The Silk Roads: A New History Of The World

Frankopan was struck by the overwhelming response to the book from readers.[10] Frankopan did not expect so many people to be interested in this book. Frankopan made readers aware of the differences between past and present regions of the world and made people aware that Eurocentrism was no longer true.[10] According to Frankopan, the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Chinese president Xi Jinping will probably lead to rapid economic growth in China and other neighboring countries.[11] He also believes that China, to provide for its current needs, is trying to build new "silk roads", even though to realise them it could take at least three decades. Moreover, as society is constantly changing, people should take a long-term and critical view of their national development.[12]

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

According to anthropologist and archaeologist Nikolay Kradin, each chapter's heading is highly intriguing.[13] Chapter 8, titled "The Road to Heaven", for example, recounts the history of the Crusades.[13] He adds that Frankopan masterfully balances history with literature, so that the book is accessible even to those who are unfamiliar with history.[13] For researchers K. Laug and S. Rance, one of the reasons for the book's success in drawing readers is because of these intriguing headlines. Moreover, the economic growth of the East has been driven by an increase in demand in the West as a result of the development of the economy.[14] They concluded that the advent of the Silk Road caused countries to seek shared interests as a result of a lack of collaboration among European countries. The rise of fascism reflected a change in the economic balance of power. In the shifting economic and political structure of Western countries, Frankopan rightly points out the weaknesses of liberal democracy.[14] M. Sanmartí found several minor inaccuracies in the book, as well as other components that were missing,[15] although for a 650-page book this may be considered insignificant. He concludes his study by telling the reader that this book is an anti-Eurocentrism collection, not a tool for comprehending world history.[13] Although the title "A New History of the World" is not entirely suit, the rigorous historical content and intriguing anecdotes appeal to the broad reader.[15]

Guha argues that from the beginning of the book through Columbus' voyages, the description of the Black Death brings the subject into the modern part, and afterwards it has lost the "focus" it was meant to express. A new history of the world does not need to include extensive descriptions of the Nazi and Soviet truce of 1939-1941. Moreover, the conflicts content in Afghanistan and Iraq is unnecessary. To Guha the book provides an outdated history that lacks a description of much of human life. Frankopan focuses more on describing urban civilization: Being the history of the city the main object of description, its main characters are mostly warriors, rulers, merchants and priests. Poor people and women do not appear. Frankopan points out the role in history of mainly European personalities, without mentioning figures such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk or Ho Chi Minh.[17]

In his new book, The Silk Roads, Frankopan has created something that forces us to sit up and reconsider the world and the way we've always thought about it. Western scholarship, he argues, has long ignored the routes linking Europe to the Pacific, the areas he calls "the axis on which the globe spun." So he has chosen to focus firmly on the Silk Roads, for what he calls "a new history of the world."

In this brilliant major reassessment of world history, Peter Frankopan gives a compelling account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east. He explores the forces that have driven the rise and fall of empires, determined the flow of ideas and goods and are now heralding a new dawn in international affairs.

A senior research fellow at Oxford and director of its Centre for Byzantine Research, Frankopan in his survey embraces a huge spectrum of readings in some sixteen languages (several of them, crucially Arabic and Russian, familiar to him). His history is materialist. The energies of the world are understood as the invisible workings of a body, its trade routes a nervous system that powers and interconnects the global anatomy.

"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"--

Civilization moves that way today, too, and, in Silk Roads, the reader sees the past and the present together as one process of many "moving parts." This book argues that world history is still a relevant subject while educating the reader in the fundamentals of history.

Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.

In the best-selling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, author Patrick Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short-term.

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. 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.

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"A glorious read...Frankopan is an exhilarating companion for the journey along the routes which conveyed silk, slaves, ideas, religion, and disease and around which today may hang the destiny of the world."

"This provocative history challenges the view of the West as heir to a pure Greco-Roman culture...Frankopan marshals diverse examples to demonstrate the interconnectedness of cultures, showing in vivid detail the economic and social impact of the silk and the slave trades, the Black Death, and the Buddhist influence on Christianity."

From Zimler I learned even in the 18th and 19th centuries Portuguese zipped around the world. From Frankopan I learned this was going on much longer than that! Frankopans comprehensive history book is not only about Portugal, but it is more robust and expansive than the short book often mentioned, The First Global Village: How Portugal Changed the World by Martin Page. Both show Portugal as a fulcrum. All helped explain why Portugal is weird. I also recommend Frankopan's short sequel, The New Silk Roads, which clarifies the global power shifts happening now.From Wendy's list onwhy Portugal is weird.

An enjoyable read from start to finish, Frankopan vividly describes the successive civilizations that arose in the Middle East, and which influenced the course of world history. As the chapters trace the rise of new technologies, sophisticated philosophies, and cultural refinements, it becomes apparent that he is subtly decentring our traditional view of world history. Europe, we realise, came late to the game, far behind the Assyrians, Byzantines, Sasanians, Abbasids, Mughals, and Persians, who could legitimately have regarded their societies as the centre of world civilization. And their successors, Frankopan argues, still play pivotal roles in global politics.

This is one of those books that you come back to again and again. Most of us learn a history of the wars that our country happened to win, rather than how we learnt to live together between those conflicts. I asked students in 16 countries to work out what was missing from their education. All identified a sense of global history. This book is the answer to that need. From Tom's list onnavigating an unstable world. 041b061a72