
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

There were many reasons for Britain’s ultimate success. Scholars have noted, for example, that levels of social and economic inequality were lower than in other countries in Europe, and that the bottom tiers of the population had noticeably higher levels of calorie consumption than their continental peers.29
Peter Frankopan • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
nothing more than what some historians have called “a tissue of exaggerations, misconceptions and outright lies.”
Peter Frankopan • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
grandiloquent,
Peter Frankopan • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Maria-Theresa’s succession in the 1740s provoked outbreaks of fighting from the Americas to the Indian subcontinent that lasted nearly a decade. The result when matters were finally settled in 1748 was that Cap Breton in Canada and Madras in India changed hands between the French and the British.
Peter Frankopan • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
The Puritans who settled New England did so in protest against the changes that had accompanied Europe’s rise and against the affluence that followed. They were reacting to the strange stream of new ideas and goods that made the world seem a very different place—where Chinese porcelain was appearing on household dining tables, where marriage of peo
... See morePeter Frankopan • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
All the riches of the Indian Ocean, the Caspian or the Black Sea, he wrote, could not make up for what had been swept away.65