Research Paper on:
Economy and Trade of Southeast Asia

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
spanning 4000 miles which was the main route by which goods and information were transported between China, India, the near East and Europe in the period between 500 BC and  1500 AD. Despite its name, there was traffic in much more than silk itself during this period: various commercial products as well as knowledge, religious belief systems and skills were  exchanged. Because of this interchange, there was a constant interaction between Europe and Asia which influenced the culture and history of both. In the late thirteenth century, the establishment of  the Yuan Dynasty unified China at the same time as the first travellers from Europe arrived, and hence initiated relationships between east and west. By the fourteenth century, maritime routes  had become firmly established to the detriment of overland routes, which were perceived as longer, more costly and harder than the sea trading routes.  Consequently, the Silk Road gradually diminished in importance, and the towns along its length disappeared; sea trade took a greater  precedence and silk manufacture had, in any case, begun in Europe. However, during the period when the Silk Road was pre-eminent as a trading route, there were other skills, knowledge  and information which found their way from east to west and vice versa: the early spread of Buddhism, for example, was a result of traffic between the two cultures along  the silk trading routes. For centuries, there was a perception on the part of Western nations that the Orient was exotic, alien and unfamiliar: although there was communication between the  two cultures, the expansionism and colonialist aspirations of the West meant that from a European point of view, the Orient was regarded as mysterious and to some extent culturally inaccessible: