravan system increasingly expanded into many areas of West and Central Asia, North Africa, North India, North-West China, and, to some extent, even parts of “Islamicate” Europe (Andalusia and Sicily). Indeed, camel caravans became the most extensive network of overland transportation the world had seen before the rise of railroad transportation. Originality: In this interview, Richard W. Bulliet discusses how camel caravans replaced wheeled transport in the “Middle East” and how the caravan system restructured many facets of socio-economic and political life in the Arid Zone between approximately 500 and 1500 ce. Conclusion: The depth of this restructuring, he argues, can be compared to changes in the mode of production commonly observed by economic historians elsewhere, including those associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism

Keywords

• camel caravan trade
• mercantile capitalism
• “middle east”
• mode of production
• transportation