When Asia Was the World

#129
Title: When Asia Was the World
Author: Stewart Gordon
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Year: 2007
Genre: History, Asia
228 pages

An enjoyable and easy to read overview of aspects of Asia's infrastructure, particularly as related to travel, trade, and customs, from about 500-1500 CE. The first 9 chapters (with one exception) follow a similar format, with material from a traveler's memoir used as a starting point for Gordon's elaboration about the era and circumstances in which each writer lived. The 10th chapter provides a useful summary and brings in slightly more theoretical material from social network theory. Gordon provides good end notes and an interesting bibliography. My only complaint is the lack of women's voices. While I recognize that there may not have been memoirs by women that met Gordon's purposes, this should be named in the introduction or concluding chapter. Otherwise one is left with a vision of the expansiveness of men's opportunities with no balance of descriptions of women's restricted possibilities in the period covered. Women's lack of access to larger social networks because of their lack of status seems important to name, and Gordon does not do so. Women lurk at the edges of this narrative as wives (both cherished and deserted), daughters, and prostitutes. There is no entry under "women" in the index. The omission of even a contextualizing note mars Gordon's otherwise very enjoyable and interesting work.