Silk Road 101 And Why We Were Colonised By The West The History They Dont Tell You

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 I have some comments after this short video. After 570 years the Silk Road is being re-established again.
 


 
A character called Marco Polo is alleged to have visited China circa 1271 when Kublai Khan was the Emperor of China. The Chinese have no records of a Marco Polo in China which is really strange because Marco Polo says that Kublai Khan appointed him to be the governor of Yangzhou. One would think that at least one Chinese scribe would have written down somewhere that a gwailoh had been appointed governor of an important city by the Mongol emperor. And despite claiming to have travelled around China, Marco Polo never once mentioned the Great Wall of China. Maybe the Banglas had just begun construction of the wall. Who knows?

Anyway the Mongol Period in China (which lasted only 89 years from 1279 to 1368) was indeed the golden age of the Silk Road. And this also provides an indication why the Mongols invaded Central Asia, especially the Abbasid Caliphate in and around Khorasan in the first place. 
The Mongols viciously pillaged, burned and massacred the largely Muslim population in that area.   Major Abbasid cities like Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench and Balkh  were captured and destroyed in 1218. Baghdad was sacked and burned in 1258. Then 21 years later in 1279 the Mongols took China.
Why did the Mongols go on such a rampage? There must have been a reason or reasons. Contrary to what the movies potray the Mongols were not a marauding desert rabble. They were a sophisticated people who knew  trade and how to organise a military.  Among the reasons for their attacking the Abbasids was that the Abbasid Caliphate kept raiding the Silk Road that cut through Central Asia. They could not keep the peace or ensure uninterrupted trade along the Silk Road. So the Mongols decided to do something about it - Mongol style. The Mongols took over Central Asia and China and kept the Silk Road open from China all the way to the Black Sea. 
Hence also that famous story from that period (1271) of Marco Polo travelling along the Silk Road to China and becoming BFF with Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor of China (this guy here?)




Some historians say that Marco Polo never ventured beyond the bazaars of Turkey where he met traders who told him stories of China and Persia. Hence in Marco Polo's story a lot of the place names are in Turkish (so they say) and not in Persian (the lingua franca of the Abbasid Period).

Anyway finally in 1335 AD a Turkish fellow called Osman defeated the Mongols in Anatolia and established the Ottoman Caliphate which would rule the Middle East, Afghanistan, the Delhi Sultanate etc for 587 years until 1922. Then in 1453 just 118 years after Osman established the Ottoman Caliphate, the 21 year old Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople from the Byzantine Empire.  And renamed it Istanbul. 
At that time the Ottomans were at war on all sides with just about everyone. It was all about controlling trade, collecting taxes and tolls. Money, money,  money. Obviously the Silk Road was a problem to them because the Ottomans promptly shut it down. 
So from circa 1453 Europe, Russia were all cut off from the luxuries and the emporium of China. The Silk Road was cut off by the Ottomans. The Europeans tried placing a long distance call to the Mongols but the Mongols had stopped answering the phone since 1335.

So the Europeans had no choice but try to find another route to China and India. Which they did.  In 1488, just 35 years after the fall of Constantinople,  Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope) and discovered that the Atlantic Ocean flows into the Indian Ocean. (Before that the Europeans were convinced by Ptolemy's map that the Indian Ocean was landlocked). 
Another 10 years later in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on the Malabar Coast in India.  13 years later in 1511 Alfonso de Albuquerque captured Melaka. The rest is our history.
Imagine, if the Ottomans had not shut down the Silk Road in 1453 the history and geo-politics of the entire world would be different. The Chinese would have become manufacturing giants 600 years ago. The Indians including Dr Mahathir's grandfathers, would have opened banana leaf shops, nasi kandar outlets and wholesale warehouses from Xinjiang to Azerbaijan all along the Silk Road. It would have been a whole new world.   
Lets hope that this new train service betwen China, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan etc will run for another thousand years. 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
By Syed Akbar Ali 

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