TradeRouteDB
106 trade routes across five millennia of commerce. From Silk Road caravans and spice fleets to container lanes, pipelines and fiber cables, trace how goods, people and ideas moved, who controlled the flow, and why routes rise and fall.
Key Routes
Silk Road
Not one road but a shifting web of paths stretching roughly 6,400 kilometers from Chang'an, modern Xian, through the oasis towns o...
Suez Canal
Built 1859 to 1869 under French direction with Egyptian labor and capital, the 193 kilometer channel has no locks. Britain bought ...
Strait of Malacca
More than 90,000 vessels transit each year, several hundred a day, making this the busiest shipping chokepoint and the shortest ro...
Strait of Hormuz
Between Iran and Oman, the usable deep-water lanes are only a few kilometers wide in each direction. Around 17 to 21 million barre...
Panama Canal
The French attempt of 1881 to 1889 collapsed under disease and design errors. The American project succeeded after 1904 because sa...
Trans-Saharan Trade Routes
The camel, adopted across the Sahara in the first centuries CE, made desert crossing routine. Salt from Taghaza and Bilma moved so...
Spice Route
Pepper from the Malabar coast, cinnamon from Sri Lanka and cloves, nutmeg and mace from the Maluku islands reached the Mediterrane...
Tea Horse Road
From the Tang dynasty onward, compressed Pu'er and Ya'an tea traveled by mule caravan from Yunnan and Sichuan across the Hengduan ...
Belt and Road Initiative
Announced as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the initiative bundles infrastructure lending an...