Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present [Hardcover]

Christopher I. Beckwith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691135894 | ISBN-13: 978-0691135892 | Publication Date: March 16, 2009

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization.

Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Christopher I. Beckwith, professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, suggests in his recent book, Empires of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press), that 'the most crucial element' of societies all through Central Eurasia--including the ones analyzed by this exhibition--was the 'sociopolitical-religious ideal of the heroic lord' and of a 'war band of his friends' that was attached to him and 'sworn to defend him to the death.' This idea, he suggests, affected the organization of early Islam as well as the structure of Tibetan Buddhist devotion. In fact, this 'shared political ideology across Eurasia,' Mr. Beckwith suggests, 'ensured nearly constant warfare.' The region's history is a history of competing empires; trade became part of what was later called the Great Game.
(Edward Rothstein New York Times )

[T]his is no mere survey. Beckwith systematically demolishes the almost universal presumption that the peoples and powers of Inner Asia were typically predatory raiders, and thus supplied themselves by extracting loot and tribute from more settled populations. . . . With his work, there is finally a fitting counterpart to Peter B. Golden's magnificently comprehensive An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East, based on Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Latin, and European medieval sources. By reading just two books anyone can now sort out Charlemagne's Avar Ring, the Golden Horde, modern Kazakhs and Uzbeks, ancient Scyths, Borodin's Polovtsian dances (they were Cumans), present-day Turks, Seljuks, Ottomans, early Turks, and Bulghars and Bulgarians, among many less familiar states or nations.
(Edward Luttwak New Republic )

In the process of illuminating this essential piece of the human past, Beckwith constructs a scrupulously researched narrative that is wholly accessible, and demands close attention.
(Nicholas Basbanes FineBooksMagazine.com )

From the Inside Flap

"Empires of the Silk Road is a major scholarly achievement. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of the history of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present. But it is much more than a simple narrative of events in what is arguably the most important region for the development of civilization during the past four or five millennia. It is an intellectually ambitious undertaking that attempts to account for essential transformations in the cultural, economic, and political life of societies situated both within the Central Eurasian heartland and on its periphery. Beckwith achieves the radical feat of demonstrating how Central Eurasia is actually key for understanding the dynamics of human history and progress throughout antiquity, the medieval period, and the recent past. Above all, and for the first time, he convincingly shows that Central Eurasia was not a sump of poverty-stricken, unremittingly vicious subhumans, but a wellspring of vibrant, energetic, resourceful, enterprising peoples who facilitated communication and change in all directions. In other words, Beckwith turns conventional wisdom on its head and makes Central Eurasia the core of human history, rather than the embarrassing backwater which it is usually portrayed as. Perhaps his greatest contribution is in the powerful, sustained epilogue, where he shatters a whole galaxy of misconceptions about the dreaded 'barbarians.'"--Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania

"Ambitious, provocative, and bristling with new ideas, Empires of the Silk Road will set off sparks. The book's clearly articulated themes are lively and stimulating, and Beckwith's integration of European, Central Asian, and East Asian materials makes this a major work in Eurasian and world history. In range and depth, this readable book is quite unlike any other."--Peter B. Golden, Rutgers University

"Empires of the Silk Road is a major scholarly achievement. . . . Beckwith turns conventional wisdom on its head and makes Central Eurasia the core of human history, rather than the embarrassing backwater which it is usually portrayed as."--Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691135894
• ISBN-13: 978-0691135892
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #701,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars black hole between 500 b.c. and 1500 a.d., August 22, 2009

By 

DaLaoHu (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Hardcover)

I don't know where to start in reviewing this book. Perhaps the beginning is a good place. This book starts off well. The prologue concerning the hero myths and the origin of the comitatus seems curious at first but makes sense as the book goes on. The first chapter on the Hittites and the origin of the chariot I found fascinating. The second chapter was not quite as good, but the musings on the origins of philosophical thought and its possible diffusion via the Silk Road between China, India, and Greece was good food for thought. Which brought us up to about 500 b.c., at which point ...

The book just seemed to fall off a cliff. For the next two thousand years, the time period the majority of us are probably most interested in, all we get is a seemingly endless succession of names and dates, which tribal leader raided which tribal group, tra la tra la, with no maps and little indication of what is important out of all of this and what is not. One small example should suffice. On page 168 we encounter the sentence: "There Alp Arslan resoundingly defeated an army of the Byzantine emperor Romanus at the Battle of Mantzikert in 1071." That's it. No further reference.

Hello!!! Wasn't that the battle that initiated the papal call for the first Crusade, one of those seminal events in world history whose repercussions are still affecting the societies of Central Asia and indeed the whole world even today, almost a thousand years later? (Afghanistan, anyone?) You would think this might be a ripe field for discussion, but in fact there is not one single mention that the Crusades even happened. The Battle of the Bulge is in this book. Pearl Harbor is in this book. But not one single mention of the Crusades. Umm, wasn't that minor Central Asian group the Turks involved?

And historical personages. What we learn about Attila the Hun is that he must have had his reasons. Oh, really? (Or as my daughter would say: "No duh!") Of course he had his reasons! Hitler had his reasons as well. The question is: what were those reasons? And were those reasons good reasons? You won't find out here.

Tamerlane. Now there's a person I'd like to learn more about. Didn't he rule during some sort of golden age in Central Asian history? I've often heard about him over the years, but never truly learned much in detail. And now I can honestly say that I still haven't. After one quick paragraph outlining all his major and minor victories and defeats, we are given this:"The legacy of Tamerlane and the Timurids was to be in patronage of the arts." That's it? Yep, that's it.

The book does get interesting again in chapter 9, when he gets into a discussion of the littoral system and how the newly opened up European sea trade to the Far East affected the Silk Road economies, but then ...

The book falls right off the cliff again, and is a jumble right through to the end. I won't go into his extended rant against Modernism because other reviewers have already done that. He has some valid points, but mostly he just sets up straw men and tears them down as easy targets, rarely focusing on the larger picture. His prescription seems to be that if only the central Asian countries could unite and form some kind of European Union-type organization, and reinstitute a Victorian Era-style noble aristocracy based on the comitatus system (see, we did get back to it in the end), then the world might suddenly find itself living in peace and harmony.

Yeah, right.

A good book deserves to be written about the empires of the Silk Road. Unfortunately, this is not it.

59 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A book I wanted to like more than I did, June 23, 2009

By 

A. Mauer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Hardcover)

I purchased this book thinking I had found a Central Eurasian companion to Norman Davies' magisterial "Europe." Alas, "Empires of the Silk Road" is too strange to fit comfortably on the same shelf.

Though Beckwith makes many interesting points, particularly at the beginning of the book (the sections on national founding myths and the comitatus are worth a glance), one senses trouble on the horizon when Central Eurasia is defined, not geographically, but rather as any place where the "Central Eurasian culture complex" took root. Though there are doubtless merits to this approach, the result is that, instead of a history of the "Empires of the Silk Road," Beckwith has attempted to write a history of the entirety of Eurasia.

This approach becomes particularly problematic in the last third of the book, when Beckwith more or less abandons his supposed topic for meager summaries of 20th century events. Casting the 20th century in terms of the rise of "Modernism," the reader is given 1-2 page summaries of the Great Depression, First and Second World Wars, and Communist takeovers of Russia and China. Presumably, anyone interested in purchasing this book will have at least a passing interest in world history and therefore possess considerably deeper knowledge of these subjects than is presented; one is therefore left to conclude that these sections were included to allow the author space to snipe at Modernism, a movement that Beckwith never bothers to define but that he clearly loathes.

Furthermore, many of these summaries are risible. For instance, the Iranian revolution is cast as the overthrow of an innocent and benevolent monarch ("the young shah gradually began a wide-ranging liberalization and modernization of Iran...[leading to] prosperity, stability, and... growth"). Though Khomeini and his ilk deserve only contempt, to let the noxious Iranian monarchy off so lightly is a disservice to the reader.

In summary, the better parts of "Empires of the Silk Road" provide a useful and perhaps necessary corrective to Eurocentric bookstore shelves. The book will doubtless appeal to those interested in a quick overview of the Scythians, Sogdians, Tamerlane, and other fascinating cultures and notables. However, the peculiar final chapters will be off-putting to many, and make it difficult to recommend this uneven title.

44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A curious book, June 12, 2009

By 

History Reader "aarondad" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Hardcover)

Somewhere along the path to writing a history of the so-called Silk Road, Christopher Beckwith got lost in a diatribe about "Modernism" and all the accoutrements that accompany it. I'm not sure what the point was, other than to rail about the injustice of it all. That aside, there's much to commend here. Beckwith's mastery of the linguistics and philology of the Central Eurasia is impressive. Certainly his passion for the subject leaps off the page. And one can admire his efforts to rescue the peoples of Eurasia from obscurity and myth. The prologue and epilogue are worth reading in their own right. It's the detours into invective and moralizing that lead his caravan astray.