The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

In Chapter 1 (titled “The Creation of the Silk Road”), Frankopan looks to the early empires of Asia to trace the origins of the commercial networks that would become the Silk Road. According to Frankopan, it is the region of Mesopotamia or the “Fertile Crescent” that “provided the basis for civilisation itself” (3). Many powerful kingdoms and empires rose in this part of the world, the greatest of which were the Persians. Under the Achaemenid Dynasty, the Persian Empire extended eastward as far as the Himalayas. Through their investment in agriculture and irrigation, road building, and legal and political infrastructure, the Persians brought about increased contact between East and West, linking Asia Minor in the West with the kingdoms and cultures of south and East Asia.

Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire in the fourth century BCE brought about crucial changes, spreading Greek culture eastward and setting in motion “a gradual and unmistakable programme of Hellenisation, as ideas, themes and symbols from ancient Greece were introduced to the east” (8). The Greek language spread through Central Asia and India, as did aspects of Greek religion and art.

China, meanwhile, was expanding as well, linking the steppes of Central and East Asia into “an interlocking and interconnecting world” (10). The Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) gradually pushed hostile nomadic tribes such as Xiongnu into the steppes and away from Chinese frontiers. By trading Chinese silk for livestock bred in the steppes, China established diplomatic relations with the nomadic peoples beyond its borders. At last, the Han gained the upper hand, seizing control of the strategic Gansu Corridor from the Xiongnu by 119 BCE and thus gaining control of the agriculturally significant regions of Xiyu in the West. According to Frankopan, this “was the moment of the birth of the Silk Roads” (12). The Chinese slowly began to learn about and trade with the Western world, turning globalization into “a fact of life” (13). China’s most important export was silk, which, in addition to being a luxury item, also served a practical purpose as a stable currency and even, at times, a form of payment for military service.

Frankopan next turns to Rome, a city in central Italy that had come to dominate the Mediterranean by the end of the first century BCE. Rome’s capture of Egypt in 30 BCE consolidated its position as the center of an empire and brought in a huge influx of wealth (Egypt was famous for its fertility and quickly became the breadbasket of Rome). As Rome began to look east, they became more and more interested in luxury items imported via India and China. Commodities such as Chinese silk were much desired by the rich upper classes and appalled many conservatives, who feared that Eastern luxury would weaken the hardy Roman character.

During this period, Persia remained at the heart of the commercial networks linking East and West. Indeed, while both China in the East and Rome in the West had significant contact with Persia, these two powerful civilizations had little knowledge about one another and rarely had direct dealings. Persia again began to grow powerful, especially under the Sasanian Dynasty that emerged around 220 CE. The rise of the Sasanians put increasing pressure on the Roman Empire. By the early fourth century CE, the Roman emperor Constantine took the radical step of moving the Roman capital to a new city. Significantly, Constantine chose Byzantion, strategically located on the Dardanelles, at “the point where Europe and Asia meet” (25). Byzantion quickly became one of the wealthiest and most important cities in the world, taking the name Constantinople after its builder.

Chapter 2, “The Road of Faiths,” explores the religious and philosophical ideas that traveled along the commercial networks that “linked the Pacific, Central Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean” (28). The conquests of Alexander the Great brought Greek ideas and theology to the East. Around the same time, Buddhism spread rapidly across India and into Central, East, and Southeast Asia. In Persia, Zoroastrianism (a religion with origins in the sixth century, under the Achaemenid Empire) had a resurgence in the 17th century under the Sasanian Empire.

Beginning in the first century CE, however, a new religion was taking both Europe and Asia by storm: Christianity. Within a few centuries, the Christians transformed from a small and persecuted minority to the power behind the Roman Empire, with the Roman emperor Constantine converting to Christianity after coming to power in 312 CE. The expansion of Christianity led to great changes. Jerusalem, the site where Christianity originated, became increasingly important. But the Christianization of Rome led to a backlash against Christians in the East, where the Persians increasingly persecuted those who shared a religion with their Roman rivals.

In Chapter 3, “The Road to a Christian East,” Frankopan discusses how Christianity underwent a resurgence in the East as relations between Rome and Persia stabilized over the course of the fourth century CE. Amid environmental changes, nomads from the steppes attacked the frontiers of Persia. Under their leader, Attila, the Xiongnu (or Huns) even advanced as far as Rome. Rome and Persia were forced to work together, and as relations between the empires improved, Christianity began to gain a stronger foothold in the East.

Tensions increasingly rose within Christianity concerning important theological issues, and in the fourth and fifth centuries, councils were held in the West and the East to try to resolve these issues. Despite these councils, disagreements within the church led to infighting within both Eastern and Western Christian communities. Some disputes, such as that between Cyril and Nestorius, contributed to the growing schism between the Western and Eastern churches, with the West supporting one side and the East another. Efforts to repair this schism were unsuccessful and gradually dwindled away.

In the East, the Sasanian rulers became more tolerant, allowing Christianity to expand deeper and deeper into Asia. But the progress of Christianity was challenged by rival faiths such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Buddhism. This competition resulted in religions influencing and borrowing from each other. By the sixth century, it was Christianity that seemed to be “the most competitive and successful” (61), making inroads in the East and the West at the expense of other religions. This Christian dominance continued until the advent of Islam changed the balance of theological power.

Chapter 4, “The Road to Revolution,” explores how the “turmoil, dissent and catastrophe” of the sixth and seventh centuries set the stage for the rise of Islam. Tensions between the Eastern Roman Empire (now centered in Constantinople) and Persia worsened after the reign of Justinian (527-65), with new regional powers like the Türks of the Central Asian steppes and the tribes of Western and southern Arabia playing an increasingly important role in the geopolitical climate. Between the 580s and the 620s, the balance of power seesawed dramatically between Rome and Persia. In 626, for example, the Persians were camped just outside of Constantinople, but by 627 the Romans were marching on the Persian capital of Ctesiphon. Religion often played a central role in the wars and politics of this period, with the war between Rome and Persia often being seen as “a war of religion” (69).

Amid this climate of political, military, and economic instability, Muḥammad’s new religion, Islam, built on ideas that had been taking in shape in the Arabian Peninsula for the past century. Despite the opposition of regional powers (especially the Quraysh clan of Mecca, which had long controlled Arabian commercial and religious life), Muḥammad proved an effective leader, and his “strong idea about unity” (73) struck a chord in the economically strained Arabian Peninsula of the early seventh century. Muḥammad was forced into exile (hijra) in 622, but in the years that followed (especially 628-32) the rapid decline of Persia created a kind of power vacuum that Muḥammad’s followers—known as Muslims—wasted no time in filling.

Chapter 5, “The Road to Concord,” continues the discussion of the rise of Islam begun in the previous chapter. Frankopan attributes much of the early success of Muḥammad and his followers to “the support provided by Christians, and above all that given by Jews” (77). In the early seventh century, many Christians and Jews encouraged Islam, finding many similarities between the new faith and their own beliefs. The support of Jewish and Christian communities was key in helping Islam establish a foothold in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, and in return early Muslim attitudes toward Jews and Christians were broadly conciliatory, “supplemented by a policy of protecting and respecting the People of the Book—that is to say, both Jews and Christians” (82).

After the death of Muḥammad, however, infighting within Islam led to increasing hostility toward rival factions and religions. By the late seventh century, Islam became more and more inclined toward proselytizing among non-Muslim local populations.

The rapid expansion of Islam united lands that had once formed the economic center of Rome and Persia, creating “a new economic and political behemoth that stretched from the Himalayas through to the Atlantic” (88). The Muslim powers that rose during this period destabilized the powers of Europe in the West and the nomads of Central Asia and even China in the East (in China, Muslim expansion brought about the collapse of the Tang Dynasty and led to the rise of the Uighurs). Commerce encouraged and centralized by Islam created new wealth, which in turn led to the rise of new cities in Asia, such as Baghdad. This economic flourishing gave rise to “one of the most astonishing periods of scholarship in history” (94). The cities of Europe, meanwhile, became “intellectual backwaters” (96). Even as Islam was threatened by schism from within (three major Muslim centers had arisen by the early 10th century, at Cordóba, Egypt, and Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula), a new world order had emerged under a “notional overarching religious unity” (97).