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The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. But what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different-and far more interesting-as revealed in this new history. In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. For centuries, key records remained hidden-sometimes deliberately buried by bureaucrats for safe keeping. But the sands of the Taklamakan Desert have revealed fascinating material, sometimes preserved by illiterate locals who recycled official documents to make insoles for shoes or garments for the dead. Hansen explores seven oases along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where merchants, envoys, pilgrims, and travelers mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. There was no single, continuous road, but a chain of markets that traded between east and west. China and the Roman Empire had very little direct trade. China's main partners were the peoples of modern-day Iran, whose tombs in China reveal much about their Zoroastrian beliefs. Silk was not the most important good on the road; paper, invented in China before Julius Caesar was born, had a bigger impact in Europe, while metals, spices, and glass were just as important as silk. Perhaps most significant of all was the road's transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic motifs. The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.… (more)
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Like so many others, including, it seems, many scholars, I'd fallen for the popular conception of the fabled Silk Road as a well-beaten thoroughfare traversing Central Asia from coastal China to the Mediterranean, with
In fact, according to Yale professor and researcher Valerie Hansen, caravans tended to be small, wholesale trade light, travel limited and local, and the routes inconspicuous but for the natural formations that marked them. If it weren't for the cultural cross-pollination that resulted from migrations of refugees from war and political conflict and the exchanges of gift-bearing envoys from kingdom to kingdom, there would be little of significance to say about the Silk Road.
But those cultural effects were world-changing. From about 200 CE to 1000 CE, the vast land mass extending across the whole breadth of Asia was traversed on foot and on camelback by hundreds of thousands of travelers, carrying knowledge from east to west and from west to east. Language, writing systems, technology, art, and especially religion spread along those pathways. Rulers converted, temples arose or were torn down, new customs supplanted old. Alliances formed and reformed; boundaries were drawn and redrawn. Monks and scholars traveled to study under other masters and examine original sacred documents. The resulting blends of peoples and cultures transformed some of the world's oldest civilizations.
The author cites primary sources, such as records of taxation, travel passes, correspondence, and legal documents, to establish a picture of traffic along the routes of the Silk Road and life in seven oases dotting the way, locations that became urban centers and even capitals of rulers. The well-documented view that emerges may have lost something in romance but seems to have gained in authenticity.
One fact of note: the term "Silk Road" was coined by Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen in 1877 when he developed maps of the ancient routes as a basis for building a railway line; until then the expression had never been used.
I read this book because Pearl S. Buck's 1948 novel Peony made me curious about how Jews came to establish large communities in China. A search for books about the Silk Road led me to Colin Falconer's (definitely romanticized) 2011 novel Silk Road, which I read in tandem with this evidence-based account of verifiable fact. All three broadened the horizons in my mind across time and space and left me with an appetite for more.
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Dust jacket enclosed in Mylar.
Contents: At the Crossroads of Central Asia : The Kingdom of Kroraina -- Gateway to the Languages of the Silk Road : Kucha and the Kizil Caves -- Midway Between China and Iran : Turfan -- Homeland of the Sogdians, the Silk Road Traders : Samarkand and Sogdiana -- The Cosmopolitan Terminus of the Silk Road : Historic Chang'an, Modern-day Xi'an -- The Time Capsule of Silk Road History : The Dunhuang Caves -- Entryway into Xinjiang for Buddhism and Islam : Khotan -- Conclusion: The History of the Overland Routes Through Central Asia.
Includes bibliographical references and index.