Silk Roads
British Museum, London

SILK ROADS is not quite what it seems.

The publicity evokes the classic image of the Silk Road, as a silhouetted camel caravan ascends a dune somewhere in central Asia. 

And Silk Roads does showcase the splendour of China in its chosen period, the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD). It bristles with treasures, from pottery camels to spectacular silk wall hangings depicting Buddhist devotional scenes from the monastic cave complex at Dunhuang; steles illustrate the Tang empire’s tolerance for the Christian and Zoroastrian faiths in its bustling, multicultural capital Chang’an; the hoard of a ship sunk off the Indonesian coast over 1,000 years ago demonstrates China’s early mastery of mass production, packed with 60,000 items for sale, much of it mass-produced ceramics from huge, state-owned factories.

But this is not an exhibition about one trade route or one culture. 

Silk Roads has attracted criticism from historian William Dalrymple, whose new book The Golden Road argues that India, not China, was the engine of east-west contact in the classical period. 

India’s influence was certainly huge. Tang China, the largest empire in the world at that time, adopted an Indian religion, Buddhism, and its understanding of astronomy and mathematics was transformed by Indian scholarship, just as Jesuit missionaries would introduce Qing China to Western science over 1,000 years later. 

[[{"fid":"70305","view_mode":"inlineleft","fields":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"This set of seven ivory chess pieces is the oldest set known to this day. It was excavated at the archaeological site of Afrasiab in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: © ACDF of Uzbekistan, Samarkand State Museum Reserve / Andrey Arakelyan","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineleft","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"This set of seven ivory chess pieces is the oldest set known to this day. It was excavated at the archaeological site of Afrasiab in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: © ACDF of Uzbekistan, Samarkand State Museum Reserve / Andrey Arakelyan","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"alt":"This set of seven ivory chess pieces is the oldest set known to this day. It was excavated at the archaeological site of Afrasiab in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Credit: © ACDF of Uzbekistan, Samarkand State Museum Reserve / Andrey Arakelyan","class":"media-element file-inlineleft","data-delta":"1"}}]]But Silk Roads does not understate this: the spread of ideas along the complex web of trade networks is its key theme, with Buddhism dominating the first half of the exhibition, but other Indian inventions given their due. A highlight are pieces from the oldest chess set ever found, unearthed at Samarkand in Uzbekistan and dating from the 700s. 

Dalrymple claims the “silk road” proper belongs to a later date following the Mongol conquests, but this is surely wrong: Rome’s Pliny the Elder was complaining about the high cost of silk — the making of which was a Chinese secret — as early as the first century AD. 

China’s extensive international trade is evident even in maps of the Tang — its territory stretching a long westward finger through central Asia to control the key land routes, while its military support for the last Sassanid king as he battled the Muslim conquest of Iran illustrates its continental reach.

China’s role as a technological leader is also well attested. China introduced paper manufacturing to the Arab world and silk manufacture to Byzantium, albeit unwillingly (the former brought to the Abbasids by prisoners of war, the latter stolen by monks on a mission).

Arguing over whether India or China was more influential seems to miss the point of this stunning exhibition. It is about connectivity and crossovers: whether technological, as in the adoption of Chinese porcelain-firing techniques and glazes by Iran, cultural, with examples of clothing styles crossing continents, or religious. 

For any book lover this is a treasure trove, presenting ancient texts beautifully inscribed in a range of scripts: Chinese, Sogdian, Persian, Arabic, Greek. Especially remarkable are those that bear witness to the exchange of ideas between civilisations: a Buddhist sutra in parallel lines of Sanskrit and Chinese; and one of the oldest known Korans in Arabic with commentary in Persian.

As you follow the exhibition west, the focus shifts to other empires of the period, the Abbasid caliphate and Byzantium, each with its distinctive artistic style. Notable too are smaller cultures, with the Vikings making an appearance navigating the rivers of Russia to trade with the east.

The focus on tolerance is welcome: like Tang China, the Abbasids were unconcerned that many of their subjects followed a different faith from their rulers, and one intricately decorated cross, commissioned by a Muslim ruler of al-Andalus for his Christian aunt, today in Spain, undermines narratives of a clash of civilisations. 

Such pluralism is not necessarily a historical norm, and the story of Silk Roads ends before contrary narratives might emerge, like the violent reaction in ninth century China against Buddhism as a foreign imposition, followed by a dissolution of the monasteries as destructive as that which later took place in England.

Nor is it all benign, and curators also point to the role of exploitation in these trade networks, with contracts for the sale of women as slaves a poignant glimpse into the lives of people too many histories forget. Silver necklaces worn by Viking nobles are counterposed to the iron neck-rings they set upon slaves kidnapped from the coasts of Ireland.

We cannot expect much modern political commentary from a British Museum exhibition, Tory fears over “cultural Marxism” notwithstanding. But the informed observer will note that the Ghanaian gold that once made the Abbasid caliphate so rich, today lines the pockets of British companies dominating west Africa’s mining sector while the peoples of the region live in poverty, an ongoing saga of resource-control detailed in War on Want’s invaluable pamphlet The New Colonialism. 

Silk Roads is worth seeing for the artefacts alone: more so, as a tribute to international exchanges based on mutual respect, as China’s Belt & Road Initiative seeks to replace a world order of Western exploitation with what Beijing terms “win-win co-operation.” 

But nor, in a world where children mine the metals for our smartphones and thousands of child refugees disappear annually into modern slavery and the sex trade, should we imagine the grimmer aspects of this story are confined to the past.

Runs until February 23 2025. For more information see: britishmuseum.org.