the centre of the world

Some thoughts on

Silk roads: A new history of the World
Peter Frankopan
Bloomsbury 2015

European history as I learned it at school doesn't make much sense between the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire and, well today, really. There are various hordes of Scythians, Huns, Vandals, Mongols as well as the Black Death coming out of nowhere to mess things up. The rapidly changing alliances of European powers with or against Russia don't make sense, from the Crimean War through to WW2. And why do European powers keep effing up Afghanistan?

All these things and many more become much clearer if you shift the focus to what Frankopan repeatedly calls the Centre of the World, namely the region of the silk roads linking China to the Mediterranean, and Russia to the Persian Gulf. The Romans essentially gave up on Western Europe, because the East was where the resources and trade opportunities were. Since then, the Caliphate of Baghdad, the long history of the Persian Empire (toppled by islamist revolution of 1979), as well as trade and conflict along the silk roads have often driven events in Europe in ways that we Europeans are insufficiently aware of.

Frankopan outlines the history of the world focused on this centre in chapters arranged chronologically but headlined with a lead theme of each period. In the earlier centuries, the book is very enlightening in terms of all the cultural and historic achievements happening there while Europe lived in the Dark Ages. It wasn't the time that was dark, it was just that the light was elsewhere.

In the more recent centuries, things become rather enraging, as it becomes more and more clear how much colonial powers messed up the region often by sheer arrogance and failing to understand the social, political and cultural systems already in place. The ancient countries of Iran and Afghanistan, along with the modern invention of Iraq bear much of the brunt of European ignorance in the 20th century. British and then Americans are trying to control these countries for their resources (aka "American interests"), including petrol, while the Soviet Union and Russia felt threatened on their soft underbelly and also wouldn't mind access to the Persian Gulf and its resources.

In the light of recent news, it is particularly intriguing how Western powers sold nuclear technology to Iran under the dictatorial regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose autocratic rule in turn was the result of a Western-backed coup against the democratic government that had dared to nationalise the country's oil resources. And then the Iran-Contra affair, where the CIA sold arms to the mullah regime (despite a US-backed embargo) and used the proceeds to fund the rightwing guerilla in Nicaragua. I'm old enough to remember that this really did happen, even though it sounds crazy in retrospect.

In his conclusion Frankopan writes (in 2015, while Obama was still president) that all the trouble we now see in this area is just the birthing pain as the region is reborn as the new centre of the world. He supports that with data of investment in infrastructure being made there and fossil fuel wealth being discovered (although globally we can't really afford to burn them). Ten years on, the conclusion strikes me as a tad too optimistic. Yes the region is more important than we (Europeans) ever realised, but its strategic importance and mineral wealth have mainly been a recipe for disaster and may continue that way.

Loving the Persian-inspired cover design. I recently reviewed Frankopan's latest book , The Earth transformed (review should come out soon), and discovered the silk roads after that selling for £1 in a charity shop.