From Western Regions to Asia: On the Geographical Concept of “Silk Road” from the Perspective of Eastern and Western Civilizations

To cite this article: LI A-hui. (2021). From Western Regions to Asia: On the Geographical Concept of “Silk Road” from the Perspective of Eastern and Western Civilizations. Asia-Pacific Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 01:3, 057-065, DOI: 10.53789/j.1653-0465.2021.0103.006

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.53789/j.1653-0465.2021.0103.006

Abstract: Through the two geographical perspectives of Western Regions and Asia, we can understand the Silk Road in the historical context of comparing ancient Eastern and Western civilizations to more comprehensively investigate the formation history of the geographical concept of the Silk Road. The Western Regions reflect ancient China’s cognition of Western civilization, while Asia is the observation and imagination of ancient Mediterranean civilization to the eastern world. In history, the scope of the Western Regions and Asia gradually expanded to outer space, and the extension of the two perspectives was almost synchronous, forming the civilization picture of the Western Regions and Asia in a broad sense. Therefore, the ancient Silk Road is not only the western region road from the east to the west but also the Asia road from the west to the east. The concept of the Silk Road in the modern sense is based on the integration of eastern and western geographical concepts after the 19th century, which also reflects the intersection of Western Regions and Asia.

Keywords: Western Regions; Asia; Silk Road; civilization view; geopolitical order

LI A-hui Number 3 APJHSS.pdf