China and the Silk Road

Envoys, traders, missionaries, and adventurers had been using the Silk Road since ancient times. On this overland route, they crossed threatening deserts like the Taklamakan, traversed towering mountain ranges like the Pamir, and spent time in bustling oasis towns like Bukhara, Samarkand, and Turpan. Testament to this are innumerable archaeological findings that have only been analyzed in recent decades. Thomas O. Höllmann utilizes these findings together with historiographical sources, gripping travel accounts, and vivid poems to reconstruct which goods made their way to China, how Buddhism and other religions were received in the Middle Kingdom, and why it was from there that key technologies, above all paper and the printing press, embarked upon their march of victory across the entire world. His book traces the economic foundations, political motives, and cultural conditions of this exchange and paints a fascinating picture of what globalization meant for a period of around two thousand years.