Book Review: The Silk Roads, A New History of the World

By Peter Frankopan

Mankind’s history is simple. After our ancestors climbed out of the primordial swamps, history progressed in a rapid succession of momentous occasions, much like the intro for the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory Theory. Industrious men with beards set about constructing mighty cities like Athens and Corinth. The ancient Greeks were the forefathers of science and philosophy, and Roman engineering was the most advanced the world had ever known. Vasco Da Gama sailed around Africa, the steam engine was invented in England, and the Dutch sold tulips. After the Mayflower set sail for the new world, America was born, and the glorious history of Western civilization proceeded straight as an arrow from that moment onwards. Meanwhile the people at the edges of the map, Chinese, Indians, Russians, and many other, were busy doing whatever. Probably nothing of consequence. According to historian Peter Frankopan, most people in the west are at best a slightly ignorant and uninterested when it comes to the part of the world, Asia, where most people lives and has lived throughout history. Even in academia eastern history is a bit of a fringe subject whose scholars are forced to grab hold of whatever crumbs happen to fall of the table when looking for research funding. In writing The Silk Roads, Frankopan is determined to shift our mental models of the world and how we view history itself, a grand undertaking to be sure, and one could mean his latest book will be regarded as essential reading for anyone harboring intellectual curiosity.

Far from being a backwater of no consequence, the vast stretch of land between the Mediterranean and the Pacific Ocean has for millennia been the nerve center and main highway of civilization. Great cities whose sublime splendor have been lost to time were strung out like the beads of a finely crafted pearl necklace along this route, where tradesmen and explorers travelled to find their fortunes. Not just people and goods, but also ideas and philosophies as well as all the major religions of our time, can thank what Frankopan calls the silk roads for having hundreds of millions of followers. Technological advances such as paper, the compass, gunpowder, mathematics, and countless others travelled along these trade routes to the west. This influx of wealth and ideas also had a darker side, as virulent diseases such as the black plague were also spread along the same trade routes.

Western historians have long thought that the death of Ögedei Khan saved the countries that Theresa May’s Brexit Team is preparing to do battle with from complete annihilation. According to Frankopan, this line of thinking shows how westerners are unable to place their history in the proper context. It has never really occurred to anyone in the west that the Mongols might not have been that interested in what we had to offer.

Having masterminded a campaign of breathtaking daring and complexity that smashed the combined armies of eastern Europe in a matter of days, Genghis Khan’s greatest general, Subotai the Valiant, was set to invade Western Europe when he was reached by the news of his Khan’s death. It was certainly true that the need to be present at the Khan’s funeral hindered his invasion plans, but Frankopan argues that one other good reason that the invasion of Western Europe never came about was that there wasn’t anything particularly valuable to plunder or steal east of Constantinople. Having seen the vast wealth of cities like Baghdad, Merv and Samarkand, overflowing with silks, gold, and precious gems, a smokehouse full of otter bladders situated on a bleak Flemish hillside was hardly a great prize. It might sound harsh but it is undeniably true that, at the time, the cities of Western Europe were lagging behind their eastern counterparts when it came to wealth and sophistication. Niall Fergusson said as much in Civilization, which I have previously reviewed on this blog.

Such was the importance of the east that when Columbus set out to sail around the world, he wasn’t looking for the Americas. Instead he sought to find a new route that could be used to transport spices to Western Europe. The continent that impeded his way, however, led to Europe rising from the mists of obscurity to seize a commanding role in global affairs for the next half century. The silver mines of South America bequeathed great wealth to the Spanish who, alongside the Portuguese, became incredibly powerful and influential. International trade and commerce were the underpinnings of the new age of empire, at the start of which a cash strapped England was left to gaze longingly at her southern rivals. This disillusionment proved to be short lived, for The British Empire that followed when Spain and Portugal were no longer in the ascendant was the largest empire the world had ever seen. Even during these heady days of colonialism, however, when the royal navy ruled the oceans and London was the nerve center of the world economy, mastery of the silk roads was crucial for the well-being of the empire. The rise of Russia in the nineteenth century was a cause of great concern to the British, since their vast lands constituted the gateway between east and west. The Crimean War is a conflict few people ever stop to think about, and the reasons why it was fought can often seem hard to grasp. When you consider the fact that Russian control of the black sea could jeopardize Britain’s access to its resource rich colonies, however, it all starts to get much clearer.   

The strategic and economic importance of these silk roads has remained undimmed even though the heydays of the British empire are long gone. When oil grew in importance and Western prospectors searched far and wide for hidden reserves of the black gold, the largest oil fields in the world were to be found in places like Russia, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Then as well as now, countries in the west are affected by what happens in oil producing countries and to this day great powers jealously guard their interests in that region. It is not just oil that they crave, countries in Central Asia that you might  associate with Borat’s rustic home village in Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 comedy film contains some of the world’s largest deposits of minerals such as gold, copper, lead and uranium. Far from having to make do with just one plasticy VCR recorder, like poor Borat did, the nouveu rich elite of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan frequently travel to places like London and Dubai to stock up on luxury goods.    

Frankopan’s great enthusiasm for telling Western audiences an alternative spin on the history they grew up with reading in musty textbooks is both admirable and infectious. He has obviously done a great deal of research and is passionate about the subject he writes about. Unfortunately, I sometimes felt that he treats the history of Western Europe in the cavalier fashion that he accuses its historians of having treated the east, although if you want to read a book about the Roman or British Empire there are quite a few other options available. Another annoying niggle was the unreasonably high amount of simple spelling and grammatical mistakes that I found when reading The Silk Roads. You usually don’t find this with books from reputable publishers, and you would have thought that Bloomsbury could afford to hire someone to read through the script a couple of times. My complaints notwithstanding, The Silk Roads is a very enjoyable read that offers a new and fresh, to Western audiences at least, perspective on history as well as the world we live in today