3Zelenyi Front, ‘Vyvoz chernozema v Pesochine: brakon’ervy zaderrzhany’, Press Release (Kharkiv, 12 June 2011).
4World Bank, World Price Watch (Washington, DC, 2012).
5Afghanistan is responsible for 74 per cent of global opium production, down from 92 per cent in 2007, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – World Drug Report 2011 (Vienna, 2011), p. 20. Ironically, as local opium prices show, the more effective the campaign to reduce opium production, the higher the prices – and hence the more lucrative cultivation and trafficking become. For some recent figures, see Afghanistan Opium Price Monitoring: Monthly Report (Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Kabul, and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Kabul, March 2010).
6‘Lifestyles of the Kazakhstani leadership’, US diplomatic cable, EO 12958, 17 April 2008, WikiLeaks.
7Guardian, 20 April 2015
8‘President Ilham Aliyev – Michael (Corleone) on the Outside, Sonny on the Inside’, US diplomatic cable, 18 September 2009, WikiLeaks EO 12958; for Aliyev’s property holding in Dubai, Washington Post, 5 March 2010.
9Quoted in ‘HIV created by West to enfeeble third world, claims Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’, Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2012.
10Hillary Clinton, ‘Remarks at the New Silk Road Ministerial Meeting’, New York, 22 September 2011, US State Department.
11J. O’Neill, Building with Better BRICS, Global Economics Paper, No. 66, Goldman Sachs (2003); R. Sharma, Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles (London, 2012); J. O’Neill, The Growth Map: Economic Opportunity in the BRICs and Beyond (London, 2011).
12Jones Lang Lasalle, Central Asia: Emerging Markets with High Growth Potential (February 2012).
13www.rotana.com/erbilrotana.
14The World in London: How London’s Residential Resale Market Attracts Capital from across the Globe, Savills Research (2011).
15The Cameroon international star, Samuel Eto’o, signed from Barcelona in 2011, Associated Press, 23 August 2011. The opening of the 2010 Under-17 Women’s World Cup was marked by a ten-minute opening ceremony featuring ‘award-winning dance group Shiv Shakit’, ‘Grand Opening: Trinbagonian treat in store for U-17 Women’s World Cup’, Trinidad Express, 27 August 2010.
16T. Kutchins, T. Sanderson and D. Gordon, The Northern Distribution Network and the Modern Silk Road: Planning for Afghanistan’s Future, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC, 2009).
17I. Danchenko and C. Gaddy, ‘The Mystery of Vladimir Putin’s Dissertation’, edited version of presentations by the authors at a Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Program panel, 30 March 2006.
18‘Putin pledges $43 billion for infrastructure’, Associated Press, 21 June 2013. For estimates, see International Association ‘Coordinating Council on Trans-Siberian Transportation’, ‘Transsib: Current Situation and New Business Perspectives in Europe–Asian Traffic’, UNECE Workgroup, 9 September 2013.
19See for example the Beijing Times, 8 May 2014.
20‘Hauling New Treasure along Silk Road’, New York Times, 20 July 2013.
21For a report on China’s impact on retail gold prices, World Gold Council, China’s Gold Market: Progress and Prospects (2014). Sales in China of Prada and related companies rose by 40 per cent in 2011 alone, Annual Report, Prada Group (2011). By the end of 2013, Prada Group’s revenues in Greater China were almost double those of North and South America combined, Annual Report (2014).
22See for example the recent announcement of a $46bn investment to build the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, Xinhua, 21 April 2015.
23Investigative Report on the US National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE, US House of Representatives Report, 8 October 2012.
24Department of Defense, Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (Washington, DC, 2012).
25President Obama, ‘Remarks by the President on the Defense Strategic Review’, 5 January 2012, White House.
26Ministry of Defence, Strategic Trends Programme: Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040 (London, 2010), p. 10.
27International Federation for Human Rights, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: A Vehicle for Human Rights Violations (Paris, 2012).
28‘Erdoğan’s Shanghai Organization remarks lead to confusion, concern’, Today’s Zaman, 28 January 2013.
29Hillary Clinton, ‘Remarks at the New Silk Road Ministerial Meeting’, 22 September 2011, New York City.
30President Xi Jinping, ‘Promote People-to-People Friendship and Create a Better Future’, 7 September 2013, Xinhua.
Acknowledgements
There is no finer place in the world for a historian to work than Oxford. The libraries and collections are second to none, while the librarians are brilliant in their resourcefulness in tracking down materials. I am particularly grateful to the Bodleian Library, the Oriental Institute Library, the Sackler Library, the Taylor Slavonic and Modern Greek Library and the Middle Eastern Library at St Anthony’s College, and to all their staff. I could not have written this book without the use of the astonishing resources of Oxford University, and without the support and patience of those who look after them.
I spent much time at the National Archives in Kew reading letters, telegrams and memos held in Foreign Office records, working through minutes of Cabinet meetings, or examining Ministry of Defence proposals – all of which reached me within forty minutes. I am thankful for the efficiency and courtesy of all those who work there.
The University Library in Cambridge allowed me to consult the papers of Lord Hardinge, while the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, kindly let me read the private diaries of Maurice (Lord) Hankey and also gave me access to the remarkable archive of the Propaganda Research Section Papers assembled by Mark Abrams. I must thank the BP Archive at the University of Warwick and Peter Housego, the Archive Manager, for digging out a large number of files relating to BP and its predecessors, the Anglo-Persian and Anglo-Iranian Oil Companies.
I am also grateful to the National Security Archive at George Washington University, a non-governmental collection of declassified documents relating to international affairs and, above all, to the history of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This is a treasure trove of important source material from recent decades. Being able to find so many documents in one place saved me repeated journeys across the Atlantic that would have been frustrating and time-consuming.
I should thank the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford, who have been wonderfully and consistently kind since I came to the college as a Junior Research Fellow nearly twenty years ago. I am fortunate to work alongside a remarkable group of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, where Mark Whittow in particular has been a never-ending source of inspiration and encouragement. Conversations and discussions with colleagues and friends in Oxford and elsewhere and in travels across Britain, Europe, Asia and Africa have helped refine good ideas, and sometimes prompted bad ones to be discarded.
Several colleagues and friends read chapters of the book, and I owe each a debt of gratitude. Paul Cartledge, Averil Cameron, Christopher Tyerman, Marek Jankowiak, Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Lisa Jardine, Mary Laven, Seena Fazel, Colin Greenwood, Anthony McGowan and Nicholas Windsor all read sections of this book, and made helpful and incisive comments that helped make it better than it otherwise would have been. I am thankful to Angela McLean for pointing me towards the latest research on plague and the spread of infectious disease in Central Asia.
In recent years, history books have tended to focus on increasingly narrow subject matter over ever shortening timeframes; I am thrilled that Bloomsbury and Knopf were keen to provide a home for an ambitious book that spans centuries, continents and cultures. My editor Michael Fishwick has been a pillar of support from the outset, urging me to cast my horizons wide, and then waiting patiently as I did so. His good humour, sharp eye and unswervi
ng backing were as reliable as they were invaluable. I am grateful too to Andrew Miller at Knopf for astute observations, questions and ideas that were both helpful and well-timed.
There are many at Bloomsbury that I should thank. Anna Simpson played the role of circus master with exemplary charm, ensuring everything was in the right place and in good order – from typeface to maps, from images to pagination – to turn a computer document into a beautiful real-life book. Peter James worked through the manuscript more than once and made elegant suggestions on how and where the book could be improved; his good judgement was much appreciated. Catherine Best did a wonderful job as the proofreader, picking up problems that I had never even noticed, while David Atkinson heroically produced the index. The maps were made by Martin Lubikowski, whose skill was matched by his patience, while Phil Beresford helped bring all the lovely images together. Emma Ewbank is responsible for a jacket design that is simply stunning. I am grateful to Jude Drake and Helen Flood for helping to encourage people to read what I have written.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude, however, to Catherine Clarke who, over lunch in Oxford several years ago, told me she thought I might be able to pull multiple strands together in a single work, something I found dubious at the time. Those doubts re-appeared often while I was writing, usually late at night; I am grateful for her advice, support and encouragement, as I am to the tireless Zoe Pagnamenta, my champion in New York. Chloe Campbell was my guardian angel, reading all the chapters of the draft, and ironing out niggles and bad habits gracefully and diplomatically.
My parents like to remind me that they taught me to walk and talk. It was they who gave me my prized map of the world when I was a boy and allowed me to put it on my bedroom wall (though they never gave me permission to use of sticky tape, nor to paste Star Wars stickers on the open oceans). They taught me to think for myself and to challenge what I heard and read. My siblings are I were lucky to be brought up in a household where a multitude of languages could be heard at the dinner table, and where we were expected to follow the conversation and chip in. The lesson of learning to understand what other people said, but also to work out what they really meant, has proved invaluable. I am thankful to my brothers and sisters, my best friends since the nursery, for setting high standards and for being my toughest critics; they are the only people I know who think studying the past is easy.
My wife Jessica has been alongside me for twenty five years, inspiring me since we were earnest undergraduates together, when we debated the meaning of life, talked about the importance of tribal peoples and danced in the cellars of the Cambridge colleges. I have to pinch myself every day how lucky I am. The Silk Roads could not have been written without her.
But this book is dedicated to our four children, who have watched, listened and asked increasingly good questions as I emerged from my study, or re-appeared from air-conditioned or exotic archives to ponder the problem of the day. Katarina, Flora, Francis and Luke: you are my pride and joy. Now the book is finished, I can finally play with you in the garden for as long as you like.
INDEX
Ābādān, here, here, here, here, here, here
Abbās Mīrzā, Prince, here
Abbās, Shah, here
Abbasid caliphate, here, here, here, here, here
Abd al-Ilha, Crown Prince, here
Abd al-Malik, Caliph, here
Abdullāh, King (of Jordan), here
Aberdeen, Lord, here
Abivard, here
Abraham, here, here, here, here
Abrams, Elliott, here
Abu Abbas, here
Abwehr, here
Aceh, here
Achaemenid empire, here
Acheson, Dean, here
Acre, here, here, here, here, here, here
Adelard of Bath, here
Aden, here, here
Adenystrae, here
adhān, here
Aeschylus, here
Afghan Wars, here, here
Afghanistan
bi-tarafi policy, here
and Cold War, here, here, here, here
and defeat of al-Qaida, here
defence of, here, here
and Northern Distribution Network, here
poppy cultivation, here
Soviet invasion, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
US-led invasion, here, here
US support for insurgents, here, here
Afrika Korps, here
Agathias, here, here
Agra, here
Amad Sanjar, Sultan, here
Ai Khanoum, Delphic maxims at, here
AK-74 assault rifles, here
Akbar I, Emperor, here, here
al-Afghānī, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn, here
Alans, here
Alaric the Goth, here
Alaska, here, here, here
Albright, Madeleine, here
Albuquerque, Alfonso de, here
Aleppo, here, here, here
Alexander the Great, here, here, here, here
Alexander I, Tsar, here
Alexander II, Tsar, here
Alexander III, Tsar, here
Alexandretta, here
Alexandria, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and European economic development, here
rise of, here
and spice trade, here
Alexandria ad Caucasum, see Bagram
Alexandria in Arachosia, see Kandahar
Alexandria in Aria, see Herat
Alexios I, Emperor, here, here, here
Algeria, here
Ali (cousin of the Prophet), here
Aligrodo, James, here
Aliyev, Ilham, here
Allenby, General Edmund, here
Almaty, here
Almeida, Francisco de, here
aloe wood, here
Alp Arslan (Seljuk ruler), here
Alsace-Lorraine, here
Amalfi, here, here, here, here, here
Amanullah, King (of Afghanistan), here, here
amber, here, here
ambergris, here
American War of Independence, here
Amery, Leopold, here
Amin, Hafizullah, here
amphorae, Roman, here
amputation, as punishment for theft, here
Amsterdam, rise of, here, here, here
An Lushan (Sogdian general), here
Andropov, Yuri, here
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, here, here, here, here
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, here, here, here, here, here
Anglo-Russian Convention, here
Anna Komnene, here
Annals of St Bertin, here
Antioch, here, here, here, here, here, here
anti-Semitism, here, here, here, here, here, here
Antwerp, rise of, here
Anzac Corps, here
Aphrahat, abbot, here
Apollo, cult of, here, here
Aq Saray palace, here
Aqaba (Mongol warlord), here
Aqaba, Crusader attack on, here
Aquinas, Thomas, here
Arab nationalism, rise of, here
Arab pirates, here, here
Arab–Israeli War (1948), here
Arak, here
Aramaic, here, here, here, here, here, here
Araya peninsula, here
Ardashīr I, King (of Persia), here
Arguim, here
Aristotle, here, here, here
Ark of the Covenant, here
Armenian church, and Mongol threat, here
Armenian traders, here, here, here
Arsaces (Persian ruler), here
Arsuf, here
Artaxerxes, King (of Persia), here
asceticism, here, here
Ashgabat, here, here
Ashmolean Museum, here
Ashoka, Emperor, here, here
al-Askarī, Jafar, here
al-Assad, Hafez, here
<
br /> Assarsson, Vilhelm, here
Astana, here, here
astronomy, here, here
Aswan dam, here
Athens, here, here, here
Atil, here, here, here, here
atomic bombs, here
Atoms for Peace programme, here
Attila the Hun, here
Auchinleck, General Claude, here
Augustus, Emperor, here, here, here
Auschwitz, here
Avars, here, here
Avaza tourist region, here
Awrangzīb, Emperor, here
‘axis of evil’, here
Axum, kingdom of, here
Ayas, here, here
Ayla, here
Ayn Jālūt, battle of, here
Aziz, Tariq, here
Azores, here, here
Aztecs, here, here
Bābur, Emperor, here, here
Babylon, here, here, here, here
Backe, Herbert, here, here, here
Bactra, here
Bactrian camels, here
Badr, battle of, here
Badr offensive, here
Baeza, Pedro, here
Bāgh-i Naqsh-i Jahān, here
Bāgh-i Wafa, here
Baghdad
architectural transformation, here
assassinations and Qasim coup, here
British occupation, here, here, here, here
expansion of textile industry, here
founding and rise of, here, here, here
Gertrude Bell dinner in, here
indifference to Crusades, here
loss of authority, here
Rumsfeld visits, here
sack of, here
Seljuk conquest of, here
and slave trade, here, here
Viking Rus’ and, here
Baghdad Pact, here
Bagram, here, here
Baha’i faith, here
Bahrain, here, here, here, here
Baikonur Kosmodrome, here
Baker, James, here
Baker, Matthew, here
Bakhtiar, Shapur, here
Baku, here, here, here, here, here
oilfields, here, here, here
Al-Balādhurī, here
Balalyk-tepe, here
Balāsāghūn, here, here
Baldwin I, king of Jerusalem, here
Baldwin II, king of Jerusalem, here
Balfour, Arthur, here, here
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Page 84
