Valerie Hansen
Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is professor of history. Her main research goal is to draw on nontraditional sources to capture the experience of ordinary people. In particular she is interested in how sources buried in the ground, whether intentionally or unintentionally, supplement the detailed official record of China’s past. Her books include The Silk Road: A New History, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, and Voyages in World History (co-authored with Kenneth R. Curtis). In the past decade, she has spent three years in China: 2005-06 in Shanghai on a Fulbright grant; and 2008-09 and 2011-12, teaching at Yale’s joint undergraduate program with Peking University.
Books by Valerie Hansen
The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began
by Valerie Hansen
"Around the year 1000, people around the globe started to realize for the first time that they could leave home, travel to other places, find out about their neighbors and adopt new approaches. A wave of Islam came to Northwest China as part of that movement. People embarked on ocean travel, who hadn’t strayed far previously. The Vikings cross from Greenland to what is today Canada. New routes linked the continents together."
We spoke to Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale, about the best books on the Silk Roads.
“My book focuses on seven Silk Road sites and proceeds in chronological order. It starts in Northwest China, about the second century AD, and continues up through the age of Marco Polo. Many people erroneously think that the Silk Road connected China with Rome. There is very little evidence of direct contact between the Han dynasty or its successors and Rome. But there’s lots of evidence of contact between China and Iran. At the end of each chapter, I include a collection of selected primary sources for each Silk Road site, some very rare, which give readers the chance to read the words of, for instance, Chinese pilgrims and Marco Polo.” Read more...
The best books on The Silk Road
Valerie Hansen, Historian
Interviews with Valerie Hansen
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1
The Silk Road: A New History
by Valerie Hansen -
2
Sogdian Traders: A History
Étienne de la Vaissière (trans. James Ward) -
3
Diary: Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law
Ennin (trans. E O Reischauer) -
4
Foreign Devils on the Silk Road
by Peter Hopkirk -
5
Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes
by Susan Whitfield
The best books on The Silk Road, recommended by Valerie Hansen
The best books on The Silk Road, recommended by Valerie Hansen
From the Han dynasty to the time of Marco Polo, the routes connecting Asia, Africa and Europe—now known as the Silk Road—were responsible for enormous amounts of global trade. Yale historian Valerie Hansen, author of The Silk Road: A New History, introduces us to its rich history: “one of the reasons the Silk Road is a misnomer is that silk was not the main good moving along.”
Interviews where books by Valerie Hansen were recommended
-
1
The Silk Road: A New History
by Valerie Hansen -
2
Sogdian Traders: A History
Étienne de la Vaissière (trans. James Ward) -
3
Diary: Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law
Ennin (trans. E O Reischauer) -
4
Foreign Devils on the Silk Road
by Peter Hopkirk -
5
Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes
by Susan Whitfield
The best books on The Silk Road, recommended by Valerie Hansen
The best books on The Silk Road, recommended by Valerie Hansen
From the Han dynasty to the time of Marco Polo, the routes connecting Asia, Africa and Europe—now known as the Silk Road—were responsible for enormous amounts of global trade. Yale historian Valerie Hansen, author of The Silk Road: A New History, introduces us to its rich history: “one of the reasons the Silk Road is a misnomer is that silk was not the main good moving along.”
