The Silk Road: What it Wasn’t, What it Was, and What it Still Is – Viewing Guide

Vocabulary of note

• Diffusion – spreading something more widely
• Convergence – the state of coming together
• Integrated History – bringing together historical developments formerly considered completely separate and demonstrating their connections; showing interconnections among developments in societies across time periods and regions of the world
• Transculturation – process by which cultural elements merge and transform through exchange with those of other cultures
• Anthropomorphism – giving human elements to an animal, object, or god
• Cultural appropriation – the adoption of another culture’s ideas, customs, clothes, practices without their permission; a 21st c term that is critical of those who practice it

Names of note

• Ferdinand von Richthoven (1833-1905) – German geographer who first used term “Silk Road”
• Zhang Qian – Chinese ambassador sent out in 138 BCE by the Han Dynasty emperor to establish diplomatic relation with groups living far to the west of China; considered first person to use the land route
• Zheng He – Chinese mariner of the Ming dynasty who led imperial backed naval flotillas in the early 1400s from China all through the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Red Sea and to the coast of Africa
• Xi Jinping – President of the People’s Republic of China (from 2013) and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (from 2012)

Outline of Presentation – with [Timecode]                                  

Introduction

• Continuity of concept in time and in imagination

Silk Road Myths [01:19]

• That it was a Highway – it was not
• Went from China to Rome – no real evidence of direct contact until the Mongol period in the 1200s (trade through intermediaries existed from the Han dynasty period onward, evidently, as Roman coins found in Chinese archaeological sites from 1^st c, BCE onward, as well as Roman glassware)
• Merchants were in Charge – imperial states really drove the movement in aid of diplomacy; agrarian empires seeking trade with nomadic states (especially in horses)
• Movement was directly from A to B [05:40] – was much more complicated; example of paper first in China, then the idea of paper moved across Eurasia in 7^th c CE, producing a revolution in printing.
• That Silk Road “died” in 1500 with rise of European maritime explorations [07:45]
  • The maritime connections had always existed, especially by “relay” trade, where goods are traded with a series of merchants along a much longer route.
  • Historical records show that the land routes never “died’ and were important to both the Russia and the Chinese Qing (1644-1911) empires
• Modernity did bring big changes, speeding up trade and making it possible to trade larger commodities

What do We Mean when we Talk about the Silk Road? [12:08]

We are talking about “the history of trans-Eurasian exchange from pre-historic times to contemporary times”

• Started with hominids coming out of Africa
• Complex cultural exchange and transculturation
• Can be diffusion or independent development, such as writing systems [15:30]
• Transculturation: meaning of something changes, develops new meaning on top of old

Examples [18:30]

• Religion
• Lutes [19:40] – examples from across Eurasia
• Gandharan Indo-Greek sculpture [25:33]
  • Example of the anthropomorphism of Buddha
• Blue and white ware [27:22]
  • Cobalt oxide needed, and Persia is the source of cobalt at the time; trade along the Silk Road in the 7^th c. facilitates trade between Persia and China; close ties between Persia and China are then made possible by Mongol empire
  • Chinese blue and white ware made of porcelain (china) seems to have first been produced during the Mongol period (the “David Vases,” held by the British Museum), and then refined and production expanded in the following Ming dynasty period (1368-1644)
  • Became popular across Islamic world, Ottoman empire, Europe
  • Question of which areas had the right clay and ability to fire to very high temperatures, as in Jingdezhen China, where the imperial kilns were established
  • Replicated by entirely different methods for centuries
• Dumplings [30:11] – food travels across Eurasia, name travels with food; classic Silk Road food

Ferdinand von Richtoven – invented the term “Silk Road” in the 1800s [31:50]

• Geographer who traveled in U.S. at time of the building the transcontinental railroad
• Sent to China to find a place for Germany to establish a base for a colony
• Sees the potential for transcontinental trade which we call “globalization” today; he first uses term “Silk Road”

Becomes a term in Geopolitics [35:30]

• Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, states in 2011: “Let’s work to create a new Silk Road,” by which she meant a north-south corridor from South Asia to Central Asia, with no mention of China or Iran (formerly, Persia), but Persia was always central to the Eurasian routes
• Xi Jinping responds in a speech in 2013 where he says “Let’s revive the Silk Road to Smash American Containment”; both Pakistan and Iran also react to Clinton’s statement, even though the U.S. has not committed any budget to the idea

Historically, China claims that two of its ambassadors were the first to explore the purpose of the Silk Roads to establish diplomatic relations and increase trade [38:20]

• Zhang Qian sent out in 138 BCE by the Han dynasty emperor to establish relations with distance groups so that they could reach the source of what they called “divine horses” that were bred in the Ferghana valley in Central Asia; the Chinese needed the horses for defense against bordering groups that had horses.
• Zheng He in the Ming dynasty leads sea voyages
• Both of these imperial sponsored missions were more geo-strategic missions than commercial

Final example of the statue of Martin Luther King on the Mall in Washington [40:48]

• Example of how socialist realism travels through artist

Conversation today about “cultural appropriation,” but Professor Millward, our speaker, says that “this is how culture works” !