Tim Winter is an Australian Research Council Professorial Future Fellow at the University of Western Australia. His work addresses how the past comes to be constructed and reconstructed for public audiences and for diplomatic, geopolitical, and nationalistic purposes. His most recent book is Geocultural Power: China's Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty First Century (2019).

• List of Illustrations


• Preface


• "The Silk Road," Morning Bulletin, May 1943


• 1 Introduction


• Part One - Connecting Cultures


• 2 The Routes of Civilization


• 3 Frontiers of Antiquity


• 4 Japan as Asia?


• Part Two - Adventures into Cosmopolitanism


• 5 The Car-tographies of Adventure


• 6 Closed Worlds, Open Minds


• Part Three - A Route to Peace?


• 7 A Divided World


• 8 Civilizations in Dialogue


• Part Four - Geopolitics


• 9 Metaphors of Power


• 10 Geostrategic Revivals


• 11 Silk Road Futures


• Appendix A


• Appendix B


• Bibliography


• Index

In The Silk Road, Tim Winter reveals the different paths this history of connected cultures took towards global fame, a century after the first evidence of contact between China and Rome was unearthed. He also reveals how this remarkably popular depiction of the past took hold as a platform for geopolitical ambition, a celebration of peace and cosmopolitan harmony, and created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. Winter further explores themes that reappear today as China seeks to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century.