Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present Paperback – Illustrated, May 8, 2011

Although a tad dry and didactic in parts, Prof. Beckwith has written an excellent history on a complex system (the Silk Road and it's proto-capitalist history) and the often ignored areas (by western historians) of Central Asia and the Near East. Along the way he gets to have fun by taking many swipes at Post Structuralism/Modernism/Post Modernism. Even so-called western "Democracy" and the elites and their patsies who support it get roasted thoroughly. Prof. Beckwith exposes the circular logic of guys like Foucault and Derrida, why modern "Democracy" has led to the pauperization and even enslavement of millions of people and continues to do so even right now, and even why there are no good modern poets and people don't quote modern poets the way they used to quote, say, Shakespeare (hint: modern poets write prose, not poetry, and the lack of stucture and rhythm, which even an 8 year old can ape, is forgettable dreck). Some of his posits I don't entirely agree with (the early Trading Companies operating in the Asian Littoral were, for all intents, governmental agencies) but so what? Who but a fool agrees with everyone on everything. If you can slog through the many battles listed and the many jejeune names, this is a VERY good read.

This book is wild, veering about like four separate works sandwiched into one.First, it lays out the basics of the "Central Eurasian Culture Complex," staring with Proto-Indo-Europeans through Scythians and Turks to Germans and Mongols.Second, it connects the "Silk Road" Central Eurasian trading network to the "littoral system" of modern colonial powers, the latter as a continuation and replacement of the former.Third, the author goes off on a masterful screed against Modernism as an ideology, the movement that managed to destroy Central Eurasian culture and all else it touches.Fourth and finally, he argues against the "Barbarian" stereotype, demonstrating that Central Eurasians were no more warlike and indeed less aggressive than the peripheral empires of China, Persia, and Rome.The ultimate result is delightfully jarring, a sort of spicy medley of all things scholarly and Central Eurasian, and a throwback perhaps to a bolder, more cavalier breed of historian.It pairs nicely with his recent iconoclastic tome on the Scythian Empire.

recounting the history of what the author terms 'Central Eurasian [henceforth CEA] Culture Complex,' which - geographically speaking - spread from Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula (i.e., Koguryo kingdoms) in the East to as far as the Pannon Plain/Carpathian Basin in the West, and in some respects even beyond those frontiers. One of the central themes connecting diverse peoples in this diachronic-synchronic/vertical-horizontal study is the presence of the oath-sworn guard corps (Latin 'comitatus') that gradually grew in number and formed the heart of CEA nations until the adoption of world religions in the Middle Ages (p. 15 passim). Maintaining the steady flow of luxury goods so as to reward their services played no small part as the raison d'etre for commerce along the Silk Road.You can read about the war charioteer Hittites, Ashvins/Wu-sun-s, Mycaneans; the state foundation struggles regarding Scythians vs. Cimmerians, Hsiung-nu-s vs. Tokhars, Huns vs. Goths, Turks vs. Avars, Mongols vs. Jurchens; as well as about the Arab conquest in Central Asia, the Khazar kaganate, imperial Tibet, Uighurs, and sundry. By extending the analysis to maritime-based trade (littoral systems) and subsequent European (Portuguese, Dutch, British, Russian) expansion/colonization in Asia, the Orientalist scholar may have cast his net far too wide. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the last two chapters (pp. 263-319, concerning 19-20th centuries), which, as other reviewers have already noted, are way too sketchy, overly generalizing, at times propagandistic, and even off tangent. Don't ask me what importance T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" or Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" holds for CEA history. Rather, the author could have breathed a word or two, say, about the Manchu-Chinese/Tibetan conflict vis-á-vis the Gurkha-ruled Nepal, the Opium Wars, the Crimean War, the 'Great Game' b/w Russia and Britain for the control of Central (and Inner) Asia, etc.Nitpicking or not, allow me to make a slight correction at this point w/ regard to the following assertion: "[After the demise of the Sakyapa overlordship, circa 1357, w]ith the partial exception of brief interregnum periods, Tibet continued to be largely unified under the rule of one or another Mongol state down to the defeat of the Junghars by the Manchu-Chinese (p. 258 fn. 80)." This is clearly untrue. There was almost zero Mongol influence in Central Tibet (ÜTsang), let alone their central authority, during the Pakmodrupa priest-kings (1358-, nominally, 1618) and the Rinpungpa governors/castellans (roughly, 1491-1566). Under the reign of the Tsangpa rulers (1567-1642) certain Tibetan factions, mainly but not exclusively the Gelukpas, sought contact w/ various Mongol tribes in order to secure their military aid. The Mongols' role during the early stage of the Dalai lama's regime (1642-1720) was that of a hired sword to subdue internal and external opposition.The main corpus is best read simultaneously with the endnotes, of which there are 111 (pp. 385-426), that offer some real insights and marshal relevant evidences. The same is true for the epilogue entitled 'The Barbarians' (pp. 320-62), which goes a long way to dispel a host of long-held misconceptions, and the two appendices ('The Proto-Indo-Europeans and their Diaspora,' pp. 363-74; 'Ancient Central Eurasian Ethnonyms,' pp. 375-84). As a methodological tool, turning the ruling paradigm of centre-periphery inside out facilitates bringing some well-deserved 'historical justice' to this marginalized region in crucial observations, such as:+ "In every recorded case when the traditional Graeco-Roman, Persian, or Chinese empires of the periphery [!] became too powerful and conquered or brought chaos to the Central Eurasian nomadic states, the result for Central Asia, at least, was economic recession. The Han Dynasty destruction of the Hsiung-nu resulted in chaos...it was several centuries before the Türk, the next nomadic people who understood the Silk Road, could restore the system...When the Chinese and Arab alliance against Tibetans and the Western Turkic empire...succeeded...the result was chaos..., bringing with it severe recession, followed by rebellions and revolutions led by Sogdians and other merchant people [740-60s CE] that affected most of the continent. Finally, when the Manchu-Chinese and Russians partitioned Central Eurasia and the Ch'ing Dynasty destroyed the Junghar Empire [1755]...the economic devastation they wrought...was so total that even at the turn of the millennium in AD 2000 the area had not recovered (pp. 257-8)."+ "There was a constant drain of people escaping from China into the realms of the Eastern Steppe, where they did not hesitate to proclaim the superiority of the nomadic life-style. Similarly, many Greeks and Romans joined the Huns...where they lived better and were treated better (p. 76)."+ The primary goal of fortifications along the borders of peripheral empires from China through Persia to Rome ('limes' network or the Byzantine military governorships called 'theme') was offensive in nature, "to hold territory conquered from neighbouring states and to prevent loss of population to them (p. 330)."+ "[T]he vast majority of the silk possessed by the Central Eurasians in the two millennia from the early Hsiung-nu times [4-3rd c. BCE] through the Mongols down to the Manchu conquest was obtained through trade and taxation, not war or extortion (p. 23)."+ Raids of steppe people were, in many cases, triggered by the breaches of treaties, or were made at the request of some peripheral power against local enemies (divide et impera), e.g., the Manchus were called upon by the Chinese Ming dynasty to crush rebellion; the Mongols' aim was to uproot their Jurchen (Chin dynasty) adversaries (p. 335); Uighur Turks (757 CE) were invited to quell the An Lu-shan revolt -- their sacking of Loyang (762) "was authorized by the financially strapped T'ang court as a reward or payment (p. 338)."For reasons unknown, the following essays by the same author of the present tome have not found their way to the bibliography (pp. 427-55): 'Tibet and the Early Medieval Florissance in Eurasia,' in: Central Asiatic Journal 21 (2), 1977: pp. 89-104; in collaboration w/ Michael Walter: 'Some Indo-European Elements in Early Tibetan Culture,' in: Tibetan Studies 7, Vol. 2: pp. 1037-54, Vienna 1997.