Empires of the Silk Road.

Today's post is a bit out of the ordinary. I finished reading Empires of the Silk Road by Christopher Beckwith last night and am still a bit overwhelmed my data overload. Originally I thought it was going to be a book about Central Asia, which it did cover quite a bit of, but it focused on the broader Central Eurasia entity. The beginning was extremely hard to follow because of all the unusual people group names that I'm not used to reading. Once Beckwith began speaking of colonialism, the establishment of the littoral trade system and decline of the continental Silk Road economy, things became more comprehensible. A few takeaways (can be edifying in any way you want it to be)...

• Central Eurasia was not merely geographic "wasteland" where no strong urban life or culture developed. Commonly, historians have depicted the area as simply where goods traded hands on their way along the Silk Road. Beckwith tries to overturn this thesis, arguing that Central Eurasia was in itself an integrated civilization and economy, much like the periphery states of Russia, China, India, SW Asia, and Europe.
• Beckwith is very concerned about the common portrayal of the steppe people and its prevalence in historiography. Since Herodotus, these "nomad" steppe peoples have had foisted on them characteristics of the "barbarian." That is, uncommonly good at warfare, violent, uncultured, nomadic, relying upon pillaging urban civilizations because they cannot produce anything of their own. On the contrary, Beckwith shows that these steppe people actually lived a better life in many ways, especially relative to peasants in places such as the Roman Empire. They were also not more violent than the periphery states, but instead only waged war when these peripheries refused to open up to trade. In many ways, the periphery civilizations were more aggressive, actually conquering large swaths of land (e.g. Tibet, East Turkistan (Xinjiang)) and massacring whole people groups (as in the case of Chinese extermination of the Jungahar rulers of East Turkistan). All that to say, the steppe peoples were not "barbarian" any more than the periphery nations were.
• Modern Central Eurasia has still not recovered from the coup de grace of the littoral system, which undermined the continental economy. Moreover, the decision between Russia and China to split Central Eurasia into spheres of influence has meant fracturing and economic devastation. Beckwith argues that what needs to happen is an integration in Central Eurasia, much like the EU, to create an economic unit, reflecting the premodern arrangement.

I'm not sure exactly what people can take from this, but at least JWar would be interested. I just finished reading it yesterday, so it's still at the front of my mind.

General Updates:

• IHOP!!!
• Got contacted for an interview at the Bailey Law Group as an administrative assistant. It's close by, in Farragut North area. Scheduled for Friday at 5pm, before the UCF last shindig.
• Last solid day of studying before the final stretch. It's been difficult staggering my exams since I have two on Thursday, which means I have little time to study for the Friday one on Thursday.

Reading Updates:

• Reading has come almost to a standstill with the onset of finals. Since I've finished Empires of the Silk Road, I will be turning a more undivided attention to Dominion and Dynasty.
• I've picked up Setting the East Ablaze as a follow-up to the Beckwith volume, since I was not satisfied with his treatment of specifically Central Asia.