Central Asia and the Silk Road ─ Economic Rise and Decline over Several Millennia

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the pre-modern economic history of Central Asia and the Silk Road, covering several millennia. By analyzing an abundance of sources and materials, it illustrates the repeated economic heydays of the Silk Road, during which it linked the Orient and Occident for many centuries. Nomadic steppe empires frequently dominated Central Asia, molded its economy and influenced trade along the Silk Road. The book assesses the causes and effects of the wide-ranging overland trade booms, while also discussing various internal and external factors that led to the gradual economic decline of Central Asia and eventual demise of the Silk Road. Lastly, it explains how the economic decline gave rise to Chinese and Russian colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Detailed information, e.g. on the Silk Road’s trajectories in various epochs, is offered in the form of numerous newly drafted maps. 

Stephan Barisitz is Senior Economist in the Foreign Research Division of the Austrian Central Bank. He joined the bank in Dec 1998 and focuses on country- research and monitoring of Russia, Ukraine, CIS, South Eastern Europe, as well as on banking and financial sector analysis. In 2008, Stephan passed his habilitation exam in economic history at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). His habilitation thesis deals with banking transformation in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union since the 1980s. From 2009 to 2013 he was lecturer at the Institute for Economic and Social History and has been carrying out research on the economic history of Central Asia and the Silk Road. Before coming back to Vienna in 1998, Stephan worked for three years as an economist at the OECD in Paris, where, together with a colleague, has was in charge of the Russia-CIS-Bulgaria Desk of the OECD Economics Department. Before that he was from 1992 to 1995 with the Austrian Institute for East and South-East European Studies (OSI), Vienna, responsible for economic research and editing of Institute publications. Stephan started out his career as an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) in 1986. Stephan had studied economics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and, after a research stay at Carleton University, Ottawa, passed his doctorate the same year.