The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

So widespread was slavery in the Mediterranean and the Arabic world that 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.”

Omg

While it stands today as a glorious vision of the past, the spark for Venice’s growth came from its willingness to sell future generations into captivity.

On 15 July 1099, Jerusalem fell to the knights of the First Crusade.

Templar knights—a particularly popular new order whose zealous mixture of military service, devotion and piety proved intoxicatingly glamorous.

The bloodlust was directly linked to the idea that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion and that the lands of Israel should be held by the Christians of Europe.

Around the time of the first crusade

The Crusade might be best remembered as a war of religion, but it was also a springboard for accruing serious wealth and power.

Many were killed, including the representative of the Latin church, whose head was dragged through the city’s streets behind a dog.

1182 oof

Whatever the truth, barely two months after the battle Jerusalem surrendered peacefully to the Muslims, its gates flung open after terms had been agreed to spare the city’s inhabitants.

1187

Ladders, battering rams and catapults that were meant to help wrest control of cities from the Muslims were instead used against what was still by far the largest Christian city in the world.

religion makes people hypocrites

Constantinople’s physical riches were spirited away to churches, cathedrals, monasteries and private collections all over western Europe.

Probably seemed awful at the time but otherwise all of these riches would have been lost when the Ottoman’s took over

The sack of the city was so brutal that one modern scholar has written of a “lost generation” in the years that followed the Fourth Crusade as the Byzantine imperial apparatus was forced to regroup in Nicaea in Asia Minor.

From the very outset, men such as Bohemond had shown that the Crusades—which promised to defend Christendom, to do the Lord’s work and deliver salvation to the many who took the cross—could be hijacked for other purposes.

The Mongols cultivated such fears carefully, for the reality was that Genghis Khan used violence selectively and deliberately. The sack of one city was calculated to encourage others to submit peacefully and quickly; theatrically gruesome deaths were used to persuade other rulers that it was better to negotiate than to offer resistance.

The terror the Mongols aroused was reflected in the name by which they were soon being referred to: Tatars, a reference to Tartarus—the abyss of torment in classical mythology.

Reports of their advance reached as far as Scotland while, according to one source, herring went unsold in ports on the east coast of Britain as merchants who normally came from the Baltic to buy it did not dare to leave home.

all the way from China!! An incredible force of destruction

The new metropolis has retained its importance ever since: Beijing.

Capital of the Mongol empire on site of old capital

With other European monarchs similarly preoccupied, the Christian presence in the Holy Land finally came to an end: two centuries after the knights of the First Crusade had captured Jerusalem, the last footholds gave way. Sidon, Tyre, Beirut and Acre surrendered to the Mamlūks in 1291.

Before withdrawing, however, “they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.” Rather than being overwhelmed by the smell, it was the highly contagious disease that caught hold. Unknowingly, the Mongols had turned to biological warfare to defeat their enemy.

Against the Genoese, damn these Mongols were savage

Vicious pogroms were carried out, with one account reporting how “all the Jews between Cologne and Austria” were rounded up and burnt alive.

Blamed the plague on Jews ... what is up with Germans and killing Jews bro

“Don’t hurtle into marriage too soon,” advised Anna Bijns in a poem written in the Low Countries, for “one who earns her board and clothes shouldn’t scurry to suffer a man’s rod…Though wedlock I do not decry; unyoked is best! Happy the woman without a man!”

Post plague society in northwestern Europe nice

Finally, in 1453, the imperial capital fell, the capture of one of the greatest cities of Christendom a triumph for Islam, which was once again in the ascendant. In Rome, there were accounts of men crying and beating their chests when news came through that Constantinople had fallen, and of prayers being offered by the Pope for those trapped in the city. But Europe had done too little when it mattered; now it was too late.

This one hurts </3 but those Western Europeans SUCK

In one Arabic manual written in the Mediterranean around this time, a chapter entitled “Prescriptions for increasing the dimensions of small members and for making them splendid” suggested rubbing a mixture of honey and ginger on to the private parts; the effect would be so powerful and produce such pleasure that the man’s sexual partner would “object to him getting off her again.”

Men have always wanted bigger dicks LOL

Not without irony, one of the glories of India was the result of the suffering of “Indians” on the other side of the world.

</3

In China, books were written advising on how to spot fakes, with Liu Dong explaining how to authenticate Xuande bronzework or Yongle porcelain.

Antiques have been popular for hundreds of years??

Globalisation was no less problematic five centuries ago than it is today.

As a result of England’s attempt to challenge the new Spanish and Portuguese routes to the Americas and to Asia, considerable effort was devoted to forging close relations with the Ottoman Turks.

Yuck

18 Indeed, the Elizabethan era saw the emergence of Persia too as a common, and positive, cultural reference point in English literature.

In addition to Islam

The account of de las Casas was important because the priest had grown increasingly disillusioned by the suffering of the native populations in the Americas, which he witnessed at first hand.

Fuck the Spanish bro

Widely circulated in the 1580s either in full or abridged to include the most damning passages, it presented an unequivocal portrait of the Spanish as mass murderers and of Spain as a cruel, bloodthirsty realm.

The irony - English thought they were better but ended up doing the same shit

This was the Spanish model of empire, in other words, one of intolerance, violence and persecution. England, of course, would never behave in so shameful a manner.

Hahaha

As contemporary commentators constantly stressed, in regard to the Americas, but also as Europeans began to fan out over Africa, India and other parts of Asia, and then Australia as well, it was all part of God’s plan for the west to inherit the earth.

Disgusting 🤢

The great irony, then, was that although Europe experienced a glorious Golden Age, producing flourishing art and literature and leaps of scientific endeavour, it was forged by violence.

It was not for nothing that world war and the worst genocide in history had their origins and execution in Europe; these were the latest chapters in a long-running story of brutality and violence.

Only a European author could have concluded that the natural state of man was to be in a constant state of violence; and only a European author would have been right.

In the place of international commerce and high politics, Venice, Florence and Rome became stops on a tourist trail for the new rich. Although first referred to as the Grand Tour in 1670,

Activities in bedchambers in Europe, hushed mutterings in palace corridors in its capital cities concerning potential brides or assumed slights by flighty rulers who were quick to have their egos piqued had implications and ramifications thousands of miles away.

Those poor girls :(

Experiences could be traumatic, as the merchant sailor Thomas Bowrey and his friends found out when they paid sixpence for a pint of “Bangha,” an infusion of cannabis, in India in the late seventeenth century:

In a neat mirror image, rising addiction to luxury goods in the west was effectively being traded for—and soon matched by—rising addiction to drugs in China.

I would not use neat to describe this

Europeans had thought only of enriching themselves as the local population starved to death.

Bless their souls

To howls of derision, Clive simply answered—like the chief executive of a distressed bank—that his priorities had been to protect the interests of shareholders, not those of the local population; he deserved no criticism, surely, for doing his job.

Capitalism is a sin

Eyes turned to the colonies in North America, where taxes were substantially lower than in Britain itself.

Tea Act 1773 directly linked to famine in Bengal caused by EIC greed

Silk Road

Wet road more like

The passing of most of India into British hands ensured that the overland trade routes were starved of oxygen, as buying and spending power, assets and attention were decisively diverted to Europe.

Yeah babe I think you should’ve ended the book here