Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 32

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TEACHING THE HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SILK ROAD
IN THE POST-CLASSICAL ERA (CA.500–1450 CE)
PART
_____
VI
by
Ane Lintvedt
McDonogh School
Owings Mills, Maryland
In many world history survey courses and introductory textbooks, Korea comes into the
historical narrative only as a flashpoint for the Cold War in the mid-20th century. This, of
course, doesn’t quite do justice to a people’s history. But few teachers have been taught
anything about Korea, and in consequence they can’t teach anything about Korea. Drawing
on Silla Korea and the Silk Road and a few other sources, I’m going to suggest ways to in-
corporate Korean history into that great Classical and Post-Classical topic of World History,
the Silk Road.
Everyone knows that the Silk Road began in China and went westward by land and water
routes, across Eurasia. Although scholars and teachers may have their “favorite parts” of
the Silk Road to explore with our classes, we all tend to teach that the land-based silk routes
began in Chang’an (or Xi’an) China and ended in the bazaars and marketplaces of the east-
ern Mediterranean area. Some adventurous souls went through the Khyber Pass into the
Indian subcontinent, and others sailed the sea-based routes of the Indian Ocean Basin.
I’m going to argue that including/inserting Korea, although east of Chang’an, into the his-
tory of the Silk Road is easy to do, is important to do, and adds to our students historical
understanding of East Asian history in total as well as their appreciation for the intricacies of
interactions along Silk Road in the Classical and Post-Classical eras.
I’m going to approach this task thematically. First, historians “use” the Silk Road as a way to
discuss cross-cultural diffusion—the conditions that allow for the spread of ideas, peoples,
merchandise, technologies, diseases—from point A to point B and all the way through point
Z. Second, we discuss the reasons and processes by which people—individually or as a
significant part of the whole society—adopt or adapt pieces of foreign cultures and blend
them into their own cultures. (This is a process that Jerry Bentley termed syncretism in his
book Old World Encounters.)
In the Classical era, the Korean peninsula was divided for centuries into three small king-
doms (cf. map on p. 6). There was a good deal of contact with China. All three used Chi-
nese writing, with transcription systems for Korean words; there was a Confucian acad-
emy founded in Koguryo in 372. 1 One kingdom, the Silla (57 BCE–668 CE), began military
32 
Silla Korea and the Silk Road: Golden Age, Golden Threads