Global Trade in the Early Medieval World: The Movement of Wealth, Spice and Medicine, 700-1100

Exploring the movement of peoples, perfumes, and spices across vast distances in this period of medieval history across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, this book examines the role of Arab merchants in trade between and among the Caliphal and Carolingian elites.

The study of the trade in perfumes and spices highlights the relationship between the South Asian subcontinent and the Caliphate. It is shown that the societies involved in this intercontinental maritime trade intermingled through the demand for goods and products which allowed for the transmission of ideas and learning. Crucially, the Eurasian end of these trading routes were tapping into pre- existing networks of trade as there is evidence that there were links of trade between East Asia and the near and Middle East as early as the seventh century B.H./ first century A.D. Thus, the book challenges the Eurocentric worldview which fails to take into account that the Europeans in the late medieval period came into a pre- existing trading network.

This book will be of interest to readers in economic history as well as the history of trade, globalisation, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Medieval world.

Toslima Khatun is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at King’s College London specialising in the politics around pandemics and public health. She has a dual discipline of History and Public Health Policy. She has a Masters in medieval history and a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies focusing on the legacies of globalisation and what that has meant for the known world. Her other works include Making Health Public, A Manifesto for a New Social Contract where she outlines how we need to learn from the past.