ALSO BY PETER FRANKOPAN
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
The First Crusade: The Untold Story
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2018 by Peter Frankopan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, in 2018.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Hal Leonard Europe Limited for permission to reprint lyric excerpt of “A Whole New World,” words by Tim Rice and music by Alan Menken. Copyright © 1992 by Wonderland Music Company, Inc. (BMI) / Walt Disney Music Company (ASCAP). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frankopan, Peter.
Title: The new silk roads : the present and future of the world / by Peter Frankopan.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048479 (print) | LCCN 2018058717 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525656418 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525656401 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Asian cooperation. | Asia—Foreign economic relations. | Asia—Economic integration. | Asia—Economic conditions—21st century. | East and West. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / International. | HISTORY / Modern / 21st Century. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization.
Classification: LCC HC412 (ebook) | LCC HC412 .F725 2019 (print) | DDC 330.95—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048479
Ebook ISBN 9780525656418
Map copyright © ML Design
Cover design by Emma Ewbank
v5.4
ep
To Louis Frankopan,
my glorious and beloved father
(1939–2018)
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Peter Frankopan
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Map
THE ROADS TO THE EAST
THE ROADS TO THE HEART OF THE WORLD
THE ROADS TO BEIJING
THE ROADS TO RIVALRY
THE ROADS TO THE FUTURE
Acknowledgements
Notes
A Note on the Author
INTRODUCTION
When The Silk Roads: A New History of the World was published in 2015, it touched a nerve. As an author, naturally I hoped that people would read and enjoy what I had written; as an academic historian, though, I had long found out that things I wanted to work on frequently had limited appeal to others. Conversations about my research at drinks parties and dinners did not often last for long, and even with my colleagues, engagement was usually directly linked to periods or regions of mutual interest.
The success of The Silk Roads therefore took me by surprise. The book sold more than a million copies around the world, spending eight months in the Sunday Times Top 10 and being a number one bestseller in the UK, the Gulf, India and China. It turned out lots of people wanted to learn more about the world, about other peoples, cultures and regions that had enjoyed glorious times in the past. It turned out that many were keen to read a history where the centre of focus is moved away from the familiar and insistent story where Europe and the West dominate the narrative to Asia and to the East.
So too did looking at the role of the connections that have linked continents together for millennia. In the late nineteenth century, the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen came up with a term to describe the networks of exchange linking Han-dynasty China with the world beyond. He called these connections die Seidenstraßen—or “the Silk Roads”—a term that caught the imagination of scholars and the general public alike.1
Richthofen’s concept of the Silk Roads was vague in terms of identifying a precise geographic scope of how goods, ideas and people moved between Asia and Europe and Africa, and explaining quite how the Pacific Ocean and South China Sea were connected with the Mediterranean and, ultimately, the Atlantic. In fact, the looseness of what is meant by the Silk Roads can also be helpful—not least because they were not “roads” in the modern meaning of the word, or because they obscure the difference between long- and short-distance trade, or even because many other goods and commodities besides silk were also traded and in some cases in greater volume than expensive textiles.
In fact, “the Silk Roads” serves as a term that describes the ways in which people, cultures and continents were woven together—and in doing so help us better understand the way that religions and languages spread in the past, while showing how ideas about food, fashion and art disseminated, competed and borrowed from each other. The Silk Roads help make clear the centrality of the control of resources and of long-distance trade, and therefore explain the contexts and motivations for expeditions across deserts and oceans that helped fashion the rise of empires. The Silk Roads show how technological innovation was stimulated across thousands of miles, and how violence and disease often followed the same patterns of destruction. The Silk Roads allow us to understand the past not as a series of periods and regions that are isolated and distinct, but to see the rhythms of history in which the world has been connected for millennia as being part of a bigger, inclusive global past.
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Even in the few short years since The Silk Roads was published, much has changed. From my perspective as a historian there have been a series of advances in how we can understand the past that are immensely exciting. Scholars working in different fields, on different periods and regions have produced work that is as innovative as it is compelling. Archaeologists using satellite imagery and spatial analysis have identified irrigation systems made up of cisterns, canals and dams dating to the fourth century AD that explain how crops were grown in inhospitable conditions in north-western China at a time when exchanges with the world beyond were beginning to rise.2
Data from commercial and spy satellites, as well as from drones used in military surveillance in Afghanistan, has been tapped into by researchers working as part of the Afghan Heritage Mapping Partnership. This has resulted in the building up of a detailed picture of an infrastructure of caravanserais, water channels and residential complexes that once housed travellers in the centre of Asia, which helps transform how we understand the way in which the Silk Roads of the past were connected.3 The fact that much of this work has been done remotely also shows how the way in which research is done in the early twenty-first century is itself evolving.4
Advances in scientific methodology have also shed new light on the relationship between nomads and those living in cities in the pre-modern era in the heart of Asia. Analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes on seventy-four human remains from fourteen burial grounds in Central Asia help reveal the distinct dietary habits of those who lived in settled as opposed to nomadic communities—while also suggesting that nomads enjoyed a wider variety of foodstuffs than those who lived in villages, towns and cities. This in turn raises important questions about the role played by mobile populations in introducing new trends and spreading cultural change across hundreds and sometimes
thousands of miles.5
Genetic and ethno-linguistic evidence has meanwhile been used to show how the spread of walnut forests and the evolution of language overlapped across large parts of Asia. Fossilised remnants of desiccated walnut seeds suggest that walnut trees were deliberately planted as long-term agricultural investments by traders and those travelling along the Silk Roads—in turn opening up ways to better understand the relationship between the natural world and the impact of rising levels of exchange locally, regionally and beyond. As well as everything else, the Silk Roads acted as “gene corridors” for humans and for flora and fauna alike.6
Then there is new research that links the origins of Yiddish with commercial exchange across Asia and claims that its evolution was connected to measures designed to protect the security of transactions by devising a language that could only be understood by a select few.7 This has obvious resonance in the world of the twenty-first century, where crypto-currencies and blockchain technology seek to solve the problem of how to enable traders to complete transactions securely. Or there is the startling evidence from new-generation ice-core technology that can be used to shed fresh light on the devastating impact of the Black Death by showing the extent of the collapse in metal production in the mid-fourteenth century.8
Documents declassified in 2017 recording meetings held between the British minister in Washington in 1952, Sir Christopher Steel, and the assistant secretary of state, Henry Byroade, to discuss a coup to depose the prime minister of Iran help us gain a clearer understanding of how the ill-fated plans took shape.9 The release of previously secret US nuclear strike plans from the early part of the Cold War likewise help reveal important insights into American military and strategic planning—and contemporary assessments of how best to neutralise the Soviet Union in the event of war.10
These are just a small number of examples to show how historians continue to use different techniques to refine and improve their understanding of the past. This is what makes history such an invigorating and exciting subject: there is a thrill in being prompted to think about things in a different way, and also in discovering connections that link peoples, regions, ideas and themes together. The past few years have made something clear as well: however traumatic or comical political life appears to be in the age of Brexit, European politics or Trump, it is the countries of the Silk Roads that really matter in the twenty-first century. The decisions being made in today’s world that really matter are not being made in Paris, London, Berlin or Rome—as they were a hundred years ago—but in Beijing and Moscow, in Tehran and Riyadh, in Delhi and Islamabad, in Kabul and in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, in Ankara, Damascus and Jerusalem. The world’s past has been shaped by what happens along the Silk Roads; so too will its future.
What follows is a detailed snapshot of contemporary affairs, but through a wide lens, in the hope of providing context for what is going on around the world, and also to highlight some of the themes on which all our lives and livelihood depend. The Silk Roads lie at the heart of this picture—so central, in fact, that it is not possible to make sense of what today and tomorrow have in store without taking the region lying between the eastern Mediterranean and the Pacific into account. This book is therefore intended to bring the story up to date and to interpret what has happened in the last few years at a time of profound transformation.
Since 2015, the world has changed dramatically. Life was becoming more difficult and more challenging for the West, I wrote at that time. It certainly seems that way following the Brexit vote and the uncertainty that surrounds the future of the European Union, which I discuss here. The United States too is on a new trajectory following the election of Donald Trump—one that is confusing to monitor and to assess. The problem is not so much the president’s Twitter feed, which is a source of much mirth for commentators, but trying to understand if the White House wants to retreat from or reshape global affairs—and why. This too is discussed in this book.
Then there is Russia, where a new chapter of relations with the West has opened, despite the continued leadership of President Putin and an inner circle that has led the country for two decades. Military intervention in Ukraine, alleged interference in elections in both the US and the UK and accusations of the attempted assassination of a former intelligence officer have led to the worst moment in Russia’s relations with the West since the fall of the Berlin Wall—and, as we shall see, have laid the basis for a reconfiguration of Moscow to the south and to the east.
In the heart of the world, the continued problems in Afghanistan, the breakdown of Syria as a result of years of civil war and the tortuous process of rebuilding Iraq fill few with confidence, despite the considerable financial, military and strategic expense that has gone into trying to improve the situation in each one. Antagonisms between Iran and Saudi Arabia and between India and Pakistan are rarely dampened down, with frequent angry recriminations threatening to develop into something more serious than words.
Times have been difficult in Turkey too, where a faltering economy and mass protests gave way to an attempted coup in 2016, when a faction in the armed forces tried to seize control. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of people were arrested and perhaps as many as 150,000 dismissed from their jobs because of their supposed links with the alleged mastermind, Fethullah Gülen. These include senior members of the judiciary, academics, teachers, police and journalists—as well as members of the military.11 Pressure on prison space has become so acute as a result that in December 2017, the government announced that it would build an additional 228 prisons in the next five years—almost doubling the number of prison facilities in the country.12
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And yet, all across Asia, these are also hopeful times. There is a strong sense of states trying to work more closely together and to elide their interests while putting differences behind them. As we shall see, a host of initiatives, organisations and forums have been established in recent years that aim to encourage collaboration, cooperation and discussion, and which provide a common narrative of solidarity and shared future.
This has been noted and acted on by those whose financial success depends on them identifying and setting trends. In 2015, for example, Nike introduced a new design to its range of trainers. The basketball player Kobe Bryant’s experiences travelling in Italy and China “established connections to both the European and Asian continents,” according to Nike, causing the sports manufacturer’s designers to think about “the legendary Silk Road, the inspiration for the new KOBE X Silk shoe.”13
An ideal companion to these trainers is the Poivre Samarcande eau de toilette by Hermès, with its “peppery, musky, slightly smoky scent of cut wood,” where “the soul of the old oak, mixed with pepper, lives on in this fragrance.” This too was inspired by the Silk Roads: “The name Samarcande,” revealed master parfumier Jean-Claude Ellena, “is a homage to the city through which spice caravans once passed on their way from East to West.”14
Someone who was even quicker off the mark than Nike and Hermès to identify the potential of the Silk Roads was none other than Donald J. Trump, forty-fifth president of the United States, who in 2007 trademarked the Trump brand in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia with the intention of producing name-brand vodka. He did the same in 2012, seeking to trademark his name for hotels and real estate in all the countries lying across the spine of the Silk Roads—including Iran, a country he has tried to isolate since taking office in 2017. Trump also had dealings in Georgia, where plans were hatched to develop “glitzy casinos,” with the appropriately named Silk Road Group, which has subsequently become the focus of considerable media scrutiny.15
The Silk Roads are ubiquitous across Asia. There are, of course, the endless tourist companies that offer to reveal the glories of a mysterious past of the countries lying in the heart of the world that has been lost in the mists of
time. But there are also many more up-to-date manifestations that show the power of the networks of the present and future as well as of the past. The Mega Silk Way shopping mall in Astana, Kazakhstan, provides one example, while the glossy SilkRoad inflight magazine aboard Cathay Pacific flights provides another. At Dubai airport, travellers are greeted by adverts for Standard Chartered Bank that declare: “One Belt. One Road. One Bank connects your business across Africa, Asia and Middle East.” Or there is gas-rich Turkmenistan nestled to the east of the Caspian Sea, where an official national slogan has been adopted for 2018: “Turkmenistan—the Heart of the Great Silk Road.”16
One reason for the optimism across the heart of Asia is the immense natural resources of the region. For example, BP estimates that the Middle East, Russia and Central Asia account for almost 70 per cent of total global proven oil reserves, and nearly 65 per cent of proven natural gas reserves—a figure that does not include Turkmenistan, whose gas fields include Galkynysh, the second largest in the world.17
Or there is the agricultural wealth of the region that lies between the Mediterranean and the Pacific, where countries like Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan and China account for more than half of all global wheat production—and, when added to countries of South East and East Asia like Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, account for nearly 85 per cent of global rice production.18
Then there are elements like silicon, which plays an important role in microelectronics and in the production of semiconductors, where Russia and China alone account for three-quarters of global production; or there are rare earths, like yttrium, dysprosium and terbium that are essential for everything from super-magnets to batteries, from actuators to laptops—of which China alone accounted for more than 80 per cent of global production in 2016.19 While futurologists and networking pioneers often talk about how the exciting world of artificial intelligence, Big Earth Data and machine learning promise to change the way we live, work and think, few ever ask where the materials on which the digital new world come from—or what happens if supply either dries up or is used as a commercial or a political weapon by those who have a near-monopoly on global supply.
The New Silk Roads Page 1