Extremely well-written and exhaustively reported history of the region running from modern Turkey and Egypt to western China, and from the Central Asian steppe to the Persian Gulf. The first half of the book is told at a breathtaking pace: Richard I merits barely two sentences in a chapter about the early Crusades. And it is told really from the perspective of the people who lived and traveled around the "Silk Roads" region. The Vikings are relevant only because they were big traders of slaves from Europe into Persian and Arab markets. Even Rome is an afterthought. Much more important
Frankopan slows down as he gets into the rise of Europe over the last 500 years, and gets progressively slower as the tale gets more recent. The last 200-odd pages are dedicated to the period from World War I to the present. And oddly, for a book that sets out to be a corrective to Eurocentric narratives that look "at the past from the perspective of the winners of recent history," the perspective of the second half of the book is decidedly Eurocentric. Sure, various European countries took turns becoming the dominant power during that stretch. But it's disappointing that we're not told that story from the perspective of, say, the Levantine traders who partnered with Venice and Genoa, or the Persian bureaucrats who signed away the country's oil wealth to Britain and the Persian businessmen.
Partly that must be because records from recent centuries are so much richer than those from longer ago. And partly it may be because the organizing principle of history in Frankopan's telling is the trade of luxury goods (and, recently, bulk commodities like wheat and oil). As Europe became the world's main consumer and eventually trader of those goods, maybe it's inevitable that Frankopan would start to speak with their voice. Still, it's a bit of a let-down. I bet the Persians kept keeping records.
The last couple of chapters rehashed events I'm already pretty familiar with: US and British fuckery in this part of the world, the Cold War, and then 9/11 and its fallout. Still, there were some nuggets in there that I didn't know or had forgotten, such as Dick Cheney's personal role in selling nuclear technology to Iran in the 1970s. And Frankopan is a lively enough writer that I didn't mind racing through that bit.
On the whole, it's an impressive historical survey of a crucial part of the world. Easy four stars.
Frankopan slows down as he gets into the rise of Europe over the last 500 years, and gets progressively slower as the tale gets more recent. The last 200-odd pages are dedicated to the period from World War I to the present. And oddly, for a book that sets out to be a corrective to Eurocentric narratives that look "at the past from the perspective of the winners of recent history," the perspective of the second half of the book is decidedly Eurocentric. Sure, various European countries took turns becoming the dominant power during that stretch. But it's disappointing that we're not told that story from the perspective of, say, the Levantine traders who partnered with Venice and Genoa, or the Persian bureaucrats who signed away the country's oil wealth to Britain and the Persian businessmen.
Partly that must be because records from recent centuries are so much richer than those from longer ago. And partly it may be because the organizing principle of history in Frankopan's telling is the trade of luxury goods (and, recently, bulk commodities like wheat and oil). As Europe became the world's main consumer and eventually trader of those goods, maybe it's inevitable that Frankopan would start to speak with their voice. Still, it's a bit of a let-down. I bet the Persians kept keeping records.
The last couple of chapters rehashed events I'm already pretty familiar with: US and British fuckery in this part of the world, the Cold War, and then 9/11 and its fallout. Still, there were some nuggets in there that I didn't know or had forgotten, such as Dick Cheney's personal role in selling nuclear technology to Iran in the 1970s. And Frankopan is a lively enough writer that I didn't mind racing through that bit.
On the whole, it's an impressive historical survey of a crucial part of the world. Easy four stars.
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