The Silk Roads

Starred review from December 21, 2015
Upending the traditional narrative of Western enlightenment and world domination as the inevitable descendants of Greek and Roman intellectual ferment, Oxford historian Frankopan (The First Crusade) places the silk roads—the long, remote Central Asian trading routes linking Europe and China—at the center of human history. The silk roads served as conduits for goods and ideas as well as plagues and marauding armies, and their location at the nexus of Europe and Asia continues to drive world events today. Frankopan casts his net widely in this work of dizzying breadth and ambition. Casual readers may struggle to follow all the threads; those opening to any page will find fascinating insights that illuminate elusive connections across time and place. Frankopan’s thoughts on Islam, for instance, begin with newly discovered “wisps of text” that are reshaping understanding of Muhammad’s life and stretch across centuries to the modern luxuries of the “oil-soaked” Middle East. The Black Plague—carried west by the Mongols—devastated Europe and the Middle East, but “the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making.” Frankopan approaches his craft with an acerbic wit, and his epochal perspective throws the foibles of the modern age into sharp relief.

January 1, 2016

In this sweeping and thought-provoking world history, Frankopan (history, Oxford Univ.; The First Crusade) shows that although the intertwined nature of the global economy seems unique to today, nations and markets have been connected since antiquity. The East, especially the Fertile Crescent area stretching from the Nile to the Persian Gulf, is time and again pivotal in making and breaking empires, civilizations, religions, and cultures. Networks of trade routes called Silk Roads have carried not only valuables such as spices, silk, gems, porcelain, and oil, but also slavery, terror, disease, and other misery through the ages. Frankopan relates stories of kings, emperors, marauders, and explorers, and also describes the effect of technological advances on warfare, use of natural resources, trade and daily life over millennia. Meticulous documentation ranges from first-person accounts to high-tech analysis of archaeological finds. The routes discussed in various chapters are illustrated by helpful maps. VERDICT Even though Frankopan's interpretation of history may raise some eyebrows, his vivid imagery will engage and inform readers looking for historical underpinnings of long-festering conflicts among nations, cultures, and religions. [See Prepub Alert, 8/31/15.]--Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

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