Beginning in the eighth century BCE, city-states such as Corinth, Miletus, and Megara founded colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, driven partly by the search for farmland and partly by commercial opportunity. These colonies became nodes in a trading network that moved olive oil, wine, pottery, and metalwork outward and grain, timber, and metals back to the Greek mainland. Coastal cities developed specialized export industries, such as fine painted pottery, tailored to distant markets. The resulting network tied together a wide arc of the ancient Mediterranean economy under loosely connected but culturally linked city-states.
Relevance to Trade History
Greek colonization and trade established commercial patterns and maritime routes that shaped Mediterranean exchange well into the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Read the full story in our article Mediterranean Commerce in the Ancient World.
Source: World History Encyclopedia — Greek Colonization. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.