Why Did Timbuktu Fail

The entire earth boast 21 cities with populations over 10 million. Within these cities many important decisions are made daily. These actions include billion dollar transactions, life changing inventions, and thousands of various goods are traded.The prosperity of an area is judged on the amount of inhabitants within the area, along with the wealthiness of the city. However if a city fails to have a strong central government, enough money to fulfill the city 's needs, and enough inhabitants, then a city will experience a downfall. Timbuktu was once a prosperous city due to its position as a world trade power. However the decline of this once prosperous city was due to the switch in trade routes that focused on coastal cities along with Moroccan

One reason for the downfall of Timbuktu was the European switch of trade routes from on foot, to over water. During Timbuktu 's prosperity, many of the European trade routes either went through or ended in Timbuktu. However during this time Europe also began to explore new areas throughout the world. In a map that shows European exploration from 1500-1550, all of the exploration routes are along the coast.(Evidence I) This was bad for the city of Timbuktu because it excluded them from being discovered by Northern European countries. The reason why they were excluded was because the boats were exploring the coasts, while TImbuktu is about 200 miles inland from the coast. The result of this was Northern European countries, missed Timbuktu and its valuable resources. Also these explorations hurt Timbuktu because these European countries found the “New World” which boasted a variety of unheard of goods. The impact of this was trade decreased in Timbuktu because of the new goods that were discovered in the New World. This decrease in trade is also depicted in a map that shows trade routes and goods exchanged following European exploration. In this map, all of the trade routes go from either North/ South America to Europe (Evidence J). Clearly the exploration of the New World, had a profound impact on Timbuktu. Europe used to be TImbuktu 's main source of trade, but after exploration, Europe completely eliminated trade with Timbuktu, and instead got its goods from the New World. This was one of the big reasons for the downfall of Timbuktu because the city lost all of its trade, which resulted in a loss of