When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the Riches of the East

New insights, especially into the remarkable developments of Asian worlds in a millennium of Asian predominance. . . . [A] thoughtful, innovative history. —David Landes, Professor of Economics and History, emeritus, Harvard University

While European civilization stagnated in the Dark Ages, Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas.

Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500—a time when Asia was the world—by relating the personal journeys of Asia's many travelers.

The splendors of courtly life, the austerity of Buddhist monasteries, and the rigors of sea travel and the silk roads all come to life through these travelers' eyes. —J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, author of The Human Web and Something New Under the Sun

If trade is what unites the modern global system and if Asia is the focal point for the new century, then the people and events so carefully described in When Asia Was the World are the ones we need to know in order to understand where we are now. It is a book as much about our future as our past. —Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Engaging and informative . . . truly unique. —Kenneth Hall, Professor of History, Ball State University, South and Southeast Asia specialist

By humanizing its subject matter in this way, the book makes complex historical processes immediately accessible to the reader. —Richard Eaton, Professor of History, University of Arizona, Asian and world historian