Despite attempting to blow through a very rich and complex history of The Silk Road, I believe Frances Wood's first three chapters of 'The Silk Road' ease the reader into very interesting sets of topics (specifically ch. 2 on the silkworms-who knew?!) with solid historical and factual evidence of the road.
My only issue with this text so far is that he is skipping around a major topic of the Silk Roads influence. Yes it made trade easy (not if you ask those who had to travel it in extreme climates and lack of resources), but it was also a highway of knowledge and culture.
The Silk Road, as depicted by Wood, is multi-faceted network of not only trade, but culture. I had imagined the road more like a one-way highway, but upon further inspection this is not the case. I think that more importantly, the road connected cultures that had otherwise been unknowledgable about. After the Enlightenment Period, European/Western views of Central Asian cultures were less than flattering, but the road allowed not only trade amongst the cultures, but knowledge of the 'other' through direct personal contact, artifacts, and texts-once translated of course. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, and thus, I believe that this gave Central Asian traditions a chance to break the barrier of 'western thought', which at the time was dominated by the 'superior' Christian tradition. If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was Voltar who wrote about how the chronology of the bible was incorrect, and in its entirety was a direct rip-off from Hinduism, which he also claimed was the older of the two traditions, and therefore the truely superior religion.
After the Enlightenment is when trade between Asia and Europe thrived, and very conveniently at the same time there was an intense interest in Chinese thought, as it was (and still is!) full of practical philosophy, uncluttered by worldly consideration. The Silk Road would have made all of this possible.
