Silk Roads
When I was around seven years old, my friend Andrew told me about his father’s plan. Back then, more than seventy years ago, his father worked for the Great Western Railway in the UK. Apparently, one of the perks of his position was that he could have one long instance travel trip per year, in his holiday. He could go from London to York, or to one of the railways stations in Devon or Cornwall. Andrew told me that his dad had never taken one of these trips, but was saving them up: when he retired he was going to travel from Paris to Moscow, and from there go on the Trans-Siberian railway all the way across to Vladivostok.
The trip by rail from Moscow would be 9,289 kms on the ‘Rosslya’ could be completed in some 7-10 days. First class travel was labelled ‘SV’, private two berth compartments, and the train would offer samovars for hot water, dining cars, and attendants. However, Andrew’s dad would take longer, stopping at various places along the way. His itinerary included such exotic paces as Kirov, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Belgogorsk, with a side route that could take you to Ulaan Baatar and Beijing.
Well, that was it! For the next few years, it was my plan too, although I had no ideas at to how to accomplish it. At the time I learnt about it, the train was far less sophisticated than the current express, but I was convinced I would love it, despite any hardship. However, what I didn’t realises at the time, it also was the start of a lifelong fascination with travel outside of Europe, and especially in Asia. Of course, fascination is one thing, and being able to realise it is another, and when, some 30 years later, I began regular visits to North East and South East Asia, my travel was by air, and train journeys forgotten. All of that was reawakened when I received a copy of a book about the Silk Road, and the exotic civilisations and countries strung out across that route.
Back in 2002, Frances Wood published The Silk Road, a Folio Society volume. It was lavishly illustrated, full of fascinating information, and, in some ways, a bit like a pirates’ treasure chest in that it was full of intriguing tidbits. She begins by telling us that the silk road is “one of the most evocative of names, conjuring visions of camels laden with bales of luxurious brocades and diaphanous silks in all the colours of the rainbow.” She quotes from James Elroy Flecker’s poem, The Golden Journey to Samarkand:
When those long caravans that cross the plain
With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells
Put forth no more for glory of for gain
Take no more solace from the palm-girt well.
Yes, this is about the distant, exotic world of the East – at least as we imagine it. It has played a role in history over centuries, from Marco Polo to 18th Century European explorers. However, Frances Wood does a good job of keeping our feet on the ground, telling us that Silk Road was “only coined in 1877 by the German explorer and geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen” (no, not the same one Snoopy was constantly engaging in aerial combat!).
Wood’s book is both engaging and frustrating. She deftly introduces figures, place, events, and people from the many countries and centuries of Silk Road history. However, each chapter leaves the reader wanting more, often because the accompanying illustrations are rather like postcards capturing moments in the past that deserve a whole book for each era and group that is depicted. There is more to the story than this, however, because the image of the Silk Road is also concerned with luxury, riches, items distinctive and special, with luxury merchandise and access to what is exotic. However, she also reminds us that there are many parts of the Silk Road that go through inhospitable terrain, with mountains, deserts, extreme weather, and frequently days with limited access to anything more than very basis food and drink. Some days in parts of the journey there is the likelihood of bitter winds, and snow and ice, while at other stages the challenges come from heat, aridity, and isolation. Now train travel is more like a rather special adventure, but not that long before it was risky and uncertain. Does it mean we now see the Silk Road as rather exciting, even desirable?
Having read Frances Wood’s book, the Silk Road began to occupy a place in my thinking, and for reasons that I can’t quite explain, I began to wonder about making that cross-continental tri, but the other way round, beginning in Japan (well, OK, starting in Japan, next popping up to Vladivostok and then continuing on from there as my real starting point). To begin in Japan wasn’t entirely without reason, as that would fit in with another of my fantasies, which was to buy my tickets in Tokyo, and commence this travel saga with a visit to the Mitsukoshi store in Nikonbashi, where I’d be able to purchase travel books, luggage, suitable clothing, cameras and binoculars and more!
Why the Mitsukoshi store? Well, it is one of Japan’s finest retailers. It is claimed to be the first store of its kind. It had started trading in 1673 as a kimono store, until 1904 when it changed had change to become Japan’s first department store. It is simply stunning. It is huge, with two large lion statues at the main entrance (since 1914), and the ‘Statue of Sincerity’, an 11 metre wooden goddess in the centre of the building. Italian marble walls showing Mesozoic ammonite fossils surround the floors, combines with luxurious fixtures and fittings including high vaulted ceilings and a pipe organ that is played every week! It appeals to the nostalgic in a country that revers traditions, although I read that just recently, Mitsukoshi advised the public that each of its department stores will abolish the ‘issuance of receipt by handwriting on Sunday, February 1, 2026.’ Plus ca change!
Clearly, travelling the Silk Road has to begin at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. However, after dealing with a change in starting point and direction, the next issue is that we have to address is the fact the Silk Road isn’t what it once might have appeared to be: today, we know it is all about ‘Roads’. This was made dramatically clear in 2015 when Peter Frankopan published The Silk Roads – and the key point was the ‘s’ at the end of the tile. Ambitious, exciting, and for many academics frustrating, what Frankopan did was to help readers see there were new ways to look at the history of the past 2,000 years or more. To put it simply, he wanted his readers to set aside the traditional view of Europeans that our world emerged from the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, followed by the Romans. He challenged this ‘Eurocentric’ view and suggests that the centre of the world was to be found further to the east, in the Caucasus, or in Iran, or even in those places often referred to as the “stans”.
The silk roads he describes are a complex series of trade, transport and migration paths along which people, goods, ideas, religions, disease and much else has flowed. If Richthofen’s term the “silk road” is relatively recent, Frankopan uses his term to describe a complex set of routes between China and the Mediterranean Sea, many of which which run through several of the world’s most disturbed and dangerous countries. Christopher Marlowe called Persia/Iran “the middle of the world” back in 1587 but Frankopan goes much further back. He notes that 2,000 years ago, as he depicts it, Chinese silks were worn by the Carthaginian elite, wealthy Iranians used Provencal pottery, and Indian spices found their way into Afghan and Roman cuisine.
The transfers were always in both directions. Alexander’s military campaigns led him to the east, and brought Greek culture to the Indus valley, as a result of which the Buddha was given a recognisably Greek form and Buddhist sculpture became popular. Christianity spread along the silk roads under the Romans. Islam more obviously did so, too. Scientific advances, philosophical ideas and much else was cross-fertilised by exposure across the east and west.
Not everything was beneficial however, and violence was a regular accompaniment for the traveller . Frankopan documents the rise of the Mongols, who wreaked havoc as they went, and other chapters cover the spread of the Slavs and the rise of the Rus, as well as later sections documenting British and American meddling that had first been evident since the 19th century. If his focus is on looking east he makes some salutary points. The spread of the plague from Asia into Europe decimated Europe’s population, but he notes that because there were fewer workers, the price of labour rose, wealth was spread (a little) more evenly and as a consequence the resulting cultural acceleration of the Renaissance was enabled.
The Silk Roads is sub-titled ‘A New History of the World’. It wasn’t an ideal choice of words. Rather it might be better thought of a a corrective to most Western histories, offering insights and facts about some of the events taking place in Asia. However, we are still awaiting an equally compelling history of the world to appear, one that also embraces Africa and Southern America. Despite this and within its limits, it is an account that, as one reviewer put it, “is full of intriguing insights and some fascinating details.” Among other comments he offers a salutary and important argument in support of the view that today the centre of global importance is shifting back to the East, as the international focus moving away from the Western-centric view which has been true of the last few centuries.
Overall, The Silk Roads consists of 25 thematic chapters that set out to reframe one key part of global history by focusing on the region connecting the East and the West (as we term them), specifically Central Asia. It examines early trade networks, before moving on to chart the spread of major religions, especially early Christianity’s reach and the rise of Islam. As we move into later centuries, economics and politics become central, with the interaction between major powers, and growing trade across the steppes and into Northern Europe. However, politics soon dominate, and we read about the Crusades and European dominance, on side side of the region, and Mongol expansions on the other.
Somehow the story becomes darker, with the impact of the great plague and the rise of new wealth, the latter a result of changing trade dynamics, imperial expansion, and shifting power blocs in the late 19th/early 20th century. Alas, now Frankopan’s account becomes rather more familiar to many of his readers, with World War I, political compromise, genocide, and the ‘miserable’ ideological conflicts of the 20th Century.
Professional historians have been rather.critical, perhaps unkindly so, as Frankopan was clearly writing for a broad audience. According to one anthropologist and archaeologist, each chapter’s heading is highly intriguing: almost every one starts with ‘The Road to/of. He adds that “Frankopan masterfully balances history with literature, so that the book is accessible even to those who are unfamiliar with history.” Just so, and that’s a real strength.
Some commentators have concluded that the advent of the Silk Road caused countries to seek shared interests, often doing so as a result of exploitation and a lack of collaboration among European countries. Certainly, in both East and West the rise fascism of reflected a change in the economic balance of power. In charting the shifting economic and political structure of Western countries, and in contrasting this with the Asian experience, Frankopan suggests the evidence can be seen as indicative of the weaknesses of the liberal democracy approach.
As some commentators have pointed out, Frankopan’s work can be seen as centrally concerned with the debate between Eurocentrism and non-Eurocentrism. Challenging Eurocentrism is amongst the biggest challenges in political economy, given so embedded are its assumptions that it is difficult to detach ourselves from the Eurocentric beliefs of western academics and commentators, not least with the dominant narrative of endogenous western development which emerged from the classic Orientalist distinction between the ‘rational’ West and ‘barbaric’ East. Just as Edward Said’s Orientalism threw many assumptions into question, so by focusing on Persia and its contribution to the history of the world, Frankopan offers a fundamental and worthwhile assault on Eurocentrism through the re-orienting of world history away from a narrative justifying an inevitable Western emergence.
As Frankopan forges ahead with his re-assertion of the importance of Persia, commentators have observed opportunities are missed for his book to live up to its ambitious subtitle – to be ‘a new history of the world’, an oft-attempted and rarely achieved goal. As one reviewer suggested, if he had limited himself to simply detailing the history of the Persian world system – something he does with remarkable zeal, detail and passion – the scale of his ambition would have been met. But by striving for the world yet settling for just a fraction of the Eastern story of it, he has produced an incomplete world history but at least in doing so has made up for just some of the deficiencies in Eurocentrism.
The Silk Roads ends with the history of the modern-day Middle East. From this vantage point it becomes clear that this former heart of the world has become a bridge between, and product of, other powers – particularly the hegemonic West which, often inspired by Eurocentric assumptions, has remained heavily engaged in the region for more than a century. That this engagement has been either the product, or more contentiously the cause, of a troubled recent history for the region is well documented. Daily news reports still testify to the chaos across areas which once belonged to the Silk Roads.
However, Frankopan ends his volume with a surprisingly optimistic vision for the future of the region. ‘What we are witnessing,’ he claims, ‘are 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.’ It is a strong point, but having digested the latter portion of his 500-plus-page volume, it seems scarcely obvious that the countries which occupy the former Silk Roads will will ever become anything more than a bridge between the two focal points of geopolitical power: the established European and North American West, and the emerging Chinese and Indian East. It is far from clear that the power, patronage and prestige of seventh-century Baghdad are going to be repeated.
If an extremely unlikely situation, if I were to find myself to travelling on the Iron Road (rather than on a Silk Road), what would I see as I progressed from Vladivostok to Moscow? Perhaps I’d do no more than notice the residues of once great centres, the remains of a focal region. Or perhaps I would see that the middle, the crossing point between East and West, was beginning to rise again, and realise it is only our Eurocentrism, or our North American perspective, that is likely to ensure we are about to miss another iteration of the Silk Roads and their key role in human affairs. Geomagnetic poles can reverse, and so can human affairs!
