The aim of the book is commendable: to evaluate the social, cultural and religious importance of highways in a truly global fashion. The anthology is the result of a workshop held in 2008 at Brown University, and forms part of the series The Ancient World: Comparative Histories. It might be seen as a companion piece to an earlier volume, Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-modern Societies (edd. K. Raaflaub and R.J.A. Talbert [2010]).
The book includes fourteen contributions, of which six cover the classical Mediterranean world, including Achaemenid Persia, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman Empire. Other contributions cover highways in India, China, Japan, America and Saharan Africa. Not only does this slim volume try to encompass the globe, but it also covers an impressive time span, from the second millennium b.c.e. to 1900 c.e., since the work defines pre-modern as the stage before railroads were introduced. This might indeed bring the pre-modern age up to our own days in certain parts of the world. The editors acknowledge that full global coverage is not possible, but a few omissions stand out, such as roads in the Islamic world. In their quest to be non-Eurocentric, the editors have also left out post-Roman Europe.
The ordering of the chapters seems to be based on geography, but is none the less not very clear: the book begins in India, followed by two chapters on China and one on Japan. Then there are three contributions on America, one on the Sahara and one on Persia, succeeded by a group of four contributions on the Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, concluded by a chapter on Jewish networks primarily in the Middle East. The reader is tossed between different eras, themes and places. The chapters on India, Persia and Jewish networks partially overlap geographically, but are still placed in different parts of the book.
There is a discrepancy between what the title and introduction state the book is about, and what the different contributors choose to cover. Highways and road-systems feature prominently in the book, but by-ways are only mentioned in one contribution. Water-ways are sometimes also included, such as the Nile, the Mediterranean or China's Grand Canal, but no urban roads. Both these categories could have been afforded more coverage, accompanied by a title change. Some contributors do not discuss roads at all, but paths as metaphors, desert routes or social networks. These are all interesting areas, but the volume could have benefited from greater uniformity and clarity of purpose.
In a work with a comparative aim, one is somewhat dismayed by the general lack of cross-references. It would have been rewarding to include the lively debates that hopefully occurred during the Brown workshop. In many instances the contributors write on similar subjects, but they use different methodologies and come to very different conclusions, which could have been interesting to follow up. A case in point is the chapters by P. Briant on Persian, C. Vaporis on Japanese and C. Julien on Inca roads as expressions of state power and propaganda. In another contribution, on Roman imperial roads by T. (which is one of the few chapters with ample cross-references), the author ingeniously deconstructs this image, as the Romans themselves according to T. seemed unaware of the impact of their road network. To have grouped these chapters together thematically and to have encouraged more debate between contributors would have fulfilled the overarching aim of this book and the series: to compare different civilisations, to analyse differences and similarities and thus get a deeper understanding of human society.
Most of the contributions cover promising and interesting subjects, but the length of many of the chapters precludes any fleshing out of these ideas. To give examples from the contributions devoted to the classical world: P. Briant's chapter on Persian roads covers twelve pages, and most of these are devoted to proving the existence of Persian royal roads, rather than to explaining the reasons behind their construction or studying their impact. J. Gates-Foster outlines how the memory of roads in Egypt might be transmitted from pharaonic to Roman times, and her text contains a fascinating general discussion. However, she only has a couple of concrete examples to back up her ideas. Likewise, B. Hitchner makes bold and large-scale comparisons between the impact of road networks on urbanisation and the economy in both southern Gaul and southern Tunisia, but at only eight pages this makes for a bare outline of an argument. The only contributor among scholars of the classical Mediterranean who manages a full line of argument, in only ten pages, is T., who succinctly manages the tightrope walk of squeezing meaning from sources ex silentio.
M. Maas and D. Ruths are even more large-scale in their chapter on Roman road connectivity on an empire-wide basis, but this is accomplished in little more than five pages. Their approach is tantalising: to see if clusters of cities as recorded in the Antonine Itinerary conform to the borders of the dioceses as instituted by Diocletian, and thus to see if road connectivity and administrative borders coincide. Their methodology is somewhat questionable, since they use the same number of potential clusters as the number of dioceses. Still there is a good deal of discrepancy between clusters and administrative borders, perhaps because dioceses often seem to be limited by bodies of water, whereas the Antonine Itinerary also includes routes across water. Perhaps Maas and Ruths would have been better served by the Peutinger Map, which only depicts roads on land.
There are also some longer chapters in the book, principally the one on Classical China by M. Nylan, which starts promisingly with road construction and regulations, but then veers off onto roads as metaphors, before coming back to roadside cults. If it had concentrated on its most promising aspect, that of cult, Nylan's contribution would have benefited from being grouped according to a cult theme with, for instance, J. Neelis’ fascinating account of the transmission of Buddhism, and Gates-Foster's study of cult locations along Egypt's desert roads.
Although the volume could have benefited from a clearer purpose, more debates and cross-references between its contributors, and in some cases more space to enable a fuller coverage of their topic, do not feel discouraged from acquiring this book. The above critique aside, the volume is a bold endeavour, contains a number of first-rate contributions and rewards the reader with many new insights and comparisons on a global scale. The layout of the volume is well done, there are very few typographical errors, and it is equipped with a useful index. However, an appendix explaining the bewildering variety of measurements would have been welcome.
