Trade: The Rise Of The Roman Empire

Throughout history, trade has been the most important contribution to an empire by helping it grow in economy and land. No empire could thrive or grow without have any sort of trade going on within it or with other empires. Every empire had something different to trade with other as in spices, metals, or even ideas/knowledge of the religion they believed in. Trade was the base of every empire due to the importance of having the constant flow of raw materials or any other things coming in, with the Silk Road being one of the most important trade routes. With the Silk Road: silk, spices, raw materials, paper, and metals were being traded from China to Europe and even to Africa. Trade and conquering other lands is what helped the Roman Empire
Soon enough the whole empire fell into chaos with people ignoring the laws and doing whatever they wanted, causing a dark age throughout the entire empire. The only institution to survive the chaotic Roman Empire was the Catholic Church, still standing after the empire fell. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the land broke up into pieces, creating basically modern Europe today. Back then it was Feudal Europe though, because there was no central government to run everything and each piece of land had their own lords/people. Trade was then cut off from other empire’s due to the feudal age of Europe and that caused the economy not to be at its greatest. Any sort of trade was all within the manor or area, there wasn’t any trade outside of it or with other manors. With all that, the Catholic Church was the only real institution to have power, other than kings/nobles because even the church chose who they wanted as king or who they wanted banished from their land. The church had so much power that they started the first Crusade and all the rest after that to capture the holy land
Mansa Musa was a generous emperor giving away gold to the poor while having all his men dressed in fine silk and having good behavior, showing everyone how wealthy his people were. With the pilgrimage to Mecca and showing how wealthy the empire was, it extremely encouraged trade to Africa. People from Europe, Middle East and China started trading more with Africa on land and sea and mostly on the Silk Road. Mansa Musa really influenced trade to start flowing towards Africa, causing their empire to grow while Timbuktu became a very important commercial city. It had connections with Egypt and any other important trade centers in North