Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next. From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in … in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts.
Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.
Also available: The New Silk Roads, a timely exploration of the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.
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A bit all over the landscape but interesting.
This book is a delight shedding a new light on world history by focusing on the great pathways of the trade routes which were the pathways of commerce as well as cultural and human interaction throughout the time humans have occupied planet Earth. Exceptional!
This is a must for understanding how civilizations interfaced and cultures spread.
filling in gaps in my learning history. Facinating.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World vast terrain from the early days of Mesopotamia to the fall of the Twin Towers. In between we find the rise of Islam, the Great Crusades, Mongols, Vikings, Huns and Genghis Khan, to say nothing of war and oil, religious conflict and conquest, and, of course, trade. This is a deep and dense tome, an academic work in the truest sense, perhaps not best suited for the casual reader. I was most interested in the trade aspect of Frankopan’s work, but found the book more focused on the highest level of globalization than on the trade that underpins it.
Ultimately, I believe that Frankopan is attempting to convey a sense of the Silk Roads – and trade more broadly – as a means of exchanging not only goods and currencies, but everything from religions, cultures, and ideas, to disease. Ostensibly, the book’s focus is trade, but by Frankopan treated trade as the vehicle for everything else, such that it’s less a history of Central Asia and the Middle East as a trade hub and more about how it’s role as a hub influenced geopolitics and culture, for example. The high water mark for trade comes relatively early, in my opinion, specifically when Frankopan writes that the Taj Mahal represents “globalized international trade that brought such wealth to [Shah Jahan] that he was able to contemplate this extraordinary gesture to his beloved spouse.” (p. 231). Nearly 300 pages remained.
In the end, I came away feeling that Frankopan had attempted to do too much. Any one of these topics is a book (or books!) unto itself. See Desert Queen, The Orientalist, A Splendid Exchange, Where the West Ends, or Hero, just for starters. Which is perhaps to say that I read too much and too widely (is there such a thing?), or at a minimum that most readers will not have already delved so deeply into this topic.
Perhaps more disconcertingly, though, I had the nagging sense that Frankopan was angry with history, Europe in particular. I could not help but feel that any crime perpetrated by Europeans was trumped up, while those committed by Easterners were somehow minimized. This sentiment crystallized for me toward the end of the book when Frankopan wrote, “…typified by the European Union being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012: how wonderful that Europe, which had been responsible for almost continuous warfare not just in its own continent but across the world for centuries, had managed to avoid conflict for several decades.” (p. 383). Yet, as anyone who has read much on world history can attest, warfare has been one of the constants since time immemorial. I don’t disagree that Europe was a mess. I’m just not convinced it was that much messier than the rest of the world. I should note, too, that I’m not the only one he noticed this. S. Frederick Starr wrote in his review for the Washington Post that “in chapter after chapter, Europeans emerge as the villains. … [Frankopan] concludes that “Europe’s distinctive character as more aggressive, more unstable, and less peace-minded than other parts of the world now paid off.”” Indeed.
Complaints aside, Frankopan does an excellent job of filling in the gaps and connecting the dots. Even more than Hero or Desert Queen, Silk Roads provides comprehensive historical background on the West’s interaction with and interference in the Middle East and Central Asia for the past several centuries. Scanning headlines today, it’s not easy to understand intuitively how certain countries have become allies or enemies; by revisiting every slight and slander for the last millennium, Frankopan allows his reader to understand these historical ties and their on-going impacts.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2016/05/the-silk-roads-new-history-of-world.html)
An outstanding exploration of the importance of the Silk Road in an expanded definition in world history.
an insight to the Middle East through a trade perspective. Shows history from an angle usually not approached and an insight of why the problems of today.