Helen and Louisa
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History
David Christian.
David Christian, a world historian, looks at the larger historical significance of the
Silk Roads and argues that ‘the silk road played a fundamental role in creating and
sustaining the unity of Afro-Eurasian history.’
The Silk roads are a complex and shifting network of trading routes linking Europe,
Asia and Africa. Christian highlights not only trans-civilisation exchanges, but transecological exchanges (between pastoral and agricultural ecologies) creating a unity
that has been ignored by historians. By looking at this unity, Christian argues three
points; that the silk roads have origins in prehistory, that their function changed in the
classical era, and that the routes expanded into the North in the last thousand years.
These modifications to classic thought, Christian argues, support the idea of a ‘world
system’ with a shared Afro-Eurasian exchange history of religion, culture, goods,
people, disease, trade cycles, technology that dates back earlier than previously
thought. He defines the silk route as; long and middle distance land routes by which
goods, ideas and people were exchanged between major regions of Afro-Eurasia',
although he himself admits this is a conservative definition.
The silk road was temporarily cut for a time but although the trans-Asian trade and
travel would resume, the silk route would never recover. Many cities
not actually on the trade routes but still managed to flourish along the steppes.
Introduction of animals along trade route, ie horses, allowed for more produce to be
transported in larger quantities. He goes on to argue that the entire Afro-Eurasian
land mass was influenced in some degree by the changes that took place along the
steppes. The silk route was a series of trade links, not merely to be traversed by one
person. Was therefore a long and drawn out process geographical and cultural
knowledge were not transported well as very few people travelled the whole route.
Christian concludes there were limits to the unity argument but must take into
consideration the underlying unity when looking at the Afro-Eurasia. Must regard
modernity itself as an indirect product of the links established along the silk roads.
Questions to address in seminar:
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How did the function of the silk roads change over time?
How far was the decline of the silk routes due to the discovery of a sea route
to the east?
To what extent did the Silk Roads lead to integration of cultures and history
along the route? Or does the fact that few people travelled the whole route
explain why cultures were not more integrated?
Can Christian’s belief that modernity is an indirect by-product of the Silk
Roads be justified?
Is Christian’s argument of a ‘Afro-Eurasian history’ valid? Or just an attempt
to fit the Silk Roads into global ‘world history’?