Earlier states in the territory of modern Mongolia created a favourable condition for cultural interactions between the East and the West. Horse messenger service, which was developed by the nomad, and caravan transportation also contribute to such interaction.

The business of trade was demanding on the merchants who underwent the journey, whether by land or sea. Over land, the nature of the terrain and its suitability for travel on camel or horseback determined the trajectory of passing traders. By sea, developments were continually being made to ships and to the instruments used for navigation, and all merchants took measures to accurately record the merchandise they carried with them. 

From the Renaissance onwards, European countries began to engage themselves more actively in trade. Technological advances permitted European sailors to navigate new routes to the east, and the advent of the Industrial Revolution accelerated this process.  By the mid-nineteenth century, European goods were being imported into China and Japan. 

The Spice Routes are the vast web of trading networks that connect the Far East with the Mediterranean, covering more than 15,000 kilometers of land and sea travel. Traders bought and sold goods from port to port, and some of the most valuable and desirable on the market were spices, emanating originally from Indonesia, southern China, India, Sri Lanka, and in particular, the Spice Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and on demand throughout Asia and Europe. 

The breakthrough by the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, to the East in 1499 opened up for the first time the prospect of European control of the Silk and Spice Routes. Their established hegemony over the trade routes was not challenged until the end of the sixteenth century, when Dutch and English forces became a threat.

Trade covered progressively greater distances as technologies became more advanced, allowing merchants to travel not only locally but across great stretches of land and sea. The Malay Peninsula and the Indonesia Archipelago lie between the Indian Ocean and the China Seas, and therefore have always been extremely important points along the trade routes.

The development of empires was closely linked to the control of international trade. Commerce around the Mediterranean in the first millennium BC was dominated by the Greeks – but in his efforts to extend his empire, Alexander the Great made advances to take control of the Indian trade too. A similar pattern is seen in the emergence of the Roman Empire, which had access to the eastern market through Egypt, and at the same time, the Chinese empire was opening trade routes to the west to strengthen its own power. 

European colonial empires were at their peak in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and this had important consequences for the trade routes under their control. Yet by the mid-twentieth century, the balance of political power had shifted once again.

Traders by land had to contend with the hardships and dangers inherent in crossing the Central Asian macro-region on foot; not least, those of political instability.

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave trade along Central Asian routes a new impetus. Changing political contexts altered the nature of goods produced and marketed, and western culture began to influence the eastern trading countries.  Yet craftsmen and artisans have continued to produce goods that reflect their cultural traditions and heritage.