The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "The True Mediterranean" With his The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) Peter Frankopan wants to change how people see history and the world, as not having always been centered in the Mediterranean a long time ago or in America today, but as having been centered in the crossroads between east and west, in "the true Mediterranean" of the world, in Central Asia, in now mostly forgotten cities "strung like pearls connecting the Pacific to the Mediterranean." Not that he's only concerned with literal silk roads; he's telling a history of international communication and trade and conflict and influence by which different cultures in the world have always wanted things produced by each other and have traded along networks of cities, through different eras silk, furs, spices, gold, silver, wheat, oil, or rare earth. He also covers the transmission of things other than goods, like ideas, languages, religions, technologies, and plagues. Frankopan covers a lot of ground, ranging from ancient Persia to contemporary –stan countries and everything in between. He is a bit brief on certain interesting people or trends or events dealt with in more detail in other books, like about the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the Mongols, the fall of Constantinople, the Opium Wars, etc. By contrast, he provides much detail on World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the current war on terrorism. Granted that there are many more historical sources the closer we approach our current era, but I would have liked more detail on older eras and less on recent ones. That said, the book is full of interesting information. I liked learning for example that much of the wealth exploited from Central and South America in the age of colonization ended up in Central Asia rather than Europe, funding for instance the construction of the Taj Mahal. The history of Knox Darcy and the British exploitation of oil in Persia and Iran from near the end of the 19th century until about the end of World War II was fascinating. It was interesting to learn that Venice became an international power largely through the slave trade--and that the Italian greeting "ciao" means "I am your slave." And it's healthy to be reminded that the nuclear technology in Iran causing such concern in the USA today was given by the USA to Iran as part of misguided efforts to prop up the corrupt dictatorial regime of the Shah. For that matter, Frankopan's depiction of the mess that the UK in the 19th and early 20th centuries and then the USA after World War II and the Cold War made in the Middle East and Central Asia through ignorance of local cultures and histories, through too much focus on the short term and not enough on the long, and through the gap between espousing democracy and freedom on the one hand and callously exercising imperial power as with torture, drone strikes, sanctions, and Guantánamo Bay on the other--is salubrious. Some of Frankopan's best lines come describing American debacles, like "The United States' efforts to diffuse the situation [in Afghanistan] ranged from the inept to the shambolic." Frankopan is into international trade and culture more than war, and he prefers listing different goods for sale in different markets in different cities in different eras to listing different kinds of soldiers and weapons and tactics used in different battles in different eras. Throughout his book, he successfully demonstrates how all peoples and cultures are interconnected. About the audiobook, the reader Laurence Kennedy is excellent when doing the base narration (a clear and engaged British accent), but whenever Frankopan quotes a historical figure like a historian or merchant or emperor or prime minister or president, Kennedy feels compelled to dramatize things by changing his voice to ostensibly suit the figure and his or her culture, donning for example a pseudo silk road (slightly Indian) accent or a generic American accent or some seasoned age or greater authority or hotter indignation or gruffer timbre or smarmier condescension, etc., all of which is completely unnecessary because the sources are full of character in their own rights. This is not such an obvious problem in the pre-sound-recording era, but as soon as Kennedy starts acting like people whose distinctive voices we know very well like Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan or Henry Kissinger or Barack Obama, the mismatch between his assumed voice and the real person's voice is jarring. I continually wished he had just read everything in his narration voice. Be that as it may, I recommend this book because it is well-written, informative, and reorients one's focus towards Central Asia, which is, as the last chapter of the book illustrates, once again becoming an economic and cultural powerhouse nexus in the world. View all my reviews
2 Comments
Naveed
10/9/2018 08:39:53 am
I am partway listening to this. I too wish he had just kept a straight voice. I found his Indian accent jarring and so unnecessary. I could just visualise Al Jolson. All I could think was really...we are going there? Sigh... I'll persevere - wise he would re record the accented bits, they add nothing and detract so much.
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JP
10/9/2018 10:23:37 am
I hope you do persevere, Naveed! I did learn a lot from the book and I enjoyed it a lot too, but had I known before hand that the reader was going to do all those unnecessary and lame accents and personas, I might've steered clear of the audiobook and tried to read the Kindle version… He is kind of like Al Jolson :-) :-(
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