The New Silk Roads
The Present and Future of the World
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
From the internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads: everything you need to know about the present and future of the world
'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' Evening Standard
'Frankopan is a brilliant guide to terra incognita' The Times
Peter Frankopan's highly anticipated follow-up to the 'Book of the Decade', The New Silk Roads takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today.
The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.
Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In this prescient contemporary history, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west.
This important – and ultimately hopeful – book asks us to reread who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The dawning "Asian century" will orbit an axis stretching from China to the Mediterranean, according to this sweeping but underwhelming primer on globalization. Updating his history The Silk Roads, which identified Western-ish Asia as history's motor, Frankopan, professor of global history at Oxford, surveys the present-day burgeoning of trade, construction, and economic relationships knitting Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Central Asian "stans," and the Middle East with China, Russia, and India. The book is mainly about China's rise as its "Belt and Road" initiative funds trillions of dollars of transport and energy infrastructure across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to facilitate trade, gain access to resources, and win geopolitical influence. Counterposed to Chinese dynamism is Frankopan's portrait of a divided, inward-looking Europe and an erratic, isolationist United States under Donald Trump he summarizes Trump's foreign policy message as " We're America, Bitch' " in an increasingly "irrelevant" West. He does note that Silk Road nations still suffer from corrupt, repressive governments, economic instability, and ethnic and military tensions. There's not much new in Frankopan's observations on Asian economic developments, and they probably won't convince doubters that the region's coalescence matters much to a rich, self-sufficient country such as America. The result is a weak brief for a globalist vision that doesn't quite connect the dots.
