The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

THE SILK ROADS by Peter FrankopanA New History Of The WorldIt's true to say that history is a story told by the winner. It's all very well to get a big head and wield a sword as a now victor; but it's of pivotal importance to remember that forces on the other side or on the periphery would be flexing their muscles, on the alert for a chance to settle scores.Peter Frankopan, a historian based at Oxford University and the author of THE SILK ROADS, has a prodigiously profound insight on historical events and is an extraordinarily hard-working researcher which we know from 100 pages of notes and bibliography accompanying 507 pages of text. This book is something none other than Peter himself couldn't have written. He pulled multiple strands together in this single great work. An epic story indeed! Incredibly informative and compellingly attractive. This ambitious book spans centries, continents and cultures. It shows a historical tapestry woven with his epochal perspective: how cultures, slaves, products, natural resources, religions and ways of life have been traded for over two thousand years; how the center of powers has changed so far and which it's heading into.This book takes the form of a series of what marked milestones in global history chronologically arranged from ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia to the Crusades to the post ww2 era to the recent consideration of Turkey joining the SCO not the EU to the present when half-a-mile-long trains carrying millions of products from China to Germany in just sixteen days and vice versa. It of course includes factual accounts of events with the additional explanations on the causality between some nitty-gritty issues. But what the author is really willing to give is a warning against solving today's problems without worrying tomorrow's. THE SILK ROADS enables us all who read it to see a broad region that had been or is in turmoil. It reveals the dangers of the lack of perspective about global history. Great turning points in human history, I've learned from this book, have been bound together by, against the backdrop of, many big and small talks and decisions which occurred in the barren steppes, in conference rooms, on the phone and sometimes in a prison cell.I owe much to Peter Frankopan. My knowledge of the world history was admittedly sparse. When it comes to history related literature, I, as a person who had no interest in the stuff of global history, have only read several books focusing on a narrow subject matter over shortening timeframesㅡUNBROKEN, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, DEAD WAKE, just to name a few. Now, after reading this book from beginning to end, highlighting and underlining sentences, making notes in the margins, I feel my heart ten times more fluttering than when I first saw the jacket image of an incredibly beautiful decorative ceiling of a certain madrasah in Uzbekistan. There is a greater quiver of excitement now in my mind than there was just after reading 7-page preface which made me all aflutter in anticipation of the following text.The bottom line: go online with your smart phone to do a search for THE SILK ROADS by Peter Frankopan, add it to cart and proceed to checkout! Some time later you would take a few stride forward to the reality of how the world works.

This text is well written and well researched. Not sure what bias one of the lengthy one star reviews is talking about. Not going to get into a refutation of those complaints. What needs to be recognized here is that the focus on Europe in a history about trade routes that didn’t include Europe for quite a while is suspicious and yet this is a much better perspective than A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE WORLD which couldn’t get out of Europe no matter how hard it tried.I think the most impressive section is the one covering the 20th century where the author manages to weave together a number of various disasters caused mostly by the British, Russians, and Americans (as well as Iran and Iraq with the help of said Europeans).I felt that the absence of China in various points was odd since it was Chinese silk that named these roads but overall this was a fascinating read.I followed this up with DESTINY DISRUPTED which is a history of the world from the perspective of Islam. That gave some great perspective to this book and is recommended for anyone who read SILK ROADS.

I don’t know how you enjoy reading your books, but unlike the page-turners that can’t be put down, if a book grabs my attention, I tend to slow down my pace to absorb as much as possible of the full meaning that the author intends to impart.At 10% this book had me hooked. The realisation of how our present way of life is just a continuation of societal systems, laws and principles that were devised, implemented and set down centuries ago was a real eye opener.I am now at around 60% and continue to be enthralled at how heavily the historical background impacts on almost every important current event and crisis that we encounter today and how different the impressions and mental pictures that emerge from the book are to those portrayed and imparted by our media.If you are interested in why the world is what it is today, you cannot get a better more interesting precis of what events caused us to reach the state of current global development and you will better understand (but not justify) the unrest in which we live.Staring from Roman days BC, the first 16 chapters (aprox 40% of the book) take you on an evolutionary trip through the major events, century by century, giving a foundation on how and why events of exploitation and slavery evolved as they did.From Chapter 17 the author brings you into the 20th Century and shows how major political self-serving manipulations and greed have resulted in the unavoidable conflicts of wars and aggression throughout the history of the East and the West.The reader cannot help but link the global terrorist activities and the peaceful invasion of Europe that we are witnessing to a resurgence of tactics and methods used throughout history to justify reaction against perceived sins that the West committed or imposed on weaker nations, which they "colonised" then simply took (or stole) their mineral, human and oil resources with no regard to the consequences on the local population and with little respect, pay-back or recompense (other than selective and ridiculous bribing of officials) to the masses of humans that they exploited, betrayed and decimated over centuries.From the outset, the author explains why he elected to use the historical names of the people and places he describes and this becomes distracting to the reader who eventually loses track of exactly who or where the event occurs because (except for a few cases) he does not give the up-to-date name of the location or person, despite his giving the actual source references on which he bases his commentary. However, as the text gives the general location and position of an individual, readers can ignore the foreign nomenclatures and read on. This does not detracted from the text and information imparted.The writing style flows well and is easy to read and follow. I’m looking forward to the remainder of this enjoyable journey.

“The Silk Roads” is a wonderful invigorating work of history. It is directed to the general reader rather than the specialist. I found it be absolutely riveting.The essence of the book is that, in the West, our history is viewed through a very narrow lense. Schools teach its students of the Roman Empire, the subsequent Dark Ages, the Norman conquest in 1066, Henry VIII and the Tudors, the American War of Independence, the Industrial Revolution and the First and Second World Wars. The vast bulk of a map of the world from western Europe to China is passed over very quickly. With “The Silk Roads”, Peter Frankopan has attempted to redress this imbalance.As the author states:“For centuries before the early modern era, the intellectual centres of excellence of the world, the Oxfords ad Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad, and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand”.Moreover, Frankopan gives the reader a perspective on the rise of Mesopotamia, Alexander the Great, the rise of Christianity in the eastern Roman Empire and then the subsequent rise of Islam throughout much of Asia. He then proceeds to discuss the Crusades, the rise of Genghis Khan and his mighty Mongol Empire and then the rise of China more specifically. He concludes by bringing the book up to the present day with the rise of Europe and the USA before suggesting that there is a reorienting of history underway again. In other words:“we are witnessing…the birthing pains of a region that once dominated the intellectual, cultural and economic landscape and which is now re-emerging. We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting – back to where it lay for millennia”.Whether you agree or not with Peter Frankopan’s conclusions, the book remains a tour-de-force. Thoroughly recommended.

What a superb job Frankopan does - not only in laying out a broad-brush world history that pulls to together so many threads usually kept separate, but also to shift the reader's perspective: we in the West are on the margins of a global stage, crucial players to be sure, but no longer the emerging stars.This is a history, in the sense that it shows how the world has changed over time, although necessarily its ambitious scope means that any one topic is not treated in great depth. Rather, it deals with the interplay of influences over time, and illustrates compellingly how regions under the author's wide "Silk Roads" umbrella have been, remain and will continue to be crucial to actions and events across the globe. That is humbling to a reader brought up to the glories of the British Empire and the self-evident supremacy of Western Europe and North America in the wake of WWII.The whole book is a pleasure to read, with many new insights and perspectives for anyone not familiar with the intricacies of power shifts at a global level. The conclusion in particular - building on the story developed over 25 chapter - shows us a new reality to which we would do well to pay attention.

Having traveled -- though a brief journey -- along the Silk Roads myself, this book brings me back traveling. It has brought me into a deeper understanding about the places I visited and the things I saw. There were things I had seen but only understood after reading this book."The Silk Roads" also drew my curiosity towards other history books, and intrigued me about the great empires of the past which previously I had little interest.I enjoy the way things are written. I would like to describe this book as a thick cheesecake garnished with a sense of humor. It's for me, not a book I'm able to read continuously until last page. Interesting, enjoyable, yes. Yet, I need time to digest between pages. Then after reading other books, I continue or even return to the pages already read, and then obtain better understanding.Since I bought this book as Kindle version, I just wished I could view the details of the maps more conveniently and freely.Did I regret buying this book? Absolutely not. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely yes.

Very clear easy to read book, with several documents supporting the writer's view and interpretation of history and explains why several countries State policies are leading to today's conflicts.

This was a fantastic survey of world history that suffered from debilitating problems, as a book.On the one hand, for its content, I'd heartily recommend The Silk Roads. It's a great survey of material culture and commerce from ancient times to the present. It's global in perspective (when most similar treatments focus on western Europe). Frankopan makes a convincing case that myopic European accounts of history distort our understanding of the world. Not just the contributions and role of Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic and (particularly) Persian culture; but also a myriad of other tribes and nations. The history of the world through this broader lens is fascinating in its own right. But, importantly, this distortion causes us to badly misinterpret "our" own culture (which I'll define as, loosely, Anglo, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch). Some of the most hamhanded, shortsighted, and bloody mistakes of the last hundred years or more, emerge directly from our ignorance and arrogance.None of this is a new perspective (especially if you're a linguist, say), and the outlines of this history were familiar to me, from talking with good friends, in a very international crowd: Turkey, Portugal, China and Iran, Austria and Egypt. But there's been very little history written, in English, that departs from the familiar Rome->Dark Ages-> Renaissance pattern. It's good to finally see something substantial written, that recontextualises our place in the world in a thorough and sensible way.For all of the above reasons, I'd give the book 5 stars. Similarly, Frankopan's prose is excellent, and deserving of 5 stars, as is his thorough documentation and extensive bibliography. His coverage of several periods of history was exciting. However, the book was almost unreadable for long stretches. It contained too many details, laid out in rapid succession, with too little discussion. Paragraph after paragraph of names, and dates, and unadorned details. It was a brisk, high altitude flight across 2000 years of history, of about 30 different nations and 12000 or more miles of territory, with no time to catch your breath.The chapters individually were sensibly written around an approximate theme. Each chapter, individually, might be a good resource for several hours of a seminar course, where you could spend some time digging into the material and discussing. But one after another, the effect was numbing. I really feel like this should have been 4 separate books, and Frankopan should have taken twice as many pages to cover the same amount of material. There is really no conceivable reason why anyone would need to cover Ancient Rome, classic Persia, China, and India; the conquest of the Americas; the 19th century through the Second World war; and finally the Cold War through the Iraq war (focusing on all the meddling we did in the Middle East)---all in a single book.The general premise, that central Asia and the Middle East, by linking East and West, were important historically, and will probably be important again, is too weak to hold the whole thing together. It was frustrating. There were beautiful moments of clarity, but they got lost in the torrent. The overtly political agenda, mainly evident in the last couple chapters and afterword, detracted from the historicity (and it's not that I disagree with Frankopan's politics, but when I want to listen to Chomsky, I do), and felt like a distraction from what was otherwise a great story of the importance of trade, material culture, and cultural transmission. I got the feeling that the political tale was meant to be the unifying thread, but again this was only clear in the last couple chapters, and it wasn't enough to hold the book together. Nor was the central conceit of saying "the silk roads" occasionally.

It is very informative and very well written. I would highly recommend as not only do you get a good history lesson but written in a way you can enjoy.

Brilliant book, good read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5/5)„The Silk Roads“ – Weltgeschichte neu erzählt, vom Rand ins Zentrum📌 KurzfazitFrankopan rückt nicht Europa, sondern die Handels- und Kulturverbindungen entlang der Seidenstraßen ins Zentrum der Weltgeschichte. Von der Antike über das Mittelalter bis zur Moderne zeigt er, wie Zentralasien, Persien, China und der Nahe Osten entscheidend für Politik, Religion, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft waren. Damit bricht er mit der klassischen westlichen Erzählung und eröffnet neue Perspektiven.📚 Inhalt in KürzeAntike Seidenstraßen als Drehscheibe von Waren, Ideen und Religionen.Rolle des Nahen Ostens und Zentralasiens bei der Entwicklung von Weltreligionen und Wissenschaft.Bedeutung des Handels für Machtverschiebungen (von Persien über das Osmanische Reich bis Kolonialismus).Moderne „Silk Roads“: Öl, Geopolitik, neue Handelsnetzwerke (China, Russland, Naher Osten).🔬 Wissenschaftliche RelevanzStärken:Umfassend recherchiert, mit riesiger Quellenbasis.Greift aktuelle historiographische Trends auf: Dekolonialisierung der Geschichte, Globalgeschichte.Bietet interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Politik, Religion, Wirtschaft, Kultur).Schwächen:Kritiker bemängeln, dass Frankopan teils zu stark vereinfacht oder dramatisiert.Einige Kapitel wirken essayistisch und weniger tief als akademische Spezialliteratur.👉 Fazit Wissenschaft: Ein bedeutendes Werk der Globalgeschichte, das Forschungspfade populär zugänglich macht.🌍 Kulturelle RelevanzInternationaler Bestseller, in über 30 Sprachen übersetzt.Hat die Seidenstraßen als Metapher für Globalisierung wieder populär gemacht.Politisch-kulturell aktuell, da China mit der „Belt and Road Initiative“ erneut auf die Seidenstraße Bezug nimmt.Stärker in der Öffentlichkeit rezipiert als in rein akademischen Kreisen – ein Brückenbuch zwischen Wissenschaft und Allgemeinheit.💭 Meine persönliche Meinung👍 Positiv: Spannend erzählt, horizonterweiternd, macht neugierig auf Regionen, die in klassischen Geschichtsbüchern oft fehlen.👎 Negativ: An manchen Stellen spürt man die populärwissenschaftliche Zuspitzung; Leser:innen mit historischem Fachwissen wünschen sich mehr Tiefgang.Für mich: ein must-read, wenn man Weltgeschichte neu denken möchte.🎯 FazitThe Silk Roads ist ein brillantes Werk der Globalgeschichte, das eurozentrische Narrative hinterfragt und die Seidenstraßen ins Zentrum der Menschheitsgeschichte rückt. Wissenschaftlich solide, kulturell relevant und spannend zu lesen.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 5 von 5 SternenWeil: wissenschaftlich stark, kulturell hochaktuell, erzählerisch fesselnd.

A great read on the history of the east.

One of the most underrated aspects of World History comes to life through the author's research and analysis. I have ordered the book for a series of lectures in my school but now I faĺl in love with the writer.