Geography: GEO 408 Silk Road
News and Current Events
- Academic Search CompleteIncludes magazines and newspapers as well as traditional research materials.
- BBC World NewsOnce on the main World News page, you have the ability to narrow the news by geographic region, such as Asia and Middle East.
- CNA - Channel News AsiaEnglish language Asian news network based in Singapore with correspondents in major Asian cities and key Western ones. In addition to news, there is also a lifestyle section and live radio feature.
- Lexis-Nexis NewsEnglish language, full-text news sources and foreign language news.
Databases for Articles & Book Chapters
- GEOBASEThe database for all geographical research. Human / Cultural, Physical, Environmental, Regional Planning.
- Web of ScienceChoose Science or Social Science Citation Index, or Arts and Humanities Citation index, or use in any combinaiton. These databases are interdisciplinary, and are best known for being able to see who has cited an article.
- Bibliography of Asian StudiesWestern-language citations to articles, books, and other publications on all parts of Asia.
Books
Adventures on the Ancient Silk Road by
The fabled Silk Road conjures up the sights, smells and sounds of faraway lands: great and diverse cultures separated by deserts sands or windswept mountain passes. But traveling the Silk Road took years, often through bleak and rugged country with few inhabitants. Those who set out fought off bandits, battled starvation and survived treacherous storms. Adventures introduces readers to three great historical figures: Chinese Buddhist Xuanzang’s (travels 629 – 645AD), 16-year epic journey from China to India and back is the only source of information we have for huge chunks of the history and geography of this time. His successful search for Buddhist scriptures changed the course of two great nations and he remains an enduring hero of folklore. Mongolian Genghis Khan (war travels 1201 – 1227), bred from infancy to be a warrior, brought the Mongol clans together into a fighting nation to rule the Silk Road and establish the greatest empire the world had seen. Italian merchant Marco Polo (travels 1271 – 1295) journeyed through China for 24 years. His journeys changed the way Europe saw the world beyond its borders. His book even inspired Columbus to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of China. Stunning photographs and art depicting the ancient routes and peoples bring the stories to life. Maps, sidebars and an afterword that highlights the story of the Silk Road are also featured. In the end we too come to know the lands the three travelers explored, and how they were greeted—or cheated—by the folks along the way.
Call Number: DS33.1 .G35 2009ISBN: 9781554511983Publication Date: 2009-08-20
Lands of Lost Borders by
"Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic."--Pico Iyer "Lands of Lost Borders is illuminating, heart-warming, and hopeful in its suggestion that we will explore not to conquer but to connect."--Booklist (starred review) A brilliant, fierce writer, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road--an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world. As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved--to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician--had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within. Lands of Lost Borders, winner of the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award and a 2018 Nautilus Award, is the chronicle of Harris's odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves; an examination of the stories borders tell, and the restrictions they place on nature and humanity; and a meditation on the existential need to explore--the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and reflective, wry and rapturous. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other--a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us.
Call Number: DS327.8 .H36 2018ISBN: 9780062839343Publication Date: 2018-08-21
Mapping the Silk Road by
Today the world is focusing unprecedented attention on Asia and the Middle East - rediscovering a cultural, political, and geographical landscape that has fascinated and frustrated Westerners since the time of Alexander the Great. Mapping the Silk Road and Beyondtraces the history of the European age of exploration and its lasting effects on these regions through an extensive series of beautifully rendered and imaginative maps drawn by explorers, merchants, and colonial administrators of the time. The book focuses on both maritime exploration and overland discovery via the ancient Silk Road: a network of trading posts that encompassed China, Tibet, Pakistan, India, Kurdistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and dozens of other places known in ancient times by fabled names, including Abyssinia, Malacca, Macassar, Siam, and Cathay. The maps provide detailed visual keys to the fascinating history of Asia and the Middle East: altogether they illuminate a cast of historical figures ranging from great leaders (the Queen of Sheba, Mohammed the prophet, King Charles V) to legendary explorers (Marco Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Sir Francis Drake, Capt. James Cook) and influential cartographers. Mapping the Silk Road and Beyonddepicts over eighty maps organized in clear chronology - from Alexander the Great's map of the world, first created in 323 BC and reproduced in a sixteenth-century atlas, to maps from the nineteenth century by French and Dutch explorers that detail the growing interaction between Europeans and Eastern cultures. These maps represent the finest examples in existence in museums, libraries, and archives around the world, chosen because they depict the most important milestones in the mapping of Asia.
Call Number: G2202.S54 N34 2004ISBN: 0714844098Publication Date: 2004-09-24
The Routledge Atlas of Central Eurasian Affairs by
Providing concisely written entries on the most important current issues in Central Asia and Eurasia, this atlas offers relevant background information on the region¿s place in the contemporary political and economic world. Features include: Profiles of the constituent countries of Central Asia, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan Profiles of Mongolia, western China, Tibet, and the three Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia Timely and significant original maps and data for each entry A comprehensive glossary, places index and subject index of major concepts, terms and regional issues Bibliography and useful websites section Designed for use in teaching undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars in geography, history, economics, anthropology, international relations, political science and the environment as well as regional courses on the Former Soviet Union, Central Asia, and Eurasia, this atlas is also a comprehensive reference source for libraries and scholars interested in these fields.
Call Number: G2166.S1 B78 2012ISBN: 9780415497503Publication Date: 2012-08-13
Shadow of the Silk Road by
Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch--in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, Shadow of the Silk Road is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. Shadow of the Silk Road encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment.
Call Number: DS327.7 .T48 2007ISBN: 9780061231728Publication Date: 2007-07-03
The Silk Road by
The phrase "silk road" evokes vivid images: of merchants leading camel caravans over deserts and steppes to trade exotic goods in the bazaars of glittering Oriental cities, of pilgrims braving bandits and frozen mountain passes to gather scriptures and spread their faith across continentalexpanses. Beyond the exotica, however, this VSI will be a sketch of the historical background against which the silk road flourished, and an essay on the significance of old-world intercultural exchange to Eurasian and world history generally.On the one hand, Millward treats the silk road broadly, as a metonym for the cross-fertilizing communication between peoples across the Eurasian continent since at least the Neolithic era. On the other, he highlights specific examples of goods and ideas exchanged between the Mediterranean, Persian,Indian, and Chinese regions, along with the significance of these exchanges. While including silks, spices, travelers' tales of colorful locales, the main focus of the book is to outline the dynamics of Central Eurasian history that promoted silk road interactions, especially the role of nomadempires; and to highlight the importance of the biological, technological, artistic, intellectual, and religious interchanges across the continent. Millward shows that these exchanges had a profound effect on the old world that was akin to, if not yet on the scale of, modern globalization.Millward also considers some of the more abstract contemporary uses to which the silk road concept has been put. It is, of course, a popular marketing device for boutiques, museums, restaurants, and tour operators from Venice to Kyoto. More than that, however, the silk road has ideologicalconnotations, used sometimes to soften the face of Chinese expansion in Central Asia, or, in the US culture wars, as a challenge to the "clash of civilizations" understanding of intersocietal relations. Finally, while it has often been argued that the silk road declined or closed after the collapseof the Mongol empire or the opening of direct maritime communications from Europe to Asia, Millard disputes this view, showing how silk road phenomena continued through the early modern and modern expansion of Russian and Chinese states across Central Asia.
Call Number: e-BookISBN: 9780199782864Publication Date: 2013-04-12
The Silk Road by
The Silk Road, a series of ancient trade routes stretching across Central Asia to Europe, evokes exotic images of camel trains laden with bales of fine Chinese silk, spices, and perfume, of desert oases surrounded by snow-capped mountains, of bustling markets thronging with travellers buying and selling grapes, coriander, Baltic amber, and Mediterranean coral. Along this route, silks were sent from China to ancient Rome; princesses were dispatched in marriage alliances across the deserts; bandits and thieves launched attacks throughout history. Covering more than 5,000 years, this book, lavishly illustrated with photographs, manuscripts, and paintings from the collections of the British Library and other museums worldwide, presents an overall picture of the history and cultures of the Silk Road. It also contains many previously unpublished photographs by the great explorers Stein, Hedin, and Mannerheim. More than just a trade route, the Silk Road witnessed the movement of cultural influences. Frances Wood traces the story of the civilizations and ideas that flourished and moved along its vast geographical expanse. Indian Buddhism was carried into China on the Silk Road, initiating a long history of pilgrimages along the lonely desert routes; Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam also made their way eastwards along its route. The nineteenth century saw a new interest in Central Asia and the Silk Road, as Russia and Britain vied for power on the frontiers of Afghanistan. A new breed of explorer, part archaeologist, part cartographer, part spy, was seen on the Silk Road, while some of the ancient cities, long buried in sand-blown dunes, began to give up their secrets. This book brings the history of the Silk Road alive--from its beginnings to the present day, revealing a rich history still in the making.
Call Number: DS33.1 .W615 2002ISBN: 0520237862Publication Date: 2003-10-06
MU Libraries has a wide selection of materials, but if you can't find what you need, try searching in WorldCat. This is a world wide catalog of materials, many of which you can borrow through the Inter-Library Loan process and have items delivered to campus for you. Please ask if you need help with this wonderful service.
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowThe world's largest and most comprehensive bibliographic database for books, journal titles, media, manuscripts and other materials held in libraries around the world. Materials not owned by Miami or by an OhioLINK library must be requested through Interlibrary Loan.
Maps
General Maps, Reference Maps, Thematic Maps of regions and countries of the world are listed in the Libraries Catalog, by "G" call numbers.
Find these maps with a subject or keyword search. Find regions and countries with a subject search of the country name and "maps", for example, "Pakistan Maps". Find maps of places within a region or country by keyword, for example, "Karachi Maps".
Regions appear as well as individual countries. Here are examples:
- Central Asia
- Silk Road
- Middle East
- Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu
- Tibet Autonomous Region
- Himalaya Mountains
- Library of Congress Map Collections to PresentDigital images of maps of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. Includes copyright free contemporary and historical maps of countries and regions of the world.
- David Rumsey Map CollectionOver 10,000 images. Rare 18th- and 19th-century maps. Many are from old atlases. The world, Europe, Asia and Africa are represented. Note: browser must be able to allow pop-up windows.
- Perry-Castañeda Library Map CollectionJPEG, GIF, and PDF map images, at the University of Texas at Austin Library. Many of the maps were originally produced by federal government agencies.
