Taking us from antiquity to Trump’s America, Xi Jinping’s China, the verge of nuclear war in several parts of Asia, Peter Frankopan reveals what history tells us about the future of humankind.
Few books genuinely transform the way we understand the story of civilisation, but Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads is one. Reorienting history from a Western perspective to the East, sweeping from Central Asia into China and India, he revealed how the flow of goods and ideas drove the creation of the world we find ourselves in today: where, once again, the east is calling out to those in search of riches and adventure.
Ten years on, the US under Trump is sowing chaos and planning to acquire territory; the Middle East is in the process of its most dramatic and brutal reconfiguration for more than a century; Russia is taking on the west – both in Ukraine and elsewhere; tensions between India and Pakistan almost boiled over into war between two nuclear powers; and Xi’s China is on the move – not least regarding Taiwan.
All these countries are part of the Silk Roads networks that have shaped local, regional and global history for millennia – spreading ideas and technologies, languages, religion and knowledge, but also disease, violence and dislocation.
What can history tell us about the past, about the present and about the future. Is a new world order being born, and if so, what will it look like? Is this a crossroads in history, or just a set of events that will be forgotten one day?
To mark the launch of a landmark 10th anniversary edition, complete with a new introduction and epic conclusion, Peter Frankopan, one of the most renowned thinkers of our age, with be in conversation with Gillian Tett of the FT. Do come to listen – and learn !
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