Trade
Historically the Ferghana Valley was an important staging-post on the Silk Road for goods and people traveling from China to the Middle East and Europe. After crossing the passes from Kashgar in Xinjiang, traders would have found welcome relief in the fertile abundance of Ferghana, as well as the possibility of purchasing further high-quality silk manufactured in Margilan. The most famous export from the region were the 'blood-sweating' Heavenly Horses which so captured the imagination of the Chinese during the Han dynasty, but in fact these were almost certainly bred on the Steppe, either west of Bukhara or North of Tashkent, and merely brought to Ferghana for sale. In the 19th century, not surprisingly, a considerable trade carried on with Russia; raw cotton, raw silk, tobacco, hides, sheepskins, fruit and cotton and leather goods were exported, and manufactured wares, textiles, tea and sugar were imported and in part re-exported to Kashgaria and Bokhara. The total trade of Ferghana reached an annual value of nearly £3,500,000 in 1911. Nowadays it suffers from the same depression that affects all trade that either originates in or has to pass through Uzbekistan. The only significant international export is cotton, although the Daewoo plant in Andizhan sends cars all over Uzbekistan.
Read more about this topic: Fergana Valley
Famous quotes containing the word trade:
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is there something in trade that dessicates and flattens out, that turns men into dried leaves at the age of forty? Certainly there is. It is not due to trade but to intensity of self- seeking, combined with narrowness of occupation.... Business has destroyed the very knowledge in us of all other natural forces except business.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“A nose, kind sir! Sure, Mother Nature,
With all her freaks, ne’er formed this feature.
If such were mine, I’d try and trade it,
And swear the gods had never made it.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)