"The Silk Roads" by Peter Frankopan

I picked up The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan to get a historian’s read on the commercial basis for how people have behaved down through the ages. I thought it would focus on prehistoric and early literate-era trade, and how it allowed European and Levantine peoples to become familiar with China. I was not disappointed, but I learned as I went the author’s thesis: the vast swath of land from the east end of the Mediterranean to the Pacific has borne the lion’s share of commercial trade, and thus the strongest influence over world political and social deeds and misdeeds through the millennia.

Frankopan sticks closely to his chosen scope. However, owing I’m sure to the relative abundance or scarcity of written material, the detail of political exigency and economic flow burgeons as we go, so that 20th Century events are treated in much greater detail than anything that went before. The author treats each major trend and era in sufficient detail to help the reader comprehend the roots of each: I found the early central Asia administrative system ensuring the safety of cargo and traveler especially intriguing.

Broad-ranging trade evolution, which shifted focus from the Middle East to Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the economic foundation for building empire, and the conflict between regional and global powers all receive treatment here. I found as I read into more current periods that my energy began to flag from the snowballing detail. The concluding chapter went to even more wordiness, and I will confess to the cardinal sin of skimming it. It just ran to such length, and I had gotten what I wanted already.

Frankopan is his own man; he doesn’t blink when citing the constantly American policies and short-sightedness in dealing with the Middle East, and is especially harsh when dealing with the brutish and bigoted practices of his own country, Britain. He is always authoritative and always well-grounded in his research and views. What more could a reader want in a historian?