Silk Roads Quotes

“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.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“A talent for following the ways of yesterday’, declared King Wu-ling in 307 BC, ‘is not sufficient to improve the world of today.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“And yet, despite the horror it caused, the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“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.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“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.70”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“As the two bullets left the chamber of Princip’s Browning revolver, Europe was a continent of empires. Italy, France, Austro-Hungary, Germany, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, even tiny Belgium, only formed in 1831, controlled vast territories across the world. At the moment of impact, the process of turning them back into local powers began. Within a matter of years, gone were the emperors who had sailed on each other’s yachts and appointed each other to grand chivalric orders; gone were some colonies and dominions overseas—and others were starting to go in an inexorable progression to independence.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Kiev became a linchpin of the medieval world, evidenced by the marriage ties of the ruling house in the second half of the eleventh century. Daughters of Yaroslav the Wise, who reigned as Grand Prince of Kiev until 1054, married the King of Norway, the King of Hungary, the King of Sweden and the King of France. One son married the daughter of the King of Poland, while another took as his wife a member of the imperial family of Constantinople. The marriages made in the next generation were even more impressive. Rus’ princesses were married to the King of Hungary, the King of Poland and the powerful German Emperor, Henry IV. Among other illustrious matches was Gytha, the wife of Vladimir II Monomakh, the Grand Prince of Kiev: she was the daughter of Harold II, King of England, who was killed at the battle of Hastings in 1066. The ruling family in Kiev was the best-connected dynasty in Europe.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Sensitive pricing and a deliberate policy of keeping taxes low were symptomatic of the bureaucratic nous of the Mongol Empire, which gets too easily lost beneath the images of violence and wanton destruction. In fact, the Mongols’ success lay not in indiscriminate brutality but in their willingness to compromise and co-operate, thanks to the relentless effort to sustain a system that renewed central control.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“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. As”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Indeed, statistical modelling based on these results even suggests that one of the effects of the plague was a substantial improvement in life expectancy.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Money, rather than men, began to be used as currency for trade with the east.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The Middle Ages in Europe are traditionally seen as the time of Crusades, chivalry and the growing power of the papacy, but all this was little more than a sideshow to the titanic struggles taking place further east. The tribal system had led the Mongols to the brink of global domination, having conquered almost the whole continent of Asia. Europe and North Africa yawned open; it was striking then that the Mongol leadership focused not on the former but on the latter. Put simply, Europe was not the best prize on offer. All that stood in the way of Mongol control of the Nile, of Egypt’s rich agricultural output and its crucial position as a junction on the trade routes in all directions was an army commanded by men who were drawn from the very same steppes: this was not just a struggle for supremacy, it was the triumph of a political, cultural and social system. The battle for the medieval world was being fought between nomads from Central and eastern Asia.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“In Afghanistan, a word was coined for the practice of seeking support from both superpowers: literally meaning ‘without sides’, bi-tarafi became a tenet of a foreign policy that sought to balance the contributions made by the USSR with those of the US.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“While the Muslim world took delight in innovation, progress and new ideas, much of Christian Europe withered in the gloom, crippled by a lack of resources and a dearth of curiosity.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“And yet, despite the horror it caused, the plague turned out to be the catalyst for social and economic change that was so profound that far from marking the death of Europe, it served as its making. The transformation provided an important pillar in the rise—and the triumph—of the west. It did so in several phases. First was the top-to-bottom reconfiguration of how social structures functioned. Chronic depopulation in the wake of the Black Death had the effect of sharply increasing wages because of the accentuated value of labour. So many died before the plague finally began to peter out in the early 1350s that one source noted a “shortage of servants, craftsmen, and workmen, and agricultural workers and labourers.” This gave considerable negotiating powers to those who had previously been at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum. Some simply “turned their noses up at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent unless for triple wages.”66 This was hardly an exaggeration: empirical data shows that urban wages rose dramatically in the decades after the Black Death.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“One caliph in the eighth century went so far as to conduct a series of experiments to freeze a range of different furs to see which offered the best protection in extreme conditions. He filled a series of containers with water and left them overnight in ice-cold weather, according to one Arabic writer. ‘In the morning, he had the [flasks] brought to him. All were frozen except the one with black fox fur. He thus learned which fur was the warmest and the driest.’22”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“It is easy to feel confused and disturbed by dislocation and violence in the Islamic world, by religious fundamentalism, by clashes between Russia and its neighbours or by China’s struggle with extremism in its western provinces. What we are witnessing, however, are the birthing pains of a region that once dominated the intellectual, cultural and economic landscape and which is now re-emerging. We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting –back to where it lay for millennia.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“although scholars have long called this period the Renaissance, this was no rebirth. Rather, it was a Naissance – a birth. For the first time in history, Europe lay at the heart of the world.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Many Jews chose to head for Constantinople. They were welcomed by the city’s new Muslim rulers. “You call Ferdinand a wise ruler,” Bāyezīd II purportedly exclaimed, greeting the arrival of Jews in the city in 1492, even though “he impoverishes his own country to enrich mine.”100 This was not simple point-scoring: in scenes which would bemuse many today but which evoke the early days of Islam, Jews were not just treated with respect but welcomed. The new settlers were given legal protection and rights, and in many cases were given assistance to start new lives in a strange country. Tolerance was a staple feature of a society that was self-assured and confident of its own identity—which was more than could be said for the Christian world where bigotry and religious fundamentalism were rapidly becoming defining features.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“It is ironic, therefore, that while Constantine is famous for being the Emperor who laid the basis for the Christianisation of Europe, it is never noted that there was a price to pay for his embrace of a new faith: it spectacularly compromised Christianity’s future in the east. The”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“maxims from Delphi were carved on to a monument, including: As a child, be well-behaved. As a youth, be self-controlled. As an adult, be just. As an elder, be wise. As one dying, be without pain.24”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“But two other important reasons also help explain the triumph of Islam in the early part of the seventh century: the support provided by Christians, and above all that given by Jews.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The future, he predicted, would belong either to the Muslims or to the Christians; it could not belong to both.38”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“This disdain for science and scholarship baffled Muslim commentators, who had great respect for Ptolemy and Euclid, for Homer and Aristotle. Some had little doubt what was to blame. Once, wrote the historian al-Mas  ūdī, the ancient Greeks and the Romans had allowed the sciences to flourish; then they adopted Christianity. When they did so, they ‘effaced the signs of [learning], eliminated its traces and destroyed its paths’. 92 Science was defeated by faith. It is almost the precise opposite of the world as we see it today: the fundamentalists were not the Muslims, but the Christians; those whose minds were open, curious and generous were based in the east –and certainly not in Europe.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Arnold Wilson complained he had to spend time bridging the cultural gap between the British “who cannot say what they mean and Persians who do not always mean what they say.” The British, he declared, saw a contract as an agreement that would stand up in court; the Persians simply saw it as an expression of intentions.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Gold and silver taken from the Americas found its way to Asia; it was this redistribution of wealth that enabled the Taj Mahal to be built. Not without irony, one of the glories of India was the result of the suffering of “Indians” on the other side of the world.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“An English visitor to Amsterdam in 1640 could not hide how impressed he was by what he saw. In the Low Countries, wrote Peter Mundy, even houses of “indifferent quality” were filled with furniture and ornaments “very Costly and Curious, Full of pleasure and home contentment, as Ritche Cupboards, Cabinetts…Imagery, porcelain, Costly Fine cages with birds” and more besides. Even butchers and bakers, blacksmiths and cobblers had paintings and luxury trinkets in their homes.60 “I was amazed,” wrote the English diarist John Evelyn about the annual fair in Rotterdam at around the same time; it was flooded with paintings, especially with “landscapes and drolleries, as they call those clownish representations.” Even common farmers had become avid art collectors.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The failure of the land to generate wheat in the anticipated quantities was a direct cause of the Holocaust.”
― Peter Frankopan, Silk Roads

“The age of empire and the rise of the west were built on the capacity to inflict violence on a major scale. The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, the progression towards democracy, civil liberty and human rights, were not the result of an unseen chain linking back to Athens in antiquity or a natural state of affairs in Europe; they were the fruits of political, military and economic success in faraway continents. This seemed unlikely when Columbus set sail into the”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“The first port of call was the Americans. In 1974, an initial agreement was reached by which the US agreed to sell two reactors, as well as enriched uranium, to Iran. The scope of the arrangement was expanded further in 1975, when a $15 billion trade deal was agreed between the two countries, which included provision for Iran to purchase eight reactors from the United States at a fixed price of $6.4 billion.55 The following year, President Ford approved a deal that allowed Iran to buy and operate a US-built system that included a reprocessing facility that could extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel, and therefore enable Teheran to operate a ‘nuclear fuel cycle’. President Ford’s Chief of Staff had no hesitation in approving this sale: in the 1970s, Dick Cheney did not find it difficult to ‘figure out’ what Iran’s motivations were.”
― Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World