The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

We think of globalisation as a uniquely modern phenomenon; yet 2,000 years ago too, it was a fact of life, one that presented opportunities, created problems and prompted technological advance.

Cities like Merv, Gundes̱ẖāpūr and even Kashgar, the oasis town that was the entry point to China, had archbishops long before Canterbury did.

Indeed, even in the Middle Ages, there were many more Christians in Asia than there were in Europe.

even today regular greetings reference human trafficking. All over Italy, when they meet, people say to each other, “schiavo,” from a Venetian dialect. “Ciao,” as it is more commonly spelt, does not mean “hello”; it means “I am your slave.”32

New centres for the arts are likewise being built, from the extraordinary National Museum of Qatar to the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, to the Baku Museum of Modern Art—or imposing new buildings like the National Library in Tashkent or the Sameba Cathedral in Tblisi, paid for by the Georgian tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili who bought Picasso’s Dora Maar for $95 million at auction in 2006. This is a region being revived and restored to former glory.

Map of the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Bay of Bengal by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten—the doyen of European mapmakers.