
The World We Have Lost: On the Silk Road Roots of Our Global System - diodorus
http://www.historytoday.com/peter-frankopan/world-we-have-lost
======
mlinksva
Interesting, I learned a few things:

> Cataclysmic struggle between the eastern Rome and Persia opened the door for
> Arabs to stream through and build one of the greatest empires in history.

More at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_war...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_wars)
... I dimly knew these two empires fought but could not have named any of the
episodes nor did I realize the direct link to the Muslim conquests.

> Cities like Venice, Verdun, Utrecht, Prague and Mainz all did good business
> trafficking slaves to Arab lands, above all, women and children. It was the
> Vikings, however, who seized control of this lucrative business, eventually
> building trading stations along the Russian river systems flowing south
> towards the Black and Caspian seas that grew into towns such as Kiev and
> Novgorod.

I knew about the Vikings and the Volga slave trade but did not know it
previously extended to northern and central Europe; not sure if Wikipedia has
a detailed article, but there's
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe#Sla...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe#Slave_trade)

------
ksk
Some of the Eurocentric focus on history is partly because of the lack of
historical documents from South Asia. I know that in India for e.g., recording
a history of the region was never a priority, infact some of of India's early
history is only known because of Chinese travelers noting down stuff in their
diaries.

In modern times, producing an "Official" History of their region is a major
undertaking that all nation states engage in. This is where they get to
'correct' the existing biases/stereotypes but a lot of nations lack the
interest and frankly survey expertise to produce a decent and accurate
History. I'd say that the West in general has been very good at documenting
(sometimes with overflowing negative bias) the history of the 'other' much
more than the 'other' has been, at documenting their own history.

------
veddox
A very good article! The author does a great job of painting a unified view of
world history within the confines of his length restriction. Of course many
things are only touched upon, and many others omitted entirely, but he
certainly manages to broaden one's view of cultural and political history, and
shows how the histories of different peoples interlink and influence each
other even today.

------
jhaand
If you're interesting in this kind of history. I can recommend the youtube
series: Crash Course - World history.

[https://youtu.be/Yocja_N5s1I?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9](https://youtu.be/Yocja_N5s1I?list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9)

Only 42 videos of around 12 minutes. Gave me a good brush up on history.

------
powera
Americans and Western Europeans focus on the history of America and Western
Europe. I'm not surprised at all.

~~~
veddox
The point is not the focus on their local history, but the exclusion of other
peoples' history that enabled their own history in the first place.

Generally, the view taught in schools in the West is that "civilization" as we
know it developed pretty much linearly on the axis Greece - Rome - Medieval
Europe - Modern Europe/North America. Sure, there were some other
civilizations in some obscure places like South America or China, we are given
to understand, but they don't really count, they didn't have any lasting
impact.

What is all too often neglected is that history doesn't work as simply as
that. Greek culture developed in interaction with ancient Persia. Rome was
also influenced by places like Carthage in North Africa. The Middle Ages in
Europe weren't known as the "Dark Ages" for nothing - compared to contemporary
Arabia, it looked pretty barbarous. (Arabian influences on medieval Europe are
many and varied, ranging from architecture to food and weapons.) In 1793, the
envoys of the first British diplomatic mission to imperial China were still
viewed as "barbarians" [1].

Of course it is entirely justified to focus mainly on your own history.
However, the danger of focussing too much on yourself is that you forget the
achievement and importance of others, leading to unwarranted nationalistic
pride.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy)

~~~
iwwr
Given the abysmal state of lower and middleschool historical education, merely
teaching the kids some basics is hard enough.

~~~
veddox
Could you elaborate? I don't quite see how a subject curriculum can make it
harder to teach?

