Re-centring Central Asia: A Global Microhistory of the Silk Road between the 9th and 15th Centuries

Objective

The innovative ReCent project transforms the historiographical framework of the Silk Road through a global microhistorical approach. Focusing on the 9th to 15th centuries, it highlights the Uyghurs’ pivotal role in cultural, material, and knowledge exchange across Eurasia, challenging both Sinocentric and Eurocentric paradigms. Despite the extensive corpus of Old Uyghur documents, they remain marginalised in broader Silk Road historiography - an oversight ReCent addresses. By integrating local documents, ReCent reconstructs Silk Road history from within, demonstrating the centrality of Central Asia and its peoples. By fostering innovative collaborations across disciplines, ReCent provides a new model for overcoming the limitations of area studies. Its findings will reshape Silk Road historiography, illuminating premodern globalisation and offering fresh and widely applicable insights into intercultural exchange. ReCent focuses on three core objectives: (1) reconstructing mechanisms of knowledge transfer, material exchange, and cultural exchange; (2) re-evaluating Silk Road functionality during periods of political fragmentation; and (3) reframing diaspora networks through comparative analyses of Central Asian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern sources. ReCent employs a highly interdisciplinary methodology, combining traditional and material philology, microhistory, historical contact linguistics, and social network analysis. Within this interdisciplinary framework hitherto marginalised Old Uyghur documents will be systematically analysed and compared with other Silk Road sources and external literary narratives. Another key innovation is ReCent’s development of an open-access digital textual and prosopographical database of Uyghurs along the Silk Road, enabling identification of individuals and connections across multiple sources. This tool will be key to study processes in cultural, material, and knowledge exchange extending well beyond the proposed project.