Stewart Gordon (1)Recensioni

A very interesting concept. I enjoyed this way of interpreting things. I liked it best when the thread stayed closest to the actual wreck rather than veering off too far afield

I think there are better books on this subject. Try A Splendid Exchange by William Bernstein.

It was reassuring to see that Xians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists agreed that travel is a necessary part of becoming an educated person.

Shira Destinie
MEOW Date: Saturday, June 9. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

Intersting view slices of mid-far east history

It was reassuring to see that Xians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists agreed that travel is a necessary part of becoming an educated person.

Shira Destinie
MEOW Date: Saturday, June 9. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

This is an enjoyable read for all fans of nautical history. Having said that, it perhaps should have had a different title, for the present one is misleading. The title should have at least been modified by a more appropriate subtitle. It is not actually about sixteen shipwrecks, but more about the development of shipping methods and design. Many of the ships discussed were not actually wrecked. That might put off disaster buffs, but still worth a read.

At parts I really liked this book but then it would get really slow and boring. When Gordon is talking about the history of the ship and the world that made it is is very interesting. But he gets into the all the little details about measurements that gets boring quickly. The title is a little misleading. It is about the ships that changed the way that we build ships and how they changed the world but not all of them were wrecked. In fact the first ship discussed was a funeral boat that was never meant to sail at all.The notes are just more details that did not really add to the overall narrative. The history of ships and maritime culture was good and interesting but Gordon has so much going on in this book at times it just gets too cluttered.

Ii give this book a Three out of Five stars.

A fascinating concept and a very enjoyable book although I felt the 20th century a little short changed and disappointed me. Bu this is very readable and its insights were illuminating. It's interesting reading the ancient parts, substantially BCE and just after, how interconnected and 'global', at least as far as trade went, the world was.½

This is an interesting theme for a romp through history, from ancient times to modern day. A discovered shipwreck kicks off each chapter, which then goes on to discuss maritime life -- commercial or warfare and the significance of that particular ship in the society which created it. Gordon takes us from ancient dug-out canoes to ornate Egyptian barges, Viking longboats, Hanseatic cogs, Nelson's own HMS Victory, the Exxon Valdez and others. Each chapter covers what we know of events surrounding that particular find (if applicable, some of the earlier ships are more representative of culture than attached to a specific event) and puts the ship wreck into historical context of the time. In some cases, specifics of the ship in question are merely a jumping point to a broader discussion of the period.

My only complaint was it's a little short -- all good stuff, I just wanted more! 20 ships, 30 -- maybe a second volume. There's certainly enough material.½

When A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks by Stewart Gordon showed up in my early reviewers program, I eagerly bid on it because the title at once conjured up for me Uluburun, the spectacular Bronze Age Mediterranean shipwreck that revealed to underwater archaeologists a long lost era of ancient international trade that contained vast numbers of artifacts of widespread provenance, including Mycenaean, Syro-Palestinian, Cypriot, Egyptian, Kassite and Assyrian. Thus, I imagined sixteen snapshots like that, each focused upon a single shipwreck that would communicate the significance of a historical period through its contents.
It turned out that was not quite the case. There are indeed sixteen chapters and each one is technically devoted to a ship, although in fact some of these are not actually shipwrecks at all. The first chapter, for instance, focuses upon the Dufuna Dugout, a remarkably preserved dugout canoe from Africa that dates back at least eight thousand years. Much of the narrative explores the history of dugouts over the following centuries, rather than the culture that produced Dufuna. The next one is also not a shipwreck, but the Khufu Barge, a ceremonial buried boat excavated near the base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which serves to spark a discussion of trade in the ancient world that is only peripherally related to the boat in this burial.
I was pleased to find the next chapter actually devoted to Uluburun itself, and it is arguably one of the best portions of the book – or maybe I just feel that way because it corresponds more closely with my interests. I am fairly deeply read in Uluburun, but to Gordon’s credit his treatment manages to reveal elements that were entirely new to me, such as the incredible story of the mouse trapped in a food storage jar whose DNA was extracted some 3400 hundred years later to determine its provenance in Ugarit in north coastal Syria! I often champion the marriage of history and technology: perhaps nothing better captures its essence and potential than this. Gordon goes on to describe other components of the cargo and how scientific analyses determined their respective source geographies. He also explores the surprisingly interconnected ancient world of trade among Hittites, Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and others in the era prior to the mysterious collapse of Bronze Age civilizations circa 1150 BCE.
Regrettably, the Uluburun chapter is hardly typical of the rest of the book. While the volume does contain other wrecks with cargo, such as the Intan (circa 1000 CE), with some exceptions many of the subjects under discussion lack tangible remains and are utilized primarily as examples of ships in service at the time. The chapter that follows Uluburun, for example, is devoted to another ship burial, this one the sixth century CE Sutton Hoo in England. What becomes clear is that Gordon’s book is less a history of the world told through shipwrecks than a nautical history of select vessels that he has chosen to study and write about. The ancient world is strangely underrepresented: some two millennia separate Uluburun from Sutton Hoo. Conspicuous in its absence, for instance, is a full chapter devoted to the famous trireme that so dominated the ancient Greek world, or any of the various warships that comprised the Roman imperial fleet. (The trireme does receive some oddly placed peripheral attention in a later discussion of Barbary war galleys, but it certainly merits much more.) We have no surviving triremes, so the omission of these and other ancient boats with no physical remains would make sense if the book was limited to actual physical wrecks with artifacts, but it is not.
To his credit, Gordon is a fine writer and much of his narrative is clearly a labor of love of all things nautical. The non-initiated, such as myself, will appreciate his detailed descriptions of how boats and their component parts function on a body of water. Also, the book is well-documented with a thick sheaf of notes at the end and plenty of illustrations, although a certain lack of maps. More than half of the volume is focused upon the last five centuries, right up to the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster. Each chapter stands alone and while arranged chronologically do not need to be read sequentially. Some are more stimulating than others, but I suspect that is less due to Gordon’s talents than the interests of the reader. One of my favorites, for instance, was the one devoted to Lucy Walker, the steamboat that exploded and sank on the Ohio River in 1844, which fit neatly into my studies of antebellum American history.
The chief problem with the book, as I see it, is entirely thematic: it seems that each chapter would make a fine article for a magazine, but there is almost nothing that connects one to the other as part of a larger narrative. Even the title is unwieldy as an effort to unite the respective essays in a common thread, since as I have noted earlier, many of the boats are not actually shipwrecks. I suspect Gordon himself was aware of this flaw: neither the “Introduction” nor the “Conclusion” – each only about two and half pages in length – convincingly explain why these studies of the sixteen selected ships belong together in one volume. I would nevertheless recommend A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks to students of nautical history, with the caveat that the component segments arguably are of greater value than the sum of these parts.½

A very interesting premise for a book but the title is a bit of a misnomer. It's not so much 16 shipwrecks as much as the impact of 16 types of vessels on the economic times in which they were used. That doesn't detract from how interesting the individual stories were. Each chapter does detail a shipwreck from the completely unknown - a dugout canoe, to the infamous - the Exxon Valdez.

The book is easy to read and it's one of those book that you can easily read a chapter here and a chapter there in between other books. It's not one you have to read all at once. It's easy to read and the writing is well informed and very interesting.

It is helpful to have a basic knowledge of boating terms which I did since my hubby is a sailor. Otherwise if you are not familiar have your dictionary or app handy. But it's a very interesting read.

A lovely, surprising book exploring some not-so-famous shipwrecks throughout history. As a maritime history buff, it is rare to find a book that doesn't cover the same few notorious wrecks. The author chose ships that are interesting and discusses their impact on the "world" at that time.

I truly enjoyed this book.

Shipwrecks are tragic, but have been a part of human history since we started making ships. There are an estimated three million ships sitting on the bottom of the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers of the world. Of that staggering number, Stewart Gordon picked sixteen to tell the story of human history.

A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks does not tell the story of the most famous wrecks. From the cover, you may think the Titanic makes the list. It does not. There are a few shipwrecks that you will recognize, but most you will not. The book explores how small local maritime travels merged into larger and larger networks of human activity. Technology and finance are the main driving forces.

The one oversight I think is missing from the collection is a container ship. The use of containers and the ships that carry them are main driving force for international commerce. China would not be the global behemoth it has become, if not for the cheap, easy shipping through container ships.

Regardless, the book is well-written and enjoyable to read. Although I was skeptical of the premise, Mr. Gordon does a remarkable job of putting large swaths of history into focus through these sixteen shipwrecks.

The publisher provided a copy of the book for me to review.

After reading the first three chapters of Stewart Gordon's A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks word for word, and feeling bogged down and mostly uninterested, I decided to skim the rest of the book, stopping only for what seemed interesting. That's when I started to enjoy the book, reading large chunks of each chapter, but moving along without guilt when I felt like it. The two chapters that were standouts for me were chapter nine about galleys, which incorporated the use of a memoir by a British galley slave, and chapter twelve about steamships, incorporating information about travel on the Mississippi River, something that has been glamorized in song and movies and books, but really was quite dangerous. The steamship chapter also talked about the formation of the postal system in the U.S.

I ended up learning quite a bit about history, transportation, trade, and Kublai Khan's fleet and attempts to conquer Japan. The least interesting chapter to me was about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, probably because I'd already heard so much and read so much about it.

Once I figured out how to approach this book, I liked it quite a bit.½

This is a very interesting book for the maritime historian, but some readers will find the title misleading. When most of us think of a "shipwreck," we conjure up a dramatic scene of a vessel going down at the hands of an angry sea, an act of war, or some other calamity. Yet, four of the first eight chapters of this book are about ancient vessels that were excavated and were not shipwrecks in the common understanding of the word. Heck, they're not even "ships;" one is a dugout canoe. This is confusing because, in the Introduction, Gordon says, "Rather, each chapter begins with the wrenching tragedy of the wreck and the excitement of the find, then moves to the design of the ship and wider questions." Oh, that this were so.

Also, one should not expect the shipwreck itself to be a pivotal moment in history. Instead, Gordon uses the shipwreck as a jumping off point. He uses the TYPES of water-going vessels he profiles to discuss the significance of that vessel's place in the socioeconomic scheme of things and the adaptation of humans to maritime travel.

Chapter 11 is a good example of this approach. Chapter 11 is all about the loss of the HMS Victory, which we learn went down in a storm in 1744, losing all hands (more than one thousand men). No evidence of the fate of the ship was found until 2008. Although the Victory was returning from breaking a French blockade at Gibraltar, it was not engaged in combat at the time of its loss. There was nothing historically significant about the sinking of the Victory. Rather, Gordon uses the sinking of the Victory to talk about the importance of that TYPE of ship (i.e., ships of the line) in British naval history and global maritime trade. This is indeed interesting, but may not be what the reader expected.

This book is well suited to the reader who is knowledgeable about boats in general. A familiarity with nautical terms (freeboard, keel, rudder, hogging, and various rigging configurations, for example) is helpful. Gordon's writing style is crisp and direct. He draws the lines from the shipwreck in question to the historical significance of the ship itself or its design in a clean, workmanlike fashion.

Personally, I am a sailor, familiar with nautical terms and have read a lot of books on nautical subjects. I supposed I hoped the wrecks in this book would 1) be actual shipwrecks and that 2) the wrecks would have historical significance. A reader knowing this in advance will be prepared to enjoy this as more of a treatise on maritime history and how it impacted world trade and economics.

The author has selected an interesting and novel approach to the study of world history. Rather than following one crisis after another or the biographies of ‘Great Men’, Gordon has selected ship wrecks as a common focus to fill in the gaps often left by traditional historians. This does not give a natural flow of history—no one wreck leads to another, but it provides a subject matter thread through the times. In addition to giving the historical context of the ship wreck, it provides an opportunity to describe the natural evolution of naval architecture as well as the economic impact of seaborne commerce through the ages. The result is a picture of history from a totally different perspective. In no way does the book displace conventional histories but, for the lover of history, it augments those sources and adds a nautical and welcome flavor. The subject matters range from a 6000 BCE dugout canoe to the 2012 capsizing of the Costa Concordia including Viking Longboats and Spanish Galleons.
It is pretty apparent that Gordon has a great love of sailing ships. His technical knowledge of masts, spars, jibs, sails and all other accoutrements and trappings of vessels of that sort is evident. Unfortunately, he gets a little too technical for land lubbers like me but that does not measurably detract from the book’s worth.
Overall: Entertaining and well worth the read.

This book is an interesting twist on the idea of explaining history through a specific set of artifacts. As a kid, I had a major obsession with the lost great liners, so this sounded right up my alley. You won’t find a lot of the well-known shipwrecks here, like Titanic or Bismarck. The author covers a wide range of vessels, from a dug-out canoe, to the Lusitania.
Each chapter in the book focuses on a certain ship, or group of ships, and discusses why it was historically important. The author does work in a lot of history (and naval engineering) in each chapter. Some chapters seemed to barely discuss the wrecks before moving on to politics or some other vein of history, so don’t read this if you are looking for information on historically important wrecks. The author does have to reach to draw connections, especially with some of the ancient wrecks. For example, he takes the wreck of an unknown ancient trade ship, and turns that into a discussion of all ancient trade. Some of the history can be pretty dry, but parts of it were interesting. It wasn’t bad, but I did struggle to get through the whole book.
This would be a good choice for a naval enthusiast. History fans may enjoy this unique twist on the subject.

C'mon, dropping a few names never hurt anyone.

That's my biggest single nitpick with what is otherwise an interesting and engaging book. It never names names. For example, on pp. 147-148, it tells us that, some time around 1740, the French built a ship that shook up the then-ossified field of naval shipbuilding. But it doesn't tell us the name of the ship, or the year!

Then, too, caution should be exercised about the title. It involves sixteen ships, none of them still in service, and all of the hulls located. But they didn't all sink, which is how I would define a wreck. The Sutton Hoo ship, for instance, was deliberately buried. So too the Khufu Barge. It's not clear that either of those two ever sailed. The Dufuna Dugout did, but it's not clear that it was wrecked, either.

And -- let's face it -- the book bites off a lot. The entire history of the world told in naval terms? That's too much to try to fit into too small a compass. That may be why author Gordon tried to leave out details like people's names -- it saved a little space. But it saved space at the cost of making it impossible to go look up additional information, and it cost the book its human touch. Plus it perhaps made it harder to spot errors, because most of the time, we look up errors by looking up people, not shipfittings!

And there are some errors -- e.g. (p. 115) Constantine the Great did not found the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. Constantine was the Roman Emperor. Period. It's just that he moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and Constantinople was the city the Byzantine Empire revolved around. Thus, without Constantine, there probably would have been no Byzantine Empire as we now know it. But to say he founded it is about like saying William of Orange (who died 1702 C.E.) founded the United States of America.

And even if even you are willing to confine your history to Maritime history, there is a lot that is missing here. The development of steam, and of iron ships, is covered only after the fact (it's astounding, e.g., to note that the U. S. S. Monitor, a ship that is historic and whose wreck has been located, didn't get in here). So there are limits to this book.

The flip side is, it's a pretty good read, and you can learn a lot about maritime technology. And it does cover a tremendous amount of history -- it's just that it covers it from a limited viewpoint pertaining to ships, commerce, and the related technology. I feel as if I'd like about four more books on this subject. In their absence, I feel like this one isn't really an ideal introduction. But you have to start somewhere!½

The author here adopts as his interpretive lens shipwrecks. There have been some striking examples of shipwrecks throughout history and he addresses all the important ones. The question is more a matter of historiography. How much do shipwrecks really explain and can the author extrapolate meaningful history from them? He is not totally successful in doing so. Nonetheless, the volume is interesting as a casual read and to dip into certain chapters that attract the reader. It is not a history per se but the world history of ships can be grasped from this survey.

It was reassuring to see that Xians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists agreed that travel is a necessary part of becoming an educated person.

Shira Destinie
MEOW Date: Saturday, June 9. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

This is a concise little history of travel and exploration in Asia from 500 A.D. to 1500 A. D.. The focus is on the (usually) congruent spread of trade, knowledge, and religion.

It seemed to hit on all the major points and seemed to be well-researched without being ponderous or pedantic.

I found it very readable and enjoyable.

An enjoyable and easy to read overview of aspects of Asia's infrastructure, particularly as related to travel, trade, and customs, from about 500-1500 CE. The first 9 chapters (with one exception) follow a similar format, with material from a traveler's memoir used as a starting point for Gordon's elaboration about the era and circumstances in which each writer lived. The 10th chapter provides a useful summary and brings in slightly more theoretical material from social network theory. Gordon provides good end notes and an interesting bibliography. My only complaint is the lack of women's voices. While I recognize that there may not have been memoirs by women that met Gordon's purposes, this should be named in the introduction or concluding chapter. Otherwise one is left with a vision of the expansiveness of men's opportunities with no balance of descriptions of women's restricted possibilities in the period covered. Women's lack of access to larger social networks because of their lack of status seems important to name, and Gordon does not do so. Women lurk at the edges of this narrative as wives (both cherished and deserted), daughters, and prostitutes. There is no entry under "women" in the index. The omission of even a contextualizing note mars Gordon's otherwise very enjoyable and interesting work.

Not only was the book fascinating, but Mr. Gordon was a terrific lecturer as well.

During the "dark" and Middle Ages in Europe, the Middle East and Asia had a thriving trade economy--people from various kingdoms and regions sailed the coastal seas and took caravans along the Silk Road to trade. But travel was not just limited to trade. Buddhist monks, warriors and Muslim legal experts traversed great distances on camel, on horse, by ship, on foot in order access information, participate in court rituals, conquer lands and obtain loot, and to interact with a world that, although not as "small" as our modern, high-speed globe, was just as lively in its own right.

Each of the nine chapters covers the life and travels of a particular individual starting circa 500 CE with Xuanzang and finishing up with on of the first Europeans to "infiltrate" Asia. What becomes very apparent is that the Middle East, Northern Africa, India, Central and Far Eastern Asia were not "compartments" isolated within themselves. Rather these areas flourished with learning, culture, trade, and innovation of the like that Europe would not experience until the Renaissance.

When the first Europeans managed to "discover" routes to these lands, the treated the citizens with superstition, disdain and arrogance--in general, Asian kingdoms tolerated Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and other local religious affiliations, as well as a variety of ideas and practices. Loyalties were to one's family and trade partners, and trade was conducted outside of the political realm. Rulers tended to abstain from meddling in the affairs of the local populations as long as taxes were paid. Yet, Europeans brought with them a different kind of "loyalty"; one must be Christian, "white" and subservient to one of the national monarchs--trade was conducted in the name of the king, and all transactions were for his benefit. The legacy of the Crusades biased Europeans against Muslims and Arabic peoples in general, and many of the first fleets sent for trade did so under threat of warfare or conquest. The motif reminds me of the three-year old that comes into a room of adults having a civilized conversation. Suddenly all the attention must focus on the child lest the child have a tantrum.

What happened to Europeans (and later Americans) to make them so uncivilized?

Really enjoying this travel journal series at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, as well as reading these books. Much more inspirational than the weighty philosophical and political tomes I've been plodding through lately, but by far more meaty than YAL. Nice change of pace.

Biographies from previous Asian Centuries

When Asia Was The World contains 8 somewhat uneven Asian biographies from the T'ang to the late Ming dynasty plus one description of a shipwreck. The book uses "social network theory", as well as "Per Otnes' theory" that the primary human unit is not the individual alone but a relationship between two people connected by a material object (page 193). These are not theories that I was familiar with, or that got a lot of explanation on Wikipedia. The book is a pleasant read however. Given its bottom-up approach it is probably best read together with a book like K.N. Chaudhuri’s Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean .

The distribution of products plays a role in the various biographies, because the people documented in the book were often involved in trade or exchanged gifts. On the other hand, they were all part of elites, and we learn little about the life or the changes in life of the common man. Equally, the exchange of ideas seems somewhat more limited than reality. The book documents an exchange between the Muslim world and Europe (ancient Europe to the Middle East, and then back from the Middle East to Medieval Europe) and particularly within the Muslim world, but the influence of India on the world of Islam gets little attention. Additionally, there was also a stream from India to China, and Southeast Asia accepted ideas and goods from everywhere. Why the exchange was so limited is unfortunately not the subject of this book.

The Buddhist monk Xuangzang had learned Buddhism from various teachers and found that they all followed their own schools and differed in doctrine. So he set off to India "to clear his doubts". He spent 14 years on the road travelling through the lands of various kings that all followed the same code of honour and gave silk robes to Xuangzang. The monk carried knowledge, relics, and medicinal plants back to China. Everywhere he went Buddhism flourished. Along the same chain of cities teachers, ritual objects, texts, medicines, ideas and trade moved to China. Nothing much is mentioned about what moved to India.

In the 10th century the caliph of Baghdad sent Ibn Fadlan, a midlevel courtier, to the Bulgars on the Volga to teach them Islam and subordinate them (voluntarily) to the caliph's rule. Ibn Fadlan left a memoir that reminisces one of an anthological study. Bringing silk robes, he travelled via Persia and Bukhara, and then on through the land of the unbelievers. A trader needed a local Turk as a sponsor and friend. However the Turk may lend him money if required, which he could pay back upon his return. The silver that was promised never arrived and the mission failed. This was a time of various religious worldviews competing for patronage and followers, and backsliding of converts was frequent in the connected steppe lands.

Every breakthrough in science in the ninth and tenth century was made in Asia, mainly at Muslim courts. Baghdad was the centre of translation tens of thousands of Greek and Latin books, done at first mainly by Jews, Nestorian Christians, and Zoroastrians. The combination with Indian mathematics led to important progress. In the arts this new knowledge was used in tile making. Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna, belonged to the rationalist Shiite minority in Bukhara. He received a thorough training in the classical arts and sciences. At 16 the brilliant boy treated the sick king and in turn was given the run of the local library. He started to write Neo-Platonist philosophy, using "wine, prayer, and directed dreaming to solve recalcitrant questions". As a rationalist Ibn Sina advocated the power of man's reason, including the relation of man to the Forms and to God. He also published on medicine, math, management and astronomy. Despite the rise of conservative Islamic empires around him, his works were familiar all the way to Spain where they were translated into Latin. Thomas Aquinas read and commented on his works. The Brit Adelard commented that

Hence it comes about that in the first climes [near the Equator], they say, the home of philosophers has its natural position. For there all seeds spring up spontaneously and the inhabitants always do the right thing and speak the truth.

The Intan is a shipwreck found in the Java Sea in 1996 that brought to light some 2,700 artefacts and lots of tin from Kedah in Malaysia. The shipwreck brought Indonesian and silver ingots, Chinese coins, a compass, ceramics from Zhejiang and the Middle East, Chinese mirrors, glass objects probably from Persia, Chinese iron objects, Buddha statues in the style of Eastern India, and Javanese moulds for Buddhist shrines. Buddhism in Southeast Asia mixed strongly with ancestor worship. The rivalry between Hinduism and Buddhism in the area matched that of Islam in the steppes further west. Skeletons of humans were found near the shipwreck, suggesting they were cargo, i.e. slaves. The origin of cargo was probably Palembang, the capital of Srivijaya, and was destined for Java.

Sleepy Mangalore on the Malabar coast was a community of Arabs, Gujarati, Tamils, Jews and others of less than 3,000 people that specialised in the spice trade (cardamom, coriander, ginger, turmeric, cloves nutmeg, etc). The spices were used across the Orient, all the way to Muslim Spain, both for flavouring and for medicine. Abraham Bin Yiju's correspondence, in Arabic in the Hebrew script, was kept in a Cairo synagogue, because it contained the word God, so it could not be disposed. The Tunis-born trader turned towards India, because enmity between Europe and the Middle East at this time of the Crusades made trade in his home country difficult. Trades like Bin Yiju did not trade directly with the Eastern boards of the Indian Ocean. The division probably reduced the risk of loss at sea due to shallows, weather and pirates. Differentiation and partnership further reduced risk (quite like the East India Companies would do in a different manner four centuries later). It seems the loss of reputation was a stronger bar than legal repercussions. Gifts and other items were sent both ways, including paper that was hardly produced in India. Guilds did not exist here as they did in Europe or, more or less, in China. Bin Yiju had two children with a local Nair slave woman that he later freed. He later left with his children but without his wife to Aden and the Yemen.

Ibn Battuta arrived in Delhi in 1332. He had used an elite-sponsored system of hostels on his way from his native Morocco, a system not unlike the one that Xuanzang had used. Serious study not just meant the hajj, but also learning from a variety of scholars and clerics in different cities and schools. Learned men could travel from Spain to the port cities of China, as law and religious teaching were equally applicable and equally desired across the whole Muslim world (page 106). However Ibn Battuta started to spent more time at the courts of kings and noble men. Presents were similar across Muslim, Christian and animist courts in Central Asia, turning Battuta into a connoisseur of horses and slave girls. Sufism had been on the rise since the fall of the Baghdad caliphate. Betel nuts made it to the courts of the Middle East and East Africa. Battuta taught kings about the political situation elsewhere and tried to learn "successful strategies, symbols and ceremonies, turning him into an early management guru. His entourage had grown to 40 people and over 1,000 horses by the time he reached Delhi. In Delhi he sought the sultan's employment, buying him over 55,000 dirhams of presents. The sultan hired him as one of the chief judges, which he remained for 9 years. He then left on a mission for the sultan to the emperor of China. He lost all gifts in a ship wreckage and it is debated if he actually made it to China, but he certainly stayed in the newly Islamic Maldives. Here he married four elite women, worked as a judge and railed against the women still going topless. He later returned to Baghdad and then to Morocco to spend his final years writing his memoirs in royal patronage.

Battuta saw a fleet of Chinese ships calling at the Malabar Coast, a quite recent phenomenon. The Chinese travelled with wives, concubines and African slaves. The later Ming emperors later sent magnificent fleets to Nanyang and the Indian Ocean. The Chinese Muslim Ma Huan recorded the 4th expedition of the Ming. He described local customs and products to supply and procure. They visited much of Southeast Asia before moving to Sri Lanka and India where they traded. Then they went on to the Arab peninsula. All the time Ma Huan searched for pattern and structure among unfamiliar beliefs and customs, with respect for what he encountered.

Babur was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, himself a son of a minor Mongol clan. He and his descendants conquered massive areas, which they sometimes depopulated (Bamian Valley, northern China). Baghdad's royal library was another victim. Babur himself conquered Samarkand, but lost it again soon after. Losing his land meant service to other relatives, at times commanding 100 troops and a chance to work his way up through battle and service. Armies were multi-ethnic, but based on a shared code of honour called "salt". The Khans also lost Babur's native fiefdom the Ferghana Valley. Babur had to flee with a few hundred followers to the trading town of Kabul. Alcohol, hashish, poetry and music were favourite pastimes in Kabul, but it would not stop him from conquering Delhi. He sent gold and silver back to his relatives in Kabul, Samarkand, Khurasan, Kashgar, and Iraq, as well as gifts to holy men in Mecca and Medina.

Tomé Pires was a Portuguese apothecary grown wealthy from trading spices in Cochin in India when the governor asked him for the first diplomatic mission to Beijing. The sea route the Portuguese found was more costly and more dangerous than the routes via the Middle East, but the Portuguese had advantages that were military (cannons) and organisational (king's support and bureaucratic loyalty) in character. Their strategy was more like Genghis Khan than like the Ming: based upon conquest it used taxes to make conquest pay for itself. In Malacca Tomé Pires wrote his Suma Oriental with the descriptions of the various ports in the region. As a child of the age of the Crusades, he always considered the Moors (Sunni Muslims) the enemy and heathen potential allies and converts. He never appreciated other loyalties and connected strength with the white race. The Chinese were white and heathens (he expected them to be like Germans), and he was sure that China would be an easy conquest. The Portuguese arrival in Canton was a riot of misunderstanding with the Portuguese giving no presents and hosting no banquets. When they arrived in Beijing a letter from the king of Malacca arrived and the Portuguese themselves refused subordination to the Son of Heaven. They claimed the protection of the king of Portugal was even valid in China. They were sent back to Canton, imprisoned and subsequently executed as robbers and pirates (likely but not certainly including Tomé Pires). The Portuguese had limited influence on intra-Asian trade, but set off an arms race. Portuguese soldiers did not profit from their country's business and drifted to the regional courts. The influence on Asian states was limited as port towns and trade were less important than agriculture.

Asian empires grew from regional centres and when they fell dissolved again. Administrative continuities generally promoted trade between ecologically different regions. The big states also produced widely used currencies and normalised weights and measures. Just like the national anthem and airline nowadays, the courts across Asia used broadly similar symbols like the umbrella, sunshade, fly whisk, drums, horns, and jewelled weapons. They also frequently organised postal systems for reliable communication. This situation allowed for trade between far flung areas like Africa and China (ivory). Islam and Buddhism required travelling and developed institutions for it, as well as standardised regulations (Sharia in the case of Islam). Neither religion dominated like Catholicism in Europe. Traders operated with little interference of local rulers. Trade helped the spread of religion as much as it helped medicine from the forests to empires far away.

The Europeans brought primary loyalty to their king and the mixture of trade and warfare to the equation. What made the Europeans strong was their belief in institutions rather than individuals. Contracts were in the name of kings or trading companies, armies could not be bribed and did not waver when the commander was killed on the battle field.

Well Thought out and easy to read Historical account of the Merchants, Monks and Scholars that traveled the Old "Silk Road" during the period from 500 to 1500. Maps and Illustrations and the outline form of this book makes for easy and interesting reading for the novice and scholar alike. Not too technical but a plethora of information from that time period regarding the subject matter.