They say and it has been proven, many times over, that history ryhmes. The world works in cycles – time, climate, wars, even financial markets. Nomads know when to move from one area to another and farmers know when to plant seeds and when not to and traders know when some products are available and when they are not. Information has always been gathered by people to be able to determine what to expect in an upcoming period. Is this what is coming in the talk of so many corridors lately?
In the middle ages there was, what is known today as, the age of exploration and discovery and that was when Atlantic Europeans, the Portuguese, and Spain, who had most contact with North Africa and West Asia felt they needed to explore new avenues to have access to the east, and most especially Cathay (China) and India, two developed economies of the time that were producing goods that were badly needed in Europe or by the new taste of those Europeans – silk, cotton clothes, and spices.
The Venetians, the Ottoman Turks and the vast Mongol Empire of Central Asia, which was breaking down at the time, stood in the way. This pushed many a trader, a king and a learned person of Atlantic Europe to think of new routes to reach those old destinations, without going through what seemed to them major and costly stumbling blocks.
It is how the Portuguese first started the age of exploration sailing along the Western coast of Africa and finally arriving in the east and the Spanish moved westwards to stumble on the Americas, lands and peoples that were unknown to them at the time.
Fast forward to the contemporary age and world, and the story seems to being repeated. It appears to be about a six-hundred-year cycle and we are back again in exploring new commercial routes to the same eastern destinations by Europeans without going through West Asia.
This time, it is the seemingly endless turmoil and uncertainty surrounding the traditional sea route of the Suez Canal/Indian Ocean water way, which passes in front of the Horn of Africa States region and hence the reason for this........