camel commerce to e commerce part two ,The Arab Lateen Sail and Chinese Rudder Pg 69-

THE ARAB LATEEN SAIL AND CHINESE RUDDER

THE ARAB LATEEN SAIL AND CHINESE RUDDERPage 69 to onwardM shahjahanAfter crusade war when soldiers came back to west they have devloped their taste for spices and asian arabian products which increase demand for these itmesIn 1104, Venice createdits first public shipyard, the most modern galley. Unlike Indian who still used to navigate with moonsoon or gazing at stars, European ships had been restricted as well due to fog Lateen and rudderEuropeans now adopted theArab lateen saila triangular sail fitted to a mast and a movable boom And also adopted from the Chinese the use of the sternpost rudder, which enabled them to steer ships safely to portcompassEurope, shipwrights could construct three-masted sailing shipsequippedwith square, lateen, and staysailsto be used for ocean shipping.45 Whatever its origin,the compass, introduced to Europe in the late thirteenth century, made voyagessafer and doubled the volume of trading as ships could now make two voyagesa year from Mediterranean ports to the English Channel and the LevantChinese ship tech.Chinese shipbuilders, too, made impressive advances. By the time Marco Polo sailed from China to India in 1292, Chinese-made ships were large enough to carry 1,520 to 1,860 tons and had multiple decks with private cabinsBut chinese trade did not get benefit from this tech.Together they effective..Together with the use of the combination of lateen and square sail, and the sternpost rudder, the compass altered the sailing schedule almost immediately. . . . With the aid of the compass, ships could sail under cloudy skies by day and night. As a result crew got permanent jobs voyages get double and expenses remain half.THE DEVIL TAKE YOU, WHAT BROUGHTYOU HERE?Bypassing muslims---finding new routesIn the fifteenth century, Portugals Prince Henry the Navigator emerged as a pioneer in the search for a new route to Asia around Africa

In 1497 King Manuel I of Portugal authorizedVasco da Gamas voyage to India in search of spices. Seeing da Gamasfirst messenger on shore in Calicut, a Muslim merchant from Tunis asked himin Spanish, The devil take you, what brought you here? His succinct reply:We came to look for Christians and spices.So true asBetween 1500 and 1634, Philip D. Curtin estimates, 28 percent of all ships that set out from Portugal bound for India were lost at sea. In their first voyages to Asia, da Gama and Cabral lost half their crew and more than half of their ships. But the lure of high profit kept the ships comingspecializationThe Portuguese establishment of beachheads in Goa in India, Melaka inMalaysia, and Macao in China in the sixteenth century created the frameworkof truly global trading. The availability of regular shipping to the East led to therise of specializationfrom Chinese porcelain to Indian diamondsDiamond tradeWestern customers used book order for diamond while depositing cash with merchant who travelled to goa india and came back after a year or two if all other things remain the same other wise not.CoffeeThe arrival of Portuguese and Dutch traders in the Arabian Sea opened thedoor for another specialty trade, coffee. Early in the eighteenth century, French trader Jean de la Roque led the first French ship around the Cape of Good Hope to Aden and Mocha. get coffee beans from the source rather than at a high price from Turkish, Dutch, or English middlemen. His trip took two and half years to complete, but the profit he made on six hundred tons of coffee was worth his troubleDutch contribution in ocean tradeBy the late sixteenth century, the Dutch had developed a cheap, general-purpose cargo vessel known as the fluyt, or flyboatOf 200-300 tons weight ..less crew -- and suitable for pirate and dangerous ocean voyages.Dutch Vs British To catch up with the Dutch, who dominated shipping, the British British government financed and encouraged research into astronomy and terrestrial magnetism. That investment paid off with many innovations, especially theproduction of the first reliable maritime chronometer, which told navigators where they were in the open sea.Petroleum discoveryEven before Panama Canal was opened, another idea to boost shipping came from the unexpected discovery of petroleum in PennsylvaniaThe first patent to refine this bounty of nature for other uses was granted by the British ruler in 1694 to three subjects who had found a way to extract and make great quantities of pitch, tarr, and oyle out of a sort of stone. Heavy oil that could be refined into petroleum was discovered by Edwin Laurentine Drake in 1859 when a well-drilling technique hehad developed gushed forth heavy crude oil in Pennsylvania.combustion engine1970sWithin half a century the internal combustion engine was invented, and by the 1970s giant oil tankers running on diesel fuel began lowering the cost of carrying crude and the cost of all freight.A further drop to transportation costs was brought about by a North Carolina trucking entrepreneur named Malcolm McLean. His plan to put cargo laden truck trailers on steamships led to the creation of the worlds first container ship, the Ideal-X.Ideal -xOn 26 April 1956, the Ideal-X was packed withfifty-eight containers in just eight hours, cutting the cost of freight by over 97 percent, to 15.8 cents a ton.wide-bodied Boeing 747Jumbo Jet in 1970The maximum gain in speed, of course, came with the beginning of airfreight, the cost of which declined dramatically between the 1950s and 1980s.Especially significant was the introduction of the wide-bodied Boeing 747Jumbo Jet in 1970, a cargo version of which began flying soon thereafterFROM GOLD COINS TO PAYPALFaster and larger ships and aircraft were not the only factors in the gatheringspeed of delivery. The evolving medium of exchangefrom bartering to cowries and from precious metals and letters promising gold and silver to plasticcredit cardshas simplified and standardized transactions and boostedtrade.FROM CLAY TABLET TO THE INTERNETOne major problem in buying and selling goods over long distances was thedifficulty of communications. How could traders stay in touch with their tradingpartners and keep track of what is being bought and sold? In 5000 bce theSumerians, who lived in what is now Iraq, found a solution by inventing writing.A trader would use a small clay tablet and a cleft stick to write down thenumbers of cattle being sold. The partner at the other end would break the claycontainer to read the tablet and verify the number of animals that had been delivered.The telecommunications and transportation revolutions would give tradinga huge boost as the traditional tariff barriers began coming down.