8 Ancient Port Cities that Controlled Global Trade

From WorldAtlas

Long before Venice, Genoa, or the Hanseatic League, a network of ancient port cities ran the global economy. They moved Egyptian grain to Italy, Indian pepper to Alexandria, Chinese silk to Southeast Asia, and Phoenician purple dye to anyone who could pay for it. Their power did not come only from harbors and monsoon winds; it came from the political institutions that organized maritime trade, the customs systems that taxed it, and the colonial outposts that secured it. The eight ports below all reached their commercial peaks before 500 CE, and together they ran a maritime trade network that stretched across the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea. Their influence on early globalization is the reason historians still talk about a “world economy” two thousand years before the term existed.