Long-Distance Trade in the Ancient World: A Network History

This book presents a novel perspective on long-distance trade in the ancient world that integrates network theory and environmental analysis into our understandings of production, movement and exchange in the so-called Long Classical Millennium (c.300 BCE – 900 BCE).

This approach departs from traditional Eurocentric perspectives that have tended to focus primarily on empires and imperial agency as the dominant analytical category, arguing instead that environmental factors played a much greater role in influencing the formation of trade routes during this period. Written in an accessible style, chapters seek to integrate and synthesise recent developments from global history, network studies, economic history and critical geography, offering new ways for scholars to examine the growth of this proto-globalised economic system. By examining the networks of people, places, animals, and things that came together in order to connect ancient Africa and Eurasia, the author de-centers any one group or region to instead foreground the environmental dynamics of ancient trade. This book will be a fascinating resource for scholars and students of ancient and global history, as well as ancient economic and environmental historians, archaeologists, and more.

Eivind Heldaas Seland is Professor of Ancient History and Premodern Global History at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has published many journal articles and written and edited several books on the ancient world, with research interests spanning across trade, the environment, network theory and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding global premodern history.