• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-22
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• 2018

The concept of the "Seidenstrassen" (Silk Road) was created by the German geographer F. von Richthofen (1833-1905) in 1877. The "Seidenstrassen" means communication between China and the Roman cultural area. To prove the route of dissemination of silk, Richthofen not only focused on geographical substantiality, based on the routes of the Chinese Zhang Qian and the Roman Ptolemy, but also on etymological, historical, and religious sources. In fact, his Silk Road concept has the trade of silk as well as the humanistic ideas of cultural exchange. It is worth noting that in his book China, Richthofen presented the Silk Road as a space-time concept that considers the length of space as well as the length of time by highlighting humanistic examples that came into modern times through the Sea Route. Later, the English term "Silk Road" appeared in 1938, the Japanese term "シルクロ-ド" (sirukurodo) in 1939, and the Korean term "실크로드" (silkrodeu) in 1952.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to examine the descriptions of the transmission of plague along the Silk Road in Orhan Pamuk's 2022 novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, the first prize for Turkish literature. Pamuk's vast knowledge of epidemiological history, which has long fascinated him, comes to life in this novel as he describes the characters' battles against the plague in the East and West and how the plague was brought to the islands and spread along the Maritime Silk Road. One of the most important trade routes in human history, the Silk Road was not only a link between East and West trade and cultures but also a route for the transmission of bubonic plague during the medieval period onwards. It was this epidemic that contributed to the decline of the Silk Road. In the novel, a plague originating in China strikes the Ottoman coastal cities of Smyrna and Mingheria on its way to Europe via India. The epidemic is contained in Smyrna but the death toll spirals out of control when the plague reaches the island of Mingheria by sea. The spatial setting of the novel is an island, which means that it communicates with the outside world by sea. The only way the plague could have spread to an isolated island was by ship. Rats from different ports and ships would have traveled to other parts of the world or even countries to spread the plague. In Nights of Plague, the fact that the plague reached Mingheria via the maritime Silk Road is also proven by the route of the ships and various narratives. The novel confirms what many scholars have argued, that the Silk Road brought various goods from the East to the Roman Empire, along with deadly diseases, and that the sea routes were an important way for the plague to travel and spread.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.153-153
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• 2017

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.95-124
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• 2023

Over the past 30 years, intense archaeological research has revealed a great increase in regional and transregional object mobility across the South China Sea during its Iron Age (500 BCE to 500 CE). Some objects had moved from a long distance: intaglios, seals, fine ceramic, glass containers, and gold coins of Mediterranean origin; and large bronzes, mirrors, and lacquerware connected to central East Asia. This evidence has given rise to larger-scale explanations, among which the most prominent has been the growth of (maritime) Silk Road trade. Scholars are divided as to whether the Silk Road is a suitable concept, with some emphasizing its orientalist overtones and colonial baggage and others finding it useful for the investigation of interregional networks trading in silk and other commodities. This paper explores how productive the Silk Road concept or metaphor really is for understanding transregional connectivity and social change in Iron Age Southeast Asia.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.23-48
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• 2018

The Silk Road usually implies a network of trade and communications that stretched from east to west and connected China and the countries of the Far East via Central Asia and the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean, or through the northern coast of the Caspian Sea and the Volga basin to the Black Sea coast. However, at certain historical stages, a network of maritime and overland routes stretching from north to south, commonly called the Volga-Caspian trade route, also played a significant role in international trade and cultural contacts. The geopolitical realities of the early Middle Ages relating to the relationship of Byzantium, the Sassanid Empire, and the West Turkic Khaganate, the advance of the Arab Caliphate to the north, the spread of Islam in the Volga region, the glories and fall of the Khazar State, and the Scandinavian campaigns in the Caucasus, closely intertwined with the history of transport and communications connecting the north and south through the Volga-Caspian route. In a later era, the interests of the Mongolian Uluses, and then the political and economic aspirations of the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid State, and Russia, collided or combined on these routes. The article discusses trade contacts existing between the north and the south in the 15th and first half of the 17th century along the routes on the western coast of the Caspian Sea.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.112-129
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• 2018

Produced by Chinese local television stations, Maritime Silk Road is a documentary which adopts ancient Maritime Silk Road as a historical nostalgia to interpret "the Belt and Road Initiative", a contemporary Chinese economic, political, and cultural strategy put forward by Chinese government mainly aiming at the countries of Southeast Asia. The main body of this article has three parts and the first part analyses how the documentary adopts computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create a historical nostalgia about ancient Maritime Silk Road in the period of Imperial China. At the same time, this part also presents a sense of diasporic nostalgia of the overseas Chinese. This historical and diasporic nostalgia is related to Chinese President Xi Jinping's political discourse: "Chinese dream" that propagandises to build a strong China put forward by Xi in 2013. The second part analyses how this historical and diasporic nostalgia legitimates Xi's "Chinese dream" and how it responds to recent territorial dispute when China continuously claims its territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea. In this light, the documentary repeatedly mentions two political rhetoric: "coexistence" (gongcun) and "mutual benefit"(huli gongying) as a practical strategy to deal with the dispute between China and some countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). In the third section, the concept of "community of common destiny" (mingyun gongtongti) is adopted by the documentary to depict a convenient and effective organization of China and ASEAN, which is framed as an ultimate goal that Chinese government is depicted as the potential leader of this nostalgic community. At the same time, by providing different and even opposite viewpoints, this article discusses three controversial political rhetoric to present how historical and diasporic nostalgia is politicalized and served for Chinese diplomacy and national interest. Overall, this article argues that the documentary creates a glorious ancient Maritime Silk Road, as a sense of nostalgia, to expand China's economic and political influence, to respond to the controversial issues, and to reassert China's leadership as the centre of Asia.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.67-90
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• 2024

India, Southeast Asia in general, and Siam in particular share a long history of cultural and commercial relations. Located in each other's extended neighbourhood, India and Thailand have a shared maritime boundary in the Andaman Sea. Situated in the strategic position, midway between West Asia on the one hand and East Asia on the other, India and Siam combined played a significant role in the maritime transactions in Asia and beyond. The geographical proximity between India and Siam led to multifaceted maritime interactions and exchanges. Siam was in the Indian sphere of cultural, religious, philosophical, technical, and linguistic influence much before the Common Era. The cultural and mercantile networks between India and Siam are well-attested by archaeological and literary sources. The archaeological findings in Siam and other Southeast Asian countries have revealed the dynamic trade and cultural exchange between India and Southeast Asia since the pre-Common Era. The Takola (modern Takua Pa) area served as a more suitable landing place for Indian merchants and there existed the settlement of the Indian mercantile community. Ligor (Nakhon Si Thammarat), Jaya (Chaiya), Patalung (Phatalung), U Thong, Ban Don Tha Pet, Ban U Taphao, Khao Sam Kaeo, and many other sites in Siam have brought to light a large variety of objects which demonstrate that ancient Siam had close mercantile contact with India as well as the Mediterranean world and China. The paper discusses in detail the cultural and trade links between India and Siam and their impact on the Maritime Silk Road.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.125-154
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• 2023

Historically, commerce was a significant factor in the proliferation and development of Buddhism, which is especially manifest in the cult of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Iconographic and textual evidence testifies that maritime trade on the Indian Ocean played a fundamental role in the formation of Avalokiteśvara worship. The sea was also a major conduit through which elements of the Avalokiteśvara faith were transmitted from India through China to Korea and Japan, the easternmost ends of the Silk Road. These elements include Avalokiteśvara's role as a maritime savior, oceanic symbolism, and the concept of the bodhisattva's worldly abode, Potalaka. Cultic sites dedicated to maritime safety were established at important transport hubs in East Asia. Due to China's strategic location on the Silk Road, as well as its cultural influence, the most important cultic sites were founded in China, first on the Shandong Peninsula, then in the southern Jiangnan region, in present-day Zhejiang Province. Especially notable is the role that Korean seafarers played in this process by assisting monks in search of the Dharma, establishing temples, and transmitting religious beliefs across the ocean. The present study focuses on the role that maritime figures played in the cultural exchanges between Korea, China, and Japan examined through Avalokiteśvara faith. By this, it aims to demonstrate how Korean seafarers inherited and continued the traditional relationship between commerce and Buddhism, while extending the Maritime Silk Road to the "East Asian Mediterranean."

• Strategy21
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• s.36
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• pp.59-93
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• 2015

A Paradigm shift is in process in China's foreign policies during Xi Jinping's era. Such changes occur with changing national identities from developing country to great power, and from continental power to continental-maritime power. China's pursuit for sea power embraces its global strategy. Accommodating the new identity of maritime power, China is developing its maritime strategy. New silk-road strategy actively utilizes China's advantage in economy, while avoiding direct military challenges against the U.S. China seeks an associated balance of power with the U.S. On the other hand, China make its determination clear to protect its core national interests, particularly Taiwan straits issue, deploying Anti-Access and Area-Denial strategy. 'Pax-Americana 3.0' and 'China's rise 2.0' have convoluted and evolved in complexity. South Korea faces much tougher challenges ahead in its foreign and security environments.

• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.144-176
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• 2015

In September 2013, President Park Geun-hye announced her controversial "Look North" policy, of which the most salient aspect is the "Eurasia Initiative". This comprises various proposals designed to overcome existing constraints by developing new markets and creating new economic partners in continental areas from which South Korea has been alienated since the end of World War II, and this dovetails nicely with China's One Belt, One Road Initiative. The concepts of the "Silk Road Rail Express (SRX)" and the "East Sea Rim Maritime Community (ESRMC)" have also been discussed. SRX is at present a purely symbolic railroad project intended to encourage individual, cultural, trade and diplomatic exchanges. ESRMC is a model for establishing an ad hoc community to promote regional economic cooperation around the East Sea. President Park's Eurasia Initiative will provide South Korean investment for the Northeast to complement Russian plans, like the "Northern Energy Road" being built by Gazprom, and Chinese plans, like the Chang-Ji-Tu Development Plan for the North Korean port of Rajin. China's trade, as well as its energy and food supplies, pass through the Strait of Malacca and the Indian Ocean, and are thus vulnerable to interdiction by India or the US. China is therefore trying to reduce its exposure geopolitical risk by establishing a network of corridors between the Belt and the Road to provide alternative paths. The "China-Pakistan Economic Corridor" and the "China-Myanmar Economic Corridor" provide such connections, and South Korea hopes that SRX and ESRMC can become part of a "China-South Korea Economic Corridor". This concept could do much to revitalize the underdeveloped northern provinces of China and Russia's Far East, not to mention North Korea. By linking up the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Trans-China Railway, the Trans-Mongolian Railway and the Trans-Korean Railway all these Asian countries will be connected to one another, and ultimately to Europe. An interim connection between China and South Korea using a rail-ferry has also been proposed.