And as a pluralist, I particularly value considering how, say, economic exchange takes place in multiple directions. PETER FRANKOPAN: First, as a historian, I find myself drawn to various histories of exchange. So could you introduce this region and its current moment by talking about why it would or would not make sense, at least from a European or US perspective, to consider it in those neocolonial terms? I understand why you would frame these geopolitical trends as perhaps the most important global dynamic right now, emanating from “the heart of the world.” At the same time, I could consult a map, and examine this greater region flanked by dominant powers like Russia, Turkey, and Iran to the north and west, and Pakistan, India, and China to the south and east (with relatively low-population, under-developed, autocratic, resource-rich nations comprising the expansive interior), and I could see taking shape something more like a 21st-century variant on preceding colonial eras. I appreciate your accounts, say, of India’s and Pakistan’s economies converging in unprecedented ways over the past few years, of Pakistan, India, China, and Russia collaborating on joint military exercises almost inconceivable not long before - of even the Taliban and ISIS seeking to participate in New Silk Roads exchanges. I admire your survey of a present-day scene catalyzed by multi-state cooperation on territorial, infrastructural, transportation, energy, and commercial concerns (rather than by inherited frictions among neighboring peoples, or petty rivalries among individual leaders). ĪNDY FITCH: I very much respect your efforts to revitalize a somewhat vague 19th-century “Silk Roads” concept by fleshing out a broadly inclusive historical narrative emphasizing intercultural flows of people, ideas, and goods (rather than the more parochial timelines often reinforced by national governments). He is also the author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East, and of a revised translation of The Alexiad. His previous book, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, received numerous international “book of the year” recognitions. Frankopan writes for The New York Times, the Financial Times, and the Guardian, and has a regular column in the London Evening Standard. Frankopan is a professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he directs the Centre for Byzantine Research. This present conversation focuses on Frankopan’s book The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World. How might 19th-century European notions of ancient “S ilk R oad ” traditions find themselves reflected in contemporary Central Asian societies ’ self-conceptions? How might Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road I nitiative overlap with these Silk Road identifications ? When I want to ask such questions, I pose them to Peter Frankopan. Billed Into Silence: Money and the Miseducation of Women.
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