The silk roads and shared heritage in Europe: Beyond ‘China to Rome’

This article offers critical engagement with ideas of shared heritage, considering representation of the silk roads in Europe as a counterpoint to their representation in China. Often cast as a ‘bridge’ between ‘East and West’ or ‘China and Rome’ (e.g. UNESCO’s description of the Silk Road Heritage Corridors), the silk roads are regularly depicted as an abstraction of interconnection. And as an abstraction, the idea of shared heritage is often emptied of its potential to communicate greater understanding of the past, respect for cultural difference and co-dependency, or to invite reflection on forms of community constituted through shared histories. Exploring the Sinicization of the silk roads, we argue that much of the rhetoric of shared heritage is deceptively exclusive. We turn to consider the depiction of these histories of trade within Europe, offering a discursive analysis of metatexts around the United Nations World Tourism Organization/European Commission Western Silk Road tourism project, with some discussion of the representation of ancient trade at different European museums. We argue that an enduring legacy of the silk roads’ romanticized image and the transcription of this into commercial tourism inhibit their potential as a useful metanarrative for the future because it fails to communicate the complexity of the past, particularly histories of violence and inequality. However, considering recent depiction of the amber roads, we argue that histories of trade can nevertheless be mobilized towards a more nuanced understanding of the past and a critical reflection on the past and present.