Empires of Ancient Eurasia (New Approaches to Asian History) 1st Edition

A good general study that appeals to my interests in comparative perspectives based on actual societal systems where one has available at least some information on what was happening in areas of non-trivial size and over time periods spanning several generations. This study is in the spirit of the approaches of Jared Diamond in the collection of essays called "Natural Experiments of History".

It's a very good look at Silk Road history of the era, but somewhat dry. Having read practically every book on the Silk Roads, I found what I expected to find, but no strong surprises or new ideas. There doesn't seem to be an overall thesis; it's more of a textbook survey. Each chapter even has an introduction that states the questions it will ask and at the end a summary of the answers it discussed.On Valerie Hansen's burning question of whether there was trade or just government shipments it seems to want it both ways. At first talks about it being only from the government, but later on there is talk of merchants as well with little to no discussion of how they fit into the picture. By the way, it does not include Hansen's book in the bibliography.The Parthian chapter is uncharacteristically problematic. I found several errors there. It also "cheats", using it mainly to discuss the Romans.The style is often terse and dry, even when a good story is available. The story of Ban Chao’s conflict with the Kushans, for example, has many more facets and is much more interesting than what is given.Overall, I prefer the books by Raoul McLaughlin -- which it does quote at times -- to this more academic work. But if those books did not exist, this would be a very good effort. This would probably work well as the starting text for a Silk Roads course.Some specific notes:The Han- Calls the Yumen Pass the Yunmen Pass.- Spells the name of a desert sometimes Taklimakan, other times Taklamakan. Both are correct, but is a little consistency with this too much to ask, Editor?The Parthians- The chapter has almost nothing about the Parthians. Instead, chapter space is used to discuss Alexander the Great and also, the Romans. What kind of history is this? One can learn more about the Parthians on Wikipedia.- Calls Sulla the “virtual dictator” of Rome. He wasn’t just the virtual dictator; he was the dictator. Rome is where we get the term from.- The dates for Mithridates II are twice given as 121-91 CE, which obviously should be BCE.- Strange gratuitous references to Jewish history. Mentions, for example, that Titus presided over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the history being explained.- Two maps, one of which is impossible to read because of everything being too small, the other hard to read because the area of interest – Parthia – is given a very dark gray color while all the stuff of interest outside Parthia has an easy to read white background.The Kushans- The story of Ban Chao’s conflict with the Kushans has many more facets and is much more interesting that what is given here. Why retell an interesting story in such a cursory and dull way?- Uses the term “Middle Iranian” and gives several examples, but doesn’t explain the term. Is it Middle because it’s neither Northern nor Southern Iranian or is it Middle because it’s neither Old nor Modern Iranian? Something an editor should have caught.

I pretty much like it all, but it's written in high school level English, which is surprising for Cambridge Press.

First of all, this is an enjoyable read. The author offers not new data but a fresh perspective; he commences with the nomadic confederations that played a critical role but are all to often sidelined in conventional histories; and when it comes to the (more conventional) view of empire, he commences his analysis from the East, hot from the West, as most (western) histories would do. Clearly, the nomads of the Central Eurasian steppe and the early (notably Han) Chinese empires are the author's special interest, and he uses that knowledge effectively.As a result, he locates the key event that triggered the First Silk Road Era (FSRE) in Chinese envoy Zhang Qiang's epic c.128 BCE mission to the Yuezhi in Bactria and his subsequent report to the emperor that triggered Chinese investment in conquests and infrastructure in the Tarim Basin. The importance of the nomads lies chiefly in the Xiongnu having been the early Han Empire's chief adversaries, who among other things pushed their fellow nomads the Yuezhi westward from Gansu via the Tai Shan into Sogdia and then Bactria, and the Yuezhi subsequently having been viewed by the Chinese as their natural allies, which precipitated Zhang Qiang's mission to Bactria to win them as confederates (the mission failed, but the resulting report was instrumental in "opening up" China to the West). The Yuezhi play a major role at the height of the FSRE when they invaded north-west India and set up the Kushan Empire, one of the four empires that fuelled and facilitated the 2nd c. CE peak trade. This is quite a compelling story.From there, the story unfolds mostly as a story of trade, mostly of Chinese export of silk to the Romans, and more or less in its slipstream, of immaterial goods, such as ideas, ideologies, inventions. The author does not belittle the latter exchange (his history at times reads a bit like an ANT (Actor-Network Theory) type account in which the connection of things is just as important as the connection of people, which is not a bad thing in my view) but maintains that the ideas (most notably, Buddhism) followed the silk.Now, there's a catch to the author's approach, both his focus on the critical role of China's opening to the West and his notion of intellectual ideas following in the slipstream, or alongside, material trade. And in my view it is a big catch. In the silk trade, the TOT (terms of trade) may have been heavily skewed in favour of China (as the author notes, the Romans probably scrambled to find something to give in return that the autarkic Chinese wanted, and more often than not ended up paying in gold and silver, having little else to offer to them). But in the exchange of ideas, the TOT were completely different, with China's western neighbours/customers having much the richer range of offerings, more "valuable," arguably, not just by some margin but by orders of magnitude.This rich offering may be summarised in a single word: Hellenisation. The three empires (or rather their predecessors) whom China encountered upon Zhang Qiang's report were all so throughly Hellenised than one may think of them as more or less a single, continuous intellectual space (with which came, of course, much pre-silk trade, many diplomatic or scholarly missions, and the occasional invasions). First observations: China's opening towards the West had a significant effect only because that "West" was already heavily Hellenised (an earlier version of "globalised," if you like): speaking the same lingua franca languages (notably Greek and Aramaic), using the same type of coinage (all following Greek designs and conventions), being at a similar cultural stage of development and having similar cultural demands.Without Hellenisation, Zhang Qiang in c.128 BCE in Bactria would merely have encountered a Yuezhen tribal court (one of several), with the usual trappings of a Eurasian steppe court: great horses, chariots or carts, masterfully crafted and handled composite bows (the Wunderwaffe of the era), and beautiful gold and other artifacts. And not much else. His report to the emperor would have been rather short: "sorry, Sir, but the Yuezhen are not open to allying with us--and apart from that, I'm afraid there is not much to report about the region beyond the high passes: the land is fertile, but the agrarian civilisation, primitive." End of story. One can imagine that for the next several years, China would have continued to fold back onto herself. No FSRE, or only a significantly later one. But let's not endeavour here to write an alternative history.The critical point the author misses is this: what did Zhang Qiang in c.128 BCE in Bactria encounter? He encountered the greatest civilisation, notably the greatest intellectual advancement, the world had ever seen, and arguably would not see again till the Renaissance. The Greco-Bactrian capital, Ai Khanoum, had been destroyed in successive invasions of the Saka (another nomadic people, pushed southwards by the Yuezhi, whom the author mentions the Saka only in passing) and the Yuezhi themselves (pushed southwards by the Xiongnu, but Bactra and other important Greco-Bactrian cities continued to thrive, as did the Indo-Grecians across the Hindu Kush, centred on the intellectual centre of Taxila. Zhang Qiang ran into a world imbued with: Greek philosophy (Platonism, Pythagoreanism, Pyrrhonism, Stoism, etc.--the very philosophical basis from which in the late 3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and to an extent Zoroastrianism sprang); an exceedingly rich and prolific literature and scribal culture fuelled by the prolific Museion and Library of Alexandria (incidentally, it is characteristic that the author on his chapter 1 map of Zhuezi migrations omits the one kingdom that intellectually and economically matters most at that time: Ptolemaic Egypt); a vast trading and exchange network featuring the highest standards of "international" (pan-ethnic) financing, quality control, standardisation, etc. mechanisms; and much more.The author notes that Zhang Qian was stunned by what he saw, but he omits to articulate what it is that stunned him (and woke up China): Hellenisation. The term does not even appear once in his Index, where it should have appeared with greater frequency than any other. Yes, the Greeks and Hellenised peoples of the Near and Middle East and of north-west India did not consume silk in any great quantity--only the Romans did; but that great trade the author is focused on is predicated upon one of the most important chapters in history--and he simply ignores it. And it is not evident that ideas followed trade; quite plausibly, trade (in volume) followed ideas. It is quite clear that the Mauryans in India and their successors imported their script, the art of writing, the art of coinage, philosophy, the art of refined architecture and sculpture, and much more from the Hellenised realm, and the jury is still out how much of that China may have imported from it, already in the early Han or even the Qin dynasty (whose very notion of "empire" was new to China and may have been borrowed from the Hellenistic realm, as were its famous terracotta soldiers, for which there is equally no precedence in China). It is yet to be seen in how far Confucian and Daoist ideas may be dependent on Greek ones. At any rate, Zhang Qian will not have been the first Chinese to get in touch with the Hellenised realm (he is only the first known one, thanks to his extant report), and certainly the Xiongnu, Yuezhi, and Saka will have been in extensive contact with it, and could have served as a relay of sorts.

This is an attempt to write a history of the “First silk road era”, that is, the period from the first Chinese penetration of the Tarim Basin which opened trade in Chinese silk to the Roman empire. It ends with the decline of the Roman and Chinese empires and the Sassanid conquest of the Parthian and Kushan empires that linked them. The truth seems to be that there is not enough surviving information to write a proper history. Either that of the matter has not been sufficiently studied. He supports the traditional view that the Romans paid for silk by exporting coin and cannot explain what the Chinese got in return. He claims that the main trade went south from Kashgar to Bactria and the Indus and then by ship across the Arabian and Red Seas. In a few places he mentions a ‘second silk road era’ when the expanding Tang met Dar-al-Islam. In this period trade went overland through Bukhara. This implies that he is planning a second book.