The Silk Roads – A new History Of The World
Peter Frankopan
Epic outline of how the world was shaped into what it is today in terms of the global trade and political landscapes that have shifted since the beginning of recorded civilisation.
The book starts with the creation of the original silk road, and speeds through history, gradually decelerating and spending more time on recent events – a solid half of the book is dedicated to events after WW1.
Frankopan covers the spread of physical goods, faith, human trafficking (of which there has been a LOT), empires, oil, war, superpowers, and the nascent rise of the center of world into power once more.
Reading this helped me to realise why the Kremlin has onion domes on it, and how the imperial arrogance of a once-great Britain created the 2020 Brexit. How the world was shaped by people who didn’t really grasp what they were doing – and how nothing about the social shape it has today should be thought of as permanent.
It’s a great read for when once needs some perspective. One the ones that’s worth future chapter-skimming as a sort of contextual reference for specific eras, and how they fed into each other.
The book is fairly light when it comes to developments within China, instead focusing heavily on an American (and therefore automatically including Russia) perspective. The third superpower is mentioned only as it relates to the european and american angle, or peripherally regarding some activities in the middle east.