ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate the global significance of Yunnan and to redraw the map of early Eurasian communications. While utilizing Chinese scholarship, the author supplements it with non-Chinese sources to construct a more comprehensive picture of the Southern Silk Road. The chapter presents a concise description of the road. It focuses on trade items such as horse, silver, and cowry, attempts to demonstrate the global importance of Yunnan by illustrating how Yunnan linked and shaped neighbouring societies. The use of a world-system perspective sheds some light on the ongoing world-system debates and adds a new dimension to our understanding of Eurasian communications. The cowry monetary system in Yunnan and other cultural evidence indicate that Yunnan belonged to the Indian Ocean economy before the Ming period. Before the Mongol conquest, Yunnan generally was independent, although it had been conquered occasionally by China.
