The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes by Raoul McLaughlin (2016) is not really about the Roman Empire at all, but it is about the silk routes. Most accurately, the book is described by the subtitle, The Ancient World Economy & the Empires of Parthia, Central Asis & Han China. 

China and the Roman borders in Syria and Bithynia are the end points, except for the seaborne trade which starts in India and ends in Egyptian Red Sea ports. None of the 3 main routes discussed were easy travelling. All start in the Tarim Basin; from there one goes south to the Indus River, one goes northwest to the Central Asian steppes, the Caspian Sea and Transcaucasia and the last goes west across Persia and Mesopotamia (Parthia).

The dangers of the sea route are obvious: pirates and lack of potable water. The steppe route was always problematic due to raiding parties and ever-changing political situations.  And the tense politics between Rome and Parthia, not to mention lack of water, frequently interrupted the third route.

There were a lot of interesting facts scattered through the book. For example, the Caspian Sea at that time was about 3 times as large east to west as in more modern times, as it was still full of water from the glaciers melting at the end of the last ice age. It took three to four days to sail across.

As a history, its focus is on the central Asian areas, from the Tarim Basin to the Parthian border, that lie between the endpoints. Many of these were parts of Alexander’s empire and so may be of interest to CANE members on that basis. But to me the most interesting parts of the book were the discussions of the economies and governmental structures of the two endpoint empires. This includes estimates of the income and expenditures of both and concludes that they were roughly comparable; Rome spending on soldiers and China on a civilian bureaucracy. 

The one problem I had with the book was that, to someone who has read and evaluated hundreds of Ph.D. dissertations in 44 years as a professor, this was not as well edited as it could have been. It read like a dissertation with every third sentence having a footnote, when it should have been edited for the general reader.

The book can be downloaded for free on various sites, and is also available through Kindle.

By: Daniel A. Bronstein, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University