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An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

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Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#21

Post by oersted »

PokemonNoGo wrote: post #18
usrnm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like there was no Bronze age, Middle Ages or Third World. It doesn't mean that we cannot use the terminology or that it's necessarily wrong, it's just limited and we need to understand the limits

>Third world Non-aligned countries didn't exist? Sorry I need some coffee and I'm feeling a little thick at the moment.

Is that the meaning of “Third World”? As in East/West/Other?

I always thought it was more about Developed/Developing/Undeveloped, mostly in terms of the industrial transition.

But, if we are being honest, it’s used a lot more as “third class”.

I suppose indeed that it is not really a well defined “thing”, like the Silk Road.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#22

Post by usrnm »

PokemonNoGo wrote: post #18
usrnm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like there was no Bronze age, Middle Ages or Third World. It doesn't mean that we cannot use the terminology or that it's necessarily wrong, it's just limited and we need to understand the limits

>Third world Non-aligned countries didn't exist? Sorry I need some coffee and I'm feeling a little thick at the moment.

They did exist the same way people and goods did travel across Eurasia, but it wasn't some defined political or economical entity and they did not call themselves "the third world"

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#23

Post by ownlife »

Insanity wrote: post #20
timdiggerm wrote: post #19

This list is just a promo blog post for the author's book

I fail to see why that devalues this list of books. It's not like he's _only_ listing his own book.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#24

Post by mandevil »

oersted wrote: post #21
PokemonNoGo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Third world Non-aligned countries didn't exist? Sorry I need some coffee and I'm feeling a little thick at the moment.

Is that the meaning of “Third World”? As in East/West/Other? I always thought it was more about Developed/Developing/Undeveloped, mostly in terms of the industrial transition. But, if we are being honest, it’s used a lot more as “third class”. I suppose indeed that it is not really a well defined “thing”, like the Silk Road.

When originally coined (circa 1950 around the Korean War), the First World was the US aligned block of countries, the Second World was the USSR aligned block of countries, and the Third World was all of the countries not part of either. Egypt, India, Yugoslavia, Ghana and Indonesia viewed themselves as leaders of the broader political movement during the 1960's and 1970's.

Even into the 1960's there were few industrialized nations outside of those two main blocks, so "Third World" quickly lost its explicitly political meaning and became more a description of the level of capital investment and worker productivity.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#25

Post by BurningFrog »

qart wrote: post #9

The author of the first book listed there explains there was no ancient Silk Road. This concept was dreamt up in 1877. https://youtube.com/shorts/Ki4UQ20tWQk

This just says that no one was aware the Silk Road existed, much less had named it that.

But it did exist, and goods were shipped between Europe and China without either side being aware the other existed, which at least I think is pretty darn amazing!

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#26

Post by ripe »

bwb wrote: post #12
qart wrote: post #9

The author of the first book listed there explains there was no ancient Silk Road. This concept was dreamt up in 1877. https://youtube.com/shorts/Ki4UQ20tWQk

ya, there were a bunch of trade routes along this path to all the different regions/cities. We just named the entire concept the "Silk Road" in the 1800s (it was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen).

Yes. Moreover:

"While engaged in a survey of China, the baron was charged with ­dreaming up a route for a railway linking Berlin to Beijing. This he named die Seidenstrassen, the Silk Roads. It was not until 1938 that the term Silk Road appeared in English, as the title of a popular book by a Nazi-sympathising Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin."

-- historian William Dalrymple

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/oct/06/the-sil...

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#27

Post by johngossman »

ownlife wrote: post #23
Insanity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see why that devalues this list of books. It's not like he's _only_ listing his own book.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

While I generally do not trust information from "advertisements", in this case I don't see how this is any worse than including a list of sources in the bibliography. What this could be is an attempt to use those other books to sell the author's through some reflected glory (or SEO-fu) but in that case, the author is still incentivized to recommend good books.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#28

Post by lamasery »

usrnm wrote: post #22
PokemonNoGo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Third world Non-aligned countries didn't exist? Sorry I need some coffee and I'm feeling a little thick at the moment.

They did exist the same way people and goods did travel across Eurasia, but it wasn't some defined political or economical entity and they did not call themselves "the third world"

Unlike "the Silk Road" or "the Middle Ages", "third world" was a term in contemporary use at the time it applies to, including among non-aligned states and NGOs that worked on third world cooperation.

It was pretty well-defined as political classifications go, and people involved in actual "entities" related to it were aware of and sometimes used the term.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#29

Post by Insanity »

ownlife wrote: post #23
Insanity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see why that devalues this list of books. It's not like he's _only_ listing his own book.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

If this was a pure advertising piece, I might agree. In this case, it's more "hey I wrote a book on this, these are other books that are great". That's kinda different at least in my mind.

Re: An amateur historian's favorite books about the Silk Road

#30

Post by wduquette »

I'd add Owen Lattimore's Desert Road to Turkestan: Lattimore traveled through the Central Asian deserts with a camel caravan in the 1930's, one of few westerner's ever to do so; and also Richard Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, about the first European explorers to enter that region.
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