Silk Roads, Old and New?
Belt and Road has created a new terminology of “old” and “new”. But if the idea of the Silk Road was invented in the diary of a German geologist in the 1870s, we might ask whether it dates back two thousand years, or a mere 150?
The Silk Road has become one of the most compelling geocultural forms of the modern era. As a depiction of antiquity and early globalization, the Silk Road story takes on different forms in different countries, and through the interpretation, or indeed imagination, of different authors. Over the course of the twentieth century, an aura of romance and enigma developed around the Silk Road: a grand narrative of trade routes across Asia, and between the East and the West; of camel caravans crossing desert and mountain; and of languages, religions and cultures in dialogue. In what has become the default, pocket history, it is now commonly stated that the term Seidenstrasse was coined in 1877 by the German geologist and baron, Ferdinand von Richthofen. The Silk Road’s path towards global fame, a process which only really began in the 1990s, is, however, far more complex than such a simple account suggests.
In the West, the Silk Road began to enter the public imagination in the 1930s, some five decades after Richthofen used the term to describe trade routes between Han dynasty China and the Roman Empire as part of his account of time spent surveying Central Asia for a trans-continental rail line. In the intervening decades other scholars and explorers from Europe and Japan built on the themes first glimpsed by Richthofen by gathering manuscripts, artifacts and artworks; the evidence of an extensive history of trade in ideas, technologies, goods and commodities and of a dialogue across cultures spanning centuries.
World War I, together with the ideological shifts towards history created by revolutions in Russia and the creation of the Soviet Union, brought to an end such lines of scholarship. But as the mythology around a mysterious, exotic Silk Road began to take hold in the 1930s, in part through the popularization of Marco Polo, its allure centered around ideas of exchange, dialogue, openness, and the enrichment - economic and cultural - that comes from trading across borders and across cultures. The Second World War, together with the geopolitical and geocultural cleavages of the Cold War meant such a story of transcontinental connectivity held little currency in the West. For decades, Central Asia was also inaccessible to Western journalists and researchers.
Despite this, in the aftermath of WWII the core themes of the Silk Road narrative began to take on a new political resonance. For those in Japan committed to rebuilding ties with neighboring Asian countries and with Europe it offered a valuable way to demonstrate Japan’s deep historical and cultural ties. Chapter 2 of Geocultural Power tells this story of how the Silk Road emerged in the post-war decades as a totem for peace diplomacy and international cooperation, citing examples of Sino-Japanese media collaborations, grand Silk Road exhibitions and scholarly collaborations with UNESCO.
Events at the end of the Cold War cemented the Silk Road’s association with diplomacy and peace, in part through UNESCO’s efforts to foster inter-national and inter-cultural dialogue. As the pages here illustrate, the organization led a ten year multilateral program, unprecedented in scale and scope, titled Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue. Few areas of the world were left unaffected by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and as walls and curtains were consigned to history the political maps of Europe and Asia needed to be redrawn; a set of transitions that demanded new ways of thinking about East and West. As analysts sought to make sense of momentous change, globalization needed its own history, one that was transregional and oriented around flows and networks. And as the language of “thawed” relations in a post Cold War world became increasingly tired, fresh metaphors capable of making sense of the new realities were required. The Silk Road: a “history” of internationalism, peaceful trade and exchange, and the cultural enrichment that comes from civilizations in dialogue, had found its (geo)political moment.
Over the 2000s, and in the wake of 9/11, the diplomatic currency of the Silk Road - both as a geocultural and geo-strategic concept for foreign policy - continued to grow, with Central Asia once again becoming the “cockpit” of international affairs. China, Japan, South Korea and United States have all conjured up foreign policy strategies for the region around variations of a ‘new’ or ‘iron’ Silk Road.
Today, Belt and Road continues this trajectory, and explicitly frames foreign policy ambition around Silk Road exchange, dialogue, trade and enrichment, and their post World War II associations with peace, harmony, and diplomacy. Since 2013 this has become the paradigm of BRI diplomatic discourse, lubricating bilateral partnerships and multilateral alliances. But their effect can be felt far beyond political speeches and colorful ceremonies.
The pages here supplement the analysis of the book, which shows how the Silk Roads permeate the public imagination and political culture of Belt and Road partner countries, and, perhaps most importantly, at home in China. They provide the all-important strategic narrative for China’s growing presence in international affairs and the sense that the country is “reviving” its place as the “Middle Kingdom” in global affairs.
