Past Events

Events Calendar

Tamara Chin (Brown University): A Short History of the Silk Road Idea
Thursday, 6 October 2016,  4:30pm -  6:00pm
Location Brower Commons A

Location: Brower Commons A

 

Abstract: Since the 1980s, the term Silk Road has had a popular and academic appeal, suggestive of an era of premodern globalization in which China played a central role. This talk gives a short history of this Silk Road idea. It introduces the 1877 coining of the term in German geography and its subsequent circulation in translation. It focuses on the Cold War period, when China's diplomacy with the newly decolonized world reimagined an Afro-Asian Silk Road that was at odds with the Silk Road of the West and Japan. This semantic history of the Silk Road/ sichou zhi lu offers a window onto the historiography of ancient intercultural contact. While recent Silk Road books, conferences, exhibitions, and institutes have helped to give shape to a notional "Silk Road Studies," this talk aims to draw greater attention to the historical underpinnings and theoretical assumptions of this growing subfield.