Recentering the World's Story
Most of us learned world history as a series of European achievements punctuated by occasional nods to "exotic" civilizations. Peter Frankopan, a historian at Oxford, argues this approach has it entirely backward. In The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, he places the trading networks connecting East and West at the center of human development, suggesting that the pathways between civilizations—not the civilizations themselves—drove progress. For readers wondering is The Silk Roads worth reading, the answer depends on your appetite for dense scholarship and radical historical reframing.
Published in 2015, this ambitious work spans millennia and continents, tracing how goods, ideas, religions, and diseases moved along trade routes from ancient Persia to modern-day oil politics. Frankopan's central thesis challenges Western-centric narratives by showing how regions we often consider peripheral—Central Asia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent—were actually the world's economic and cultural engines. Readers familiar with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel will recognize a similarly sweeping approach, though Peter Frankopan focuses more on connectivity than geography.
Frankopan's Scholarly Approach
The author writes with the confidence of someone who has spent years in archives, and his prose reflects both the breadth of his research and his academic training. Frankopan doesn't simply narrate events; he weaves together economic, political, and cultural threads to show how seemingly distant developments influenced each other across vast distances and time periods. His writing style tends toward the dense and scholarly—this isn't popular history in the Bill Bryson mold.
The book's structure follows a roughly chronological path, but Frankopan frequently jumps between regions and time periods to illustrate connections. One moment he's discussing silk production in ancient China, the next he's examining how Roman demand for Eastern luxuries drained the empire's gold reserves. This approach effectively demonstrates his thesis about interconnectedness, though it can occasionally feel scattered for readers seeking a more linear narrative.
Rather than focusing on traditional historical "great men," Frankopan emphasizes the Mongols as crucial facilitators of trade and cultural exchange. Under their rule, the Silk Roads reached perhaps their greatest extent and safety, allowing merchants, missionaries, and ideas to move with unprecedented freedom. He also highlights lesser-known rulers and administrators who protected trade routes, negotiated treaties, and established the legal frameworks that made long-distance commerce possible.
The book pays particular attention to Persian and Arab leaders who controlled key segments of these networks, as well as Chinese officials who regulated the flow of goods at the eastern terminus. Frankopan demonstrates how these figures—often relegated to footnotes in Western histories—wielded enormous influence over global economic development. Religious figures also feature prominently, as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and other faiths spread along the same routes that carried spices and silk.
Challenging the Western Narrative
Frankopan's most compelling argument concerns how the rise of European sea power gradually marginalized the traditional Silk Roads. Rather than presenting European exploration as inevitable progress, he frames it as a response to being excluded from profitable overland trade. The "Age of Exploration" becomes less about European ingenuity and more about circumventing existing networks controlled by others.
This reframing extends to more recent history. Peter Frankopan argues that twentieth-century conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other regions make more sense when viewed through the lens of controlling strategic trade routes rather than spreading ideology. The book's final sections connect ancient trading patterns to modern geopolitics, suggesting that the Silk Roads' importance never truly ended—it just shifted forms.
Dense Reading with Uneven Pacing
While Frankopan's scholarship is impressive, this history book demands serious commitment from readers. At times, the sheer volume of information overwhelms the narrative thread. The author's decision to cover such vast temporal and geographical scope means individual topics sometimes feel underdeveloped. Readers hoping for deep dives into specific periods or regions may find themselves wanting more detail.
The book also suffers from occasional repetition of its central thesis. After the first few chapters establish the importance of trade networks, subsequent restatements of this point feel unnecessary. Some sections focusing on more recent history feel less authoritative than the ancient and medieval portions, where Frankopan's expertise shines brightest.
Worth the Intellectual Investment?
The Silk Roads succeeds brilliantly as a corrective to Euro-centric historical narratives, and readers interested in understanding how our interconnected world developed will find valuable insights throughout. Peter Frankopan's research is thorough, his thesis compelling, and his examples often surprising. However, this is decidedly academic history—readers seeking entertaining storytelling or accessible prose might find it heavy going.
The book works best for readers with some background in world history who can appreciate Frankopan's reframing of familiar events. Those completely new to the subject might struggle with the density of information and frequent geographical shifts. Despite its challenges, the book offers a genuinely fresh perspective on human development that makes the effort worthwhile for serious history readers.