History & society

The Silk Roads

Peter Frankopan

A new history of the world, told from the lands between the Mediterranean and the Himalayas

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  • 12 key ideas
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  • Published 2015

Introduction

Peter Frankopan, a historian at the University of Oxford, retells world history from the middle of the map. Instead of a story that runs from ancient Greece and Rome to modern Europe and America, he starts from the lands between the Mediterranean and the Himalayas, the region the Silk Roads crossed. He argues that for most of history this was the centre of the world: where cities and great religions began, where empires rose and fell, and where goods, ideas and diseases moved between east and west.

The book has a preface, twenty-five chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter is named for a road: the road of faiths, of furs, of slaves, of gold, of silver, of black gold (oil), and more. It runs in time order from the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and Han China, through the spread of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, the Vikings, the Crusades, the Mongols and the Black Death, to the voyages of Columbus and da Gama, the British Empire and its rivalry with Russia, the two world wars, the Cold War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The conclusion looks at the new routes being built across Asia. This summary follows the book's order in twelve key ideas.

Note: the book was published in 2015. Later events, such as the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021 and the full-scale war in Ukraine that began in 2022, are not in it. The book's account of religions and its judgements about countries, governments and leaders are Frankopan's; this summary reports them and adds none of its own.

  1. 1Frankopan argues that for most of history the centre of the world lay not in Europe but in the lands between the Mediterranean and the Himalayas
  2. 2Frankopan argues that the Silk Roads were born when Han China pushed west in search of horses, and that Rome's appetite for eastern luxuries tied the ancient world together
  3. 3Frankopan shows that faiths travelled the same roads as goods, and that rulers used religion to strengthen their power
  4. 4Frankopan places the rise of Islam in a world worn out by plague and by a long war between Rome and Persia
  5. 5Frankopan argues that the early Islamic world became a wealthy, open and learned civilisation, with centres of learning from Baghdad to Bukhara, Merv and Ghazni
  6. 6Frankopan argues that the wealth of the Islamic world pulled northern Europe into the Silk Roads, through a trade in furs and, above all, in slaves
  7. 7Frankopan argues that the Crusades, remembered as wars of faith, also began a contest among Europeans for the riches of the east
  8. 8Frankopan argues that the Mongols were not only destroyers: their empire lowered the cost of trade, and the plague that travelled its roads ended up remaking Europe
  9. 9Frankopan argues that the voyages of Columbus and da Gama moved the centre of the world to western Europe, at a terrible cost to others
  10. 10Frankopan argues that Britain's effort to guard India against Russia shaped the history of Afghanistan and Persia, and helped bring on the First World War
  11. 11Frankopan argues that oil and wheat made the region a prize for the great powers through two world wars and into the Cold War
  12. 12Frankopan argues that recent western wars in the region were short-sighted, and that the Silk Roads are now rising again

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The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan: summary | Daridanesh