An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road | Hacker News Reader

An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

bookdna.com

93 pointsbwb32 comments

Good list. It does not include "Silk Roads" by Frankopan, which I agree with. That's a good read but much more a history of world trade (hence the plural) and strangely western-centric. I saw strangely because in the introduction Frankopan says he wanted to write a history from the point of view on central Asia, but its not that at all. Dalyrymple's "Golden Road" succeeds at Frankopan's objective and I found it much better in general. I don't want to sound too negative on "Silk Roads" but I think the title is subtly misleading if you want to learn about the trade general referred to as the Silk Road.

Yes, Frankopan's Silk Roads was a disappointment to say the least, I was really expecting an enlightening history of the middle east, starting from the early interrelations between the various civilisations (Egypt, Babylon, Harappan) and the progression through time (for example mentioning the Periplus of Roman adventurers into the far east). Good histories of China (Goldman/Fairbanks), and India (Keay) had whetted my appetite, and I think I'll need to read Dalrymple to be fully sated.

About this book: "Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders", and especially about this source of information:

> Shlomo Goitein used the documents that were serendipitously discovered in the geniza of the Cairo synagogue

I'm still waiting for a proper "inclusion" of their contents in the "main" historical discourse, it's a pity that there aren't much many historians going through them and using their contents. From the dedicated wiki page [1]:

> The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000[1] Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. (...) comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza

I'd add Owen Lattimore's Desert Road to Turkestan: Lattimore traveled through the Central Asian deserts with a camel caravan in the 1930's, one of few westerner's ever to do so; and also Richard Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, about the first European explorers to enter that region.

The author of the first book listed there explains there was no ancient Silk Road. This concept was dreamt up in 1877.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ki4UQ20tWQk

Just like there was no Bronze age, Middle Ages or Third World. It doesn't mean that we cannot use the terminology or that it's necessarily wrong, it's just limited and we need to understand the limits

>Third world

Non-aligned countries didn't exist? Sorry I need some coffee and I'm feeling a little thick at the moment.

They did exist the same way people and goods did travel across Eurasia, but it wasn't some defined political or economical entity and they did not call themselves "the third world"

Unlike "the Silk Road" or "the Middle Ages", "third world" was a term in contemporary use at the time it applies to, including among non-aligned states and NGOs that worked on third world cooperation.

It was pretty well-defined as political classifications go, and people involved in actual "entities" related to it were aware of and sometimes used the term.

Is that the meaning of “Third World”? As in East/West/Other?

I always thought it was more about Developed/Developing/Undeveloped, mostly in terms of the industrial transition.

But, if we are being honest, it’s used a lot more as “third class”.

I suppose indeed that it is not really a well defined “thing”, like the Silk Road.

When originally coined (circa 1950 around the Korean War), the First World was the US aligned block of countries, the Second World was the USSR aligned block of countries, and the Third World was all of the countries not part of either. Egypt, India, Yugoslavia, Ghana and Indonesia viewed themselves as leaders of the broader political movement during the 1960's and 1970's.

Even into the 1960's there were few industrialized nations outside of those two main blocks, so "Third World" quickly lost its explicitly political meaning and became more a description of the level of capital investment and worker productivity.

ya, there were a bunch of trade routes along this path to all the different regions/cities. We just named the entire concept the "Silk Road" in the 1800s (it was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen).

Yes. Moreover:

"While engaged in a survey of China, the baron was charged with dreaming up a route for a railway linking Berlin to Beijing. This he named die Seidenstrassen, the Silk Roads. It was not until 1938 that the term Silk Road appeared in English, as the title of a popular book by a Nazi-sympathising Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin."

-- historian William Dalrymple

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/oct/06/the-sil...

This just says that no one was aware the Silk Road existed, much less had named it that.

But it did exist, and goods were shipped between Europe and China without either side being aware the other existed, which at least I think is pretty darn amazing!

Tim Severin is referenced in the list, so i would suggest as an addition Tracking Marco Polo by the very same author, a fun read indeed. From Goodreads: Tim Severin took up the challenge offered from antiquity by Marco Polo. Using the great explorer's journals as a route guide, Severin followed him all the way from Venice to Afghanistan - on a motorbike. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1735662.Tracking_Marco_P...

I loved his Brendan voyage, bloody ballsy buggering off to sea across the North Atlantic in a leather boat.

This list is just a promo blog post for the author's book

I fail to see why that devalues this list of books. It's not like he's _only_ listing his own book.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

If this was a pure advertising piece, I might agree. In this case, it's more "hey I wrote a book on this, these are other books that are great". That's kinda different at least in my mind.

While I generally do not trust information from "advertisements", in this case I don't see how this is any worse than including a list of sources in the bibliography. What this could be is an attempt to use those other books to sell the author's through some reflected glory (or SEO-fu) but in that case, the author is still incentivized to recommend good books.

You mean you've _never_ bought a book for its bibliography?

Just to note, I made the site to interview authors and get their 5 favorite books on something they are passionate about. And I promote their book alongside the list to help them bump into readers. Authors generally just want to share something they are passionate about; it isn't about money, as nobody is writing a book to make money.

It is a great way to meet books, I think :)

And has been fun to build!

Great list by an absolute expert on the subject :)

I'm hoping to do the Silk Route by bike in the next couple of years. TAD Global Cycling puts together yearly runs, and it looks amazing: https://tdaglobalcycling.com/silk-route

I traveled some of the countries along the way last year, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (by hiking and offroad vehicles). The landscape is beautiful, but be very prepared to survive in the scorching sun and dust in the desert for days without any option to resupply food and water. We met some solo cyclists along the way, I have great respect for those individuals. For example, this is how the main road looks like in some parts of Tajikistan: https://i.imgur.com/MlZauBn.jpeg The traffic on these roads consists mostly of Chinese trucks and an occasional crazy traveler like us. Note how a secondary track emerged along the side of the main road because the original one became so filled with potholes.

"be very prepared to survive in the scorching sun and dust in the desert for days without any option to resupply food and water"

I have done Central Asia from Europe to China by bike twice, most recently 2024. Absolutely no problem with resupplying food and water daily. There are food stops and railway-worker infrastructure in the Kazakh and Uzbek deserts. And while Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have a lot of wild mountain beauty, they are still inhabited. Indeed, local families earn some money by catering to cyclists.

Ah great to hear :), thanks!

Did you do it solo or with someone or a group?

Nice picture :)

The nice thing about going with a group is that it comes with a support vehicle and water/food/bag carrying. Doing it on my own would be about 10x more intense in terms of prep, I think. I've watched a few biking videos where they started getting close to the edge on water and had to ask random houses they finally found.

If you like an epic trek, there's always horseback: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20925119

Hah, I read his book, it is fantastic and worth a read -> https://www.amazon.com/Trail-Genghis-Khan-Journey-Through-eb...

It also makes my butt hurt just to think about.

There's footage / DVD from his trip also - up on youtube some is, IIRC :-)

Yeah, sore bum, ouchies. That can be bypassed if you don't mind walking, don't mind camels, and don't mind being thought a bit girly:

* https://www.sidetracked.com/fieldjournal/crossing-australia-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson

Our family doesn't mind a long jolly, one of my favourites (that someone else did) was into the more restricted bits of Papua: Cannibals & Crampons (2001)

  In 2001, two British ex army officers set out to climb the unscaled face of Mandela--a remote mountain rising 15,400 ft. above the jungles of New Guinea. This is the extraordinary story of their trek through some of the world's most unexplored terrain.

* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2142721/

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShIfMP8rfg0

Life Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield. (read twice)

Through the Jade Gate to Rome, John E. Hill. (browsed)

The Silk Road: A New History, Valerie Hansen. (yet to buy but looks awesome)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com