The Silk Roads

Description

Peter Frankopan retells world history by placing the Silk Roads—the shifting networks that crossed Asia—at its center. Across centuries, merchants, armies, pilgrims, diplomats, and diseases move between the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, India, and the Pacific, carrying religions, technologies, cultures, and economic ambitions with them. The narrative ranges from ancient civilizations and Mongol expansion through the Black Death, the world wars, and the end of the Cold War. Its central argument is that developments usually described as Western arose through sustained contact, competition, and exchange with the East. By tracing repeated struggles to reach and control Eurasian routes, the book presents global power not as a self-contained Western ascent but as the changing result of connections across continents.

Themes