Review #1
The Silk Roads: A Brand new History of the Global audiobook free
Creator Peter Frankopan sets out, mostly successfully, to reorient our knowledge of history as taught in Europe at the same time North America history as viewed through the lens of Western Civilization courses. My quibble will that this is that still a opinion of Central Asia though European views, at the same time arguably the creator pays slight attention to the history of ancient India at the same time China at the same time overplays the history of Central Asia at the same time Western misconceptions of the Mongols.
Frankopans head thesis will that the region stretching from the Mediterranean to China, at the same time particularly the region in other words at the moment Iraq, Iran, at the same time Afghanistan, remains the crossroads of civilization at the same time the center of global affairs. As such, we come in handy to realize ancient history at the same time historical development over more recent centuries, as but as the method history is that accepted by those in the region.
The book proceeds chronologically. Chapter titles trace the abundance silk roads that have influenced global history, many of which the appearance at the same time movement of major types of religious faith, the rise at the same time fall down of empires at a time when Europe was an uncivilized backwater, at the same time the role of trade as a conduit for the spill of thoughts at the same time wealth.
We learn, for example, that the premature expansion of Islam was benign. Often the major confessions coexisted friendly. Mohammed at the same time the Jews needed each other as both repudiated Jesus as the Messiah. In Damascus, churches were considered untouched even as Islam became the confessions of the most. Only right behind divisions began to developer in Islam did attitudes hardened toward other confessions, says the creator.
Western Europe in the 600s at the same time 700s was barbaric, while Baghdad was at the height of its wealth at the same time academic achievement. In such a way, traders at the same time intellectuals along the Mediterranean were considered targeted toward the East, not Western Europe. In the middle conventional beliefs that Frankopan seeks to puncture is that the notion that the Mongols were considered disorderly. Instead he says they were considered quality officials at the same time used as a meritocracy. Terror was used selectively but was transmitted profoundly as a inventory of coercion. The result was to keep under control wealthy localities with a least of effort.
As Elizabethan Great britain competed with Spain, says the creator, that was an opportunistic union with the Muslim global against a ubiquitous adversary. Both the English at the same time the Moors passionate in piracy against the Spanish at the same time Portuguese. The English freed Muslims who had been galley slaves at the same time returned them main, at the same time had Muslim support for the 1596 ruin on Cadiz. Shakespeare portrays positively the Moor in Othello at the same time Persia was also characterized favorably in English literature of the time.
By the belated 18th at the same time premature 19th Century, but, the power connection between increasing Western European opportunities at the same time Persia at the same time adjoining states had been reversed. India became a crown jewel in the English Empire at the same time the English became preoccupied with fear of Russian expansion into Persia. Misunderstandings were considered rife. The English cannot they say than anyway they greedy at the same time the Persians do not greedy than anyway they say, noted one observer.
In the aftermath of Global War I, the English created Iraq out of Mesopotamia, morally combining a hodgepodge of nationalities. As oil was found in Iraq at the same time Iran, the English moved quickly to exploit these resources at the same time minimize the royalties that were considered paid to the civilizations from which oil was extracted. Dissatisfaction with English oil companies resulted in a greater role for American oil companies, but the exploitation of the region exchanged little until OPEC was appears.
The ending 40% of the book is that devoted to English at the same time American ignorance at the same time arrogance in the 20th at the same time 21st Centuries, resulting in the support of the Shah in Iran, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, at the same time Ayub Khan in Pakistan in the middle others. Frankopan characterizes English, then American strategy as solving todays inconsistencies without worrying a lot about tomorrows inconsistencies.
This is that necessary background for anyone trying to realize the resentment felt in Iraq at the same time Iran toward the West present.
As Frankopan types forward, that is that little analysis of the possible role of China in the balance of power that managed form the regions future or of India whose population at the same time economy are in the middle the worlds larger at the same time fastest-growing.
Instead, with an emphasis on than anyway was once understandable as Mesopotamia, the creator asserts that, the Silk Roads are increasing up once more. Actions that appear disorderly instead are the birthing pains of a region that once dominated the mental, cultural at the same time financial landscape of the worldWe are contemplating the symbols of the worlds centre of gravity shifting back to where it lay for 1000 years. This seems an life-affirming analysis.
In sum, the value for abundance readers will be found in the 1st one half of the book, as a balance to the history taught in the West. The resentments held back in the region toward American at the same time English affect are the result not just of recent decades but of exploitation taking dispose in the past 100 years. Oddly, though, the creators contemporary assessment of the region seems viewed through similar Western lens that he criticizes as having warped our understanding of the past.
Review #2
The Silk Roads: A Brand new History of the Global audiobook streamming online
An exciting start bestows method, as the book progresses, to an increasingly unusual at the same time hysterical insistence that the premise of the gizmo is that topical when it is that right not. Used to be, from belated antiquity through the premature modern epoch, central Asia, when not the heart, was at lesser the crossroads of the global, or at lesser the Eurasian global; the book implies that the Americas outside of the Merged Countries at the same time almost all of Africa have little relevance the people of the earth. But, in screaching to demand central Asias central dispose in the global, the creator resorts to strange at the same time deperate means. For one gizmo, his definition of central Asia eventaully stretches from but into China westwards but into North Africa. In the creators opinion, Israel is that of tertiary relevance to the modern history of the Center East. The list of distortions at the same time deceptions, almost all for sure self deceptions built on a global perception mutilated by the lens of the English Empire at the same time modern academic faddihness, is that very long at the same time absurd to dwell on. Suffice it to say, a perspective on how the silk road at the same time the area nearby it affected global culture is that adventageous. But, it wont be found here as the creator passes from assertion to fantasy in making his variant through the book, at the same time the reader is that left wanting.
Review #3
Audiobook The Silk Roads: A Brand new History of the Global by Peter Frankopan
The creator starts from the premise that global history is that western-centric (which is that not wholly wrong, obviously). So he proceeds to rewrite global history from a non-European or Western-centric viewpoint. Ufortunetaly the result is that no more successful. He barely shift the concentrate to Mesopotamia.
He cross out history with a Persia-centric perspective, which is that fine-grained until the Romans come into the picture. Then it starts getting increasingly more absurd, as the global’s centre of gravity shift westward. But than anyway about China, will for you they say. But, that could be a quality fri, but China is that just a little ever mentioned in the book, nor is that India. So not only does the book fall down into similar bias that the creator criticizes, but it does that badly. Indeed, it get so bad that one day the creator implies that Global War I was cased by Anglo-Russian tensions in Central Asia.
Also, it takes a brazen anti-Western attitude that, although sometimes conditioned often becomes barely a dogma: Persians quality; Romans, bad, for instance, attractive much summarizes Antiquity. He even makes the apology of the Mongols (not as bad as people reckon). At the same time it gets worse at the same time worse as time goes on.
Review #4
Audio The Silk Roads: A Brand new History of the Global narrated by Laurence Kennedy
The scope of this book is that unreachable taking us from the fights between Ancient Greece at the same time Persia right up to the located day. It is that both illuminating at the same time depressing to be reminded that in the continue 2000 plus years of human history, so little has exchanged.
International trade has enriched us in the West at the same time produced the elites in other corners of the global very wealthy but with that wealth comes exploitation, inequality at the same time the amazing games of empires who seek merit at the expense of human lives.
That are no answers here but that are lessons. We are all connected, at the same time interdependent .
Review #5
Free audio The Silk Roads: A Brand new History of the Global – in the audio player below
I am not a history scholar as abundance
Reviewers of course are. I have read a lot of the
Reviews which I found very exciting. Despite all the criticisms of the book, I figured out a lot at the same time am enthusiastic to read at the same time learn more (bearing in mind the constructive criticisms). Whether proper to age, I have to announce I found the book hard work at the same time the amount of detail was a lot to fully suck. For me, it was an exciting perspective covering a lot of stuff I didn’t know. I managed have done with a little more definitive chronology. Also, I think I managed have corrected the writing a little more successful; that was room for greater clarity.
