Galleons and Caravans, lecture week 3

The Silk Roads

Anne Gerritsen

  1. Connecting with the previous lecture:250-1350. New York: Oxford University

Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European hegemony: The world system A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

  1. The name ‘Silk Roads’:

Ferdinand von Richthofen,Ueber die centralasiatischen Seidenstrassen bis zum 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. Vortrag gehalten in der Sitzung der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, am 2. Juni 1877. Berlin: Druck von Kerskes & Hohmann, 1877.

  1. Space. The various maps (see PPT) show:
  2. Their location in Central Asia, with connections in other directions
  3. The multiple routes that combine together to form the Silk Roads network
  1. Timings. The Silk Roads developed in different periods:
  2. 2 BCE to 2 CE: initial development of the various Silk Routes, establishment of oasis towns like Samarkand, Kashgar, Dunhuang and Khotan.
  3. C7 to C9: time of the cosmopolitan Tang (T’ang) empire in China and the expansion of Islam from the Arab world through Persia to Central Asia.
  4. C13-C14: expansion of the Mongol Empire. ‘Pax Mongolica’. Marco Polo’s travels.
  5. C19-present: Tsarist expansion into Central Asia in 1850s, Great Britain and Russia competing for influence (‘Great Game’); late C19 explorations.
  6. ‘Oil and Gas Road’ of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan.
  7. OBOR: ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative.
  1. Environment:
  2. oasis towns in desert environment
  3. instability of the landscape
  4. harsh conditions for travel
  5. no sedentary agriculture
  6. few institutional records
  1. Importance of animals for the success of the trade routes
  1. The goods:
  2. From China came silks, ceramics, paper, gunpowder, but also musk, rubies, pearls and rhubarb for medicinal purposes.
  3. From the Mediterranean came Roman and then Persian glass and textile
  4. From the places in between: spices, gemstones, furs, horses, and perhaps most importantly (for the Chinese): jade.
  1. The people:
  2. Traders. Western and Chinese, but probably much more importantly, but few made the journey in whole. Most active were the traders from Sogdiana, Samarqand, Khotan, Kroraina and Bactria.
  3. Travellers, pilgrims, priests, scholars, entertainers
  1. Interpretations of the Silk Road:
  • Some argue that Silk Roads last flourish was during the Pax Mongolica, thereafter declined, and after founding of the European trade companies, superseded by maritime trade.
  • Revisionist views: Silk Roads as the ‘centre of the world, the progenitor of many of civilization’s most important inventions, crux of the world economy’ Susan Whitfield, curator of the BL and leader of the Dunhuang project.
  • Silk Roads as the centralising force in Afro-Eurasian unity:
  1. William McNeill sees the unity of the Afro-Eurasian continent as starting with the Han contacts with the Roman empire.
  2. Andre Gunder Frank (The Centrality of Central Asia, 1992): Central Asians central to world history: gave rise to the Timurid in Samarkand, the Ottomans in Turkey, the Safavids in Persia the Mughals in India.
  3. David Christian: Silk Roads important for the movement of “disease vectors, languages, technologies, styles, religions and genes.”
  1. Perspectives on the Silk Road.
  2. Significance of the Silk Roads for Europeans:
  3. Alexander the Great
  4. Ethnographers and historians of the Ancient world
  5. Knowledge of ‘The East’ from accounts by Marco, Sir John Mandeville, Pegolotti, De Clavijo who served as embassador in Samarkand in fifteenth century, and the C16 jesuit Bento de Goes.
  6. Access route to ‘wealth of the east’
  7. Aurel Stein and the Dunhuang project
  8. Significance for Central Asia:
  9. Trade and intermediaries
  10. Instability in the region:
  11. Turfan, had been run by the Uyghurs, but was taken over by the Mughals: Muslim decendents of the Mongols.
  12. Transoxania run by the Timurids, who also dominated the great cities of Persia. They were succeeded by the nomadic Uzbeks, while Persia came under control of the Safavids.
  13. Turkey came under the control of the Ottomans.
  14. Importance of the Silk Road for China
  15. Buddhism and the connection with India
  16. Dunhuang and Central Asian art and knowledge
  17. Trade in silk, horses, jade
  18. Conflict with nomadic peoples of Central Asia
  19. OBOR: demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Central Asia