63 pages • 2 hours read
Peter FrankopanThe Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Chapter 6, “The Road of Furs,” looks at the increasingly important role played by steppes of Central and East Asia in commerce following the Muslim conquests. While the Muslim world often viewed the steppes with anxiety (correspondents such as Ibn Faḑlān produced and published reports of the strange nomadic tribes to the West), their economic contributions were also extremely important. Livestock and agricultural produce, and animal pelts “above all else” (103), were central to the economy of the steppes. Animal pelts in particular served several key practical purposes, not only providing warmth in winter but also in setting exchange rates in an economy that was not yet monetized. In the Muslim world, the prosperity from the conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries created a high demand for furs and led to the rise of a “fur road” (104).
In the steppes, these new commercial links fed competition between tribal groupings and brought them into closer contact with the West. The Khazars, who became very powerful, even converted to Judaism in the middle of the ninth century.
The burgeoning economy of the steppes also led to the movement of missionaries and merchants from West to East. Among these newcomers from the West were Scandinavian Vikings known for their toughness. One group of Swedish Vikings settled along the trade routes between the Black and Baltic seas, where they came to be known as the Rus’ people, who would later become “the fathers of Russia” (111).
Chapter 7 Summary
The trade in enslaved people, associated especially with the Rus’, stimulated the Northern European economy. Populations of Slavs, Turks, and sub-Saharan Africans were regularly enslaved and sold in slave markets that proliferated in Europe and Asia. While some Europeans balked at the thought of enslaving Christians, others profited immensely from doing so (it was human trafficking that birthed the wealth of Venice).
As the Rus’ grew more powerful, they turned to the “business of protection rackets” (120), demanding tribute from local populations and eventually becoming the dominant power in the Western steppes by the end of the 10th century, displacing the Khazars. With infighting between Muslim factions causing instability in the south, the Rus’ soon directed their attention to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, which had been taking advantage of unrest in the Muslim world to recover many of its old holdings in Asia Minor and Syria. The Rus’ formed strong ties with Constantinople to increase their wealth and power, allowing them to build important settlements such as Kiev and Novgorod. More populous and sophisticated societies resulted in a drive toward monetization.
In the East, meanwhile, the continuing instability of the Muslim caliphates allowed nomadic tribes such as the Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks to increase their power in the 11th century. The new balance of power resulted in increased incursions against the Byzantine Empire. Desperate, the Byzantine emperor appealed to the Pope Urban II in 1095 for help, resulting in the First Crusade.
Chapter 8 Summary
Chapter 8, “The Road to Heaven,” explains how the fall of Jerusalem to the First Crusade in 1099 ushered in “an age dominated by western Europe” (133). In addition to bolstering papal Christian ideology, the taking of strategic sites in the Eastern Mediterranean gave the Europeans access to valuable opportunities, so that the Crusade became “a springboard for accruing serious wealth and power” (135). The Muslim response to the Crusade, meanwhile, was limited. But the Crusaders antagonized many other populations and powers, especially the Byzantine Empire, to which the Crusaders neglected to turn over important cities they had retaken, despite having sworn to do so.
Italian city-states such as Genoa, Pisa, and Venice wasted no time taking advantage of the “exciting commercial possibilities” (137) offered by the capture of Jerusalem. In the competition between the Italians, Venice soon came out on top, sending fleets and lending money to back the Western European Crusaders in exchange for a substantial share in their successes.
At least at first, relations between Muslims and Christians were stable. Ideas and goods flowed from the East into Europe, stimulating the economies of the Christian as well as the Muslim worlds. But competition for the Eastern Mediterranean soured relations between the Christians of the two halves of Europe, and by the end of the 12th century there was open fighting between Venetians and Byzantines.
Meanwhile, the ruthlessness and incompetence of the Crusaders in the East failed to stop the brilliant general Saladin, who retook Jerusalem in 1187, shortly after inflicting a crushing defeat on the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin. Two subsequent attempts to retake Jerusalem ended in failure, with the second of these, the Fourth Crusade, culminating in the sack of Constantinople and never even reaching Egypt or the Holy Land. A later expedition against Egypt similarly came to nothing.
Chapter 9 Summary
In Chapter 9, “The Road to Hell,” Frankopan looks at the disruptions that entered the Muslim and Christian worlds from the steppes as the Mongols expanded their power with ruthless efficiency. Under Genghis Khan and his descendants, the Mongols quickly built “the largest land empire in history” (154). Genghis Khan took advantage of weakening Muslim authority in the early 13th century to push his empire into Central Asia, using violence “selectively and deliberately” (156) to terrify opponents into submission. As the Mongols prospered, they stimulated the growth of commercial and cultural infrastructures. Despite the brutality of Mongol warfare, cities and towns conquered by the Mongols were quickly rebuilt and surpassed their former glories.
Christian Europe reacted with terror to the Mongols, who by the 1240s had conquered territory in Russia and even Eastern Europe. But the Mongols were ultimately more interested in establishing themselves in Asia and even North Africa, and despite several false starts, they ultimately made few inroads in Europe. Meanwhile, the seizure of wealthy Asian cities such as Baghdad made the Mongols fabulously wealthy.
In the middle of the 13th century, however, the Mongols were faced with a new threat from the Muslim world as the Mamlūks, the new rulers of Egypt, began to push back against them in Palestine and Syria. Internal tensions among the Mongols also caused their power to become fragmented into four principal branches (the “senior line” in China, the heirs of Chaghatay in Central Asia, the Golden Horde of the steppes of Russia and central Europe, and the Īlkhānids in Greater Iran). As the Mamlūks continued to increase their power in the Eastern Mediterranean, they managed to drive back not only the Mongols but also the last remaining Christians in the Holy Land: By the end of the 13th century, Jerusalem, Sidon, Tyre, Beirut, and Acre were all in Mamlūk hands. But though “the Christian Holy land was gone for good” (169), the commercial connections built by Europeans such as the Venetians would only continue to increase their reach and importance.
Chapter 10 Summary
Chapter 10, “The Road of Death and Destruction,” opens with a discussion of how the Venetians and Genoese continued to expand their commercial empires in Asia. Their success was due in large part to the fiscal policies of the Mongols, who strategically kept taxes low. This was one example of the “bureaucratic nous” (173) of the Mongols, who from the beginning showed themselves very skilled at incorporating the diverse populations under their rule into a “coherent system” (173). The Mongols also displayed religious tolerance, and religions such as Christianity continued to spread in Asia during their rule. Under the Mongols, heightened economic activity, improvements in maritime links, and the introduction of silver as “a single currency across Eurasia” (181) transformed the monetary systems of the East and West alike.
But the “arteries connecting the world” (182) also facilitated the spread of disease. In the middle of the 14th century, the “Black Death” (an outbreak of Yersinia pestis) spread rapidly from the steppes through Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The global devastation was so extreme that many believed the world was ending. Nevertheless, the Black Death sparked major economic and social developments in Europe that would transform the relationship between East and West. Worker shortages led to higher wages, and serfs and peasants acquired freedom of movement as landowners struggled to find adequate agricultural labor. These changes led to new forms of economic activity and eventually a period of rapid economic and demographic growth. Similar growth was also happening in parts of Asia, for example in southern India and Ming China. The conquests of Timur in Central Asia, from the 1360s on, increased China’s wealth even more by stimulating further trade. In the 15th century, however, a financial crisis gripped Europe and Asia, brought about by a kind of “credit crunch” (193) as Eastern powers such as China began producing more goods than they could sell. Climate change may have worsened the crisis, as the unusually warm period known to climatologists as the Medieval Climate Anomaly gave way to the Little Ice Age. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was establishing itself in the Bosporus, and when the (Muslim) Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, panic spread through the Christian world. This sparked a wave of religious and cultural persecutions directed against the Muslims and Jews of Europe, many of whom fled east. Then, at the very end of the 15th century, the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas and Vasco da Gama around the southern tip of Africa set in motion a series of events that would transform Europe’s relationship to the East and the rest of the world.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
Chapters 6-10 turn from the early history of the Silk Roads and the rise of its principal ideologies to the disruptions that transformed it after the Muslim conquests. Such disruptions—including the Crusades, the Mongol conquests, and the Black Death—were heavily influenced by religion. In the centuries following the Muslim conquests, religious forces continued “jostling and blending to create composite worldviews” (101), and Frankopan explores the results of this “jostling and blending” (for instance, the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism), blurring traditional distinctions between “Eastern” and “Western” religion and philosophy. At the same time, Frankopan shows how increased competition between a few major religions—especially Islam and Christianity—sparked historical shifts in commercial networks. This dynamic shows that The Relationship Between Trade and Cultural Exchange can flow in both directions: Just as trade networks can facilitate the spread of religious ideas, shifts in religious power can alter trade networks. Periodic successes of Christian powers against Muslim powers (such as the triumphs of the Byzantines over the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate in the 10th century) would create “a sense of revival in the Christian world” (123). This ideological competition came to a head in the Crusades, religious wars that gave Western Europe access to the commercial and economic opportunities offered by the Mediterranean, as well as in religious persecutions such as the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century.
Frankopan also emphasizes the interrelation between religion, commerce, and politics. Frankopan writes, for example, that “while the Crusade is chiefly remembered as a war of religion, its most important implications were worldly” (131). It was through the Crusades that important new ideas and technologies came to the West, and it was by taking advantage of the Crusades that the northern Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were able to establish their mercantile empires, ultimately succeeding “where Christian knights had faltered” (170). In the 13th century, the Mongols used religion very differently, adopting a policy of religious tolerance to stimulate economic growth and demonstrating that “instinctively [they] knew how to be great empire-builders: tolerance and careful administration had to follow up on military might” (175). As always, Frankopan emphasizes The Importance of Trade in Global History, noting that it is “trade and access to desirable goods” (126) that provides the conditions necessary for different groups to rise to power. Numerous examples are given to support this thesis: the fur trade and the rise of the Nomads, the slave trade and the rise of the Northern Europeans, and, of course, luxury goods such as silk and the rise of various Eastern powers. During the Mongol conquests, for instance, silk and other luxury goods served many purposes, commercial as well as cultural and social.
Frankopan also discusses the role of ecological and environmental factors in the history of the Silk Roads. Introducing the devastation caused by the Black Death, Frankopan writes:
It was not just ferocious warriors, goods, precious metals, ideas and fashions that flowed through the arteries connecting the world. In fact something else entirely that entered the bloodstream had an even more radical impact: disease (182).
The impact of the Black Death that swept through Europe and Asia, a phenomenon Frankopan traces to the specific ecological conditions of the Eurasian steppes in which the plague originated, was huge. And of course it was the very trading routes that linked Europe and Asia that “became lethal highways for the transmission of the Black Death” (183). Similarly, Frankopan notes that the financial crises of the early 15th century may have been exacerbated by climate change, pointing to cases such as flooding in China as illustrations of “the impact that environmental factors had on economic growth” (193).
These chapters also continue Frankopan’s emphasis on Power Dynamics Between East and West. Frankopan’s anti-Eurocentric bent is continually repeated. The reader is reminded that as the trade in enslaved people was expanding:
the places that mattered were not in Paris or London, in Germany or Italy—but in the east. Cities that connected to the East were important—like Kherson in the Crimea or Novgorod, cities that linked to the Silk Roads running across the spine of Asia (125).
Similarly, Frankopan posits that the Mongols never expanded far into Europe because they “were simply uninterested” (159) in what the region had to offer, or because “there were fatter and better targets elsewhere” (162), or because “Europe was not the best prize on offer” (164). In the 13th and 14th centuries, as Europeans such as Marco Polo flocked to the East, it was clear to all that all the riches lay along the Silk Roads and in the Eastern lands that controlled these trading routes, so that the wealth of the East “stood in sharp contrast to that of Europe” (177). But the end of the 15th century, as Frankopan notes, would mark a crucial shift as social and economic developments following the Black Death led to rapid economic growth in Europe and, finally, the period of discovery and world conquest spearheaded by Columbus and da Gama: “Suddenly, the continent was no longer the terminus, the end point of a series of Silk Roads; it was about to become the centre of the world” (196).
