The silk roads: Realigning our understanding of the world

I'm at a stage in my life where I can read social, geographical and political history texts for pleasure - the nerd that I am - rather than for academic studies. I'm embracing the opportunity to enhance my understanding of the world and how we got to where we are now. I can see that this shift of mine to non-fiction has also come about as the latest offerings from several of my long-standing favourite fictional authors have been less than stellar. I recognise, too, that I am filling a need-to-keep-learning gap left after leaving academia and finishing formal studies with my doctorate five years ago.

This review is of two books in the silk roads series, written by Oxford University historian, Dr Peter Frankopan. The author has an impressive resume, including his current position as the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. He has been a visiting Fellow at both Harvard and Princeton and has lectured at universities all over the world. Dr Frankopan writes regularly for national and international media on how history helps us understand the present. He is involved in several education-based charities with his wife, including the Frankopan Fund in his native Croatia that awards scholarships to Croatian students to study internationally. He's also a musician and sportsman, having represented Croatia at cricket. Impressive stuff!

The silk roads | Published January 2015 | Read May 2025 and The new silk roads | Published November 2018 | Read June 2025

The silk roads: A new history of the world

First off, The silk roads is a big read - 636 pages in all. It took me some weeks to get through it. It's written in an accessible and engaging way, though, and that's no mean feat given the amount of history that is covered. Frankopan sets out to challenge Western perspectives on history and realign our understandings of the world, foregrounding the vital role that the Silk Roads played in spreading and connecting economies, ideas, cultures and religions throughout history. I totally got on board the central message of the book, that the East is the true lifeblood of history. [And it is important to note that Frankopan doesn't mean the Silk Road trade route itself so much as the region between East and West: Persia, Central Asia and the Middle East.]

The book is not a deep dive into the history and the places and peoples of the East (as I am sure that would be an even longer tome!), but rather a scene-setting contextual piece for the current geopolitical landscape. I've seen reviewers critique the lack of a deep anthropological dive, but I don't think that was Frankopan's intent. At its core, The silk roads helps the reader understand how much the West owes its development to the East. The silk road of the book's title is essentially a metaphor for the interactions and exchanges of goods and ideas between East and West that shaped the West's advancement.

Irrespective of my following comments that critique the book, it is absolutely worth the read as a starting point for readers interested in Eastern history. It's a bit like a one of those 25-countries-in-two-weeks bus tours, where the traveller is whizzed by a bunch of important and interesting places to gain an overall feel for things without spending any quality time in each place and seeing inside said places. I applaud Frankopan for taking the "silk roads as the centre of the world" stance, but I am not entirely sure he pulled it off. He may have been better presenting the book as a history of the region and its role in modern history rather than as a 'new' history of the world. As would be expected, too, from such an ambitious project, the book gives more or less treatment to certain regions or periods in history, and the result is that it lacks balance. I would have liked a more thorough explanation of why he chose to focus on certain regions or periods in history and how that focus supported his central message.

Frankopan, then, is an example of what he is critiquing in his book: that historical narratives are served up in ways that represent the author of those narratives. While academic historical texts are based on research, they are still presented through the author's lens. Frankopan clearly sees the West as greedy and power hungry (and a little foolish) but, as noted above, I am not sure that he convinces the reader of his "silk roads as the centre of the world" argument by his scathing account of Western (read: British and American) historical injustices and mistakes.

I did, however, learn a lot about Eurasian history and I can now much better appreciate how early civilisation was shaped by the East (and particular, Persia), not the Greeks and Romans. I found the bits in the first half of the book about how religions were formed, metaphorised, and spread super interesting. Frankopan's obvious distaste for the actions of European colonial powers is apparent in the middle part of the book. I added to my knowledge of this part of global history, but it was sad and a little depressing to see how the world has been shaped by these forces. It is here where Frankopan's thesis falls down somewhat, as the power the East held in early civilisation has been diluted by the rise of the West, by plundering the riches of less powerful countries and by exploiting people through slavery.

Props to Frankopan for sticking with his ideas on the links and interdependencies throughout history and the ways that the East has influenced the West, tying the two worlds together. Yes, the book has flaws, but it has sparked my interest in Eurasian history and I am keen to read more. The book did leave a last impressing on me, not just for its scathing critique of colonisation and the West's thirst for power, but for the massive shift in economic and military power first from the East to Western Europe and then to the United States. The message the reader is left with at the end of the books is that this shift may be temporary. This message leads to Frankopan's second book on the silk roads, The new silk roads: The present and future of the world.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The new silk roads: The present and future of the world

I spotted The new silk roads in an airport bookshop when I was travelling back home from a work trip. I'd only recently finished reading The silk roads so I was keen to see where Frankopan took the subject matter.

It's important to point out that the follow up to the 2015 publication of The silk roads was published in 2018. I read it in 2025. Writing about current events as they happen in such a changing world is bound to mean books have a limited shelf life. I found myself pondering how much things have changed in the years between the book's publication and my reading of it. That's not to say the book has no power, but it does need to be understood in terms of the timing of its publication.

The new silk roads continues Dr Frankopan's central messages from ending of The silk roads, that the world is changing dramatically, that the power that has sat with the West (and in particular, the United States) is shifting. Frankopan claims to be presenting an analysis of the reverberations around the world of this shift of power, largely based on the wealth of Eurasian countries from their huge stores of natural resources and the strengthening ties across Eurasia through the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The rising power of the East stands in contrast to the fragmentation and isolationist approach of the West, according to Frankopan, and the mess we've found ourselves in due to the actions of the United States over the past 70+ years.

Let's start with the good bits. I was on board with Frankopan's approach to the present and future global landscape, where China will ultimately replace the United States as the world's superpower. I agree with his stance and with his critique of the West in a post-Brexit, Trumpian world. Frankopan presents lots of interesting examples of the BRI and economic shift in power to the East. I wasn't aware of the staggering amount of Chinese global investment, in projects that serve its own interests but also support developing countries through advancements in infrastructure and technology. I was stunned at China's reach and of the depth and breadth of the projects it supports.

The new silk roads was originally intended as a postscript to The silk roads. Perhaps the cynics out there will claim that Frankopan was cashing in on the success of his first book and it should have stayed as a postscript. I tend to agree, as, unfortunately, the follow-up book is nowhere near as good as the original. It suffers from being a collection of facts without sufficient analysis. It was also weird to see such a notable academic relying so heavily on media (and quite often press release) material rather than academic sources. The book did a good job of bringing useful information together, but one could achieve the same results with a few hours to spare trawling the Interwebs.

As I said in my review of The silk roads, historical texts are always presented through the lens of the author. It is clear that Frankopan is no fan of the United States and is absolutely an admirer of China. He spends a lot of the book listing the projects and proposals within the Belt and Road initiative, praising China for its generous financing of much-needed infrastructure works. I noted above that The new silk roads lacks analysis and certainly, Frankopan presents the list of projects as some sort of brilliant, long-term strategy. Is it, though? He doesn't actually make the case for this argument. He also makes Chinese funding sound like it is entirely motivated by altruism and a 'soft' rise to superpower glory. Again, is it, though? I can't imagine any country acting purely out of altruism and no country is free from criticism of its domestic and international actions.

Frankopan argues that the world's wealth lies in the resource-rich countries of Eurasia. That is probably true, but he does show how many of the projects funded by China make little sense and do nothing to advance the economy of the poorer countries of the world nor the lot of their peoples. I also wonder how much cooperation is happening in Eurasia, as suggested by Frankopan. The old adage, there's no such thing as a free lunch, was constantly in my mind as I read The new silk roads.

I was disappointed by The new silk roads as I was expecting something with more rigour that followed the thread of Frankopan's earlier book. He had my vote as a dissenting voice that took an alternative perspective to the dominant Western one. The bones of something meaningful was there in his second book, Frankopan just executed it poorly, without the depth of analysis to give credence to his claims.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐