The Early Modern “Silk-Road”. The Role of European, Chinese, and Russian Trade Reassessed
Journal: Global and European Studies Institute (GESI), Universität Leipzig
Year: 2020

This paper investigates the historic and contemporary place of European and Asian trade in the context of the so-called “Silk Road”. The success and the competition of the present-day Chinese economy is seen as the cause of the declining role of Western economies in world markets but the reality is and was much more complex in the past. Was the Industrial revolution a fundamental turning point? In Central Asia in particular the institutional and economic rapports were much more nuanced than one