Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20524 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Review
[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, Beckwick constructs a scrupulously researched narrative that is wholly accessible, and demands close attention.
(Nicholas Basbanes FineBooksMagazine.com )

Review
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 )

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

Customer Reviews

A curious book
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.

A book I wanted to like more than I did
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.

Ambitious but Disappointing
Writing a history of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present is clearly an ambitious undertaking given the vast geographical region, the large number of people groups, and the length of time. I have to give Christopher Beckwith a great deal of credit for attempting such a history and compiling a short narrative (~360 pages) that is at least somewhat coherent.

Beckwith did an excellent job of explaining the "Central Eurasian Culture Complex" and how it affected ancient Central Eurasian sociopolitical development. Chapter 10, which adroitly explained how the Littoral system created by European colonialism effectively shut down the Silk Road, was also particularly informative.

The rest of the book was difficult to follow without prior knowledge of the geography of Central Asia, the major people groups mentioned in the book, and how linguistics can be used to determine the movements of ancient peoples. The first five chapters were so littered with names of ethnic groups and their movements that it was virtually impossible to assimilate enough of the information to develop a general picture of what happened during those periods. Subsequent chapters referenced some of these groups, seemingly at random, so even though the history itself was easier to follow in those chapters, the obscure references made for difficult reading.

Unfortunately, the end of the book disintegrated into a lengthy diatribe about the deleterious effects of "modernism" and "populism" upon Central Eurasia. Because neither term was well-defined, it left the conclusions of the book in an unnecessary state of ambiguity. The diatribe was even more confusing because the book said almost nothing about the culture of these Central Eurasian groups. It is difficult to argue that "modernism" destroyed a vibrant culture when the value of that culture was never communicated.

Also, the end of the book spent so many pages explaining the developments of surrounding areas(Russia, Europe, China, and India), that the history of Central Eurasia was essentially lost in the mix.

Overall, this book presented a great deal of information about an area of history that has very little written about it and managed to get all of it into one book. However, the book was hard to follow and deviated significantly from its intended purpose at several critical junctures and was, therefore, not terribly useful to someone (like me) who was looking for a solid general history of the region.