• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.155-174
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• 2023

Trade along the Silk Routes reached its zenith during the Pax Mongolica, a period of relative stability in Eurasia that was created by the Mongol empire in the 13th and 14th centuries. It is generally believed that the Silk Routes declined after the disintegration of the Mongol empire in the second half of the 14th century and that they fell into disuse after the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople as the Europeans sought alternative maritime routes to Asia. This paper examines the aftermath of the Mongol-era overland and maritime Silk Routes from a non-Eurocentric perspective. Seen from the standpoint of various successors to the Mongol empire, such as the Timurid empire, the Mughal empire, the Uzbek khanate, the Ottoman empire, Manchu Qing, and Russia, the overland and maritime Silk Routes did not really collapse or sharply decline during the post-Mongol period. These Mongol successor states maintained close and thriving overland trade relations with each other or some important maritime trade relations with Southeast Asia. It may be argued that the Silk Routes in the post-Mongol world functioned rather independently of European seaborne commerce.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to examine the descriptions of the transmission of plague along the Silk Road in Orhan Pamuk's 2022 novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, the first prize for Turkish literature. Pamuk's vast knowledge of epidemiological history, which has long fascinated him, comes to life in this novel as he describes the characters' battles against the plague in the East and West and how the plague was brought to the islands and spread along the Maritime Silk Road. One of the most important trade routes in human history, the Silk Road was not only a link between East and West trade and cultures but also a route for the transmission of bubonic plague during the medieval period onwards. It was this epidemic that contributed to the decline of the Silk Road. In the novel, a plague originating in China strikes the Ottoman coastal cities of Smyrna and Mingheria on its way to Europe via India. The epidemic is contained in Smyrna but the death toll spirals out of control when the plague reaches the island of Mingheria by sea. The spatial setting of the novel is an island, which means that it communicates with the outside world by sea. The only way the plague could have spread to an isolated island was by ship. Rats from different ports and ships would have traveled to other parts of the world or even countries to spread the plague. In Nights of Plague, the fact that the plague reached Mingheria via the maritime Silk Road is also proven by the route of the ships and various narratives. The novel confirms what many scholars have argued, that the Silk Road brought various goods from the East to the Roman Empire, along with deadly diseases, and that the sea routes were an important way for the plague to travel and spread.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.33-50
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• 2016

The article studies the new situation in international long distance trade after the emergence of new superpower - Arab Caliphate - in Eurasian overland tracks of the Great Silk Road. The stages of Arab advancement along trade routes and outcomes of their contestation with the strong tribal confederations of Turkic nomads in Central Asia and the Caucasus are highlighted. A special focus is made upon the relationship of Arabs with Khazar Turks who have endured severe clashes with strongest army of the time in the region. Khazar kingdom survived and even expanded its control over the tracks of international trade in the western part of Eurasia. The research describes the way how trade partnership between Arabs and Turks was shaped in the aftermath of military clashes. Existing scholarly views on the role of Khazar in Silk Road are reviewed and unattended evidence of Arab sources are involved to support concluding points that Khazar state managed to consolidate various actors for maintenance of international trade such as so called Rus warriors and merchants in the west of Volga, nomadic tribes in Eurasian steppes, and Jewish trading gild named ar-rahdaniyya in Arab sources. It is asserted that Khazar state since the second half of 9th century through its decline in mid 10th century not only served as transit space for goods of exporting countries but also exported goods of its own crafts and natural resources.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.23-48
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• 2018

The Silk Road usually implies a network of trade and communications that stretched from east to west and connected China and the countries of the Far East via Central Asia and the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean, or through the northern coast of the Caspian Sea and the Volga basin to the Black Sea coast. However, at certain historical stages, a network of maritime and overland routes stretching from north to south, commonly called the Volga-Caspian trade route, also played a significant role in international trade and cultural contacts. The geopolitical realities of the early Middle Ages relating to the relationship of Byzantium, the Sassanid Empire, and the West Turkic Khaganate, the advance of the Arab Caliphate to the north, the spread of Islam in the Volga region, the glories and fall of the Khazar State, and the Scandinavian campaigns in the Caucasus, closely intertwined with the history of transport and communications connecting the north and south through the Volga-Caspian route. In a later era, the interests of the Mongolian Uluses, and then the political and economic aspirations of the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid State, and Russia, collided or combined on these routes. The article discusses trade contacts existing between the north and the south in the 15th and first half of the 17th century along the routes on the western coast of the Caspian Sea.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.335-347
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• 2019

China's 'One Belt and One Load' initiative is a mega-infrastructure project that connects China and the Eurasian Economies Area by overland and sea routes. Therefore, if it goes smoothly, It will be a new engine for economic development in China and the world, and It is expected to be a factor that will change the structure of the international economy. Especially, the Eurasian continent is likely to develop into the center of the global economy. But China's 'One Belt and One Load' initiative is not only macro and long-term, but also implies complexity, making it hard to be optimistic about development. China's 'One Belt and One Load' initiative is not only strongly promoted as a long-term national development strategy to be completed by 2049, but also strong economic complementarity between China and 'One Belt and One Load' consecutive countries. And many of the successive countries are expecting 'One Belt and One Load' construction. Therefore, there is no possibility at all. In particular, the possibility of development can not be completely ruled out, given the various policies of 'One Belt and One Load' currently being pursued by China. Even if it doesn't go smoothly, the process alone will have significant economic effects on China and neighboring countries, so it will be meaningful. With the help of information technology.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.37-60
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• 2021

Before the tenth century, the dress of elite women in and around China often reflected "Han" Chinese fashions and preferences. In funerary paintings and relief sculptures of Sogdian and Xianbei couples from the sixth century, for example, women wear "Han" Chinese-style clothing. Even in the Tang dynasty (ca. 618-907), when exchange with Central Asia via overland Silk Road trade impacted the styles and patterning of elite dress and men incorporated clear Central Asian attributes into their dress, elite women in the Tang sphere wore recognizably Tang fashions. Chinese-style dress in these centuries clearly conveyed cultural import and, likely, political power, especially after the founding of the Tang dynasty. However, the straightforward borrowing of Tang women's dress shifted in the Khitan Liao dynasty (ca. 907-1125). The Liao, in contrast to other states that shared a border with China in previous centuries, saw themselves as political equals to the Song dynasty (ca. 960-1278) court in the south. The Liao court was interested in Song customs and culture and incorporated artistic motifs and practices from the Song court. However, the Liao courtly idiom was never fully subsumed into the greater world of the Song - rather, the Liao used facets of Song courtly culture for their own ends. One way this is manifested is through the dual administrative system, a bureaucratic organization that, among other things, regulated and distinguished between who was permitted to wear Khitan and non-Khitan dress. In this paper, I will examine the material evidence from funerary contexts for how the dress of elite Liao women both engaged with the dress of the Song, while also maintaining a certain amount of cultural autonomy. Through their dress, elite Liao women signaled clear messages about their status, identity, and difference to their Song counterparts.