Until the second century B.C., silk remained an article known to the Chinese alone. But in that century an event occurred which was of immense importance for East and West alike. At that time certain fierce tribes of nomads in Mongolia were making constant attacks upon the Chinese. These nomads were the same tribes of Huns who later were driven west by the Chinese and invaded Europe. In order to meet these attacks from the Huns, a diplomatic mission, headed by a man named Chang Ch'ien, was sent forth by the Chinese Emperor in the year 138 B.C. The mission sought to cross the arid wastes of Turkestan, in order to find and make an alliance with a certain friendly tribe in the west. The Chinese thought that this alliance might help to defeat the Hun raiders.
Soon after leaving China, Chang Ch'ien and his band of a hundred men were captured by the very Huns against whom his mission was directed. For ten long years he was held prisoner. Then, making his escape, he pushed dauntlessly westward once more. Finally he reached what was then Bactria, a country in the extreme west of Turkestan, where he found the tribe that he had been sent to visit. They treated him with friendship, but showed no desire to join an alliance against the dreaded Huns. So Chang Ch'ien retraced his steps, only to suffer the misfortune of again falling a prisoner to the enemies. This time, however, he succeeded in escaping after a single year of captivity. In 126 B.C., twelve years after his departure, he returned to the Chinese capital, accompanied by but one of the hundred men who had started with him.
Chang Ch'ien's mission was a failure from a diplomatic point of view. But he brought back with him two important plants of western Asiatic origin. One was alfalfa, which was to prove of the greatest value to the Chinese as food for the horses used in their later military campaigns against the Huns. The other was the grape, which has ever since been one of China's favorite fruits.
Most important of all, however, Chang Ch'ien gave to the Chinese their first accurate knowledge of the expanses of Central Asia. Following his advice, they launched a series of military campaigns which during the next century broke the power of the Huns. Finally all of Turkestan was brought under Chinese rule. Across the desert the Chinese conquerors laid out a series of garrison posts. Thus, well before the birth of Christ, a trade route was established which crossed Turkestan from China, passed through Persian territory, and reached the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. From there ships could continue the journey to Rome itself. Thus were Rome and China, then the two most powerful empires in the world, linked by trade.
The most important product sent by China over this route to Rome was silk. Because of its high value and light weight, silk was ideal freight for the caravan trains of the long, long road. So much silk was carried over this route that it has since been commonly known as the great Silk Road.
In return for silk, the Roman Empire sent to the Chinese precious stones, wool textiles, asbestos, and — of greatest importance from a cultural point of view — glass, which is of western Asiatic origin. Yet none of these products could balance in value the precious silk. Woven into a semitransparent gauze, silk became the fashion among the ladies of Rome. In some periods of history silk was literally worth its weight in gold by the time it reached its destination. In fact, the Romans used so much silk and other Asiatic luxuries that during the first two centuries A.D. Rome suffered an adverse trade balance with Asiatic countries estimated to equal no less than half a billion United States dollars. One writer, indeed, has even gone so far as to suggest that this unfavorable trade balance was one important cause for the downfall of the Roman Empire.
After the collapse of Rome in A.D. 476, the silk trade was continued with Byzantium (Constantinople), the leading center of European civilization during the Middle Ages. During all this time, however, Europeans had no clear idea of how silk was produced. The Roman poet, Virgil (70-19 B.C.), for example, described silk as some kind of a vegetable product that is combed from trees. The Chinese, we may be sure, jealously guarded the methods of making silk. It was a valuable "trade secret."
About the middle of the sixth century, however, some monks arrived in Constantinople from the East, bearing the startling news that silk was not "combed from trees," but was produced by caterpillars. With the Byzantine Emperor's encouragement they were sent eastward once more to bring back the secret of silk. Some time between the years 552 and 554, they returned triumphantly to Constantinople, bringing with them some precious silkworm eggs which they had smuggled out of the country inside a bamboo cane. From these few eggs are descended the countless millions of silkworms that have since been grown in Europe.
Today, most European silk is made in Italy and France. The Far East, however, continues to produce the vast bulk of the world's supply. In recent decades Japan, using improved methods of large-scale production, has taken the lead from China in the manufacture of silk. Some of the silk produced in China, nevertheless, retains the high qualities of that produced in former times. When peace comes and China recovers from the ravages of war, it is quite possible that silk may again become one of her leading exports.
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