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"Our world was made on and by the Silk Roads. For millennia it was here that East and West encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas and cultures, the birth of the world's great religions, the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the growth of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols and the Black Death to the Great Game and the fall of Communism, the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. The Silk Roads vividly captures the importance of the networks that crisscrossed the spine of Asia and linked the Atlantic with the Pacific, the Mediterranean with India, America with the Persian Gulf. By way of events as disparate as the American Revolution and the horrific world wars of the twentieth century, Peter Frankopan realigns the world, orientating us eastwards, and illuminating how even the rise of the West 500 years ago resulted from its efforts to gain access to and control these Eurasian trading networks. In an increasingly globalized planet, where current events in Asia and the Middle East dominate the world's attention, this magnificent work of history is very much a work of our times"--… (more)
An enlightening perspective on history that focuses on connections that expand the definition of value, usually to the detriment of the new colonised cultures but driving a sort of distruptive transformation which leads to new social structures, not better but more complex, perhaps... ( )
Less than a history of the Silk Road per se, but rather a fresh history of the world. Unbiased and bold. It also provides a lot of new sources. Recommended. ( )
Some interesting facts, but unfortunately without a context. The book was often quite dragging to read, because it felt I was reading a list of people and dates with no idea who was who and how they were connected. There was some attempt to that, I admit, but in the end too much was included and in the end I remembered nothing of what I just read. There should have been an overarching, and more specific, theme to build a story around. Now the book was too big and too general, at least for a reader like me. ( )
A rollercoaster ride through the broad-brush narrative history of everything connected to the Middle Eastern, Persian and Turkic parts of Asia, but lacking any serious over-arching insight or point. A history this broad needs to have general, theoretical, or sociological points to make in order to make use of its data, like "The Human Web"; a book focussed on the Silk Road and East-West interaction would need to be more detailed, as "The Edge of the World" detailed the history of interaction across the North Sea. This however is really no more than a set of notes drawn from other books on various times and places. See "Africa: a biography of the continent" for an example of how this sort of book can be done much better. ( )
We halted in the country of a tribe of Turks...we saw a group who worship snakes, a group who worship fish, and a group who worship cranes. --Ibn Fadlan's Voyage to the Volga Bughars
I, Prester John, am the lord of lords, and I surpass all the kings of the entire world in wealth, virtue and power...Milk and honey flow freely in our lands; poison can do no harm, nor do any noisy frogs croak. There are no scorpions, no serpents creeping in the grass. --Purported letter of Prester John to Rome and Constatinople, twelfth century
He has a very large palace, entirely roofed with fine gold. --Christopher Columbus' research notes on the Great Khan of the East, late fifteenth century
If we do not make relatively small sacrifices, and alter our policy, in Persia now, we shall both endanger our friendship with Russia and find in a comparatively near future...a situation where our very existence as an Empire will be a stake. --Sir George Clerk to Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, 21 July 1914
The president would win even if we sat around doing nothing. --Chief of Staff to Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstaan, shortly before 2005 elections.
Dedication
To Katarina, Flora, Francis and Luke
First words
Preface: As a child, one of my most prized possessions was a large map of the world.
"Our world was made on and by the Silk Roads. For millennia it was here that East and West encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas and cultures, the birth of the world's great religions, the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the growth of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols and the Black Death to the Great Game and the fall of Communism, the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. The Silk Roads vividly captures the importance of the networks that crisscrossed the spine of Asia and linked the Atlantic with the Pacific, the Mediterranean with India, America with the Persian Gulf. By way of events as disparate as the American Revolution and the horrific world wars of the twentieth century, Peter Frankopan realigns the world, orientating us eastwards, and illuminating how even the rise of the West 500 years ago resulted from its efforts to gain access to and control these Eurasian trading networks. In an increasingly globalized planet, where current events in Asia and the Middle East dominate the world's attention, this magnificent work of history is very much a work of our times"--
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