The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes
The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia and Han China

This basically a follow-on to McLaughlin's study of trade across the Indian Ocean. Despite being almost the same size, it feels like an appendix to it. Whereas his former book spent a lot of time giving specifics of particular trade goods and where Romans were going to get them and trying to get an i......more

A good, somewhat factual introduction to the Silk Routes and the various empires that acted as an intermediary between the Roman and Chinese empires. Although both empires were aware of each others existence, there was no direct contact, not in the last place because intermediate empires such as the......more

An overview of the political situations and other factors playing into the trade between China and Rome. Chinese techniques for steel were superior, for instance, but because Rome was used to different places having better or worse steel according to their ore, Romans assumed it was just better mater......more

Read this while researching my next book, Ends of the Earth. Covers a lot of the early history of central Asia that few people know about and does it in a very readable way.......more

A difficult read. I suspect if you did not have a strong command of geography and history already this book would be almost meaningless. No obvious narrative thread. The pattern of jumping around in time means that it is difficult to track where each of the described groups was in relative developme......more