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The Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies offers in three volumes the first comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region to elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires. Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange analyzes frontier zones as particular landscapes of encounter, economic development, and transimperial network formation. The chapters offer problematizing approaches to frontier zone processes as part of and in between empires, with the goal of better understanding how and why goods and resources moved across the Afro-Eurasian region. Key frontiers in mountains and steppes, along coasts, rivers, and deserts are investigated in depth, demonstrating how local landscapes, politics, and pathways explain network practices and participation in long-distance trade. The chapters seek to retrieve local knowledge ignored in popular Silk Road models and to show the potential of frontier-zone research for understanding the Afro-Eurasian region as a connected space. ; The Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies offers in three volumes the first comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region to elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires. Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange analyzes frontier zones as particular landscapes of encounter, economic development, and transimperial network formation. The chapters offer problematizing approaches to frontier zone processes as part of and in between empires, with the goal of better understanding how and why goods and resources moved across the Afro-Eurasian region. Key frontiers in mountains and steppes, along coasts, rivers, and deserts are investigated in depth, demonstrating how local landscapes, politics, and pathways explain network practices and participation in long-distance trade. The chapters seek to retrieve local knowledge ignored in popular Silk Road models and to show the potential of frontier-zone research for understanding the Afro-Eurasian region as a connected space.

What is development, what has it been in the past, and what can historians learn from studying the history of development? How has the field of the history of development evolved over time, and where should it be going in the future?

The notion of the “Silk Road” that the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen invented in the 19th century has lost attraction to scholars in light of large amounts of new evidence and new approaches. The handbook suggests new conceptual and methodological tools for researching ancient economic exchange in a global perspective with a strong focus on recent debates on the nature of pre-modern empires.The interdisciplinary team of Chinese, Indian and Graeco-Roman historians, archaeologists and anthropologists that has written this handbook compares different forms of economic development in agrarian and steppe regions in a period of accelerated empire formation during 300 BCE and 300 CE. It investigates inter-imperial zones and networks of exchange which were crucial for ancient Eurasian connections.Volume I provides a comparative history of the most important empires forming in Northern Africa, Europe and Asia between 300 BCE and 300 CE. It surveys a wide range of evidence that can be brought to bear on economic development in the these empires, and takes stock of the ways academic traditions have shaped different understandings of economic and imperial development as well as Silk-Road exchange in Russia, China, India and Western Graeco-Roman history.