Peter Frankopan

Oxford

Professor of Global History at Oxford. Director, Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. Silk Roads. Environment & Climate Change. Co-host of the Legacy podcast

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Articles

Leprosy, Armadillos and the Long Memory of Disease

4 days ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

On my way back from Tajikistan, I had a chance to catch up on some reading and on some of the latest research in fields I am interested in. One of the great misconceptions of history is that the past is dead. Yet the past persists - sometimes in our politics, sometimes in our landscapes, and sometimes, quite literally, in our bodies.
Global Threads with Peter Frankopan

6 days ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

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Drones over Port Sudan: Three insights to the remaking of the new world order

1 week ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

Earlier this month, Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a series of drone attacks on Port Sudan, a strategic city on the Red Sea coast that is currently serving as Sudan’s interim capital. These attacks targeted critical infrastructure. One wave hit northern areas of the city where the army’s Flamingo naval base is located.
Ancient India at the British Museum review — were these deities really so benign?

2 weeks ago | ft.com | Peter Frankopan

Between 200BC and AD600, Indian religious traditions underwent a profound visual metamorphosis.
A Bead Too Far: Rethinking Global Connections Before Columbus

2 weeks ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

As a historian of exchange, I am conscious that goods that travel long-distances, are shiny or unusual get all the glory: a lot of history is mundane, low-key and local. Every now and again, though, the glittery, exciting things are important for a reason.
The Longest Road: Genomic Echoes of Humanity’s Greatest Journey

2 weeks ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

Around a dozen years ago, I began to work on genetic materials in order to better understand migratory patterns. I was particularly interested in a few hot spots - such as the influence of Yamnaya cultures of Eurasia in northern India, the Xiongnu/Huns, Yuezhi/Kushan and later nomadic groups too. When I wrote The Earth Transformed, I went further back in time (a lot further!) to look at patterns of movement and settlement from the dawn of human history.
A Bitter Pill: How pharmaceuticals are rewriting the rules of rivers, marine life and ecosystems that depend on them

3 weeks ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

I wrote yesterday about Sinking Cities, and about the damage caused by unsustainable water depletion. The 28 cities with the largest population in the US are all sinking. That creates problems that are very expensive to fix - and are likely to trigger long-term consequencs about viability, about migration, collapsed real estate values and dead cities that are very familiar to a history of urban settlement.
Global Threads with Peter Frankopan

4 weeks ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

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Operation Sindoor: some key takeaways

4 weeks ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

Indian operations against positions in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in Pakistan itself came as retaliation for the deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people - mainly Indian tourists - last month. The escalation of tension, first about water right, and then with Indian military strikes looked as though it might accelerate to all-out war between two nuclear powers.
Empire, Inequality and the Architecture of Collapse

1 month ago | peterfrankopan.substack.com | Peter Frankopan

In the early years of the first millennium, two great empires cast long shadows across the earth. Rome, encircling the Mediterranean like a bronze ring, stretched from the rainy hills of Britain to the sands of Syria. To the East, the Han dynasty ruled over a vast realm of rice paddies and river valleys, orchestrating a courtly ballet of taxation and administration from its heart in Chang’an/Xian.