When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the Riches of the East

by Stewart Gordon

Book Overview

While European civilization stagnated in the "Dark Ages," Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500-a time when...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030681739X
• ISBN13: 9780306817397
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Surprises, Sadness, Adventure, Commerce

Brilliant. Each chapter is an individual in depth view of the ways and times of ancient trade throughout greater Asia. Wins losses. Marriages and heartbreaks. These were all but easy times. However, between wars and trade routes they found their way, made children, and made it through life. We are reminded of human tenacity and the will to evolve culture amidst all odds.

A New Perspective on Exploration

Reading this book opened my eyes to a prejudice that I never knew I had. I love stories about explorers - Marco Polo, Lewis & Clark, Harrison Forman, etc., but I never thought about the Asian explorers whose trips spread culture throughout the known world. Stewart Gordon passionately recounts their stories and their contributions to civilization in this wonderful collection of narratives of great Asian travelers who represented the forefront of learning. It is a good lesson to learn these days when, after 500 years, the Asian world is again emerging as the center of activity. I recommend this book to anyone looking for new stories of travel and adventure. I was not familiar with any of the figures whose stories are told in the book and now realize that their contributions were every bit as important as the explorers we are taught to revere in the West.

A compelling, lively account

Before Marco Polo and other noted world explorers there was cultural and commercial trade around the world: Asia had its own explorers, traders and travelers who crossed the globe to exchange ideas. Research scholar Stewart Gordon has traveled the world to examine original texts in science, history, philosophy and sociology to create WHEN ASIA WAS THE WORLD, and here provides an Asian focus unique in the world of Western focuses on exploration. His stories of travelers and explorers of Asia provides a compelling, lively account perfect not just for high school and college collections, but for general-interest lending libraries strong in history and culture, especially Asian history.

Engaging and fun- a cool book!

Like most people brought up in the American public school system my knowledge of Asian history consisted of "China invented noodles and gunpowder and then Europe took over and some Chinese guys thought that their kung ku was so good that bullets couldn't hurt them". When I got older I learned that there was a LOT more to it than that but really- it was all pretty vague. Stewart Gordon's book is an excellent remedy to this problem. The scope is broad (500-1500CE!) but the book never feels sketchy. Gordon arranges it around 8 travelers accounts and so he takes us from one end of Asia to the other following real people on their *real* adventures. WOW! The extensive notes in the back provide lots of pointers to further reading if you're inspired to hunt up any of the original accounts or the hard-core scholarship. A great book and one I'm recommending to friends.

Travel alert

Stewart Gordon is an artist (wood sculpture, automata) and historian whose previous books have been informed by a vision and concern for cross-cultural relations (Robes and Honor; Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India). When Asia Was the World continues this exploration on two levels, about Asia during the years 500-1500 CE, and about the voyagers who left us records of these times. The subjects may be obscure (to many of us) but Gordon's narratives have a clarity and brilliance appropriate to the colors of the arts and materials they often describe. An excellent book to read before or on a trip - leave it as a gift with your host.

A Fun Read

This book was really a fun read - like travel literature plus. I never before thought about what Asia was like when Europe was in the Dark Ages. It's based on the actual journals of people who traveled during that time. There are lots of exotic places, like Bukhara and Samarkand, but I never felt lost. There are good maps and there always seemed to be a paragraph of explanation just when I needed it. The book kept coming back to themes, like common court ceremony or the shared fears of pirates. . A lot of the travelers had friends spread across much of Asia. My favorite chapter was on a man named Ibn Battuta. He went all the way from Morocco to China telling stories and bringing news to courts along the way and made it back to Morocco. It's a readable sized book, a little over 200 pages, and at the end I felt as if I'd been right along with these travelers, felt the heat and cold, and learned a lot about their world.