1700's Silk Road more important than Shipping

I'm working on a scenario that makes the Silk Road through central Asia the main route for trade in the 18th Century, rather than slacking off as shipping routes took over.

Are there any obvious reasons shipping would fail to take over?

Perhaps the planet is mostly landlocked with insignificant oceans for sea routes, or maybe naval/navigation technology failed to appear.
 
A mostly landlocked world will be so different than ours that OTL won't exist, and it would be almost impossible to prevent the development of naval/navigation technology in Europe - it's just too useful and profitable (far beyond for things like the trade with the East).
 
Perhaps a surviving Mongol Khanate would help, but shippping has the advantage of being capable of moving large quantities of goods over large distances. It's difficult to wave away that advantage.
 
Geologically, if Malaysia is connected with Australia (through Indonesia etc - the way proto-humans came through in the Ice Age), it would severely limit the ability to do shipping routes.
In practice (i.e. no geologic PODs)... no idea. Longer surviving Mongol Empire maybe? If Ogedei Khan survives for a few more years, the Mongols would trample through a large part of Europe, and it would hit two things at the same time - huge Mongol Empire and a Europe taken down a little (so it won't develop the OTL shipping technology quite as early).
 
Perhaps a surviving Mongol Khanate would help, but shippping has the advantage of being capable of moving large quantities of goods over large distances. It's difficult to wave away that advantage.
Pun intended, I'm sure.:p;)

Anyway, the sea route is always going to be more profitable after ships are developed that can make those sorts of long-haul trips regularly, but I think you can slow down the decline of the overland route if it is safe (i.e. few brigands) and controlled by a small number of friendly powers. You probably need to avoid the bad blood between the Islamic world and Europe, so that trade continues apace.
 
Perhaps a surviving Mongol Khanate would help, but shippping has the advantage of being capable of moving large quantities of goods over large distances. It's difficult to wave away that advantage.

Eh, there's more important advantages to the sea route. For example, any goods which make it the whole length of the Silk Road will have changed hands maybe 1-2 dozen times since no merchant travels the whole length of the route - goods are sold from merchant to merchant to merchant before finally reaching Europe. Every item is sold on for a profit for obvious reasons, so the item gets more and more costly the further it gets. With a ship, you go straight from original producer to final seller and skip as much as one or two years of travel and reselling. The mark-up from those years of changing hands meant that items doubled, trebled, perhaps increased in value by 10 or 20 times, and that's a discount that is entirely going to go into the pocket of a sea-based merchant. There's a reason that the sea route was viewed as fantastically valuable beyond all comparison, and this is that reason.
 
I was going to explore the silk road and other withered trade routes having a temporary rebirth in my TL due to all the insanity of my POD.
 

Winnabago

Banned
You could take the Atlantic and fill it with actual sea monsters or crazy storms (excepting well-traversed bits close to Europe/north Africa).

Then there's no other way to get American/Eastern/African wares to Europe other than the Suez.
 
What about Indo-Russian trade? IIRC, that was done mostly through land routes.

Some naval power could easily just skip the middleman and the mountains by sailing.

Maybe if there was a hostile power at seas, or some Indian power resists colonization and becomes friendly with Russia?
 
Some naval power could easily just skip the middleman and the mountains by sailing.

Maybe if there was a hostile power at seas, or some Indian power resists colonization and becomes friendly with Russia?
You could easily butterfly colonization. That's not really an issue. But, it would arguably take much longer for Russia (Or any Russian states) and India (Or any Indian states) to trade through sailing. Another method is to keep Central Asia roughly stable. Suppose the Mughals, Safavids, Uzbegs or Russians manage to keep it under their grips, it would be much easier to trade. And the Urals are just hills.;)
 
You could easily butterfly colonization. That's not really an issue. But, it would arguably take much longer for Russia (Or any Russian states) and India (Or any Indian states) to trade through sailing. Another method is to keep Central Asia roughly stable. Suppose the Mughals, Safavids, Uzbegs or Russians manage to keep it under their grips, it would be much easier to trade. And the Urals are just hills.;)

This is giving me an idea.:)
 
Hm. If no-one *knew* that it was possible to get from Europe to the East by sailing ?

After all, no-one did it before the 15C (or so few that it never caught on).

It would presumably take a lot of coincidences to cause all the early exploration voyages to disappear without trace. But, not anything outside the laws of physics, or, indeed, given the perilous nature of the sea, outside the bounds of possibility.

After a few ships have disappeared , everyone will "know" that it is impossible to sail more than a certain distance from Europe without BadThings happening. Vivid imaginations will readily supply the specifics of the BadThings.

There is always a risk of some innovative Eastern people coming the other way of course.
 
Hm. If no-one *knew* that it was possible to get from Europe to the East by sailing ?

After all, no-one did it before the 15C (or so few that it never caught on).

A history of sailing between the Orient and Europe was long established. It was always a naval route between China and the Persian Gulf up into the Ottoman Empire through modern-day Iraq, though, and for a long time ships weren't really up to the job of sailing all the way between the two points, including of course the massive deviation around India, all in one journey, and basic politics and economics made constant stops for resupply and repair infeasible, so ships only travelled a few hundred miles at a time, leading to a naval version of the trading and retrading of the Silk Road. All of Europe knew it was possible to do the route from centuries earlier, but their problem was that the Ottomans sought to dominate the route and so what few long-distance trading ships Europeans owned before the 14thC were useless. Eventually, when ship technology got good enough to allow for months at sea in rough weather, they finally bit the bullet and started sailing around Africa. They also tried heading in the opposite direction to circumvent the problem entirely. That is, of course, what led to the discovery of America.
 
I seem to recall (though I'm far from sure of the details) that the thing was lots of people knew there was a naval route from the East to the Red Sea and thence to the Mediterranean. But no-one knew what was involved in getting round the bottom of Africa via the Atlantic . Various hardy souls had ventured out beyond the Pillars of Hercules and turned to port , and sailed and sailed and sailed. And either never came back, or returned to report that they sailed (or rowed) for vast distances and never got beyond the African coast . Thus concluding it was impossible, until the Portuguese pushed on that bit further.

Wasn't there also a problem with contrary winds? They had to actually sail west before heading back east ? Or something?

Since the East to Red Sea route was contemporary with the Silk Road one must assume that the various transshipments, markups, bribes etc made it questionably competitive. So the real breakthrough was the longhaul, no break of bulk voyage. Which for many centuries was thought (in Europe, anyway) to be impossible . How, then, to maintain that presumption ?
 
Hm again. The OP specified C18. That's a big ask. For, even if it were possible to discourage attempts to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, sooner or later someone will sail west around Cape Horn, and then circumnavigate the globe, proving the existence of the easterly route. And that is almost certain to be well before 18C.

What if there was a commodity in the East, much prized in the West, which could not be shipped by sea. I've no idea what it might be, but I know some animals could not be transported by sea until modern times. Live bees, perhaps, or insects ? Possessing some wonderful or magical property. It would have to be very special though to make the Silk Road route continue to be profitable.
 
Should be doable to delay it into the late 17th century (not entirely, just as big enough of a thing to kill the Silk Road, derail initial Portuguese efforts, delay later efforts a bit with some bad luck and other issues), but into the 1700's would require a hard hard Europe-screw that'd also hurt the Silk Road.
 
Thanks for all the good feedback! I know it is a big stretch in history. I'm imagining a period of history that is perhaps more other-world, with caravan routes taking the role of the later railroad networks opening up continents to a new lease of industry and trade.

I like the setting of colonial powers taking hold of new lands and economic prospects - but wanted to move away from the old shipping & pirates track to a more land based Age of Enlightenment, with its new ideas about economy and politics.

I understand it might be a case of accepting some sea-trade and focusing on micro economies of clusters of islands and mostly land locked areas full of exotic resources. With just enough retardation of shipping conditions to stop those 1-trip world crossing journeys and break it up into lots of shorter routes that make the land journeys relatively profitable.
 
Top