Valerie Hansen (1) (1958–)

Six-word review: First-millennium travel shaped world history.

Extended review:

Like so many others, including, it seems, many scholars, I'd fallen for the popular conception of the fabled Silk Road as a well-beaten thoroughfare traversing Central Asia from coastal China to the Mediterranean, with long trains of pack camels hauling goods for trade across endless reaches of mountain and desert.

In fact, according to Yale professor and researcher Valerie Hansen, caravans tended to be small, show more wholesale trade light, travel limited and local, and the routes inconspicuous but for the natural formations that marked them. If it weren't for the cultural cross-pollination that resulted from migrations of refugees from war and political conflict and the exchanges of gift-bearing envoys from kingdom to kingdom, there would be little of significance to say about the Silk Road.

But those cultural effects were world-changing. From about 200 CE to 1000 CE, the vast land mass extending across the whole breadth of Asia was traversed on foot and on camelback by hundreds of thousands of travelers, carrying knowledge from east to west and from west to east. Language, writing systems, technology, art, and especially religion spread along those pathways. Rulers converted, temples arose or were torn down, new customs supplanted old. Alliances formed and reformed; boundaries were drawn and redrawn. Monks and scholars traveled to study under other masters and examine original sacred documents. The resulting blends of peoples and cultures transformed some of the world's oldest civilizations.

The author cites primary sources, such as records of taxation, travel passes, correspondence, and legal documents, to establish a picture of traffic along the routes of the Silk Road and life in seven oases dotting the way, locations that became urban centers and even capitals of rulers. The well-documented view that emerges may have lost something in romance but seems to have gained in authenticity.

One fact of note: the term "Silk Road" was coined by Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 when he developed maps of the ancient routes as a basis for building a railway line; until then the expression had never been used.

I read this book because Pearl S. Buck's 1948 novel Peony made me curious about how Jews came to establish large communities in China. A search for books about the Silk Road led me to Colin Falconer's (definitely romanticized) 2011 novel Silk Road, which I read in tandem with this evidence-based account of verifiable fact. All three broadened the horizons in my mind across time and space and left me with an appetite for more. show less

A couple of things to know about the title of this book, and how the title relates to historian Valerie Hansen's actual premise and execution here. First, and most importantly, when Hansen says "Globilization," she's not talking about the concept that we think of today, that of, for example, a company setting up organizational shop in one country but building factories in another to take advantage of lower wages. She is really talking about a growing interconnectedness between ever wider show more areas of the world for the purposes of trade, yes, but also the sharing of ideas and innovations. Second, the year 1000 is really used as a sort of central point in time, one that Hansen frequently circles back to, but not one that she slavishly adheres to. She talks, really, about developments over a range of times within a 2- or 3-century time period, from around 900 to around 1200. Finally, the use of the word "explorers" is misleading, because, at least for a Western reader, it puts to mind people in ships or on expeditions intentionally setting out to explore places they'd never been before to see what they could find out. Only a few of the major players in this narrative fit that mold. More often, Hansen is talking about conquerors, merchants and even historians. So all this makes me wonder whether the book title was Hansen's own idea fully or one that her publisher came up with. Well, at any rate, I say all that not by way of a criticism of the book, but more as a way of aligning the expectations any prospective readers.

Basically, what Hansen does in this book is give us a tour around the world, circa 1000, to describe what an observant traveler then might have found, and both going back in time to illuminate how things got that way and then moving forward. What she wants to emphasize is that the world then was much more interconnected, that trade routes, for example, were much more far flung and markets more sophisticated, than we might imagine via a Western view through which we think of parts of the world as being "discovered" in the 15th and 16th centuries. (To Hansen's credit, in my view, she spends very little time making this last point, choosing instead to concentrate on her topic and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions on that score. It is only at the very end of the book that Hansen mentions the European explorers at all.)

Unfortunately, at least for my own experience here, Hansen begins with, perhaps, the least convincing chapter of her "globalization" thesis, that of the Vikings' travels to North America. It's not that there's anything to be doubted about the idea of the Vikings having been there. (I have actually been to the excavated remains of their settlement at the very northern tip of Newfoundland! It's very cool, and they even have a nearby recreation of the small buildings with folks showing how the forge would have worked, etc.) It's more the fact that the Vikings didn't stay very long, and didn't have much successful interaction with the indigenous inhabitants. So, OK, the Vikings figured out how to get to North America, but they weren't adaptable enough, never, for example figuring out how to catch seals and other marine life through the ice, as the locals could. Also, evidence shows that they returned from time to time to harvest lumber. But still, how is a brief, non-lasting, interaction really evidence of globalization?

Things get more convincing, however, when Hansen begins discussing the Mayans' far reaching trade routes from their Yucatan Peninsula base north as far as Arizona and south into South America. The Vikings also come back into the picture when Hansen describes the forays of Scandinavian bands into northeastern Europe. They came to trade with the inhabitants, but because they were fiercer and had better weapons, they were soon forcing tribute from the people they interacted with, essentially demanding protection money. The people were known as the Rus, "a word derived from the Finnish name for Sweden, which means 'to row' or 'the men who row.'"

As Hansen explains it, one of the most important elements of the globalization she writes of is the consolidation of much of Eurasia from fragmented localized religions into large blocks of people (or at least rulers and upper class) into the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Hansen says that this occurred not because the missionaries of those religions were so persuasive, but more for political and economic reasons. Alliances and even trade agreements were more easily made between coreligionists, and internal power could be consolidated more effectively as well if religion was eliminated as an excuse for the questioning of legitimacy and authority.

Well, I've already gone on for too long here. I'll just add that Hansen does a good job of illuminating her overall thesis, showing how trade was common and markets widespread, particularly between China, Southeast Asia, Africa (The chapter on the wide ranging trade throughout the continent and then outward is short but quite interesting.), the Middle East and India. She describes quite a few technical innovations, such as improvements in shipbuilding, around 1000 that enhanced these factors. (A trading journey known to have been made by Chinese sailors all the way to Madagascar was twice as long in miles as Columbus' first trip.) Sadly, we see that the international slave trade was a major driver of many of these developments. There are times when Hansen seems to be trying too hard to jam events into her globalization premise, saying that things happened "because of Globalization" that might more convincingly be described as signsof globalization. And some of the individual chapters I found more interesting than others. All in all, though, I'm glad that my reading group chose this book for this month. While I would imagine that among historians there is room for debate about some of Hansen's conclusions, I feel that I certainly learned enough and was engaged enough for most of the time, to find this a valuable reading experience. show less

Even if you already have some awareness of global connections in the time before AD 1500, when the era of European exploration and "discovery" began, I'm pretty sure you would learn new things from this comprehensive, well-written book.

Hansen eases into her topic gently for Western readers with a careful review of a topic likely to be familiar, Viking voyages, evaluating dates and locations by using a combination of physical artifacts and oral history. Her introduction of these tools, along show more with detailed descriptions of means of travel (in this case boats), culture/religion, and approaches to trade, form the foundation of the remainder of the book.

It would serve no purpose for me to recount here details of her tales of the significance of the slave trade, not just across the Atlantic but in many cultures throughout Europe and Asia and Africa. You should read it yourself! I thought I knew something of the spread of religion throughout Europe and Asia, but Hansen's explanations of the various ways in which leaders wishing to expand their territories used the adoption or rejection of religions to advance their cause was new information to me.

Finally, although I had previously read of the lengthy voyages of merchant ships from India, Southeast Asia and especially China, as they ventured as far as Madagascar, Hansen's integration of details of shipbuilding and descriptions of the products traded along the routes gave me a much clearer impression of the vibrant cultures supported by these trips. And her explanation of the navigational techniques of the natives of the South Pacific gave me new respect for their accomplishments.

I listened rather than read, which may have been a disservice to the book because I would think the printed version had plenty of maps to accompany the text. But I have a pretty good sense of geography - and there was always Google Maps to fill in any gaps.

As we attempt to come to terms with a 21st century world that often seems to be spinning out of control, it was good to reflect on the integration of ideas and cultures in the past - even if it takes a long time to play out, and is subject to a certain amount of backsliding. show less

Valerie Hansen's The Silk Road: A New History brings together both archaeological and textual analyses to reassess the history of the famous trading route during the first millennium CE. Hansen focuses primarily on a cluster of oasis towns that are today located in far northwestern China or in Uzbekistan, places where the arid climate and the relative remoteness has helped to preserve the sites and their associated sources particularly well. She argues that despite the romance which has been show more associated with the Silk Road since the late nineteenth century, and popular ideas about its importance, that the overland routes were actually comparatively little travelled and weren't that economically important. The Silk Road's real historical value lies in how its network of interconnected local and regional trade circuits functioned as a conduit for languages, religions, and cultures.

I can't speak to the specifics of Hansen's arguments about the individual oasis societies, not being particularly familiar with them, but on a macro level her point seemed broadly persuasive. I just wish she'd settled on a different structure. This is a somewhat meandering book, and it wasn't always clear to me how individual parts added to the whole. It did, however, reinforce my desire to someday travel along at least part of the Silk Road myself. show less