Well, since I am finishing off layover in Singapore I felt that it might be appropriate to write a post that is somewhat uniquely Asian in flavour (th

Silk Road by the Sea

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2020-06-26 12:35:26

Well, since I am finishing off layover in Singapore I felt that it might be appropriate to write a post that is somewhat uniquely Asian in flavour (though at this stage I am unsure if I am actually going to get around to completing it, let alone posting it, before I return to Australia – as it turned out, I didn’t). Anyway, we decided to visit the aquarium on the island of Sentosa, and as some museums are apt to do (though I’m not really sure if you can call it a museum, it is probably more like a zoo for fish, though we don’t call them zoos for fish, we call them aquariums – but I digress) they had a display at the entrance to the aquarium, looking at the various ports of call a ship would visit on its way back from China back in the days of the sailing ships.

The curators referred to this as the Maritime Silk Road, though apparently that also refers to  modern trade route between China and Europe , and scholars refer to it as the  Silk Road by the sea . Honestly, whatever you call it, in the end, it is basically a maritime trade route that allowed merchants to ship goods to and from China, and it was a route that eventually became dominated by the British (who effectively ruled the oceans from around the late 1700s to the mid-twentieth century – one thing that I have realised on my travels to Singapore is how World War II was effectively the catalyst that removed Britain from her position as ruler of the world).

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