The Silk Roads: A Brief History with Documents

Xinru Liu

nën 2018 · Shitur nga Macmillan Higher Education

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For more than 1500 years, across more than 4000 miles, the Silk Roads connected East and West. These overland trails and sea lanes carried not only silks, but also cotton textiles, dyes, horses, incense, spices, gems, glass, and ceramics along with religious ideas, governing customs, and technology. For this book, Xinru Liu has assembled primary sources from ancient China, India, Central Asia, Rome and the Mediterranean, and the Islamic world, many of them difficult to access and some translated into English for the first time. Court histories, geographies and philosophical treatises, letters, travelers’ accounts, inventories, inscriptions, laws, religious texts, and more, introduce students to the complexities of cultural exchange. Liu’s thoughtful introduction considers the many ways the peoples along the Silk Roads interacted and helps students understand the implications for economies and societies, as well as political and religious institutions, over space and time. Maps, document headnotes and annotations, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography offer additional pedagogical support.

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Xinru Liu (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) teaches world history, the history of South Asia, and the history of Central Asia at the College of New Jersey in Ewing. She is associated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of History and Institute of World History. Among her many publications are The Silk Road in World History; Connections Across Eurasia: Transportation, Communications, and Cultural Exchange on the Silk Roads with Lynda Norene Shaffer; Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People in A.D. 600 –1200; and Ancient India and Ancient China.