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The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Spiral-bound

by Peter Frankopan (Author)

4.5 8,661 ratings

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The sun is setting on the Western world. Slowly but surely, the direction in which the world spins has reversed: where for the last five centuries the globe turned westwards on its axis, it now turns to the east.

For centuries, fame and fortune was to be found in the west in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of adventure and riches. The region stretching from eastern Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China and India, is taking centre stage in international politics, commerce and culture and is shaping the modern world.

This region, the true centre of the earth, is obscure to many in the English-speaking world. Yet this is where civilization itself began, where the world's great religions were born and took root. The Silk Roads were no exotic series of connections, but networks that linked continents and oceans together. Along them flowed ideas, goods, disease and death. This was where empires were won and where they were lost. As a new era emerges, the patterns of exchange are mirroring those that have criss-crossed Asia for millennia. The Silk Roads are rising again.

A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is an important account of the forces that have shaped the global economy and the political renaissance in the re-emerging east.

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672 pages
Language

English
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09GCX8L5N
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Spiral-bound ‏ : ‎ 672 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #4,891,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.5 8,661 ratings

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kyounghwa esther sung

Reading this book is the simple way to take a few stride forward to the reality of how the world works.

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2017

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THE SILK ROADS by Peter Frankopan
A New History Of The World

It's true to say that history is a story told by the winner. It's all very well to get a big head and wield a sword as a now victor; but it's of pivotal importance to remember that forces on the other side or on the periphery would be flexing their muscles, on the alert for a chance to settle scores.

Peter Frankopan, a historian based at Oxford University and the author of THE SILK ROADS, has a prodigiously profound insight on historical events and is an extraordinarily hard-working researcher which we know from 100 pages of notes and bibliography accompanying 507 pages of text. This book is something none other than Peter himself couldn't have written. He pulled multiple strands together in this single great work. An epic story indeed! Incredibly informative and compellingly attractive. This ambitious book spans centries, continents and cultures. It shows a historical tapestry woven with his epochal perspective: how cultures, slaves, products, natural resources, religions and ways of life have been traded for over two thousand years; how the center of powers has changed so far and which it's heading into.

This book takes the form of a series of what marked milestones in global history chronologically arranged from ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia to the Crusades to the post ww2 era to the recent consideration of Turkey joining the SCO not the EU to the present when half-a-mile-long trains carrying millions of products from China to Germany in just sixteen days and vice versa. It of course includes factual accounts of events with the additional explanations on the causality between some nitty-gritty issues. But what the author is really willing to give is a warning against solving today's problems without worrying tomorrow's. THE SILK ROADS enables us all who read it to see a broad region that had been or is in turmoil. It reveals the dangers of the lack of perspective about global history. Great turning points in human history, I've learned from this book, have been bound together by, against the backdrop of, many big and small talks and decisions which occurred in the barren steppes, in conference rooms, on the phone and sometimes in a prison cell.

I owe much to Peter Frankopan. My knowledge of the world history was admittedly sparse. When it comes to history related literature, I, as a person who had no interest in the stuff of global history, have only read several books focusing on a narrow subject matter over shortening timeframesㅡUNBROKEN, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, DEAD WAKE, just to name a few. Now, after reading this book from beginning to end, highlighting and underlining sentences, making notes in the margins, I feel my heart ten times more fluttering than when I first saw the jacket image of an incredibly beautiful decorative ceiling of a certain madrasah in Uzbekistan. There is a greater quiver of excitement now in my mind than there was just after reading 7-page preface which made me all aflutter in anticipation of the following text.

The bottom line: go online with your smart phone to do a search for THE SILK ROADS by Peter Frankopan, add it to cart and proceed to checkout! Some time later you would take a few stride forward to the reality of how the world works.

23 people found this helpful

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Avid Reader

A must read for anyone interested in why the world seems to be getting progressively divided

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2016

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I don’t know how you enjoy reading your books, but unlike the page-turners that can’t be put down, if a book grabs my attention, I tend to slow down my pace to absorb as much as possible of the full meaning that the author intends to impart.

At 10% this book had me hooked. The realisation of how our present way of life is just a continuation of societal systems, laws and principles that were devised, implemented and set down centuries ago was a real eye opener.
I am now at around 60% and continue to be enthralled at how heavily the historical background impacts on almost every important current event and crisis that we encounter today and how different the impressions and mental pictures that emerge from the book are to those portrayed and imparted by our media.

If you are interested in why the world is what it is today, you cannot get a better more interesting precis of what events caused us to reach the state of current global development and you will better understand (but not justify) the unrest in which we live.

Staring from Roman days BC, the first 16 chapters (aprox 40% of the book) take you on an evolutionary trip through the major events, century by century, giving a foundation on how and why events of exploitation and slavery evolved as they did.
From Chapter 17 the author brings you into the 20th Century and shows how major political self-serving manipulations and greed have resulted in the unavoidable conflicts of wars and aggression throughout the history of the East and the West.

The reader cannot help but link the global terrorist activities and the peaceful invasion of Europe that we are witnessing to a resurgence of tactics and methods used throughout history to justify reaction against perceived sins that the West committed or imposed on weaker nations, which they "colonised" then simply took (or stole) their mineral, human and oil resources with no regard to the consequences on the local population and with little respect, pay-back or recompense (other than selective and ridiculous bribing of officials) to the masses of humans that they exploited, betrayed and decimated over centuries.

From the outset, the author explains why he elected to use the historical names of the people and places he describes and this becomes distracting to the reader who eventually loses track of exactly who or where the event occurs because (except for a few cases) he does not give the up-to-date name of the location or person, despite his giving the actual source references on which he bases his commentary. However, as the text gives the general location and position of an individual, readers can ignore the foreign nomenclatures and read on. This does not detracted from the text and information imparted.

The writing style flows well and is easy to read and follow. I’m looking forward to the remainder of this enjoyable journey.

11 people found this helpful

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evanjamesroskos

Not quite a decentralized look at EurAsia

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2022

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This text is well written and well researched. Not sure what bias one of the lengthy one star reviews is talking about. Not going to get into a refutation of those complaints. What needs to be recognized here is that the focus on Europe in a history about trade routes that didn’t include Europe for quite a while is suspicious and yet this is a much better perspective than A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE WORLD which couldn’t get out of Europe no matter how hard it tried.

I think the most impressive section is the one covering the 20th century where the author manages to weave together a number of various disasters caused mostly by the British, Russians, and Americans (as well as Iran and Iraq with the help of said Europeans).

I felt that the absence of China in various points was odd since it was Chinese silk that named these roads but overall this was a fascinating read.

I followed this up with DESTINY DISRUPTED which is a history of the world from the perspective of Islam. That gave some great perspective to this book and is recommended for anyone who read SILK ROADS.

29 people found this helpful

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Maryam

Eye-Opening

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2023

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No words will justify how valuable the insights in these books are and how beautifully the author goes through history.

The author touches upon beautiful cultural and religious elements. Sticks to the facts, and remains unbiased.

This book should be taught in schools as it takes you through centuries and centuries of useful data whilst showcasing that history is always intertwined with the present and the future!

A must read!

3 people found this helpful

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Donita

The Silk Roads

Reviewed in Mexico on February 22, 2024

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Se me hizo muy interesante. Me encanta la Historia.

No he podido comprar el libro en Kindle, no sé porque, solo tengo el sample.

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Fernando

Muito enriquecedor

Reviewed in Brazil on July 1, 2022

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Um livro longo e detalhista, requer muita paciência. Li em partes ao longo de vários meses. Muito interessante e bem escrito.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Fun & informative

Reviewed in India on November 20, 2023

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The good reviews have said it all. I picked this up (along with the great game) for as prep books for a trip to Uzbekistan. (Will hopefully cover other silk route spots later). With some careful pacing and a deadline to spur me, this was my fastest reading of a 500+ page book. I think some familiarity with the names, empires, characters involved helped me with the speed. Overall, breezy read with a good perspective of a world that was incredibly well connected despite all that we think of the past.

One person found this helpful

Jin

Review

Reviewed in Germany on November 30, 2020

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When someone recommend me this book, I have expected to read something totally different.

I was raised in Germany so most of history lessons were focused on Ancient Rome, World War I & II and a bit of basic history including Columbus finding America, US American main historic events and so on. Since I have an Asian background, I already kind of sensed that history is told and perceived differently from every country or culture. Therefore, it was very interesting to read this huge collection of historical facts from the point of view from the „middle of the world“.
It’s so packed with facts and compressed to show the main events that I was very slow to read through each page chewing through every fact.

I actually expected to see kind of a more subject commentary of the author on how history is currently being told in different cultures. Nevertheless, I also liked how this book was composed of; it felt like a mini-lexicon which skimmed through world history going through the forgotten protagonists and countries who actually played a huge role. But I can imagine that this book may feel too heavy and too much to those who are just beginning with world history or who are not at least a bit familiar with major world history events.

9 people found this helpful

I. Jones

Superb book for understanding the world we live in

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2020

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This book has been around for four or five years now, but it looks like I read it at just the right time, given current events in Iran (as of early January 2020).
It claims to be a new history of the world. That’s a bit grandiose, but it certainly is an alternative way of looking at world history over the last two or three thousand years. For the most part, because although the author strives to avoid being Eurocentric, there are times when he just can’t help it, given the role that Europe – and its empires – have played in world history, particularly over the last five hundred years.
I have to say that the opening is not very promising. Roman history is clearly not the author’s forte and he skates over the Roman conquest of Egypt and the defeat of Cleopatra in a pretty perfunctory and not entirely accurate way. However, from then on the book gets much better. This is not so much original research as original thinking and a meticulous synthesis of what we know and what we don’t know about the history of central Asia, or specifically the corridor from Turkey to the Himalayas. Some of this is familiar – the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the Mongols, Timur Lang – but the beauty of this book is the fine detail that the author adds and the connections he makes between events and places that don’t immediately appear to be connected. I could give dozens of examples, but one striking one is the discovery of Roman coins deep in India. Another is the way Buddhism had to jazz itself up to make itself more appealing to people who wanted temples, rituals and statues. Similarly we hear of a 4th century bishop complaining that Jewish services are far more entertaining than Christian ones because they have music and dancing, tambourines and cymbals, and we’ve got to raise our game if we’re going to compete for market share.
There is another apparent blip when the author switches to Columbus, Portugal and Spain and the “discovery” of the Americas. It seems like a digression till you realise that 1492 did shift the centre of gravity temporarily from central Asia to central America; or in Eurocentric terms from Venice to Lisbon and Seville. It also opened up new trade routes between East and West (and made those terms largely meaningless once the globe had been circumnavigated).
As the book moves closer to the twenty-first century, we get new insights into where we are now, such as the rise of China and Iran’s role as a regional power. For example, I was familiar with British nineteenth century Russophobia and the “great game” which largely involved using Afghanistan as a buffer to prevent the Russians from attacking British-ruled India. However, I was very hazy about British involvement in Persia and this book taught me a lot about why the Iranians are so hostile towards us westerners, especially the US and Britain. Whether you agree with the author’s analysis or not, it seems incontestable that much of our intervention in central Asia over the last two hundred or more years has been a concoction of short-termism and naked self-interest mixed with large doses of hypocrisy and double standards, all served up with a thick white supremacist sauce. For example, consider the games the US played during the first Gulf War between Iraq and Iran. First they backed Saddam Hussein of course; but by the mid-eighties the US was not only supplying conventional weapons to Iran; they were also providing the capability for Iran to develop nuclear weapons – and other western countries were falling over themselves to get a slice of the pie. Seems ironic now that Trump is threatening Iran with World War III. NB the author focuses on the role of one Dick Cheney, both in the 1980s as a supplier of arms and nuclear technology and more recently as someone who wants to see the Iranian nuclear programme – that he enabled – blown to dust.
All in all this is a superb book for understanding the world we live in now and I Iook forward to reading the sequel shortly.

18 people found this helpful

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