What was your history class like? Was there any world history? If there was, chances are that it was relegated to the periphery of the largely Euro-centric story told of the rise of the West, or left out to be taught in another non-mandatory elective. Professor of global history at Oxford University, Peter Frankopan, seeks to rectify these historical gaps in his 2016 bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, and in the process maybe change Western perceptions of a region today commonly seen to be backwards and reactionary.
Frankopan tells the interconnected story of the world by examining the civilizations along the ancient trading routes of the Silk Roads that spanned from Africa to the Mediterranean to East Asia that connect the West to the East, from the distant past to the present, giving readers a new perspective on major historical events, like the fall of the Roman Empire to the later fall of the European colonial powers. It is the epic story of conquests, wars, and the constant trade of goods, people, ideas, and religions, a globalization that started and has never completely stopped, but seemingly has increased in intensity in the present moment.
So rather than follow the traditional route of historical analyses in expounding heavily on our inheritance of the Greco-Roman legacy, a path Frankopan sees as neglecting a nuanced tale of vibrant East-West exchange, Frankopan starts with the rise of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE in competition to the Romans as one of the first defining moments of antiquity. Within this hotbed of exchange, major religions and economic conventions became fairly mainstream, from common trade currencies to religions whose success depended on emphasizing common elements of these doctrines with local traditions. Christianity moved this way east and Buddhism west, attracting large sects of competing followers and helping to ensure their statuses among major world religions.
There was a healthy inter-mixing and borrowing (and relative tolerance) of ideas that, by-and-large, enabled the East to flourish in a varying succession of great empires, a condition that has endured for a majority of humanity's existence. The West caught up and eventually surpassed the East in large part through the exploitation of the bountiful natural and human resources of conquered lands, from the gold and slaves brought back from North and South America, Africa, and Asia, to the spices, precious stones, and eventually oil, of the Middle and Far East. Conquest and suffering went hand-in-hand with prosperity at home, allowing Western Europe and later America to beef up their militaries while simultaneously raising their political, cultural, and economic stars worldwide in the form of various colonial empires. When those empires fell, the powers-that-be turned to short-term deals with strongmen to safeguard their interests in the region (think oil). (Of course, we know today how that's gone.)
As a result of the latter policies, the exploitation of the East by the West left mixed-bag legacies that continue to resonate today, from the powder keg of the largely autocratic Middle East to the economic dynamism of East and South-East Asia. This is where it becomes especially helpful to know the other side of the story, how imperial legacies set the countries of the Silk Roads back in the modern era, with arbitrarily designed national boundaries and centuries of economic exploitation (think oil) resulting in autocracy, income inequality, and a bevy of other declines on various social indices for many living in the region.
But, there seem to be major changes underway today that are serving to revitalize the ancient corridors of commerce, people, and ideas, and with it lift up the peoples of the area. While uneven progress has been made in the center of the world towards climbing back upwards, the exhaustion of the West in the wake of huge military expenditures in the region in combination with increased political infighting over the globalization opening up new avenues in the East seems to show that the Silk Roads may be reclaiming their historical top-dog status once again. For one, China is investing heavily in Africa and in its ambitious New Silk Roads initiative to build up the transportation and economic infrastructure of the region. New centers for the arts and learning are popping up again in the Middle East and Asia. Many Western foreign policies are beginning to shift their focus Eastward.
In any case, in an era of transition, much uncertainty remains. While The Silk Roads prescribes no solutions that will avert potential conflict between a seemingly peaking West and rising East, it provides helpful context, a roadmap of the past leading to the present. Whatever we choose to do next, it seems clear that Western foreign policy should be geared towards peacefully guiding the rising powers upwards and securing a prosperous multipolar world for the many. Peace would seem to depend on that.
Works Cited:
Frankopan, Peter. (2016). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books.
No comments:
Post a Comment