An incredible, breathless journey through 2500 years of human history from the beginnings of the Silk Road to the
Contemporary Chinese One Belt One Road policy. The book is somewhat
misleadingly titled, the Silk Road was specifically the core overland trade route through
Central Asia between Europe and China. The scope of this book is much wider
than that, surveying global trade and its effect on global development over the
last two millennia. Fortunately, considering the scale of the enterprise,
Frankopan has a very readable and concise writing style which remarkably endows this book with the feel of a page turning thriller rather than a staid economic
history. No mean feet considering both the subject matter and the fact that it runs to over 600 pages.
This macro
approach to history is fascinating, to survey how capital has moved across the globe is to
understand the power centres of human history across all of history. A view that is not so easily
obtained in histories focussing on a single empire or country which is how the majority of the world is educated through focussing on the
country or Empire that you happened to reside in. This produces a very
distorted view of the world where particularly in the West were the history
of China and Central Asia are almost unknown despite being the cultural and
economic powerhouse of much of the last two millenniums. As Frankopan points out
Alexander when he chose to conquer didn't go West because there was nothing there, he went East instead where the power and the money was. This is one of many fascinating insights in a tremendous book full of them, as ever the old adage is follow the money, and Frankopan has done that with fantastic results.
None more so than when Frankopan makes the
argument that the Silk Road is on the rise again and the centre of commercial gravity is returning back to Central Asia and China. Which raises an
interesting thought for post Brexit Britain which finds itself isolated and on completely the
wrong side of the world, fittingly perhaps, as by reading this book you will realise that this is much like how Britain has spent the majority of its existence.
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