The New Silk Road
International research project on the New Silk Road’s implications for higher education and research cooperation between China and Europe
The results of this project have been published as: China and Europe on the New Silk Road. Connecting Universities Across Eurasia . Edited by Marijk van der Wende, William C. Kirby, Nian Cai Liu, and Simon Marginson. Oxford University Press (2020).
The project was concluded on 4-5 November 2021 with a Final Conference: International Higher Education and Global Science: Europe-China relations in a Changing World Order. Click here for more information .
This research project focuses on China’s rise in global higher education. It aims to explore the possible implications of the New Silk Road (or China’s One Belt One Road policy) for higher education and research cooperation between China and Europe.
How will these new relationships affect European higher education and research? What types of academic flows and activities emerge along the New Silk Road? How do universities respond? Under which conditions are these activities taking place? Who defines these, and based on what values?
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On foot in the path of the silk road.
A walk through the birthplace of globalization
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The Silk Road, Old and New
Networks of goods, peoples, cultures, and trade stretch from China to the Mediterranean Basin. These “silk roads”—overland across Eurasia and through maritime routes across the Indian Ocean—have shaped empires, spread religions, and fueled global economies for millennia. Today, new silk roads, like China's Belt and Road Initiative, build on old and extend beyond their traditional reach, to Africa and beyond. How has the Silk Road influenced the modern global economy, politics, and world religions? How can the transregional lens of the “silk road” help us understand globalization, borders, and migration?
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By: History.com Editors
Updated: June 6, 2023 | Original: November 3, 2017
The Silk Road was a network of trade routes connecting China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe. Established when the Han Dynasty in China officially opened trade with the West in 130 B.C., the Silk Road routes remained in use until A.D. 1453, when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade with China and closed them. Although it’s been nearly 600 years since the Silk Road has been used for international trade, the routes had a lasting impact on commerce, culture and history that resonates even today.
The Silk Road may have formally opened up trade between the Far East and Europe during the Han Dynasty , which ruled China from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220 Han Emperor Wu sent imperial envoy Zhang Qian to make contact with cultures in Central Asia in 138 B.C., and his reports from his journeys conveyed valuable information about the people and lands that lay to the West. But the transport of goods and services along these routes dates back even further.
The Royal Road, which connected Susa (in present-day Iran) more than 1,600 miles west to Sardis (near the Mediterranean Sea in modern Turkey), was established by the Persian ruler Darius I during the Achaemenid Empire—some 300 years before the opening of the Silk Road.
The Persians also expanded the Royal Road to include smaller routes that connected Mesopotamia to the Indian subcontinent as well as northern Africa via Egypt.
Alexander the Great , ruler of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia , expanded his dominion into Persia via the Royal Road. Parts of the thoroughfare were ultimately incorporated into the Silk Road.
Silk Road History
The east-west trade routes between Greece and China began to open during the first and second centuries B.C. The Roman Empire and the Kushan Empire (which ruled territory in what is now northern India) also benefitted from the commerce created by the route along the Silk Road.
Interestingly, the ancient Greek word for China is “Seres,” which literally means “the land of silk.”
However, despite this obvious link to the name, the term “Silk Road” wasn’t coined until 1877, when German geographer and historian Ferdinand von Richthofen first used it to describe the trade routes.
Historians now prefer the term “Silk Routes,” which more accurately reflects the fact that there was more than one thoroughfare.
Silk Road to China
The Silk Road routes included a large network of strategically located trading posts, markets and thoroughfares designed to streamline the transport, exchange, distribution and storage of goods.
Routes extended from the Greco-Roman metropolis of Antioch across the Syrian Desert via Palmyra to Ctesiphon (the Parthian capital) and Seleucia on the Tigris River, a Mesopotamian city in modern-day Iraq.
From Seleucia, routes passed eastward over the Zagros Mountains to the cities of Ecbatana (Iran) and Merv (Turkmenistan), from which additional routes traversed to modern-day Afghanistan and eastward into Mongolia and China.
Silk Road routes also led to ports on the Persian Gulf, where goods were then transported up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Routes from these cities also connected to ports along the Mediterranean Sea, from which goods were shipped to cities throughout the Roman Empire and into Europe.
The Silk Road: 8 Goods Traded Along the Ancient Network
The vibrant network opened up exchanges between far‑flung cultures throughout central Eurasia.
5 Ways the Mongol Empire Promoted Innovation
The Mongols were brutal military conquerors, but they also took great interest in spurring intellectual collaboration.
How Far Did Ancient Rome Spread?
At its peak, Rome stretched over much of Europe and the Middle East.
Silk Road Economic Belt
Even though the name “Silk Road” derives from the popularity of Chinese silk among tradesmen in the Roman Empire and elsewhere in Europe, the material was not the only important export from the East to the West.
Trade along the so-called Silk Road economic belt included fruits and vegetables, livestock, grain, leather and hides, tools, religious objects, artwork, precious stones and metals and—perhaps more importantly—language, culture, religious beliefs, philosophy and science.
Commodities such as paper and gunpowder, both invented by the Chinese during the Han Dynasty, had obvious and lasting impacts on culture and history in the West. They were also among the most-traded items between the East and West.
Paper was invented in China during the 3rd century B.C., and its use spread via the Silk Road, arriving first in Samarkand in around A.D. 700, before moving to Europe through the then-Islamic ports of Sicily and Spain.
Of course, paper’s arrival in Europe fostered significant industrial change, with the written word becoming a key form of mass communication for the first time. The eventual development of Gutenberg’s printing press allowed for the mass production of books and, later, newspaper, which enabled a wider exchange of news and information.
Silk Road Spices
In addition, the rich spices of the East quickly became popular in the West, and changed cuisine across much of Europe.
Similarly, techniques for making glass migrated eastward to China from the Islamic world.
The origins of gunpowder are less well known, although there are references to fireworks and firearms in China as early as the 600s. Historians believe that gunpowder was indeed exported along the Silk Road routes to Europe, where it was further refined for use in cannons in England, France and elsewhere in the 1300s.
The nation-states with access to it had obvious advantages in war, and thus the export of gunpowder had an enormous impact on the political history of Europe.
Eastward Exploration
The Silk Road routes also opened up means of passage for explorers seeking to better understand the culture and geography of the Far East.
Venetian explorer Marco Polo famously used the Silk Road to travel from Italy to China, which was then under the control of the Mongolian Empire, where they arrived in 1275.
Notably, they did not travel by boat, but rather by camel following overland routes. They arrived at Xanadu, the lavish summer palace of the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan .
In all, the explorer spent 24 years in Asia, working in Kublai Khan’s court, perhaps as a tax collector.
Marco Polo returned to Venice, again via the Silk Road routes, in 1295, just as the Mongolian Empire was in decline. His journeys across the Silk Road became the basis for his book, "The Travels of Marco Polo," which gave Europeans a better understanding of Asian commerce and culture.
HISTORY Vault: Ancient History
From the Sphinx of Egypt to the Kama Sutra, explore ancient history videos.
Silk Road: Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient.eu . List of Rulers of Ancient Greece . Metmuseum.org . Trade between the Romans and the Empires of Asia. Metmuseum.org . About the Silk Road: UNESCO. En.unesco.org . The Legacy of the Silk Road. Yale University . China’s Gift to the West. Columbia University . The Landmark Herodotus : The Histories. Edited by Robert B. Strassler. Royal Road. GlobalSecurity.org .
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“As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature.” (UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity)
Silk road centre.
Taking the historical Silk Road as an inspiring symbol of cultural exchange, the Silk Road Centre provides a forum for promoting greater understanding of cultural diversity and cross-cultural connections for peace and progress. The Centre’s programs support development through intellectual and cultural exchanges in the Silk Road region.
Our vision is to connect cultures to facilitate the development and exchange of knowledge, research, policies and practices contributing to peace and progress in Pakistan and the Silk Road region.
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The silk road region.
Scholars use the term Silk Road to denote a network of trails and trading posts, oases and emporia connecting East Asia to the Mediterranean. The Silk Road network is generally thought of as stretching from an eastern terminus at the ancient Chinese capital city of Chang’an (now Xian) to westward end-points at Byzantium, Antioch, Damascus, and other Middle Eastern cities. Beyond these end-points, other trade networks distributed Silk Road goods throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, and throughout eastern Asia (Major et al, 2001).
WORLD HERITAGE SITES ALONG THE SILK ROAD
Declaring a heritage property as a World Heritage gives it immense universal value. After being inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO, the property ascends to the status of common heritage of the entire world and humanity. To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of ten selection criteria established by UNESCO. The criteria are regularly revised by the Committee to reflect the evolution of the World Heritage concept itself. For the current selection criteria, please visit: https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/
This section presents World Heritage sites located in key countries of the historic Silk Road (Source: World Heritage Centre, https://whc.unesco.org/ )
Afghanistan
Afghanistan has the following 2 cultural sites on the World Heritage List. Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan…
Azerbaijan has the following 3 cultural sites on the World Heritage List. Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape (inscribed in 2007) Historic…
China has a total of 55 sites on the World Heritage List. This includes 37 cultural, 14 natural and 4…
Egypt has 7 sites on the World Heritage List, including 6 cultural and 1 natural heritage site. Cultural Abu Mena (inscribed…
Greece has a total of 18 World Heritage sites, including 16 cultural and 2 mixed cultural and natural sites. Cultural…
Iran has a total of 24 sites on the World Heritage List. This includes 22 cultural and 2 natural sites.…
Iraq has 6 sites on the World Heritage List, including 5 cultural and 1 mixed cultural and natural site. Cultural…
Italy has a total of 55 sites on the World Heritage List. This includes 50 cultural and 5 natural sites.…
Japan has a total of 23 sites on the World Heritage List, including 19 cultural and 4 natural sites. Cultural (19)…
Kazakhstan has a total of 5 sites on the World Heritage List, including 3 cultural and 2 natural sites. Cultural Mausoleum…
Kyrgyzstan has a total of 3 sites on the World Heritage List, including 2 cultural and 1 natural site. Cultural…
Pakistan has six cultural heritage sites inscribed as World Heritage by UNESCO. Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro (inscribed in 1980) Buddhist Ruins…
Republic of Korea
Korea has a total of 14 World Heritage sites, including 13 cultural and 1 natural heritage site. Cultural Baekje Historic…
Russian Federation
Russia has a total of 29 sites on the World Heritage List. This includes 18 cultural and 11 natural sites.…
Syrian Arab Republic
Syria has the following 6 cultural heritage sites on the World Heritage List. Cultural Ancient City of Aleppo (1986) Ancient City…
Tajikistan has the following 2 cultural and natural sites on the World Heritage List. Cultural Proto-urban Site of Sarazm(2010) Natural…
Turkey has a total of 18 sites on the World Heritage List. This includes 16 cultural and 2 mixed sites.…
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan has the following 3 cultural sites on the World Heritage List. Cultural Kunya-Urgench (2005) Parthian Fortresses of Nisa (2007) State Historical…
Uzbekistan has a total of 5 sites on the World Heritage List, including 4 cultural and 1 natural site. Cultural…
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2022 International Conference and Art Festival for Promoting Social Cohesion and Interfaith Harmony BUDDHISM IN PAKISTAN: HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, ART AND ARCHITECTURE March 14-15, 2022 Pakistan is a holy…
Silk Road & Gandhara Conference
For over 1500 years, the historical Silk Road served as an inspiring symbol of connecting diverse cultures and promoting development. This road made connections between Pakistan, China and…
Connecting with Silk Road Cultures
The Silk Road Centre, Quaid-i-Azam University’s Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, Hazara University, Taxila Museum and Prince Miangul Adnan Aurangzeb joined hands to organize a tour of eminent…
Book Launch: Mohanas of Indus
Mohanas with their boathouses have been part of Pakistani culture since time immemorial and Najam has spent years documenting their life. The Silk Road Centre in collaboration with…
Buddhism Conference Press Launch
The first international conference on Buddhism in Pakistan will be held by the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations (TIAC) in collaboration with the Silk Road Centre (SRC) in…
World Heritage Day 18 April 2019
In collaboration with Quaid-i-Azam University’s Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Pakistan, the Silk Road Centre organized a symposium on…
Remembering Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani
Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani was a prominent archaeologist, historian and linguist. From the discovery of ancient rock art from the Karakoram Mountains in Gilgit Baltistan to explorations in…
Annual Heritage Forum 2016
The Silk Road Centre organizes yearly Heritage Forums, which are intended to provide a platform to exchange information on key issues related to preservation of Pakistan’s cultural heritage.…
Nestlé Heritage Photo Contest 2015
Silk Road Centre’s third annual Heritage Photo Contest, supported by Nestlé Pakistan and Lok Virsa, received its inspiration from water – being an essential element of culture and…
Heritage Photo Contest 2014
Since its independence in 1947, Pakistan’s religious contours have kept on changing. Religion apparently has more influence in the Pakistani society than it had in the past. Gradually,…
WDCD 21 May 2014
Cultural diversity is the array of cultural differences that exist among groups of people. Cultural diversity can be a result of natural circumstances, for example, climate and or…
Heritage Photo Contest 2013
Pakistan is endowed with a rich cultural heritage both tangible and intangible cultural assets. There are hundreds of historic structures and sites that are facing the threat of…
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Along the Silk Road
The following interactive website was developed as a supplement to the SPICE curriculum Along the Silk Road , which explores the vast ancient network of cultural, economic, and technological exchange that connected East Asia to the Mediterranean.
Interactive website: Silk Road Activities
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Belief Systems Along the Silk Road
Religious beliefs of the peoples of the Silk Road changed radically over time and was largely due to the effects of travel and trade on the Silk Road itself. For over two thousand years the Silk Road was a network of roads for the travel and dissemination of religious beliefs across Eurasia.
The religious beliefs of people along the Silk Road at the beginning of the 1st century BCE were very different from what they would later become. When China defeated the nomadic Xiongnu confederation and pushed Chinese military control northwest as far as the Tarim Basin (in the 2nd century BCE), Buddhism was known in Central Asia but was not yet widespread in China nor had it reached elsewhere in East Asia. Christianity was still more than a century in the future. Daoism, in the strict sense of that term, connoting an organized religion with an ordained clergy and an established body of doctrine, would not appear in China for another three centuries. Islam would be more than seven centuries in the future.
The peoples of the Silk Road in its early decades followed many different religions. In the Middle East, many people worshiped the gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman pagan pantheon. Others were followers of the old religion of Egypt, especially the cult of Isis and Osiris. Jewish merchants and other settlers had spread beyond the borders of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea and had established their own places of worship in towns and cities throughout the region. Elsewhere in the Middle East, and especially in Persia and Central Asia, many people were adherents of Zoroastrianism, a religion founded by the Persian sage Zoroaster in the 6th century BCE. It posited a struggle between good and evil, light and darkness; its use of fire as the symbol of the purifying power of good was probably borrowed from the Brahmanic religion of ancient India. The Greek colonies of Central Asia that had been left behind after the collapse of the empire of Alexander the Great had, by the 1st century BCE, largely converted from Greco-Roman paganism to Buddhism, a religion that would soon use the Silk Road to spread far and wide. In India, on side routes of the Silk Road that crossed the passes to the Indus Valley and beyond, the older religion of Brahmanism had given way to Hinduism and Buddhism; the former never spread far beyond India and Southeast Asia, while the latter eventually became worldwide in extent.
Coming at last to China on our west-to-east survey of the ancient faith of the Silk Road, we find that rulers worshipped their own ancestors in great ancestral temples; they were joined by commoners in also worshiping deities of the earth, the four directions, mountains and rivers, and many others. There was, as yet, in China no official state cult of Confucius, no Buddhism, and no organized religious Daoism. The beliefs of Korea and Japan at that early period are largely lost in an unrecorded past, but they appear to have been ancestral to the later Japanese religion of Shinto, a polytheistic belief system that emphasizes worship of local gods and goddesses, the importance of ritual purity, and rule by a king of divine descent.
That the religious beliefs of the peoples of the Silk Road change radically from what they had been when trans-Eurasian trade began to take place on a regular basis was largely due to the effects of travel and trade on the Silk Road itself. Over the centuries for two thousand years the Silk Road was a network of roads for the travel and dissemination of religious beliefs across Eurasia. Religious belief is often one of the most important and deeply held aspects of personal identity, and people are reluctant to go where they cannot practice their own faith. Traders who used the Silk Road regularly therefore built shrines and temples of their own faiths wherever they went, in order to maintain their own beliefs and practices of worship while they were far from home. Missionaries of many faiths accompanied caravans on the Silk Road, consciously trying to expand the reach of their own religious persuasion and make converts to their faith.
The dynamics of the spread of beliefs along the Silk Road involves a crucial, though little-remarked, difference between two fundamental types of religions. Generally speaking, religions are either proselytizing or non-proselytizing. That is, they either actively seek to recruit new members to the faith from outside the current membership group, or they do not. In the former case, ethnicity, language, color, and other physical and cultural differences are taken to be of relatively small importance compared with the common humanity of all believers, and the availability of the faith (and its particular canons of belief, forms of worship, and promises of salvation) to all humans everywhere. In the latter case, that is, of non-proselytizing religions, membership in a religion often coincides with membership in an ethnic group, so that religious participation is a birth right and not a matter of conversion; conversion often occurs only when a person marries into the faith, and in extreme cases conversion is rejected as an impossibility. Examples of proselytizing faiths are Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam; non-proselytizing faiths include Hinduism, Judaism, and Shinto. All of these were religions of the Silk Road; some spread along the trade routes to extend their spheres of faith enormously, while others did not travel from their native lands, or did so only to form enclaves of the faithful in foreign lands.
Buddhism was the first of the great missionary faiths to take advantage of the mobility provided by the Silk Road to extend its reach far beyond its native ground. From its origins in north eastern India, Buddhism had already spread into the lands that are now Pakistan and Afghanistan by the 1st century BCE. Buddhist merchants from those areas built temples and shrines along the Silk Road everywhere they went; the priests and monks who staffed those religious establishments preached to local populations and passing travelers, spreading the faith rapidly. Buddhism’s essential message—that earthly life is impermanent and full of suffering, but that the painful cycle of birth, death, and rebirth can be ended through Buddhist faith and practice—had wide appeal, and its universalism enabled it to cross boundaries of space, language, and ethnicity with ease.
The arrival of Buddhism in China was officially noted by the imperial court in the mid-1st century CE, and the faith spread in China thereafter, helped by both official and private support for the building of temples and monasteries. Buddhist missionaries from Central Asia began an active program of translating sacred texts into Chinese, and a number of Chinese priests and monks, over the centuries, traveled the Silk Road in search of doctrinal instruction in India. Buddhism spread from China to Korea and Japan by the 6th century CE; it retained a dominant position in China until the decline of the Tang dynasty in the 9th century. Thereafter Buddhism remained important in China, but more as a private than an officially sponsored religion.
Buddhism also interacted in China with religious Daoism, especially from the 3rd century CE. Religious Daoism, in the form of several competing sects, absorbed many of the local religious temples and doctrines of ancient China. It offered believers immortality or reincarnation in a celestial pantheon, and amassed a canon of sacred texts rivaling that of Buddhism. Daoism spread westward into CentralAsia along the Silk Road, providing, just as Buddhism had done, religious facilities for traveling believers; many of the important Buddhist temple complexes of Central Asia show Daoist influence or incorporate Daoist chapels. The Chinese Chan tradition of Buddhism (called “Zen” in Japanese) owes a great deal to Buddhist-Daoistsyncretism.
Meanwhile, in the western reaches of the Silk Road, important changes were also taking place. Christianity was transformed, in the century orso after 50 CE, from a local phenomenon in the region now comprising Israel and Palestine to a rapidly expanding, proselytizing religion through the efforts of the major Christian apostles. Christianity thrived especially at the expense of classical paganism; in Christianity’s original homeland, Judaism remained the dominant but non-proselytizing religion even as it also evolved new traditions of study and practice.
Christianity spread eastward as well as westward, in the process evolving various differences from place to place in doctrine and forms of worship. The Christianity of the Silk Road was primarily the form known as Nestorianism, after the teachings of Nestorius, a 5th-century patriarch of Constantinople who soon outraged the Roman and Byzantine worlds with his unorthodox doctrines, such as taking from the Virgin her title “Mother of God.” Nestorian Christianity spread to Persia, India, and China, bringing with it the Syriac language and script ( the basis of the writing systems of several Central Asian languages); a famous inscribed stela (standing stone tablet) in Xi’an, dated 781, commemorates the official arrival of Nestorian missionaries in China. By that time, Nestorian churches were to be found in cities all along the Silk Road, though there were undoubtedly many fewer Christians than Buddhists in Central Asia.
Another Middle Eastern faith that was important on the Silk Road for a time was Manichaeism, established by the Persian prophet Mani in the 3rd century CE. Mani arose from the Zoroastrian tradition, and consciously incorporated elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other faiths into his own doctrines; he saw himself as the successor to Zoroaster, the historic Buddha, Jesus, and other great ancient religious teachers. Manichaeism, like Zoroastrianism, emphasized the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness; it offered salvation to the Elect, those who were deeply immersed in the faith’s teachings. Manichaeism became an important rival of Christianity in the Middle East and Mediterranean North Africa, and was known all along the Silk Road (though with little or no impact on China and East Asia), but its influence began to wane by the end of the 6th century.
Silk Road faiths from the Middle East to the north western reaches of China were challenged and, in time, displaced by the spread of Islam, which is at present the faith of the majority of people in the countries spanned by the old Silk Road.
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was born around 570 CE. At the age of40, according to Muslim tradition, he became the recipient of a series of revelations, recorded in the Quran, which is for Muslims a faithful recording of the entire revelation of God sent through Muhammad. The basic teachings of the Quran were belief in One God, unique and compassionate; the necessity of faith, compassion, and morality in human affairs; accountability of human actions; and the recognition that the same God had sent Prophets and Revelations to other societies, which Islam affirmed while regarding the Quran as the final message and Muhammad as the last of the divine messengers.
Although the initial spread of Muslim rule and authority to neighboring regions, which took place after the death of the Prophet in 632, was a result of conquest, the actual process of converting the peoples in these regions to Islam took a long time. It was effected primarily through the work of Muslim preachers, traders, and rulers. On the whole, the process of conversion to Islam, with a few exceptions, was a peaceful one. Most Muslims followed the Quranic injunction “There is no compulsion in religion” (Ch.2:256) and spread their faith more by example than by coercion.
In the Silk Road context, a good example of this process are the Sufis, devotees committed to spiritual life and unity among traditions, whose teachings of Islam exist in all the vernaculars and cultures of Silk Road peoples. The full diversity of Muslim traditions, schools of thought, and civilizing influences have flourished along the Silk Road. These include the development of philosophy and science; law and history; literature and the arts; and the expressions in music and dance of the devotional and creative spirit of Islam. That pluralism still denies the life of most Muslims living along the old Silk Road. At present, at least 560 million Muslims live in Asia, almost half of the total number of Muslims in the world.
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Music of the silk roads.
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