Direct source-to-market shipping threatened ports whose prosperity depended on cargo changing hands along a relay route. Around the African coast and elsewhere, traffic concentrated in major ports while other stopping places lost their commercial role. Some settlements that later appeared to be fishing villages retained architecture from a much larger past. Those buildings reveal how changes in ship range and trading practice reorganized coastal economies.
Notable Point · 16:08-16:52
Direct shipping reshaped port hierarchies
Bypassing relay ports concentrated traffic in major hubs and could reduce formerly important commercial stops to small settlements.