the.com/trade
The oldest human technology: turning what you have into what you want without violence.
means To exchange goods, services, or money with someone — or the business or skill by which someone makes a living.
from Trade comes from Middle Low German 'trade' meaning a track or course — the path a person treads. It's a cousin of the English word 'tread,' and it first meant a worn route or a way of going. From the idea of a habitual path came the sense of a regular line of work, and from there the buying, selling, and swapping we mean today. So the merchant's 'trade' is, quite literally, the road they walk again and again.
- older than money
- Barter predates coins by tens of thousands of years
- silk road
- A 4,000-mile network moving silk, ideas, and plagues
- comparative advantage
- Even worse-at-everything nations still profit by specializing
- spice wars
- Nutmeg once sparked colonial empires and bloody monopolies
- trade winds
- Named for ships, not commerce — old meaning was course
silk road — overland trade routes connecting china to mediterranean from 130 bce through 1400s ce
triangular trade — transatlantic commerce: europe to africa to americas to europe, 16th-19th centuries
hanseatic league — merchant confederation of baltic and north sea cities controlling trade from 1200s-1600s