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The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy & the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia & Han China
A fascinating history of the intricate web of trade routes connecting ancient Rome to Eastern civilizations, including its powerful rival, the Han Empire. The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian Empire of ancient Persia, and the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan), laying claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria. Raoul McLaughlin also delves deeply into Rome’s trade ventures through the Tarim territories, which led its merchants to the Han Empire of ancient China. Having established a system of Central Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road, the Han carried eastern products as far as Persia and the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Though they were matched in scale, the Han surpassed its European rival in military technology. The first book to address these subjects in a single comprehensive study, The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes explores Rome’s impact on the ancient world economy and reveals what the Chinese and Romans knew about their rival Empires.
282 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 4, 2016
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April 17, 2019
This basically a follow-on to McLaughlin's study of trade across the Indian Ocean. Despite being almost the same size, it feels like an appendix to it.
Whereas his former book spent a lot of time giving specifics of particular trade goods and where Romans were going to get them and trying to get an idea of the overall Roman budget, this is more of a jumbled history of some of the land area between Rome and China. He starts off with a discussion of what Rome had to get from China, which is interesting.
The obvious part is silk, and he goes into the difference between 'domesticated' silk, and 'wild' silk, where the latter uses threads from cocoons where the larvae ate it's way out, cutting the strands. Chinese 'domesticated' silk is so good because it has extremely long single strands to work with. At any rate, the lesser version was produced in many places, including the Greek island of Cos. More surprising is the assertion that Chinese steel was superior to what Rome could produce, so high-quality steel was an import. I'd like to see some sort of study of the history of metallurgy to check that. The most surprising part is indications that Rome was exporting silk to China. It wouldn't have been much, but the Roman world had access to some brilliant dyes that China did not, so dyed silks left the Empire again.
Most of the rest of the book takes a look at various areas and regimes along the northern trade routes that made up the Silk Road(s). He starts with China's troubles with the Xiongnu (Huns!), which started China exploring to the south of their territory looking for potential allies against them. This eventually gets them to Bactria... but just as the post-Alexandrian nation there is dissolving into fragmented city-states.
There is some look at the Chinese economy, but it's not nearly as well developed, and most of the book he seems to try to avoid discussing their currency. ("Han revenues: 12,300 million cash", without saying cash what.) At one point near the end he does define the wushu, which seems to be the currency base for his calculations. He spends some time discussing the differences between revenue collection between the two, which could probably stand to be more in depth, though I'd have to spend a fair amount of time thinking about it to make sense of everything he does have there.
All that is basically the ends of the book. In between, there's a discussion of various regions in between, their contacts with other areas, trade routes through, but mostly little on the actual trade itself. It makes for a good history of central Asia from ~200 BC to ~100 AD, also with some helpful notes on the geography involved, but it doesn't integrate them with each other very much except for a time line given in the front. So, it's nowhere near as useful as The Roman Empire in the Indian Ocean, though it is interesting, and good books on this region are rare.
Whereas his former book spent a lot of time giving specifics of particular trade goods and where Romans were going to get them and trying to get an idea of the overall Roman budget, this is more of a jumbled history of some of the land area between Rome and China. He starts off with a discussion of what Rome had to get from China, which is interesting.
The obvious part is silk, and he goes into the difference between 'domesticated' silk, and 'wild' silk, where the latter uses threads from cocoons where the larvae ate it's way out, cutting the strands. Chinese 'domesticated' silk is so good because it has extremely long single strands to work with. At any rate, the lesser version was produced in many places, including the Greek island of Cos. More surprising is the assertion that Chinese steel was superior to what Rome could produce, so high-quality steel was an import. I'd like to see some sort of study of the history of metallurgy to check that. The most surprising part is indications that Rome was exporting silk to China. It wouldn't have been much, but the Roman world had access to some brilliant dyes that China did not, so dyed silks left the Empire again.
Most of the rest of the book takes a look at various areas and regimes along the northern trade routes that made up the Silk Road(s). He starts with China's troubles with the Xiongnu (Huns!), which started China exploring to the south of their territory looking for potential allies against them. This eventually gets them to Bactria... but just as the post-Alexandrian nation there is dissolving into fragmented city-states.
There is some look at the Chinese economy, but it's not nearly as well developed, and most of the book he seems to try to avoid discussing their currency. ("Han revenues: 12,300 million cash", without saying cash what.) At one point near the end he does define the wushu, which seems to be the currency base for his calculations. He spends some time discussing the differences between revenue collection between the two, which could probably stand to be more in depth, though I'd have to spend a fair amount of time thinking about it to make sense of everything he does have there.
All that is basically the ends of the book. In between, there's a discussion of various regions in between, their contacts with other areas, trade routes through, but mostly little on the actual trade itself. It makes for a good history of central Asia from ~200 BC to ~100 AD, also with some helpful notes on the geography involved, but it doesn't integrate them with each other very much except for a time line given in the front. So, it's nowhere near as useful as The Roman Empire in the Indian Ocean, though it is interesting, and good books on this region are rare.
January 28, 2022
History of the trade between the Roman and Han (Chinese) Empires during Classical and Late Antiquity.
The Jade Gate Ruin at the Han Imperial Entry and Exit Porte for Caravans on the Silk Routes. This fort marked the northern frontier of the Han Empire.
My dead pixels, format, ebook was a moderate 388-pages which included: maps, footnotes, appendices and a bibliography. It had a UK 2016 copyright.
Raoul McLaughlin is a British historian and author of ancient history, in particular Roman trade. He is the author of three (3) non-fiction books on the period. This was the first book I’ve read by the author.
Firstly, this is an intermediate-level text on a particular aspect of Roman history. It would be very helpful for a reader to have a firm background on the history of Classical and Late Antiquity to fully appreciate it. In addition, I recommend having an atlas available; preferably one showing satellite imagery, to relate the geographical locations and conditions found in the narrative.
TL:DR Summary
McLaughlin’s narrative was a traditional chronological account: stretching from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. It describes the trade, primarily in the fabric silk, between the ancient Han Chinese and Roman Mediteranean empires. In particular it describes: the goods, the routes between the two powers, the trade’s economics, and the cultural, military and political conditions of the two powers and those of the intervening geography. When the book sticks to its knitting on the topic of the silk trade, it’s very good. However, the author too frequently drifts-off topic. As a conclusion he tries to write an abbreviated Fall of the Roman Empire, which fails to bring the primary trade narrative to a solid conclusion. It also gives short shrift to diminished trade’s effects on the political entities of Central Asia. Finally, the geography of Central Asia is not supported by adequate maps, illustrations or photographs.
The Review
McLaughlin is a fair writer. I found very few writing errors. The narrative was very clear and factual in an academic fashion. Descriptions and explanations were well-enough done. Only in a few places was his narrative evocative. For example:
There were maps. However, the maps were childishly rendered. In addition, in my edition they were mislabeled. I realize that maps and illustrations add to the cost of printing an ebook or otherwise. However, the included maps did not contain the detail needed to support the detailed narrative. The author is a historian, but there was a vast geography involved in the silk trade that he skims over. To his credit he describes the caravans down to a thumbnail description of Bactrian (two humped) camels which carried the loads over the longest, hardest stretches. However, I had GoogleMaps open to satellite view to get a feel for the distances and topography. I was forced to use this and interpolate between the: book’s maps, the narrative and the atlas to gain a necessary appreciation of the geography.
Central Asian Silk Routes Geography. The silk routes started at the far right in China and stretched to the eastern Mediterranean. The route starts in Northern China. It goes across the northern edge of the Himalayas to what is now Tajikistan. It then split to go due west, across the Aral and Caspian seas, through the Caucasus to the Black Sea; a route to Roman territory that avoided the Parthian Empire. The other arm went south into what is now Afghanistan. In Afghanistan it split again. One arm going south into India and the other west through the now Iran (then the Parthian Empire) to the Eastern Mediterranean. From India, silk could travel to Egypt by sea, when The Monsoon allowed. This route also avoided the Parthian Empire.
There were illustrations and two (2) photographs included. The illustrations were line drawings of coins and reliefs. I would have preferred there to be architectural diagrams. I didn't understand why the photographs included were chosen. (The pic I included above would have been a better choice.) There was no use of tables and charts in the narrative. Information that should have been arranged in a tabular fashion appeared in the appendices.
The narrative was mostly from the Roman perspective. A good portion of the remainder was Chinese. These were the entities with the largest trove of surviving historical records. There was a much smaller amount from the intermediary: Parthian and Kushan empires and the Indian and Central Asian steppe kingdoms. Since these political entities were the crucial middlemen in the trade between Rome and China, they would have added a valuable perspective. Note that the Parthian Empire and its successors were a rival power to the Roman, and eventually Byzantine Empires.
I found the discussion of the silk trade of antiquity to be an education on silk. Silk was a fungible commodity in ancient China. Peasant farmers could pay their taxes with a quantity of silk thread produced by their women folk in a cottage industry. Silk fabric in standardized rolls was used by the Chinese Imperial government to pay wages, and debts. Silk was both money and could be made into clothing with the addition of some labor. As the Chinese pushed north to fortify their frontier against steppe nomads they started buying the nomads off with silk. That silk eventually worked its way west as trade goods. Silk transported well. It being: non-perishable, light and non-fragile. Eventually the standardized Chinese rolls of silk reached western markets, where they were unwoven and rewoven, then dyed into a more desirable cloth than the available: linen, wool, hemp and cotton (only available in India). The weight in silk thread that would make-up a mean, Han peasant farmer's smock in China, in the form of a more colorful, artfully crafted, diaphanous garment could only be afforded by an Empress in Rome. Silver was the major trade good that drained east to China to pay for silk. A one-way trip for a roll of silk between northern China and the Eastern Mediterranean was about 5000 kilometers (about 3000 kilometers as the crow flies by the land routes. It took about a year. In addition there were partial sea routes. One went from Ptolemaic (later Roman) Egypt, through the Red Sea, and across the Indian Ocean to the Indian sub-continent. The other from the Black Sea to Asia Minor, across the Caucasus to the Caspian, and Aral seas (both larger then) then to the Central Asian steppe.
Note that in addition to silk, Chinese high-carbon steel moved east to west. This was a high tech material not available in the west at the time. In addition to gold and silver, small, light, high-value objects like fine glass and precious and semi-precious gems moved west to east. Roman glass was a high tech material not available in the east at the time.
I thought the author did a very good job on the qualitative aspects of the narrative. To a certain extent he did well with the quantitative. However, that was generally from a monetary perspective. I fault him for not using a proper macroeconomic analysis. For example, not noting that silk was uniquely, a fungible commodity in the Chinese empire. Also, there was no real discussion of the spatial interaction with silk. That is, the complementary relationship with it and the impetus for interaction between the distant, Mediterranean region with its precious metal. However, the author displayed himself to be a historian at heart and not an economist or a geographer.
Finally, narrative-wise there was still a lot of story after the fall of the Roman Empire and the impoverishment of the Byzantine Empire. The book’s narrative abandons its trade emphasis with the steppe Hun’s precipitating the fall of the Roman Empire. (Pages are spent on a thumbnail Fall of the Roman Empire.) The Huns were certainly a disruptive influence on Central Asia and Europe. However, they likely did not end the silk trade, like the book abruptly ended in about 400 AD. Historically, the trade was just diminished in the west, until silk production started in the Byzantine Empire in about the 6th Century. Technically, Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire and successor state of the Roman Empire? I was also disappointed not to be reading more about the silk trade and the Sassanid dynasty, the successor state to the Parthian Empire. I thought the book ended two (2) centuries too early.
This is a good read for an interested and prepared student. The Roman legions and gladiatorial combats get popular attention. The trade of luxury commodity goods and import taxation in the Roman Empire is little discussed. I have read little on the Han Empire of antiquity, which was as important as the Roman Empire in world history. The Parthians always get a bad rap, in western-oriented ancient history. (Iran may have inherited some of this?) The book gives you a focus on the historical importance of central Asia (which includes the present Afghanistan), currently a backwater. However, the author wanders from the book's central consideration of ancient Roman/Chinese trade. He squanders pages on well-known Roman History, peripherally related to the silk trade. He also neglects the less well-known history of the middlemen political trading entities, and the Chinese in late antiquity. This could have either been a shorter book, or a more informative larger one, if the author had maintained its focus.
Readers may want to read Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe by William Rosen (my review) before reading this. The books are very similarly written, although McLaughlin only mentions one plague (smallpox) in his narrative. Historically, there were several. Rosen does mention Asian trade, but only as a source of infection.
The Jade Gate Ruin at the Han Imperial Entry and Exit Porte for Caravans on the Silk Routes. This fort marked the northern frontier of the Han Empire.
My dead pixels, format, ebook was a moderate 388-pages which included: maps, footnotes, appendices and a bibliography. It had a UK 2016 copyright.
Raoul McLaughlin is a British historian and author of ancient history, in particular Roman trade. He is the author of three (3) non-fiction books on the period. This was the first book I’ve read by the author.
Firstly, this is an intermediate-level text on a particular aspect of Roman history. It would be very helpful for a reader to have a firm background on the history of Classical and Late Antiquity to fully appreciate it. In addition, I recommend having an atlas available; preferably one showing satellite imagery, to relate the geographical locations and conditions found in the narrative.
TL:DR Summary
McLaughlin’s narrative was a traditional chronological account: stretching from about 200 BC to about 400 AD. It describes the trade, primarily in the fabric silk, between the ancient Han Chinese and Roman Mediteranean empires. In particular it describes: the goods, the routes between the two powers, the trade’s economics, and the cultural, military and political conditions of the two powers and those of the intervening geography. When the book sticks to its knitting on the topic of the silk trade, it’s very good. However, the author too frequently drifts-off topic. As a conclusion he tries to write an abbreviated Fall of the Roman Empire, which fails to bring the primary trade narrative to a solid conclusion. It also gives short shrift to diminished trade’s effects on the political entities of Central Asia. Finally, the geography of Central Asia is not supported by adequate maps, illustrations or photographs.
The Review
McLaughlin is a fair writer. I found very few writing errors. The narrative was very clear and factual in an academic fashion. Descriptions and explanations were well-enough done. Only in a few places was his narrative evocative. For example:
Travelers using these routes had to carry water and food supplies along courses marked by the droppings of camels and the bones of dead animals.
There were maps. However, the maps were childishly rendered. In addition, in my edition they were mislabeled. I realize that maps and illustrations add to the cost of printing an ebook or otherwise. However, the included maps did not contain the detail needed to support the detailed narrative. The author is a historian, but there was a vast geography involved in the silk trade that he skims over. To his credit he describes the caravans down to a thumbnail description of Bactrian (two humped) camels which carried the loads over the longest, hardest stretches. However, I had GoogleMaps open to satellite view to get a feel for the distances and topography. I was forced to use this and interpolate between the: book’s maps, the narrative and the atlas to gain a necessary appreciation of the geography.
Central Asian Silk Routes Geography. The silk routes started at the far right in China and stretched to the eastern Mediterranean. The route starts in Northern China. It goes across the northern edge of the Himalayas to what is now Tajikistan. It then split to go due west, across the Aral and Caspian seas, through the Caucasus to the Black Sea; a route to Roman territory that avoided the Parthian Empire. The other arm went south into what is now Afghanistan. In Afghanistan it split again. One arm going south into India and the other west through the now Iran (then the Parthian Empire) to the Eastern Mediterranean. From India, silk could travel to Egypt by sea, when The Monsoon allowed. This route also avoided the Parthian Empire.
There were illustrations and two (2) photographs included. The illustrations were line drawings of coins and reliefs. I would have preferred there to be architectural diagrams. I didn't understand why the photographs included were chosen. (The pic I included above would have been a better choice.) There was no use of tables and charts in the narrative. Information that should have been arranged in a tabular fashion appeared in the appendices.
The narrative was mostly from the Roman perspective. A good portion of the remainder was Chinese. These were the entities with the largest trove of surviving historical records. There was a much smaller amount from the intermediary: Parthian and Kushan empires and the Indian and Central Asian steppe kingdoms. Since these political entities were the crucial middlemen in the trade between Rome and China, they would have added a valuable perspective. Note that the Parthian Empire and its successors were a rival power to the Roman, and eventually Byzantine Empires.
I found the discussion of the silk trade of antiquity to be an education on silk. Silk was a fungible commodity in ancient China. Peasant farmers could pay their taxes with a quantity of silk thread produced by their women folk in a cottage industry. Silk fabric in standardized rolls was used by the Chinese Imperial government to pay wages, and debts. Silk was both money and could be made into clothing with the addition of some labor. As the Chinese pushed north to fortify their frontier against steppe nomads they started buying the nomads off with silk. That silk eventually worked its way west as trade goods. Silk transported well. It being: non-perishable, light and non-fragile. Eventually the standardized Chinese rolls of silk reached western markets, where they were unwoven and rewoven, then dyed into a more desirable cloth than the available: linen, wool, hemp and cotton (only available in India). The weight in silk thread that would make-up a mean, Han peasant farmer's smock in China, in the form of a more colorful, artfully crafted, diaphanous garment could only be afforded by an Empress in Rome. Silver was the major trade good that drained east to China to pay for silk. A one-way trip for a roll of silk between northern China and the Eastern Mediterranean was about 5000 kilometers (about 3000 kilometers as the crow flies by the land routes. It took about a year. In addition there were partial sea routes. One went from Ptolemaic (later Roman) Egypt, through the Red Sea, and across the Indian Ocean to the Indian sub-continent. The other from the Black Sea to Asia Minor, across the Caucasus to the Caspian, and Aral seas (both larger then) then to the Central Asian steppe.
Note that in addition to silk, Chinese high-carbon steel moved east to west. This was a high tech material not available in the west at the time. In addition to gold and silver, small, light, high-value objects like fine glass and precious and semi-precious gems moved west to east. Roman glass was a high tech material not available in the east at the time.
I thought the author did a very good job on the qualitative aspects of the narrative. To a certain extent he did well with the quantitative. However, that was generally from a monetary perspective. I fault him for not using a proper macroeconomic analysis. For example, not noting that silk was uniquely, a fungible commodity in the Chinese empire. Also, there was no real discussion of the spatial interaction with silk. That is, the complementary relationship with it and the impetus for interaction between the distant, Mediterranean region with its precious metal. However, the author displayed himself to be a historian at heart and not an economist or a geographer.
Finally, narrative-wise there was still a lot of story after the fall of the Roman Empire and the impoverishment of the Byzantine Empire. The book’s narrative abandons its trade emphasis with the steppe Hun’s precipitating the fall of the Roman Empire. (Pages are spent on a thumbnail Fall of the Roman Empire.) The Huns were certainly a disruptive influence on Central Asia and Europe. However, they likely did not end the silk trade, like the book abruptly ended in about 400 AD. Historically, the trade was just diminished in the west, until silk production started in the Byzantine Empire in about the 6th Century. Technically, Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire and successor state of the Roman Empire? I was also disappointed not to be reading more about the silk trade and the Sassanid dynasty, the successor state to the Parthian Empire. I thought the book ended two (2) centuries too early.
This is a good read for an interested and prepared student. The Roman legions and gladiatorial combats get popular attention. The trade of luxury commodity goods and import taxation in the Roman Empire is little discussed. I have read little on the Han Empire of antiquity, which was as important as the Roman Empire in world history. The Parthians always get a bad rap, in western-oriented ancient history. (Iran may have inherited some of this?) The book gives you a focus on the historical importance of central Asia (which includes the present Afghanistan), currently a backwater. However, the author wanders from the book's central consideration of ancient Roman/Chinese trade. He squanders pages on well-known Roman History, peripherally related to the silk trade. He also neglects the less well-known history of the middlemen political trading entities, and the Chinese in late antiquity. This could have either been a shorter book, or a more informative larger one, if the author had maintained its focus.
Readers may want to read Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe by William Rosen (my review) before reading this. The books are very similarly written, although McLaughlin only mentions one plague (smallpox) in his narrative. Historically, there were several. Rosen does mention Asian trade, but only as a source of infection.
June 7, 2020
A good, somewhat factual introduction to the Silk Routes and the various empires that acted as an intermediary between the Roman and Chinese empires. Although both empires were aware of each others existence, there was no direct contact, not in the last place because intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans, seeking to maintain lucrative control over the silk trade, inhibited direct contact between these two powers.
Raoul McLaughlin sticks to the facts: he sums up the rise and fall of the various buffer empires, the goods that were exchanged (mainly Chinese silk and Roman glassware), where which coins were found and the few stragglers that managed to end up in China. It was depressing to read that a Chinese envoy, sent out to make contact with the Roman empire, was dissuaded by the Partians to venture further, where only a mere 40 days distanced him from the Roman border, leaving me to wonder how history could have turned out if he actually had succeeded.
Raoul McLaughlin sticks to the facts: he sums up the rise and fall of the various buffer empires, the goods that were exchanged (mainly Chinese silk and Roman glassware), where which coins were found and the few stragglers that managed to end up in China. It was depressing to read that a Chinese envoy, sent out to make contact with the Roman empire, was dissuaded by the Partians to venture further, where only a mere 40 days distanced him from the Roman border, leaving me to wonder how history could have turned out if he actually had succeeded.
November 17, 2020
I really wanted to like this book. It started out so well: the first two chapters are composed of interesting stories compellingly told. Sadly, things go downhill from there, and the book suffers from a lack of any narrative from that point on, and, worse, jumps around incomprehensibly from one unfamiliar ancient nation to another, with no maps to assist with following where the world the author is rambling about, no reproductions of inscriptions, tapestries, or manuscript illustrations to help with picturing one nation distinctly from another, and little coherent link between one section and the next. When I gradually realized in chapter 10 that we were no longer even following events that took place on the Silk Road, but had somehow wandered into Roman holdings along the Danube in modern Germany, France, and Hungary (I think: lack of maps make it impossible to be sure), I gave it up. It's a shame; its clear that there is ample material for a fascinating book --but perhaps it is the inability to focus the work narrowly enough that has excluded narratives such as the one of the Chinese princess smuggling silk worms out in her hair that made the early chapters so compelling: the focus in later chapters is so "zoomed out" that the individuals who lived the stories are wholly indistinguishable. I do not plan to finish the book, and it's terribly disappointing. It started so well.
June 26, 2025
The concept of the book exploring commercial ties between China and Rome was sufficient for me to give it a read. The book was full of interesting information much that was new or in a new context. What I appreciate most about this book is the alternative points of view to which I now have access, especially when thinking about these regions.
What I didn't gain was clarity on the players in between the great empires. It was a bit rough to read some of it, not for the content but for maintaining context. Maybe that was just me but it took away from an otherwise interesting book on an underappreciated topic.
What I didn't gain was clarity on the players in between the great empires. It was a bit rough to read some of it, not for the content but for maintaining context. Maybe that was just me but it took away from an otherwise interesting book on an underappreciated topic.
December 29, 2020
An overview of the political situations and other factors playing into the trade between China and Rome.
Chinese techniques for steel were superior, for instance, but because Rome was used to different places having better or worse steel according to their ore, Romans assumed it was just better material. Romans unpicked silk and rewove it into lighter waves, and dyed it as well; this got re-imported as far as India and led the Chinese to believe that Rome had sericulture.
There's also chapters on the regions between and their effects on trade. These are less good but still have some interesting stuff.
Chinese techniques for steel were superior, for instance, but because Rome was used to different places having better or worse steel according to their ore, Romans assumed it was just better material. Romans unpicked silk and rewove it into lighter waves, and dyed it as well; this got re-imported as far as India and led the Chinese to believe that Rome had sericulture.
There's also chapters on the regions between and their effects on trade. These are less good but still have some interesting stuff.
February 8, 2023
Read this while researching my next book, Ends of the Earth. Covers a lot of the early history of central Asia that few people know about and does it in a very readable way.
January 24, 2020
A difficult read. I suspect if you did not have a strong command of geography and history already this book would be almost meaningless. No obvious narrative thread. The pattern of jumping around in time means that it is difficult to track where each of the described groups was in relative development.
December 5, 2021
If, like me, you have a reasonable grasp of ancient Roman history, but were curious about the world to the east of the Empire, the Roman Empire and the Silk Routes will help you fill in the gap. It traces the history of the regions between Rome and China during the era concurrent with the Roman and Han Empires, with a particular emphasis on the commercial ties that brought goods between the two greatest empires of the epoch.
A book like this is inevitably a survey, but it’s a bit more than a random assortment. Chapters examine the Xiongnu and Han, the Yuezhi, the Kushan and Parthian Empires, and the Sogdians and Sarmatians. Other chapters are focused on individual topics, like the extent of the silk trade between China and Rome, a comparison between the two empires, and the geography and character of the Black Sea region. There are many anecdotal interludes, but I found each of them interesting and enlightening.
Sometimes the book makes leaps that aren’t clearly supported by the evidence, and sometimes complex issues are rendered a bit too simple. I also found the lack of analysis of Pontus under Mithridates VI a curious omission. I did, however, appreciate how the author closely analyzed several unusual primary sources (such as a curious set of confiscated Sogdian letters) to support his conclusions. Overall, I really enjoyed my journey through these overlooked regions and departed with a deeper understanding of the ancient world.
A book like this is inevitably a survey, but it’s a bit more than a random assortment. Chapters examine the Xiongnu and Han, the Yuezhi, the Kushan and Parthian Empires, and the Sogdians and Sarmatians. Other chapters are focused on individual topics, like the extent of the silk trade between China and Rome, a comparison between the two empires, and the geography and character of the Black Sea region. There are many anecdotal interludes, but I found each of them interesting and enlightening.
Sometimes the book makes leaps that aren’t clearly supported by the evidence, and sometimes complex issues are rendered a bit too simple. I also found the lack of analysis of Pontus under Mithridates VI a curious omission. I did, however, appreciate how the author closely analyzed several unusual primary sources (such as a curious set of confiscated Sogdian letters) to support his conclusions. Overall, I really enjoyed my journey through these overlooked regions and departed with a deeper understanding of the ancient world.
February 27, 2019
The book added to my knowledge of the ancient world. It was very detailed covering a multiplicity of names for empires, tribes, emperors, kings, leaders. The author covers almost 400 years, 200 BCE to 200 CE, therefore power struggles changed the outlines of the territory covered.
The strength of the book is political geography not economics. It could have benefited from many more maps—there are only four in the e-book. However, the author conveys both the physical topography of the Silk Roads and the multitude of peoples who sought power along the routes. Another positive aspect is combined discussion of East and West—from China and all of the political powers between them to the Roman Empire. It is a scholarly book that uses as its sources the works of the historians and geographers of antiquity. Trade does not seem to be a major topic for these writers, which explains the plethora of information about warfare, the rise and fall of empires, and the physical environment.
There are many fascinating nuggets of information to supplement other reading on the ancient world.
The strength of the book is political geography not economics. It could have benefited from many more maps—there are only four in the e-book. However, the author conveys both the physical topography of the Silk Roads and the multitude of peoples who sought power along the routes. Another positive aspect is combined discussion of East and West—from China and all of the political powers between them to the Roman Empire. It is a scholarly book that uses as its sources the works of the historians and geographers of antiquity. Trade does not seem to be a major topic for these writers, which explains the plethora of information about warfare, the rise and fall of empires, and the physical environment.
There are many fascinating nuggets of information to supplement other reading on the ancient world.
June 7, 2021
An interesting look into the confluence of Rome and China, but though it touches upon many interesting periods of history it tends to come across as a 'list of things said by sources' in many ways, resisting too much in the way of analysis or captivating history-telling. There's a great tendency for speculation – ancient history of course is difficult from a historiographical perspective, but it doesn't necessarily make for great reading when nothing seems particularly solid. Though the title promises the silk road as a sort of throughline, more often the book sort of falls into a 'history of these parts of the world in between Rome and China', which – while interesting – only occasionally veers back to the silk road, and then not often in a particularly interesting way. Those complaints aside, I learned some new information here and there and it wasn't necessarily an unreadable book, just a little dull.
March 30, 2020
Interesting history
The basics of the subject are interesting and well researched. The style can be pretty dry and sometimes redundant. The title and description make it seem the focus will be on Roman understanding and attitudes toward the Silk Road, but a lot of time is spent on the Parthians. While this focus eventually makes sense, it is confusing at first. Reading the digital version was also problematic, as I could not reference the maps as much as I needed to when grappling with geography that is unfamiliar to me, especially in an ancient context.
The basics of the subject are interesting and well researched. The style can be pretty dry and sometimes redundant. The title and description make it seem the focus will be on Roman understanding and attitudes toward the Silk Road, but a lot of time is spent on the Parthians. While this focus eventually makes sense, it is confusing at first. Reading the digital version was also problematic, as I could not reference the maps as much as I needed to when grappling with geography that is unfamiliar to me, especially in an ancient context.
April 2, 2021
Good info but
Organized badly. Or not at all. Random facts given in great detail, but boings around from Rome to China to places in between with no pattern. Maps not detailed enough, places seldom given their modern name so we know where they are. Meh.
Organized badly. Or not at all. Random facts given in great detail, but boings around from Rome to China to places in between with no pattern. Maps not detailed enough, places seldom given their modern name so we know where they are. Meh.
May 9, 2023
An informative and wide-ranging look at a little-known and little-studied but very significant part of ancient history.
This book transforms the romantic "Silk Road" or "Silk Routes" into a definite geography and history of many different interacting nations and cultures, with an underlying emphasis of looking at the relationship between the world's two largest empires of the Roman period: Rome and China. Between them lay a number of diverse nations, including large prosperous ones such as India and Parthia, and formidable and elusive ones such as the Xiongnu and the other peoples of the northern steppes. All of these players played roles in the commerce that gradually developed between China and the West, a commerce that was always only one element in a complex and shifting mix of geography, politics, war, and technical innovation.
The writing is a bit dry and sometimes repetitive, and seems to head off on tangents here and there--all of which are interesting, but maybe not always completely germane. But the author does communicate his fascination with this exotic world, and this reader learned lots of new things. Right now, this is probably the book on the Silk Routes. If you're interested in them, you need to read it.
This book transforms the romantic "Silk Road" or "Silk Routes" into a definite geography and history of many different interacting nations and cultures, with an underlying emphasis of looking at the relationship between the world's two largest empires of the Roman period: Rome and China. Between them lay a number of diverse nations, including large prosperous ones such as India and Parthia, and formidable and elusive ones such as the Xiongnu and the other peoples of the northern steppes. All of these players played roles in the commerce that gradually developed between China and the West, a commerce that was always only one element in a complex and shifting mix of geography, politics, war, and technical innovation.
The writing is a bit dry and sometimes repetitive, and seems to head off on tangents here and there--all of which are interesting, but maybe not always completely germane. But the author does communicate his fascination with this exotic world, and this reader learned lots of new things. Right now, this is probably the book on the Silk Routes. If you're interested in them, you need to read it.
September 17, 2025
An excellent and informative book about Sino-Roman relations and the world between them primarily during the Imperial/Han periods. This was very informative and I learned a lot with this book, especially about Central Asia and the closeness between Rome and China, with oftentimes only the Parthians separating the two empires.
Very informative and easy to understand and though it requires a fair bit of knowledge about Rome and focuses more on Rome’s relationship with China rather than the other way round, much of this is likely because of the surviving sources, or lack thereof.
Very informative and easy to understand and though it requires a fair bit of knowledge about Rome and focuses more on Rome’s relationship with China rather than the other way round, much of this is likely because of the surviving sources, or lack thereof.
February 20, 2020
Diving into a period of time in a region of the world that hasn’t been studied much in educational institutes of Western Europe. It was amazing learning new stuff about the vast steppes of Asia and how the nomads affected Parthia and their rivalry with the Roman Empire.
The book is available through kindle, for free, if you have Prime subscription. Definitely recommending it
The book is available through kindle, for free, if you have Prime subscription. Definitely recommending it
November 1, 2020
This was a monograph, but it was fascinating reading about the ancient people groups and how the Silk Road was created.
August 1, 2026
Clippings
'Seidenstrassen' or 'Silk Routes' was first used by the nineteenth-century German geographer and explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, uncle of the First World War aviator Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
The Romans used wrought or cast iron instead of steel for want of high quality ore (restricted to two sites in the Austrian Alps) and know-how. The Han dynasty developed large enclosed furnaces and double-action pistons to mass produce steel from cast iron, giving Chinese troops superior armour and armour-piercing crossbow bolts, whose sale they restricted. The Xiongnu learned it and spread it to Parthia, which used it to destroy the Romans at Carrhae, 53 BC.
In AD 9 the Han Dynasty ruling ancient China was temporarily usurped in a palace conspiracy and the Tarim kingdoms broke off communications with the new Xin Emperor Wang Mang. The tributary systems sending silk into Central Asia ceased and long-distance caravans operated without Chinese protection. Silk became scarce and expensive in Rome. In AD 16 the conservative elite called on the Senate to introduce new anti-luxury legislation. The ban on silk in male attire was still in force in AD 37 when Caligula became Emperor. Caligula ignored previous legislation and appeared before Roman crowds in Persian-style silk garments. Suetonius reports the Emperor wore a long-sleeved tunic and sometimes appeared in silks which men were forbidden to wear.
In AD 408 a German warlord named Alaric from the Visigoth nation invaded Italy and threatened to sack Rome unless the western Senate granted a large ransom: 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver and 4,000 silk tunics. The Senate sent agents to seize garments from wealthy citizens, but people hid their precious clothing from the government bailiffs so that the full ransom could not be raised. Many in Rome risked the destruction of their city rather than hand over their prized silk garments to save the state.
Pliny repeats the opinion that Seric silk was wool found in their woods. Writing in the second century AD, Pausanias corrected some of these claims, reporting that the Seres make their clothes from threads produced not by a tree but by an insect the Greeks call ser. He describes this creature as a large beetle, like a spider, that can spin webs in trees, and offers an impression of Chinese sericulture: the insect is reared by the Seres, who build shelters for them in winter and summer, and it produces fine thread which it rolls around its feet. These reports probably came from Indian merchants who reached China through the overland Silk Routes.
The Chinese called Greek civilization Li-Jian, from the conquests of Alexander of Macedon (A-Li-Jian-der). When the Chinese became aware of the Roman Empire they called it Da Qin, meaning 'Great China', recognising that Rome ruled a territory equalling their own regime in size and political power.
Steppe bows had a sapwood core with a belly (side facing the archer) layered with pliable cattle horn plates steamed or boiled before being shaped to fit the weapon. After the bovine plates were glued in position, multiple layers of a collagen-rich preparation made from boiled sinew were applied to increase its tensile strength. The powerful hind leg tendons of horses produced the strongest glues and coatings. This was a slow process as each layer was allowed to dry and set.
Official posts were designated Left or Right (East or West) and the army divided into decimal units ranging from 10 to 10,000 men. The lowest commander was the Chief of Tens, who could lead several decimal units. At its height the Xiongnu Empire was a confederation of twenty-four steppe divisions, each given a territory and governed by an appointee known as a 'Great Officer', who could assemble a force of up to 10,000 fighting men under the overall command of the Chanyu. The Chanyu ruled assisted by two senior subordinates known as the 'Wise King of the Right' and the 'Wise King of the Left'.
To maintain this 'Peace and Alliance' settlement, Emperor Gaozu agreed to give the Xiongnu regular tribute of food stocks and large quantities of silk. Modu approved the terms and demanded that the Chinese Emperor present a Han princess to join his wives. This acknowledged that the two regimes had become political equals or 'Brother States'. Later evidence suggests the silk payments alone may have included up to 10,000 pi of silk per annum (4 tons).
The Hsin Shu explains a policy designed to make the Xiongnu economically dependent on Chinese products. The Chinese recognised the Xiongnu badly needed the border markets and had sought desperately to obtain them, even resorting to force. Therefore the government should immediately establish many border markets in strategic locations. The scheme required each market site to have sufficient military forces for self-protection. Every large border market should include shops specialising in selling raw meat, wine, cooked rice and delicious barbeques, all large enough to serve 100 or 200 people.
Within a decade (120 BC) the Hexi Corridor was secure and the Han Empire controlled a 600 mile conduit connecting China to the outer Tarim territories. The fortified frontier city of Dunhuang, 'Blazing Beacon', was established on the western edge of the newly settled region, named for signal fires lit to communicate with Chinese outposts.
Beyond Dunhuang was a parched desert region, the 'Flaming Sands', where agriculture was impossible and sustenance came only from isolated waterholes. To cross it, wheeled vehicles were left behind and travellers journeyed on foot across shifting sands with lines of camels, donkeys or horses burdened with supplies. Three routes led west from Dunhuang into the Tarim territories. The northern route ran 400 miles across the pale sands and desiccated salt fields of the 'White Dragon Desert' between Dunhuang and the oasis outposts of Hami and Turfan. Turfan was a major agricultural centre close to passes in the Tien Shan Mountains. The central route headed 300 miles due west from Dunhuang and Yumen Quan, the 'Jade Gate', to the oasis outpost of Loulan, 'City of the Dead', following the marshy northern fringes of a vast lifeless wasteland known as Lop Nor, the 'Salt Desert'. The centre of Lop Nor was formed by the desiccated, encrusted remains of an ancient seabed whose mineral residues contaminated surrounding watercourses. The third headed south of Lop Nor from Dunhuang through Yang Quan, the 'Sun Gate', on a 500 mile path to the oasis settlement at Cherchen.
The two caravan routes around the Taklamakan Desert converged at the large oasis settlement of Kashgar on the western edge of the Tarim Basin. From Kashgar travellers could follow relatively short routes through the closely-clustered Pamir Mountains, whose towering boulder-strewn peaks rise above 24,000 feet and are covered with glacial ice.
When the Chinese army reassembled at the edge of Ferghana, the steppe chief Kokand took refuge in a fortified city the Chinese called Ershi (Alexandria Eschate or 'Alexandria the Furthest'). This city, at the western entrance to the Ferghana valley, had been established next to the Jaxartes River in 329 BC by the Macedonian King Alexander.
Enriched by Chinese tribute and increased caravan traffic, the Tarim kingdoms entered a new phase of urban expansion and economic growth. The first caravan expeditions across the Tarim territories were state-managed operations, travellers transporting diplomatic gifts and tribute between distant kingdoms. Soon private merchants joined the state caravans, bribing the Chinese envoys in charge of regular caravan deliveries to the Western Regions. The main oasis kingdoms became route stations providing large groups of travellers with supplies and protection for long-range ventures around the Tarim Basin.
The senior Han commander in the Tarim Territories was a military governor known as the Protector General, managing relations between China and the thirty-six Tarim kingdoms subject to the Han Empire. He maintained diplomatic links, oversaw political obligations, ensured tribute payments and guaranteed travel and trade connections across Central Asia. He also managed agreements with western powers such as the steppe-based Wusun beyond the Tien Shan Mountains, the Kangju of Sogdia, and the rulers of Bactria and Iran. His political headquarters was at Wu-li, near the centrally placed oasis kingdom of Kucha on the northern Tarim Basin.
This subsidy became an annual payment to the Southern Xiongnu ensuring their loyalty as frontier guards and allies of the Empire. The payments were not fixed but graded according to the commitment and submission they displayed towards China. By 33 BC the annual award had doubled to 18,000 silk bolts and 18,000 catties of silk floss. By 1 BC the Chinese government were delivering 30,000 silk bolts and 30,000 catties of silk floss. The result was a continual outflow of Chinese silk that the Xiongnu used and traded across the steppe frontiers and Central Asia.
By the first century BC the main routes across the mountains and deserts of ancient Iran operated through a network of caravanserai the Greeks called stathmoi. The Parthians allowed Roman merchants to visit Babylonia (Iraq), but barred them from joining the caravans crossing Iran to Transoxiana and the silk routes leading to China.
Great quantities of silk were transported from Thina (China) to Bactria. Some bales were trafficked down the Indus and Ganges Rivers to Indian ports and loaded aboard visiting Roman vessels. Other bundles reaching Bactria would have been collected by Parthian caravans carrying merchandise overland across Iran to Ctesiphon and the main commercial cities of ancient Babylonia. Syrian caravans then transported silk and other oriental goods from Babylonia to seaports in the eastern Mediterranean.
Unlike the steppe nations, the Romans cropped their hair and wore embroidered clothes. The Hou Hanshu adds that the people of this country are all tall and honest, resembling the people of the Middle Kingdom (China), which is why this state is called Da Qin. The people of Da Qin are honest in business and don't have two prices; grain and foodstuffs are always in good supply and the resources of the State abundant.
In AD 98 Nerva granted the supreme position of Emperor to Trajan. Dio explains that Nerva did not esteem family relationship above the safety of the State, believing in looking at a man's ability. Nerva is said to have declared he had done nothing that would prevent his laying down the imperial office and safely returning to private life. He died of natural causes soon after retiring, which probably explains why the Han were informed that the ruler of Da Qin who has been dismissed quietly accepts his demotion without anger.
These people belonged to a European population that probably migrated into the Tarim Basin from near the Caspian Sea during the third millennium BC. The earliest Europoid burials there date to about 1,800 BC: tall individuals with angular faces and recessed eyes. They had distinctive fair or reddish-brown hair which they wore long and sometimes braided. One well-preserved burial near Qiemo, known as the 'Cherchen Man' and dated to 1,000 BC, consisted of a 6 foot 6 inch man with red hair, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and full beard. His skin was tattooed with yellow and purple pigments and he wore a red twill tunic with tartan-patterned leggings.
One particular Bodhisattva named Avalokitshvara was favoured by merchants who travelled the silk routes and crossed the Indian Ocean. Avalokitshvara was believed to operate a Great Vehicle that could retrieve his followers and rescue anyone in peril who invoked his name before their moment of death. Businessmen could not take wealth into the afterlife, but they could accumulate and transfer merit between reincarnations, either by performing beneficial actions or by funding religious institutions to facilitate good deeds. The concept of safe-havens between destinations appealed to many commercial travellers, who readily accepted that merit could be purchased and transferred as if a physical commodity or investment. Consequently, Buddhist institutions devoted to Avalokitshvara received significant patronage from wealthy merchants, encouraging the spread of this belief system across the silk routes.
North of the Greater Caucasus are broad steppe lands with grasslands rising into forested hills of oak and ash. Above these low hills are pine forests and alpine meadow slopes leading into a landscape of permafrost with snow-capped mountains and high glacial peaks. The lower slopes of the western Caucasus Mountains are heavily forested and descend into marshlands near the Black Sea coast. By contrast the eastern ranges tend to be drier with barren terrain that is mostly treeless.
The main sea-port in Colchis was the ancient city of Phasis, founded by Milesian Greeks from Asia Minor in the sixth century BC. At that time this was the most easterly coast reachable by seafaring Greek explorers. The forbidding snow-capped mountains of this 'edge of the world' territory entered Greek myth as where the immortal Titan Prometheus was chained by the god Zeus as punishment for giving mankind the secret of fire. Bound to a rock, it was said a great eagle tore at his innards every day until freed from his agony by the intervention of the Greek hero Hercules. Ancient Colchis was also immortalized in the story of Jason and the Argonauts who sought the Golden Fleece in these same lands. The remoteness and inhospitable terrain of Colchis meant this legendary reputation prevailed in popular Roman imagination even after the area became part of the Empire.
By the Roman era a small Hellenic kingdom lay in the northern reaches of the Black Sea on the Crimean Peninsula, known in antiquity as the Chersonesos, with so narrow a connection to the northern coast that it was considered almost an island. Greek colonists settled the region in the sixth century BC and became wealthy farming its rich agricultural land. By the fifth century BC their cities were under local Greek tyrants who established dynastic rule over most of the region.
The first Greek dynasts to rule ancient Chersonesos were from a royal household called the Spartocids. During the fifth century BC they gained control of the small cluster of Hellenic cities on the Crimean Peninsula and the neighbouring Asiatic coast. The early Spartocids became wealthy by shipping large volumes of grain to Athens.
The Greek merchant fleet left the Crimea in summer when the new grain harvest was loaded aboard, sailing to the Bosporus and anchoring along the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellenic city of Byzantium to await a military escort from the Athenian navy before entering the Aegean Sea. In 340 BC King Philip II of Macedon attacked the assembled merchant fleet and captured 230 vessels.
Throughout the early Roman period the Kingdom of Chersonesos continued to export large amounts of grain to densely populated cities in the eastern Mediterranean. The slave trade was also significant: markets in Chersonesos received captives from the Pontic-Caspian steppe who were sold in Mediterranean ports.
From Phasis it was a voyage of 63 miles along this coast to the fortified Hellenic city of Sebastopolis, formerly known as Dioscurias, founded by Milesian Greeks in the sixth century BC. It was a thriving trade post in 270 BC when the Greek navigator and geographer Timosthenes reported 300 tribes, all speaking different languages, trading at the site.
Vageses warned Crassus that he was breaking political treaties agreed by previous Roman generals and that if he continued with an invasion in search of Parthian gold he would instead find himself burdened with Seric iron. The term 'Seric iron' would not have alarmed Republican Romans, who knew little of the distant Seres or 'Silk People' and were unaware the Parthians were connected to an overland supply chain equipping their warrior-horsemen with superior armour and weaponry. Small samples of Chinese silk had probably reached the Mediterranean soon after the Han Empire secured the Hexi Corridor and established a route through the Tarim territories (104 BC), but in this period superior oriental steel was highly-prized by steppe peoples and was not reaching Mediterranean markets in any great quantity.
Roman ships began sailing around the southern tip of India to reach city-ports in the Ganges and Burma. But these voyages remained within the Indian Ocean since the 1,000-mile-long Malay Peninsula was a major barrier to ventures further east. Roman ships were dependent on seasonal weather and once the northeast monsoon began to blow in November, it was time to sail back across the ocean to Egypt.
The Maes merchants were conveyed 600 miles across the Tarim kingdoms by a Chinese military escort and brought through the Jade Gate to the 600-mile-long Hexi corridor leading into inner China and the 400-mile route to Louyang. This part of the journey revealed the true scale of eastern Asia to Roman geographers. Ptolemy reports that the distance from the Stone Tower to Sera, the capital of the Seres, is a journey of seven months, estimated at 36,200 stadia. This distance was about 3,600 miles and suggests a journey from the Euphrates to central China could be completed in about twelve months, a full year of travel.
The Romans imposed tribute on subject peoples as a symbol of submission and punished revolt by increasing their demands for money and materials. Tribute amounts were fixed by longstanding agreements, so the imperial regime did not necessarily derive greater revenues from a country growing more prosperous under Roman rule. The Roman regime imposed low-rate taxes of about one fortieth (2.5 per cent) on goods crossing provincial boundaries, so internal trade did not raise large amounts of revenue.
The city of Rome had a population close to a million, sustained by a government-issued grain dole offered to select male citizens. About 200,000 citizens were eligible for a dole that provided more than their basic needs, enough grain to feed 400,000 people in the capital. The annual dole included 88,000 tons of grain shipped from farms on coastal North Africa and the Nile Valley in Egypt. According to Josephus, almost a third of this grain, 29,000 tons, was Egyptian produced. As Tacitus observed, it is not barren soil which causes distress in Italy: we prefer to cultivate Africa and Egypt, and trust the life of the Roman people to ships with all their risks.
The Han regime paid salaries to a large bureaucratic staff working for the central government in Louyang and serving in the provinces to
'Seidenstrassen' or 'Silk Routes' was first used by the nineteenth-century German geographer and explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, uncle of the First World War aviator Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
The Romans used wrought or cast iron instead of steel for want of high quality ore (restricted to two sites in the Austrian Alps) and know-how. The Han dynasty developed large enclosed furnaces and double-action pistons to mass produce steel from cast iron, giving Chinese troops superior armour and armour-piercing crossbow bolts, whose sale they restricted. The Xiongnu learned it and spread it to Parthia, which used it to destroy the Romans at Carrhae, 53 BC.
In AD 9 the Han Dynasty ruling ancient China was temporarily usurped in a palace conspiracy and the Tarim kingdoms broke off communications with the new Xin Emperor Wang Mang. The tributary systems sending silk into Central Asia ceased and long-distance caravans operated without Chinese protection. Silk became scarce and expensive in Rome. In AD 16 the conservative elite called on the Senate to introduce new anti-luxury legislation. The ban on silk in male attire was still in force in AD 37 when Caligula became Emperor. Caligula ignored previous legislation and appeared before Roman crowds in Persian-style silk garments. Suetonius reports the Emperor wore a long-sleeved tunic and sometimes appeared in silks which men were forbidden to wear.
In AD 408 a German warlord named Alaric from the Visigoth nation invaded Italy and threatened to sack Rome unless the western Senate granted a large ransom: 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver and 4,000 silk tunics. The Senate sent agents to seize garments from wealthy citizens, but people hid their precious clothing from the government bailiffs so that the full ransom could not be raised. Many in Rome risked the destruction of their city rather than hand over their prized silk garments to save the state.
Pliny repeats the opinion that Seric silk was wool found in their woods. Writing in the second century AD, Pausanias corrected some of these claims, reporting that the Seres make their clothes from threads produced not by a tree but by an insect the Greeks call ser. He describes this creature as a large beetle, like a spider, that can spin webs in trees, and offers an impression of Chinese sericulture: the insect is reared by the Seres, who build shelters for them in winter and summer, and it produces fine thread which it rolls around its feet. These reports probably came from Indian merchants who reached China through the overland Silk Routes.
The Chinese called Greek civilization Li-Jian, from the conquests of Alexander of Macedon (A-Li-Jian-der). When the Chinese became aware of the Roman Empire they called it Da Qin, meaning 'Great China', recognising that Rome ruled a territory equalling their own regime in size and political power.
Steppe bows had a sapwood core with a belly (side facing the archer) layered with pliable cattle horn plates steamed or boiled before being shaped to fit the weapon. After the bovine plates were glued in position, multiple layers of a collagen-rich preparation made from boiled sinew were applied to increase its tensile strength. The powerful hind leg tendons of horses produced the strongest glues and coatings. This was a slow process as each layer was allowed to dry and set.
Official posts were designated Left or Right (East or West) and the army divided into decimal units ranging from 10 to 10,000 men. The lowest commander was the Chief of Tens, who could lead several decimal units. At its height the Xiongnu Empire was a confederation of twenty-four steppe divisions, each given a territory and governed by an appointee known as a 'Great Officer', who could assemble a force of up to 10,000 fighting men under the overall command of the Chanyu. The Chanyu ruled assisted by two senior subordinates known as the 'Wise King of the Right' and the 'Wise King of the Left'.
To maintain this 'Peace and Alliance' settlement, Emperor Gaozu agreed to give the Xiongnu regular tribute of food stocks and large quantities of silk. Modu approved the terms and demanded that the Chinese Emperor present a Han princess to join his wives. This acknowledged that the two regimes had become political equals or 'Brother States'. Later evidence suggests the silk payments alone may have included up to 10,000 pi of silk per annum (4 tons).
The Hsin Shu explains a policy designed to make the Xiongnu economically dependent on Chinese products. The Chinese recognised the Xiongnu badly needed the border markets and had sought desperately to obtain them, even resorting to force. Therefore the government should immediately establish many border markets in strategic locations. The scheme required each market site to have sufficient military forces for self-protection. Every large border market should include shops specialising in selling raw meat, wine, cooked rice and delicious barbeques, all large enough to serve 100 or 200 people.
Within a decade (120 BC) the Hexi Corridor was secure and the Han Empire controlled a 600 mile conduit connecting China to the outer Tarim territories. The fortified frontier city of Dunhuang, 'Blazing Beacon', was established on the western edge of the newly settled region, named for signal fires lit to communicate with Chinese outposts.
Beyond Dunhuang was a parched desert region, the 'Flaming Sands', where agriculture was impossible and sustenance came only from isolated waterholes. To cross it, wheeled vehicles were left behind and travellers journeyed on foot across shifting sands with lines of camels, donkeys or horses burdened with supplies. Three routes led west from Dunhuang into the Tarim territories. The northern route ran 400 miles across the pale sands and desiccated salt fields of the 'White Dragon Desert' between Dunhuang and the oasis outposts of Hami and Turfan. Turfan was a major agricultural centre close to passes in the Tien Shan Mountains. The central route headed 300 miles due west from Dunhuang and Yumen Quan, the 'Jade Gate', to the oasis outpost of Loulan, 'City of the Dead', following the marshy northern fringes of a vast lifeless wasteland known as Lop Nor, the 'Salt Desert'. The centre of Lop Nor was formed by the desiccated, encrusted remains of an ancient seabed whose mineral residues contaminated surrounding watercourses. The third headed south of Lop Nor from Dunhuang through Yang Quan, the 'Sun Gate', on a 500 mile path to the oasis settlement at Cherchen.
The two caravan routes around the Taklamakan Desert converged at the large oasis settlement of Kashgar on the western edge of the Tarim Basin. From Kashgar travellers could follow relatively short routes through the closely-clustered Pamir Mountains, whose towering boulder-strewn peaks rise above 24,000 feet and are covered with glacial ice.
When the Chinese army reassembled at the edge of Ferghana, the steppe chief Kokand took refuge in a fortified city the Chinese called Ershi (Alexandria Eschate or 'Alexandria the Furthest'). This city, at the western entrance to the Ferghana valley, had been established next to the Jaxartes River in 329 BC by the Macedonian King Alexander.
Enriched by Chinese tribute and increased caravan traffic, the Tarim kingdoms entered a new phase of urban expansion and economic growth. The first caravan expeditions across the Tarim territories were state-managed operations, travellers transporting diplomatic gifts and tribute between distant kingdoms. Soon private merchants joined the state caravans, bribing the Chinese envoys in charge of regular caravan deliveries to the Western Regions. The main oasis kingdoms became route stations providing large groups of travellers with supplies and protection for long-range ventures around the Tarim Basin.
The senior Han commander in the Tarim Territories was a military governor known as the Protector General, managing relations between China and the thirty-six Tarim kingdoms subject to the Han Empire. He maintained diplomatic links, oversaw political obligations, ensured tribute payments and guaranteed travel and trade connections across Central Asia. He also managed agreements with western powers such as the steppe-based Wusun beyond the Tien Shan Mountains, the Kangju of Sogdia, and the rulers of Bactria and Iran. His political headquarters was at Wu-li, near the centrally placed oasis kingdom of Kucha on the northern Tarim Basin.
This subsidy became an annual payment to the Southern Xiongnu ensuring their loyalty as frontier guards and allies of the Empire. The payments were not fixed but graded according to the commitment and submission they displayed towards China. By 33 BC the annual award had doubled to 18,000 silk bolts and 18,000 catties of silk floss. By 1 BC the Chinese government were delivering 30,000 silk bolts and 30,000 catties of silk floss. The result was a continual outflow of Chinese silk that the Xiongnu used and traded across the steppe frontiers and Central Asia.
By the first century BC the main routes across the mountains and deserts of ancient Iran operated through a network of caravanserai the Greeks called stathmoi. The Parthians allowed Roman merchants to visit Babylonia (Iraq), but barred them from joining the caravans crossing Iran to Transoxiana and the silk routes leading to China.
Great quantities of silk were transported from Thina (China) to Bactria. Some bales were trafficked down the Indus and Ganges Rivers to Indian ports and loaded aboard visiting Roman vessels. Other bundles reaching Bactria would have been collected by Parthian caravans carrying merchandise overland across Iran to Ctesiphon and the main commercial cities of ancient Babylonia. Syrian caravans then transported silk and other oriental goods from Babylonia to seaports in the eastern Mediterranean.
Unlike the steppe nations, the Romans cropped their hair and wore embroidered clothes. The Hou Hanshu adds that the people of this country are all tall and honest, resembling the people of the Middle Kingdom (China), which is why this state is called Da Qin. The people of Da Qin are honest in business and don't have two prices; grain and foodstuffs are always in good supply and the resources of the State abundant.
In AD 98 Nerva granted the supreme position of Emperor to Trajan. Dio explains that Nerva did not esteem family relationship above the safety of the State, believing in looking at a man's ability. Nerva is said to have declared he had done nothing that would prevent his laying down the imperial office and safely returning to private life. He died of natural causes soon after retiring, which probably explains why the Han were informed that the ruler of Da Qin who has been dismissed quietly accepts his demotion without anger.
These people belonged to a European population that probably migrated into the Tarim Basin from near the Caspian Sea during the third millennium BC. The earliest Europoid burials there date to about 1,800 BC: tall individuals with angular faces and recessed eyes. They had distinctive fair or reddish-brown hair which they wore long and sometimes braided. One well-preserved burial near Qiemo, known as the 'Cherchen Man' and dated to 1,000 BC, consisted of a 6 foot 6 inch man with red hair, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and full beard. His skin was tattooed with yellow and purple pigments and he wore a red twill tunic with tartan-patterned leggings.
One particular Bodhisattva named Avalokitshvara was favoured by merchants who travelled the silk routes and crossed the Indian Ocean. Avalokitshvara was believed to operate a Great Vehicle that could retrieve his followers and rescue anyone in peril who invoked his name before their moment of death. Businessmen could not take wealth into the afterlife, but they could accumulate and transfer merit between reincarnations, either by performing beneficial actions or by funding religious institutions to facilitate good deeds. The concept of safe-havens between destinations appealed to many commercial travellers, who readily accepted that merit could be purchased and transferred as if a physical commodity or investment. Consequently, Buddhist institutions devoted to Avalokitshvara received significant patronage from wealthy merchants, encouraging the spread of this belief system across the silk routes.
North of the Greater Caucasus are broad steppe lands with grasslands rising into forested hills of oak and ash. Above these low hills are pine forests and alpine meadow slopes leading into a landscape of permafrost with snow-capped mountains and high glacial peaks. The lower slopes of the western Caucasus Mountains are heavily forested and descend into marshlands near the Black Sea coast. By contrast the eastern ranges tend to be drier with barren terrain that is mostly treeless.
The main sea-port in Colchis was the ancient city of Phasis, founded by Milesian Greeks from Asia Minor in the sixth century BC. At that time this was the most easterly coast reachable by seafaring Greek explorers. The forbidding snow-capped mountains of this 'edge of the world' territory entered Greek myth as where the immortal Titan Prometheus was chained by the god Zeus as punishment for giving mankind the secret of fire. Bound to a rock, it was said a great eagle tore at his innards every day until freed from his agony by the intervention of the Greek hero Hercules. Ancient Colchis was also immortalized in the story of Jason and the Argonauts who sought the Golden Fleece in these same lands. The remoteness and inhospitable terrain of Colchis meant this legendary reputation prevailed in popular Roman imagination even after the area became part of the Empire.
By the Roman era a small Hellenic kingdom lay in the northern reaches of the Black Sea on the Crimean Peninsula, known in antiquity as the Chersonesos, with so narrow a connection to the northern coast that it was considered almost an island. Greek colonists settled the region in the sixth century BC and became wealthy farming its rich agricultural land. By the fifth century BC their cities were under local Greek tyrants who established dynastic rule over most of the region.
The first Greek dynasts to rule ancient Chersonesos were from a royal household called the Spartocids. During the fifth century BC they gained control of the small cluster of Hellenic cities on the Crimean Peninsula and the neighbouring Asiatic coast. The early Spartocids became wealthy by shipping large volumes of grain to Athens.
The Greek merchant fleet left the Crimea in summer when the new grain harvest was loaded aboard, sailing to the Bosporus and anchoring along the shore of Asia Minor opposite the Hellenic city of Byzantium to await a military escort from the Athenian navy before entering the Aegean Sea. In 340 BC King Philip II of Macedon attacked the assembled merchant fleet and captured 230 vessels.
Throughout the early Roman period the Kingdom of Chersonesos continued to export large amounts of grain to densely populated cities in the eastern Mediterranean. The slave trade was also significant: markets in Chersonesos received captives from the Pontic-Caspian steppe who were sold in Mediterranean ports.
From Phasis it was a voyage of 63 miles along this coast to the fortified Hellenic city of Sebastopolis, formerly known as Dioscurias, founded by Milesian Greeks in the sixth century BC. It was a thriving trade post in 270 BC when the Greek navigator and geographer Timosthenes reported 300 tribes, all speaking different languages, trading at the site.
Vageses warned Crassus that he was breaking political treaties agreed by previous Roman generals and that if he continued with an invasion in search of Parthian gold he would instead find himself burdened with Seric iron. The term 'Seric iron' would not have alarmed Republican Romans, who knew little of the distant Seres or 'Silk People' and were unaware the Parthians were connected to an overland supply chain equipping their warrior-horsemen with superior armour and weaponry. Small samples of Chinese silk had probably reached the Mediterranean soon after the Han Empire secured the Hexi Corridor and established a route through the Tarim territories (104 BC), but in this period superior oriental steel was highly-prized by steppe peoples and was not reaching Mediterranean markets in any great quantity.
Roman ships began sailing around the southern tip of India to reach city-ports in the Ganges and Burma. But these voyages remained within the Indian Ocean since the 1,000-mile-long Malay Peninsula was a major barrier to ventures further east. Roman ships were dependent on seasonal weather and once the northeast monsoon began to blow in November, it was time to sail back across the ocean to Egypt.
The Maes merchants were conveyed 600 miles across the Tarim kingdoms by a Chinese military escort and brought through the Jade Gate to the 600-mile-long Hexi corridor leading into inner China and the 400-mile route to Louyang. This part of the journey revealed the true scale of eastern Asia to Roman geographers. Ptolemy reports that the distance from the Stone Tower to Sera, the capital of the Seres, is a journey of seven months, estimated at 36,200 stadia. This distance was about 3,600 miles and suggests a journey from the Euphrates to central China could be completed in about twelve months, a full year of travel.
The Romans imposed tribute on subject peoples as a symbol of submission and punished revolt by increasing their demands for money and materials. Tribute amounts were fixed by longstanding agreements, so the imperial regime did not necessarily derive greater revenues from a country growing more prosperous under Roman rule. The Roman regime imposed low-rate taxes of about one fortieth (2.5 per cent) on goods crossing provincial boundaries, so internal trade did not raise large amounts of revenue.
The city of Rome had a population close to a million, sustained by a government-issued grain dole offered to select male citizens. About 200,000 citizens were eligible for a dole that provided more than their basic needs, enough grain to feed 400,000 people in the capital. The annual dole included 88,000 tons of grain shipped from farms on coastal North Africa and the Nile Valley in Egypt. According to Josephus, almost a third of this grain, 29,000 tons, was Egyptian produced. As Tacitus observed, it is not barren soil which causes distress in Italy: we prefer to cultivate Africa and Egypt, and trust the life of the Roman people to ships with all their risks.
The Han regime paid salaries to a large bureaucratic staff working for the central government in Louyang and serving in the provinces to
March 18, 2022
Began this year with a pivot once again to history, and within history reads to the history of Rome, which is how I believe I began my current reading stint (with Rubicon as the first one if I am not). I had two expectations from this book – one a narrative-ish history of Rome and the silk route empire(s) and a second an economic history or a history of trade. The first, I think I subconsciously wanted in the flavor of something written by Tom Holland or Everritt or even Mike Duncan. The second, I wanted something along the lines of works by Adam Tooze, Daniel Yergin or even Niall Ferguson. Worst case, I expected something similar to Anarchy by Dalrymple (a narrative historian who frankly does not get economics).
It is safe to say none of those expectations were met. This book was decently saturated with factoids (one extremely fascinating learning was that Chinese steel was superior to Roman steel); yet it does not flow very well nor have any apparent cohesive argument or theme. Maybe I got a little bored (a rarity for any economic history and a history of Rome) but I did not feel like the book even went through with a timeline or a history of trade between the empires, across the years. It simply talked about trade existing, presenting histories of the intermediary empires as well as of china, and coupled it with documenting trade in goods and artefacts
I guess my greatest disappointment stems from the fact that I focused a little too much on the title which set expectations for a detailing of ‘The Ancient World Economy’, yet this was at best a cataloguing of the trade existing at random points between the Roman and Chinese worlds. There is more to an economy than that for sure.
Rating: sigh with a heavy heart I have to give a Roman and economic history read a 3 out 5, best. This book is just meh. Not so bad as to be left incomplete, not amazing enough to continue racing through it nonstop.
It is safe to say none of those expectations were met. This book was decently saturated with factoids (one extremely fascinating learning was that Chinese steel was superior to Roman steel); yet it does not flow very well nor have any apparent cohesive argument or theme. Maybe I got a little bored (a rarity for any economic history and a history of Rome) but I did not feel like the book even went through with a timeline or a history of trade between the empires, across the years. It simply talked about trade existing, presenting histories of the intermediary empires as well as of china, and coupled it with documenting trade in goods and artefacts
I guess my greatest disappointment stems from the fact that I focused a little too much on the title which set expectations for a detailing of ‘The Ancient World Economy’, yet this was at best a cataloguing of the trade existing at random points between the Roman and Chinese worlds. There is more to an economy than that for sure.
Rating: sigh with a heavy heart I have to give a Roman and economic history read a 3 out 5, best. This book is just meh. Not so bad as to be left incomplete, not amazing enough to continue racing through it nonstop.
August 21, 2018
One of the most important trade routes in history is commonly known as the “Silk Road”. However, it was not 1 road but a series of known trade routes that connected multiple empires in the ancient world. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the goods were the Romans & it's love for silk. And this book gives lots of information in the backdrop of this vast trade network.
Despite not having official links, the routes allowed the Roman to acquire silk via the thousands of miles from the Han Empire to the upper classes in Rome. Seen more as a way to pay subject for their work in the Han Empire, the Romans paid vast amounts of bullion for this good.
Along the way, we learn about many others that were in conflict with Romans like the Parthians & the steppe peoples who resided along the Black Sea, lands further east around the Caspian. These conflicts would hamper trade. But it wasn't only there, as the Han empire had to deal with the Xiongnu in the Mongolian steppe, the Tarim kingdoms to the west, the Sogdians, & their trade relations with the peoples beyond.
This book has loads of information that is squeezed into this one volume. The political & social information is crucial in understanding this era. The author does well in trying to provide a good rounded understanding of each main player without getting into too much detail on each as those can be addressed in their own separate works.
Overall, if you are a fan of antiquity & wish to get a much better understanding of the Roman & Han empires, this is a very good place to start.
Despite not having official links, the routes allowed the Roman to acquire silk via the thousands of miles from the Han Empire to the upper classes in Rome. Seen more as a way to pay subject for their work in the Han Empire, the Romans paid vast amounts of bullion for this good.
Along the way, we learn about many others that were in conflict with Romans like the Parthians & the steppe peoples who resided along the Black Sea, lands further east around the Caspian. These conflicts would hamper trade. But it wasn't only there, as the Han empire had to deal with the Xiongnu in the Mongolian steppe, the Tarim kingdoms to the west, the Sogdians, & their trade relations with the peoples beyond.
This book has loads of information that is squeezed into this one volume. The political & social information is crucial in understanding this era. The author does well in trying to provide a good rounded understanding of each main player without getting into too much detail on each as those can be addressed in their own separate works.
Overall, if you are a fan of antiquity & wish to get a much better understanding of the Roman & Han empires, this is a very good place to start.
January 15, 2020
The author is clearly passionate about the subject, but makes a lot of tenuous leaps in his analysis of source material that would not be supported by the majority of academics (see e.g. his attempt to link Pliny's description of the Seres with archaeological finds in the Tarim Basin from thousands of years earlier). As another reviewer points out, sources are too often taken at face value. The author states in his introduction that he "examines the ancient evidence without the agendas or limitations of ongoing academic disputes," yet many of the connections he is trying to make - across such vast distances in a time period so far removed from our own - are inherently controversial. My advice to others would be to read this with a grain of salt, as it is far from an authoritative account.
August 12, 2020
I debated finishing this book because usually give up on books I don’t love. But the stories of the various empires were interesting enough to keep reading. It is perhaps better thought of as a series of vignettes, with no real thesis. In fact, great portions of the book are simply restated facts from contemporary works like the Han Shu and Natural History.
Worth a read if you’re really interested in this era or the various Eurasian empires that came and went. But don’t expect anything deep.
A nitpick: the author couldn’t decide how to refer to different empires and constantly writes things like “XYZ happened in Da Xin (the Roman Empire)” even when not quoting.
Worth a read if you’re really interested in this era or the various Eurasian empires that came and went. But don’t expect anything deep.
A nitpick: the author couldn’t decide how to refer to different empires and constantly writes things like “XYZ happened in Da Xin (the Roman Empire)” even when not quoting.
April 7, 2020
I have read over 30 books about Greco-Roman history and dozens more about Middle Eastern, Central Asian and East Asian history, and this book is one of the most boring I have read. The various chapters lack a cohesive structure. Most chapters have little to do with the Roman Empire's relation with the silk road. The book mostly consists of background information about the geography and basic history of each region between China, India and the Mediterranean. There are occasionally interesting tidbits, but they are few and far between.
September 7, 2017
Academic book on the ancient world economy and the Silk routes that connected the Roman empire with the Han Chinese empire. It also covered the empires of central Asia and the Parthians. Interesting read for those versed in economics. Recommended.
September 28, 2019
A fine researcher...but as dry as the Gobi, McLaughlin needs a ghost writer to communicate his fascinating facts. Sadly, my high school students were better, more poised and erudite writers. Lots to learn if you can survive the arid prose!
July 27, 2021
More of a history of how the Roman world's economy interacted with central Asia than commerce across the Silk World. Jumped around between various empires between Rome and China. Could have used more maps.
February 20, 2019
The author takes sources at face value and the analysis lacks in depth.
April 9, 2020
Informative but, at the same time, boring. Too much about who was battling who for a recreational read. Couldn't finish it.
April 12, 2021
In our age of the Internet, where the differences of time and distances of lands collapse via wireless communication and aero vehicles, we are easily apt to presume that what we can do was an impossibility for those of different eras and places. Yet, what is happening now has happened before, although in various modes of Operandi. Global trade was also part of the ancient world's economy that affected civilization's fortune just as it is today in our time. This book shows the reader how ancient commerce happened thousands of years ago across a great distance of continents from the Far East to the West to propagate the prospects and prosperity of Europe and Asia's far-flung regimes via silk routes through Central Asia.
The book is a fine organization of routes, resources, and regimes involved in the ancient business world that surprise the modern reader that without airplanes, cars, and computers even, our forefathers of humankind found ways to travel a great distance for profits with flares for adventure. First, the term "Silk Roads" became famous by the 19th Century German geographer/explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, who surveyed the land routes crossing Central Asia from Afghanistan to China as used in the ancient Chinese and Roman texts. His ambitious plan was to construct a railway line across Central Asia that would have linked the German economy to Chinese markets. In ancient times, the Romans imported Chinese silk that came to Roman Syria from Iranian caravan routes crossing the Parthian Empire from Uzbekistan to Mesopotamia. The Romans' Eastern business also included Indian valuables via the Persian Gulf that reached Parthian markets in Babylonia. An ancient text reveals that one Indian sailor from the wreckage of a trade ship from India around the Red Sea rescued by a Greek patrol ship from the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt around the Arabian Peninsula told the Greeks how to sail from India via season Monsoon winds.
The Romans had already known about India but not the Far East until 1 B.C., when silk began to reach the Mediterranean Sea through the Parthian Empire ruling in ancient Iran via caravan routes, aka the silk roads. It appears that commerce contacts and cultural interactions indeed existed. Modern archeologists discovered the graves of slave workers of textile production during the first century A.D. at Vagnari in southern Italy; one of them had a DNA of Far Eastern ancestry inherited from his mother. From Julius Caesar to Caligula, silk both ornamental and devotional in the panoply of magnificent Roman authority. The Romans made ceremonial silk curtains dyed in royal Tyrian purple as awnings in public ceremonies to protect spectators' eyes from the glare of the fiery Mediterranean Sun. Silk also made beautiful garments and garlands presented to classical gods' images and offered to the protective household deities. The reader would be pretty surprised to learn that the end of Cleopatra VIII and her paramour Mark Anthony was a purple augury of lucrative Roman trade from the eastern world. The accumulated Roman economy from Ptolemaic Egypt's annexation and control over the eastern legions made the distribution of the Roman citizens' funds possible. The empire gained direct sovereignty over the Red Sea shipping lanes into the Indian Ocean.
Reading this book confirmed my conviction that people would find the way to do what they needed. However, the younger generations of our time often make the anachronistic mistake of judging the previous generations as culturally retrogressed and hemmed in insular thoughts. It is only a different way of doing business, however slow or primitive it may seem. The ancient commerce contacts show that a country cannot stand alone and survive alone in the world if it refuses to measure the truth with the desire based on ethnocentrism growing into xenophobia. Human cultural progress is a collective enterprise. We live not in isolated islands but a global village.
The book is a fine organization of routes, resources, and regimes involved in the ancient business world that surprise the modern reader that without airplanes, cars, and computers even, our forefathers of humankind found ways to travel a great distance for profits with flares for adventure. First, the term "Silk Roads" became famous by the 19th Century German geographer/explorer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, who surveyed the land routes crossing Central Asia from Afghanistan to China as used in the ancient Chinese and Roman texts. His ambitious plan was to construct a railway line across Central Asia that would have linked the German economy to Chinese markets. In ancient times, the Romans imported Chinese silk that came to Roman Syria from Iranian caravan routes crossing the Parthian Empire from Uzbekistan to Mesopotamia. The Romans' Eastern business also included Indian valuables via the Persian Gulf that reached Parthian markets in Babylonia. An ancient text reveals that one Indian sailor from the wreckage of a trade ship from India around the Red Sea rescued by a Greek patrol ship from the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt around the Arabian Peninsula told the Greeks how to sail from India via season Monsoon winds.
The Romans had already known about India but not the Far East until 1 B.C., when silk began to reach the Mediterranean Sea through the Parthian Empire ruling in ancient Iran via caravan routes, aka the silk roads. It appears that commerce contacts and cultural interactions indeed existed. Modern archeologists discovered the graves of slave workers of textile production during the first century A.D. at Vagnari in southern Italy; one of them had a DNA of Far Eastern ancestry inherited from his mother. From Julius Caesar to Caligula, silk both ornamental and devotional in the panoply of magnificent Roman authority. The Romans made ceremonial silk curtains dyed in royal Tyrian purple as awnings in public ceremonies to protect spectators' eyes from the glare of the fiery Mediterranean Sun. Silk also made beautiful garments and garlands presented to classical gods' images and offered to the protective household deities. The reader would be pretty surprised to learn that the end of Cleopatra VIII and her paramour Mark Anthony was a purple augury of lucrative Roman trade from the eastern world. The accumulated Roman economy from Ptolemaic Egypt's annexation and control over the eastern legions made the distribution of the Roman citizens' funds possible. The empire gained direct sovereignty over the Red Sea shipping lanes into the Indian Ocean.
Reading this book confirmed my conviction that people would find the way to do what they needed. However, the younger generations of our time often make the anachronistic mistake of judging the previous generations as culturally retrogressed and hemmed in insular thoughts. It is only a different way of doing business, however slow or primitive it may seem. The ancient commerce contacts show that a country cannot stand alone and survive alone in the world if it refuses to measure the truth with the desire based on ethnocentrism growing into xenophobia. Human cultural progress is a collective enterprise. We live not in isolated islands but a global village.
March 6, 2021
This is the third book this year on the “Silk Roads”, along with some others that have been tangentially related to it. I am not sure what is so intriguing to me about it - whether to find an historical basis for China’s current infrastructure projects in Central Asia or the geopolitical ideas that Putin is using to justify his rule, or else the intriguing idea of some set of pathways, however sparsely travelled across some of the more barren stretches, or even an insight into when Central Asia was an actual driving force in the world’s politics and economics. All of these lines of thought are worthwhile and attention grabbing. The more that is known about the Silk Roads, the more reduced my expectations have become for big discoveries.
For example:
1) There wasn’t really one Silk Road but a variety of roads that were determined by the geography, the interests of traders and travelers, and the political state of play at any given time.
2) The state of the roads varied widely across different time periods. Who was ruling what? What forces were there to secure order? Who were the prominent participants in different periods?
3) The road, such as it was, did not serve as a thruway but more as an occasion of linked shorter works that individuals and states participated in on various stretches. The analogy with the US would be how the Interstate highway system grew up out of a number of preexisting roads and shorter local initiatives and was only linked together later in its history (the 1950sl and 1960s).
4) It is amazing that any of this persisted, given the sparse volume of travel and the rudimentary technology for keeping track of transactions over very long periods of time.
5) While it is tempting to think of contacts between Europe and China over the Silk Roads, this really this not occur on a regular basis. There is a whole historiography of Marco Polo, of course, but the most fascinating linkage - between the Roman Empire and Han China - did not really develop much at all. The Chinese knew fairly little about Rome and the Romans seem to have known even less about the Chinese Empire. Too bad!
This is the point behind Raoul McLaughlin’s book on the Roman Empire and the Silk Routes. There wasn’t really much of a direct linkage, whatever the trade routes there were from China to the West. These linkages, such as they are, get covered well, but other books on the Silk Road, such as Hansen’s, are more informative.
What McLaughlin provides that makes his book valuable is the historical context for the Silk Routes in both China and the Roman world. What was the political state of affairs? How were the different empires administered? What factors drove their ecocnomies? What were the states between Rome and China and how did they influence the extent of trade that occurred? What about oceanic travel? These points are covered in detail and the book is valuable for providing good context. For example, the Romans obtained silk from China on a regular basis. They did not, however, obtain much related to the technology of steel making or advance weapons that the Chinese possessed. The suggestion in the book is that the Parthians wanted this technology for themselves and impeded the transfer of this knowledge to the Romans, which allowed them to maintain an advantage in weaponry.
If a readers interest is in one book on the Silk Roads, this is not as good as some others. For telling the story of how Rome fit into the world of the Silk Routes, the book is very effective.
For example:
1) There wasn’t really one Silk Road but a variety of roads that were determined by the geography, the interests of traders and travelers, and the political state of play at any given time.
2) The state of the roads varied widely across different time periods. Who was ruling what? What forces were there to secure order? Who were the prominent participants in different periods?
3) The road, such as it was, did not serve as a thruway but more as an occasion of linked shorter works that individuals and states participated in on various stretches. The analogy with the US would be how the Interstate highway system grew up out of a number of preexisting roads and shorter local initiatives and was only linked together later in its history (the 1950sl and 1960s).
4) It is amazing that any of this persisted, given the sparse volume of travel and the rudimentary technology for keeping track of transactions over very long periods of time.
5) While it is tempting to think of contacts between Europe and China over the Silk Roads, this really this not occur on a regular basis. There is a whole historiography of Marco Polo, of course, but the most fascinating linkage - between the Roman Empire and Han China - did not really develop much at all. The Chinese knew fairly little about Rome and the Romans seem to have known even less about the Chinese Empire. Too bad!
This is the point behind Raoul McLaughlin’s book on the Roman Empire and the Silk Routes. There wasn’t really much of a direct linkage, whatever the trade routes there were from China to the West. These linkages, such as they are, get covered well, but other books on the Silk Road, such as Hansen’s, are more informative.
What McLaughlin provides that makes his book valuable is the historical context for the Silk Routes in both China and the Roman world. What was the political state of affairs? How were the different empires administered? What factors drove their ecocnomies? What were the states between Rome and China and how did they influence the extent of trade that occurred? What about oceanic travel? These points are covered in detail and the book is valuable for providing good context. For example, the Romans obtained silk from China on a regular basis. They did not, however, obtain much related to the technology of steel making or advance weapons that the Chinese possessed. The suggestion in the book is that the Parthians wanted this technology for themselves and impeded the transfer of this knowledge to the Romans, which allowed them to maintain an advantage in weaponry.
If a readers interest is in one book on the Silk Roads, this is not as good as some others. For telling the story of how Rome fit into the world of the Silk Routes, the book is very effective.
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