In an almost hour-long podcast, Jim Cuno, former president of J Paul Getty Trust, speaks to the author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World on this grand network that was a conduit for the dissemination of religious and scientific ideas, the exchange of commercial and cultural goods, and advance of military might and political ambitions.
Frankopan underscores that while Europe wasn’t the centre of the world, its empires grew through global trade. The pattern for most European nations was the same: they established fortified warehouses for trade, which morphed into colonies with armed defence. This, in turn, entangled them in local conflicts and then global rivalries.
Discovery of oil in the 20th c. intensified imperial interests, shaping geopolitics as nations competed to control this resource. You can call this gem of a podcast an intro to what we now call globalisation.