Empires of the Silk Road

A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present

By: Christopher I. Beckwith

Narrated by: Jim Lee

A classic book now available on audio

With narration by Jim Lee, who tells the epic story of the rise and fall of the Silk Road empires

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization.

Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.

©2009 Princeton University Press (P)2023 Princeton University Press

Critic reviews

"Winner of the 2009 PROSE Award in World History & Biography/Autobiography, Association of American Publishers"

"Christopher I. Beckwith, professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, suggests in his recent book, Empires of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press), that 'the most crucial element' of societies all through Central Eurasia—including the ones analyzed by this exhibition—was the 'sociopolitical-religious ideal of the heroic lord' and of a 'war band of his friends' that was attached to him and 'sworn to defend him to the death.' This idea, he suggests, affected the organization of early Islam as well as the structure of Tibetan Buddhist devotion. In fact, this 'shared political ideology across Eurasia,' Mr. Beckwith suggests, 'ensured nearly constant warfare.' The region's history is a history of competing empires; trade became part of what was later called the Great Game."—Edward Rothstein, New York Times

"[T]his is no mere survey. Beckwith systematically demolishes the almost universal presumption that the peoples and powers of Inner Asia were typically predatory raiders, and thus supplied themselves by extracting loot and tribute from more settled populations. . . . With his work, there is finally a fitting counterpart to Peter B. Golden's magnificently comprehensive An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East, based on Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Latin, and European medieval sources. By reading just two books anyone can now sort out Charlemagne's Avar Ring, the Golden Horde, modern Kazakhs and Uzbeks, ancient Scyths, Borodin's Polovtsian dances (they were Cumans), present-day Turks, Seljuks, Ottomans, early Turks, and Bulghars and Bulgarians, among many less familiar states or nations."—Edward Luttwak, New Republic

"[E]rudite and iconoclastic, [Empires of the Silk Road] provides a wealth of new ideas, perspectives, and information about the political and other formations that flourished in that large portion of the world known as Central Eurasia. . . . [A] major contribution to Central Eurasian and world history."—Nicola Di Cosmo, Journal of Global History

the steppe peoples.

just an incredible recounting of some of the worlds most influential and important history, a region which in modern times is ignored and forgotten.

Very informative history lesson and much appreciated.

I found this book to be very interesting and informative regarding the history of the Eurasia. As someone from Greek descent, the book opened my mind in unexpected ways. Thank you

A detailed enjoyable history

I study Central Asia a lot , this was a very enjoyable narrative and historical retelling.

A curious history of the Silk Road

This is an odd book if you follow it all the way to the end. It provides a glimpse into a region of the world whose history will be familiar to few. He makes an interesting case for the importance of Central Eurasia as an economic axis important from Atlantic to Pacific and in so doing, defines a number of cultural traits he argues form a cultural complex underpinning the unity of the region. Not all will find his cultural genealogies convincing, given the extended period covered by the book. This is particularly true of his placement of the Indoeuropeans as ancestral to Central Eurasian cultural complex. While certainly some of these cultures were I-E speakers, it is also true that cultures he places in opposition to Central Eurasia, such as the Mediterranean cultures, were also. This discussion would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of cultural genesis.

Yet covering several thousand years (from the proto-Indoeuropeans to the present day) in a relatively short text results in a raft of over-generalizations, on the one hand, and a lack of depth on the other. Much of the history devolves into the sort of depressing recitations of rulers and battles that puts many a student off history, without the necessary larger social picture. When he does take the time to discuss social and cultural history, the book shines, even though these are relatively brief. For instance, the pervasiveness and centrality of commitatus relations among elite warriors was particularly fascinating. Another difficulty for listeners is the many references to cities and territories that have long since vanished, so be forewarned: maps are a necessity but are not provided.

Late in the book, the author morphs into Dr. Grumpus, who has a beef with Western culture over the past 100 years, that is, with "modernity". What exactly his poor opinion of Picasso, Stravinsky, and virutally all other artists since 1900 have with the Silk Road remains unclear. He even gets in a dig at rock music. According to the author, they have all stopped producing "beauty", and they commit the crime of changing and growing. Nor is the reason for rehearsing in bullet points the history of the past two centuries apparent, since the Silk Road had been long undercut by emerging coastal trade, as he discusses in detail.

Even with the limited number of pages in this book, it is repetitive in its main points and perhaps is fighting prejudices that have all but evaporated among those who would read a book like this, as in the long concluding rant about barbarians and barbarism.

Despite these critiques, this is one of the few windows in English on a world and time period outside most mainstream histories, so your time will not be wasted.

Unfocused and prone to tangents

I loved the author’s more recent book, “The Scythian Empire”, so I checked this one out as well. I found it generally less engaging, without much focus, but it is the last few chapters of the book that really made me want to write a review. The author goes on at great length about modernism and how damaging it is. Alright. But then he gets into very specifically modernism in the arts, and he completely abandons the discussion of the Central Eurasian peoples in favor of lamenting the death of beauty and art. First of all, as an artist, his assertions are frankly ridiculous and seem to come from an almost cloistered academic view of the world that discounts the reality on the ground and instead focuses on what academics are saying about the arts (and generalizing that as well). But more importantly, this is completely unrelated to the overall point of the book and feels kind of self indulgent and whiny. I don’t like to leave negative reviews, and the book was informative and had an interesting perspective overall, but this last chapter is really souring my taste.