全英語授課課程
This course will be an introduction to the Silk Road in world history. Students will read general works and some excerpts of historical sources on the Silk Road. English will be the language for instruction, presentation, and reading. Videos will be used for teaching aids if needed. Following introductory lectures on the Silk Road, we will survey, in a chronological order, the historical developments in the network of the Silk Road and explore different topics on the Silk Road.
It has been 140 years since the term “Silk Road” was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833–1905), a famous German explorer and geographer. Originally this term was used to refer to the ancient Sino-European network of silk trade. However, the Silk Road has become a symbol of historical Eurasian connection and interaction in the modern context. Its contemporary incarnation is the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road (as known as the Belt and Road Initiative), inaugurated by the Chinese government in 2013. In 2014, UNESCO designated the Chang’an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site.
It has been believed that the Silk Road was important in world history until the collapse of the Mongol Empire in the second half of the 14th century. Overland trade declined since then and was replaced by flourishing maritime trade. However, new findings have indicated that the north-south overland trade was still significant, and Inner Asia was still the crossroads of Eurasian civilizations. The Silk Road was also viewed as a historical model of modern globalization.