Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 29, 19 April 2024
Open
Access | Article
The Sogdian Rise: Revisiting Factors That Contributed to the Success of Sogdian Merchants in Gansu Around 313 C.E.
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Based solely on Sogdian ancient letters II and V, this article reexamines two factors that are commonly supposed to have contributed to the success of Sogdian merchants around 313 A.D. and then further explores certain commercial characteristics of Sogdian traders at that time. While scholars list Xiongnu-China war and the Sogdian post system as two vital factors that led to Sogdian traders’ success, Sogdian merchants in Gansu at that time consider Xiongnu-China war as a disaster, and they didn’t completely trust the their own post system according to their letters. These factors were not thought of as being crucial to the success of these Sogdian merchants by themselves. Based on their commercial behaviors in the letters, Sogdian merchants seem to be neither open nor good at grasping business opportunities. While these two characteristics seem to have been considered key determinants of mercantile success since ancient times, Sogdian merchants were still able to succeed in their business without outstanding abilities in these two fields. Therefore, exploring factors that truly contributed to the success of Sogdian merchants may provide a new insight into commerce in the old days. Besides, the lessons drawn from the experiences of Sogdian merchants may be used for reference by people who wish to gain commercial success today.
Keywords
Sogdian merchants, Xiongnu-China war, Sogdian post system, Sogdian traders’ characteristics
References
1. Sima, Qian. Records of the Grand Historian of China. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.
2. Vaissière, Étienne de la. Sogdian Traders: A History. Translated by James Ward. Boston: Brill Academic Pub, 2005.
3. Wei, shou. Wei shu. Shanghai: China Publishing House, 1997.
4. Nanai-vandak. Sogdian Ancient Letter No. 2. Translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams. London: London University Press, 2004.
5. Fri-khwataw. Sogdian Ancient Letter No. 5. Translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams. London: London University Press, 2004.
6. Rezakhani, Khodadad. “From the Kushans to the Western Turks”. In King of the Seven Climes: A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 C.E.), edited by Touraj Daryaee, 1-236. California: UCI Jordan Center for Persian Studies, 2007.
7. Grenet, Frantz, Nicholas Sims-Williams, and Étienne de la Vaissière. “The Sogdian Ancient Letter V.” In Alexander’s Legacy in the East Studies in Honor of Paul Bernard, edited by Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 91-104. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24049096.
8. Fang, Xuanling. Jin shu. Shanghai: China Publishing House, 1961.
9. Ban, Gu. Han shu. Shanghai: China Publishing House, 2007.
Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).
- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Politics and Socio-Humanities
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-365-4
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-366-1
- Published Date
- 19 April 2024
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/29/20230623
- Copyright
- 19 April 2024
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited