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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: In antiquity, goods and ideas moved between East and West, giving rise to the Silk Roads.
Chapter 3: The emerging Muslim world seized the Silk Roads, sending wealth and learning coursing far and wide across the globe.
Chapter 4: A booming slave trade and the conquest of Jerusalem signaled the beginning of Europe’s ascent.
Chapter 5: Over merely two centuries, vast regions of the world were brutally ravaged, first by the Mongols and then by deadly plague outbreaks.
Chapter 6: European voyages to Africa, the Americas, and Asia linked the world, yet they brought horrific suffering too.
Chapter 7: New trade routes birthed new empires, as the various European powers took turns in the imperial spotlight.
Chapter 8: At the dawn of the twentieth century, Western powers rushed for Persia’s oil reserves.
Chapter 9: Hitler sought to seize the fertile soils of southern Russia, and low grain yields may have, in part, fueled the Holocaust.
Chapter 10: Following the Second World War, the United States sought to expand its influence across Western Asia.
Chapter 11: The region that birthed the Silk Roads is in turmoil, yet it is reemerging as a power again.
Description
The Silk Roads (2015) is a comprehensive history of the world, written with an eye to the networks of trade that shaped it. The networks of trade first established in ancient Persia and later linked with Chinese trade routes created a great network between the East and the West. But these Silk Roads are not relics of the past. They have morphed and changed, and their impact can be felt today, right down to America’s fateful engagement in the region where it all began.
Who Should Listen
- Economists looking for historical parallels
- Intrigued followers of world events who want to learn about trade
- Historians of all stripes