The King's Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road

Silk Road mono graphs often make sweep ing, and admit tedly attrac tive, gen er al iza tions about the nature of pre mod ern trade, exchange, and the human mobili ties that underpinned it.Xin Wen in a path break ing mono graph chal lenges such an undif fer en ti ated approach by show ing how inter state diplo macy, born of the decline and dis ag gre ga tion of the Tang, Tibetan, and Uyghur Empires, pro vided both the pri mary moti va tion and orga niz ing struc ture for travel and exchange between the late ninth and elev enth cen tu ries.Therein, Wen eschews an empire cen tered approach to the Silk Road, which has bound the rhythm of exchange to the rise and fall of great states and can often stray into gen er al iza tion.Instead, he stra te gi cally employs the Dunhuang archive's con sid er able mul ti lin gual resources (pri vate let ters, gift led gers, loan con tacts, songs, etc.) to build a gran u lar, trav eler cen tered social his tory of inter state exchange.The book is divided into three sec tions deal ing with trav el ers, the nature of their travel, and the world that travel gen er ated.Chapters 1 to 3 con tex tu al ize the Dunhuang man u script col lec tion's value for the his tory of inter na tional travel and inno va tively trace the "trav eler" as human envoy, ani mal, and object, each with their own travel lives wor thy of inves ti ga tion.Chapters 4 to 7 exam ine the act of travel's facil i tat ing com po nents: the road and nav i ga tion; the rec i proc ity of the host's pro tec tion and accom mo da tion for the guest's prop a ga tion of the host's good repute; the gift exchanges therein; and finally, the lim ited mul ti lin gual ism that made it all pos si ble.Chapter 8 to 10 then extrap o late a world where the eco nom ics of highrisk del e ga tions func tioned on the asymmetry of gift exchanges, the coconstruction of king ship with the exchanged lux ury objects, and a shared polit i cal cul ture of the "road" itself.Wen's trav elercen tered approach pro vi des inti mate details from sin gle lives and fol lows in the ven er a ble foot steps of Valerie Hansen and Susan Whitfield but also Imre Galambos and Sam Van Schaik, who have all sought to uti lize indi vid ual doc u ments in depicting the lives of trav el ers on the Silk Road. 1 The story of Dun huang offi cial Liang Xingde whose two mis sions both witnessed mur ders, includ ing his own in 935, speaks to the tumul tu ous excite ment and dan ger expe ri enced on a road where envoys of dif fer ent stripes often crossed paths (140-41).Yet, trav el ers are also the objects of exchange.Wen uses their stories to show, for instance, how Khotanese jade and Chi nese lux ury silks gen er ated a shared mate rial cul ture of king ship that fur ther impelled elites to inten sify con tacts and exchange.Wen here deftly weaves together Dunhuang cave paint ings, gift led gers, and doc u men tary records.The reader is then able to imag ine the host of rela tion ships and net

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