The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

Russia’s recovery after the Crimean War fueled mounting concern in Britain, as Chapter 16 (“The Road to War”) explains. As the British firmed up their position in India and China, Russia “developed its own Silk Roads” (290) with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway at the end of the 19th century. Russia also moved to strengthen its ties with Persia, bringing them closer and closer to British India. This all caused great consternation in Britain, especially coming at a time when there was already “an acute sense of imperial overstretch” (295).

Desperate, Britain tried to divert Russia from the East by driving them to expand into Europe. In particular, the British wanted to draw Russia into conflict with Germany, whose strong economy and military spending was also a source of mounting concern. Germany, feeling vulnerable, sought to build new connections with Eastern powers such as the Ottomans. Following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1914, the entrenched tensions in Europe escalated into the First World War. This war and the desolation it inflicted bankrupted the European powers.

Chapter 17, “The Road of Black Gold,” addresses the growing importance of oil in the geopolitics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Western figures like the British businessman William Knox D’Arcy amassed great wealth by finding oil in the East. Persia in particular was much courted by European powers because of its oil deposits, with Knox D’Arcy—and Britain—gaining the upper hand by the early 20th century.

The discovery of oil in Persia and neighboring countries was a turning point commercially as well as geopolitically. The discovery gave rise to important corporations such as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, bringing wealth to Britain. This new wealth fueled Britain’s rivalries with its neighbors in Europe, including France and Russia. In the East, growing exploitation by Western powers seeking oil soon “led to a deep and festering hatred of the outside world, which in turn led to nationalism and, ultimately, to a more profound suspicion and rejection of the West best epitomised in modern Islamic fundamentalism” (320).

As more and more oil flowed from Persia, the British took measures to secure their position, building a supply network and diverting much of the new oil to the Royal Navy (a policy that took effect just before the beginning of the First World War). The British sought to improve their supply lines by strengthening their holdings in the Persian Gulf region, often by making promises to local Arab leaders that they could not keep (a policy that led to major problems later). The British also tried to cooperate with other European powers, including the French and Russians, to take control of Constantinople, whose location on the Bosporus Strait, between Europe and Asia, made it essential to controlling the transportation of oil. This effort came to nothing, with the Ottomans retaining control of the strategic city. Frankopan contends that by increasing tensions between European powers, the question of access to oil became one of the major policy issues that contributed to the outbreak of the First World War.

Chapter 18, “The Road to Compromise,” continues to examine the strategies pursued by European powers such as Britain as they sought to consolidate their position in the East, especially regarding access to oil. In the early 20th century, the British increasingly intervened in the politics of Persia and other countries of Mesopotamia and the Near East, setting up figureheads (such as Prince Farman-Farma and, later, Reza Khan in Persia) whom they believed would be favorable to their interests in the region. The British also began taking an interest in Palestine, whose port of Haifa commanded a strategic position for shipping oil across the Mediterranean.

European attempts to gain control of the Caucasus, on the other hand, met with continued failure as the Ottomans held on to their position there. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1918 also challenged Britain’s position in the Caucasus and Central Asia, as the new government proved to be very aggressive in expanding into Asia.

The United States, meanwhile, also began to direct its attention to securing its oil needs. The US began to compete with the British in Persia, presenting itself as the “perfect white knight” (338) to counter the imperialist British—though of course American exploitation of Persia proved to be no better than British exploitation.

As Western powers continued splitting up the Near and Middle East among themselves, reactions against imperialism and colonialism became stronger and stronger. Geopolitical issues in the region also became more pronounced as the negative consequences of the Europeans’ “dangerous game” (341) of meddling in local politics and breaking agreements began to become apparent. In the 1920s and 1930s, Eastern powers broke away from their Western overlords, building new trade networks in Asia to move their resources across the Mediterranean and into the rest of the world.

In Chapter 19, “The Wheat Road,” Frankopan shows how competition for access to wheat was one of the major contributing causes behind the Second World War, much as access to oil was behind the First World War. Frankopan examines the treaty between Hitler and Stalin in 1939 in the context of the worsening food crisis in 1930s Germany. From the beginning, Hitler had designs on invading the Soviet Union and taking control of their fertile Eastern holdings, especially the Ukraine.

The alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union posed a major concern to European powers, threatening their interests in the East. The Germans made significant inroads in the Middle East and Central Asia in the 1930s, taking advantage, for example, of the “natural overlap […] between the deep anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime and that of some leading Islamic scholars” (354). Hitler’s rapid conquest of Poland and France further shifted the balance of power in Europe.

After gaining enough momentum, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, violating his earlier agreement with Stalin. The invasion caught Stalin by surprise and made rapid gains. Hitler, meanwhile, shored up his position in the East, and the Arab world was massively pro-German.

Soon, however, Hitler’s position stalled in the Soviet Union (as well as the East). Battlefield losses, supply problems, and the Soviets’ scorched-earth retreats all took a significant toll, and soon it became clear that “the idea of taking control of an apparently bottomless pool of resources in the East had been an illusion” (375). With the deaths of millions of Germans becoming inevitable due to a massive food shortage, the Germans now need “to identify those who should suffer” (375). As Frankopan explains, the Germans first let Russian prisoners starve before beginning to systematically murder the Jews. Thus, “the failure of the land to generate wheat in the anticipated quantities was a direct cause of the Holocaust” (379).

In the years that followed, Hitler was slowly forced out of Russia and the rest of Europe. Following the end of the war, much of Europe was divided between the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union. This split would propel the Cold War that defined the second half of the 20th century.