The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

 1. What’s in it for me? 

See a new history of the world from the Silk Roads perspective.   Hello everyone!  Today, I’d like to interpret a wonderful book for you, British historian Peter Francopan's book "The Silk Road: A New History of the World."    Speaking of the Silk Road, we are very familiar with, in 139 BC, the Chinese emperor of the Han Dynasty sent a ambassador, Zhang Qian, who reach out the Western Regions, opened up a trade channel, sold the Chinese silk to Central Asia, Europe and other regions. Later, in 1877 the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen introduced the name ‘Great Silk Road’ for a chain of age-old trade routes through Central Asia that connected the Far East to the West. For some 1,700 years, the Silk Road was the world’s largest trade network. Caravans of up to a thousand camels, horses, oxen and donkeys crossed deserts and high mountains to carry coveted goods from East to West and West to East.    So, today's book, is to talk about a history of the trade channel? Obviously not. Is the Silk Road a visible artificial road? Definitely not. If you have a map of the world on hand, you will see the Silk Road just across the entire Asian hinterland, opened up the Himalayas to the Mediterranean Sea, the east coast of the Black Sea, so that the entire Asian and European political, military, economic, cultural, religion, etc., all these circulated up. To see it in a big picture, the Silk Road linked up a whole East-West exchange network.   With such a vision, let’s look at this book, the author's intention at a glance. He believes that for thousands of years, the “Silk Roads” area crossed the East and the West regions, is actually the operation axis of the world. So he used the Silk Road as a starting point, speaking a new history of the world by using Asian hinterland as the center rather than Europe as the center.   However, until today, can we say, the Asian hinterland with the most complex situation and full of conflicts and contradictions, is the center of world civilization? Is this argument right? Let's take a look. In the past, when it comes to world history, it is often said that the Roman Empire perished, after a thousand years of dark medieval, suddenly the Renaissance, the religious reform, the British bourgeois revolution, and then the industrial revolution, and so on and on. Anyway, in accordance with this order, we entered the modern society. In short, the whole world history, is a European-centric history.   However, we ignore an important historical fact: before the advent of the great navigational era and the Renaissance, the world's stage center is not in Europe, the East and West civilization are gathered in the Asian hinterland. That is, all the countries and regions along the Silk Road.   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 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.