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Silk Road
In Kaido ni Ikuku, Ryotaro Shiba describes the Age of Discovery from a European perspective in “Kaido yuku Nanban no Michi (1): Xavier and the Basque Country” and “Kaido yuku Nanban no Michi (2): Spain and Portugal” and from a Chinese perspective in “Kaido iku – Bin no Michi. Bin” refers to Fujian Province in China, and describes the Silk Road as a route of cultural exchange between the East and West.
The Silk Road is a network of trade routes on the Eurasian continent that was active from the 2nd century BC to the mid-15th century, with a total length of more than 6,400 km, and played a central role in the economic, cultural, political, and religious exchanges between East and West.
The Silk Road began around 114 B.C. when the Han Dynasty, an era before the Three Kingdoms period in which Cao Cao, Liu Bei Yuan De, and Sun Quan were active, advanced into Central Asia and almost completely pacified this once uncharted region.
The Han Dynasty was followed by a series of powerful empires, including the Parthian Empire from eastern Anatolia to Afghanistan in the same period, and the Roman Empire in the West. The export of silk, tea, dyes, perfumes, and porcelain from the East, and horses, camels, honey, wine, and gold from the West brought profits to the region.
It is said that the Silk Road lasted nearly 1,500 years because it was not controlled by a single country, but was a decentralized network of various nations. This Silk Road came to an abrupt end in 1543 with the rise of the Ottoman Empire, which cut off traffic between the East and West.
This led Europe to seek routes to the wealth of the East, and the region entered the Age of Exploration, as described in the aforementioned “Nanban-no-michi” and “Kaido yuku Holland Kikou” (Road to Holland).
The term “Silk Road,” which played such an important role in world history, was coined by Germans in the Western cultural sphere, but in “Kaido yuku: Bin no michi,” the famous Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, who is also mentioned in “Nishida Kitaro’s ‘Study of the Good‘”, uses the term “Silk Road” to refer to the Silk Road. I asked him if he knew the word “Silk Road” and he replied that he had never heard of it. When asked, “Do you know the Silk Road?” he had never heard of the term, and instead replied, “For us, by any measure, it is Marco Polo,” stating that the Silk Road was not popular with Westerners.
The Silk Road and Nomadic Peoples
Ryotaro Shiba, in his book “Kaido wo iku” (On the Road), often discusses the difference between agricultural peoples and nomadic peoples. Agrarian peoples are those who stay on the land and eventually build up a large group of people and eventually a nation, while nomadic peoples are those who live on the move, periodically changing their pastureland.
Since ancient times, it has been believed that “civilizations are created by settled peoples,” and that the four major civilizations of the world – Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indus, and Chinese – were all born on the banks of great rivers and developed in the fertile delta by agricultural peoples.
In contrast to this view, for example, the idea that people migrating across the islands of the Pacific built a “civilization” linked to the sea, or that nomads migrating across the wide steppes of Eurasia nurtured their own civilization, which greatly influenced the civilizations of the surrounding settled peoples, has gained wide acclaim in recent years. The Silk Road is the stage of the Eurasian continent.
In the central part of Eurasia, where the Silk Road takes place, there is a vast expanse of plains called the Eurasian Steppe. The climate in this region is harsh, with hot and dry summers and cold and harsh winters, making it unsuitable for agriculture and suitable for the nomadic lifestyle.
In this article, I would like to discuss nomadic tribes on this Silk Road.
The Eurasian Steps began around 3000 BCE, when the area from the northern coast of the Black Sea to the northern coast of the Caspian Sea began to dry out due to climate change. As a result of the aforementioned changes, the broadleaf forests in this region were transformed into steppe areas, and people began to choose a pastoral lifestyle, moving with livestock (sheep, goats, cattle, horses, etc.) in pursuit of grass, rather than a farming lifestyle. People began to choose the grazing lifestyle over the farming lifestyle. Current research suggests that climate change in the region was a major catalyst for the “birth of nomadism.
Some believe that a little later, from around 2000 to 1700 BCE, an Indo-European army on two-wheeled chariots threatened the south in the steppe region between the Urals and Kazakhstan. At that time, harness and riding techniques were not well developed, and it was difficult for humans to ride horses directly, so when horses were used in battle, they were pulled by horses on chariots with wheels on both sides.
It is unclear when nomads began to acquire riding skills, but it is said that people began to ride horses in Asia and the Mediterranean around the 10th century BCE. Furthermore, the current theory is that horseback riding in the steppe region began in the 9th to 8th centuries BCE.
It is thought that the middle of the 9th century BCE was a time of global climate change, when areas that had previously been semi-deserts became steppes, steppe areas increased, and nomads began to ride horses.
In the midst of this changing environment, current historical research favors the theory that the first nomads were the Scythians. The Scythians are said to have been active from around the 7th to 3rd centuries BCE in the steppe area stretching from the western Pamir Plateau to the Volga River along the northern coast of the Black Sea, with their peak period from the 6th to 4th centuries BCE.
Nomads, who could freely manipulate horses and pursue livestock in groups, had great human resource power in their own right. The Scythians are thought to belong to the Iranian ethnic group, and they introduced iron manufacturing technology from the Hittites and other peoples in West Asia, and used it for agricultural tools and armaments. They played a role in transmitting it to the East.
The Scythians not only formed a powerful kingdom around the Black Sea, southern Russia, and the steppes of the Northern Caucasus after the 6th century BC, but also fought against Darius III of the Achaemenid dynasty and Alexander III of Macedonia. The Scythians, who had mastered advanced horsemanship, had a very high military power. Despite their bravery and strength, the Scythians are said to have been destroyed in the 3rd century by the Eastern Goths, a Germanic people who lived on the northern coast of the Black Sea.
A famous nomadic people who followed the Scythians were the Xiongnu, who were located on the Mongolian plain. They were also a powerful military group.
The Xiongnu first appeared in history in a clear form during the period when the First Emperor unified China. At the same time as the unification of China, the Xiongnu also unified several tribes and became a powerful nation. To shake off this threat, the First Emperor dispatched his general, Meng Meng, to drive the Xiongnu out of the Ordos region (present-day southern Inner Mongolia, China) and built the Great Wall of China to prevent their further southward expansion.
Due in part to these measures taken by Qin, the Xiongnu’s power temporarily waned. However, during the reign of Huang Tong Duan Yu (Duan Yu = King of the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu rapidly became powerful and revived during the reign of Hutong Danyu (Danyu = King of the Xiongnu, reigned 209-174 BCE). First, he destroyed the Dong Hu, a nomadic group in the east, and then defeated the Yue clan, a nomadic group in the west, to form a vast empire in the blink of an eye. In 200 BCE, Huzhong defeated the army of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty had been a vassal state of the Xiongnu for about 50 years after the defeat of Huzhong by Liu Bang, the founder of the Han Dynasty.
The Wu emperor (reigned 141-87 BC) attempted to reverse this relationship, and he sent the armies of generals Ye Qing, Huo Qing, and others to “defeat the Xiongnu,” and also sent Zhang Qian’s army to intercept them, and conducted numerous other expeditions. The Xiongnu’s fortunes became increasingly doubtful, and during the reign of Uizenyu (114-105 BC), the Xiongnu declined to the point where the Han Dynasty demanded hostages. The Xiongnu then repeatedly divided and unified, and disappeared from history.
Although the Xiongnu disappeared from the public stage, there is a theory that some of them may have actually become the people later known as the Huns. The Huns were a nomadic equestrian tribe in Northern Asia whose westward expansion is believed to have caused the great Germanic migration. Although this is not a confirmed theory, there seems to be no doubt that the nomadic horsemen of Asia triggered the Great Migration that shook Europe.
At their peak, the Huns formed a huge empire whose territory stretched from the steppes of Central Asia to present-day Germany. The Huns reached their peak under the reign of Attila (406-453), but were defeated by the combined forces of the Visigoths and Visigoths at the Battle of Cataraunum in 451, and invaded Italy in 452, but were forced to retreat due to an epidemic in their own ranks, and when Attila died of illness the following year, this mighty empire fell into rapid decline. empire rapidly declined and collapsed.
After that, the Uygur, Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Sogd, Mongol, Keret, Melkite, and Naiman tribes occupied the land.
Later, around 1200, Genghis Khan united Mongolia and established the Mongolian Empire and began to expand his power, as described in “Mongolian Travels Along the Road“.
In 1240, Ogoday Kaan, who succeeded Genghis Khan, invaded Poland and Hungary, as described in “The Country That Could Not Take the Road: Hungary.
Kublai Khan, the fifth Mongol general, conquered China and established the Empire of Yuan in 1271, and in 1274 and 1281, he unsuccessfully invaded Japan, as described in “On the Road to Iki and Tsushima“.
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