Map of Wealth
Hubs of trade routes, homelands of banking, cities where economics was born — from Chang’an to Venice, from Florence to Wall Street. Tap a marker for the story, tap the legend to filter.
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Trade Routes & Banking
The Birth of Economics
Modern Finance
The coastline data is shared with "History of Technology" (Natural Earth, longitude -130° to 145°, latitude 10° to 72°), covering the Silk Road, Europe, China, and North America; place coordinates use standard identifications of the figures’ main places of activity. A few figures (such as the pseudonymous Satoshi) have no definite location and are not on the map, though they still appear in the cards and graph.
Places on this map
Chang’an
The Han capital, the eastern starting point of the Silk Road. From here Zhang Qian "pierced open" the Western Regions; thereafter caravans came and went along this road for a thousand years, carrying silk and porcelain west and bringing grapes and fine horses east, joining the two worlds of East and West into a single web of trade for the first time.
Connected figures: Zhang Qian
Linzi
Capital of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn period. Here the famed chancellor Guan Zhong served Duke Huan of Qi, regulating prices and currency by the "art of light and heavy" and pioneering state salt-and-iron monopolies — one of the earliest systematic practices of governing by economic means, centuries ahead of comparable Western thought.
Connected figures: Guan Zhong
Kaifeng
Capital of the Northern Song. Here Wang Anshi pushed through the "Xining Reforms," using the Young Shoots Law, the Market Exchange Law, and more to have the state actively step into the economy — a "big government" experiment nearly a thousand years ago, whose success or failure is argued to this day.
Connected figures: Wang Anshi
Taicang (Liujiagang)
The anchorage from which Zheng He’s fleet set sail on the seven voyages to the Western Ocean. Hundreds of treasure ships and over twenty thousand men set out from here, reaching as far as the east coast of Africa and building a China-centered tribute-trade network — only to stop abruptly after its glory, as China turned and shut the door to the age of the ocean.
Connected figures: Zheng He
Venice
The trading republic of the medieval Mediterranean, home of Marco Polo. He traveled east along the Silk Road, reportedly living seventeen years in Yuan-dynasty China, and on his return dictated The Travels of Marco Polo, carving into the European imagination an East rich beyond belief.
Connected figures: Marco Polo
Florence
The city of the Renaissance, base of the Medici banking family. Rich as a state through double-entry bookkeeping and foreign branches, they poured vast wealth generously into art — Leonardo and Michelangelo both enjoyed their patronage. It was the ledgers of bankers that indirectly upheld the whole Renaissance.
Connected figures: The Medici
Augsburg
A financial center of Germany, seat of the Fugger family. Jacob Fugger became one of the "richest people in history" through mining and credit, and even funded Charles V to bribe the prince-electors into the imperial throne — the power of finance for the first time so nakedly overriding that of kings.
Connected figures: Jacob Fugger
Edinburgh
The center of the Scottish Enlightenment, birthplace and resting place of Adam Smith, the "father of economics." It was on this fertile soil of thought that he wrote The Wealth of Nations, using a single pin to explain the miracle of the division of labor, and set down the first charter of free-market economics.
Connected figures: Adam Smith
London
The world’s economic center in the age of the Industrial Revolution. Here Ricardo and Malthus debated fiercely over trade and population, and Keynes prescribed "government intervention" for the Great Depression; while the exiled Marx, in the reading room of the British Museum, wrote his critique of capitalism, Capital.
Connected figures: David Ricardo · Thomas Malthus · John Maynard Keynes · Karl Marx
Vienna
The birthplace of the Austrian School. Both Hayek and Schumpeter grew from this soil of thought: one put forward "creative destruction," seeing how innovation drives capitalism; the other defended market prices as an irreplaceable information system, warning that central planning is doomed to fail.
Connected figures: Friedrich Hayek · Joseph Schumpeter
Frankfurt
The birthplace of the Rothschild family. From here the elder Rothschild sent his five sons to the great cities of Europe, building a family banking network spanning the continent and becoming the chief creditors of nineteenth-century governments — turning finance into a force that could sway history.
Connected figures: The Rothschilds
New York (Wall Street)
The world center of modern finance. Here Morgan consolidated American industry and single-handedly played "central bank" in the panic of 1907; here Rockefeller’s oil empire rose and fell; and here Graham turned investing into a disciplined study, writing the bible of value investing.
Connected figures: J. P. Morgan · John D. Rockefeller · Benjamin Graham
Omaha
The hometown and base of the "Oracle," Warren Buffett. He has scarcely left this small Midwestern city all his life, building the near-bankrupt Berkshire into a vast investment empire from here, practicing value investing and the power of compounding for a lifetime — known as the "Oracle of Omaha."
Connected figures: Warren Buffett
Chicago
The base of the Chicago School. Here Friedman revived monetarism and raised the banner of the free market, rising to fame after Keynesianism floundered in the stagflation of the 1970s, and profoundly influencing the economic policy of the Reagan and Thatcher era.
Connected figures: Milton Friedman