It ain't (just) what you say. It's the way that you say it.

Communication is what communicates ... so hadn't we better be more careful?

A few days ago I went with some friends to London to the British Museum to view the Silk Roads exhibition, an explication and visual display outlining the development, particularly in the first millennium of the Common Era, of the vast network of trading routes from China and across Arabia and India to Africa, Europe and beyond.

It was impressive: fascinating and richly illustrated glimpses of a busy and vibrant world, trading all manner of goods over vast distances.

Instructive, too: not least, I learned about some peoples whose existence I was previously completely unaware of: the Sogdians of Samarkand who were introduced thus in the exhibition:

Although today their name is perhaps unfamiliar, the Sogdians were once among the great traders of the Silk Roads. Setting forth from Sogdiana, their homeland in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, they engaged in trade across thousands of kilometres, from the Steppe to India, and China to the Mediterranean world.

(Note: the image at the top of this post is a section of one of the exhibition panels, headed ‘Sogdians of Samarkand: cultural interconnectors’.)

All of which is to say that the exhibition was informative, and certainly visually gorgeous …

BUT … by the end of the visit I was puzzled … something felt amiss, confusing … something that, at first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

What might it be?

At first I thought it perhaps had something to do with communications bias because the term ‘multiculturalism’ seemed to figure prominently in the messaging. There was a frequent sliding-in of references to multiculturalism, always, it seemed to me, with the suggestion that it was constructive and favourable. Here’s a typical example, from a display panel that was headed ‘Oasis cities along desert routes’:

Along these arduous routes were oasis kingdoms and cities, where people could rest, drink and replenish. At such sites evidence for the fusion of cultures, religious ideologies and technologies can be found. Among the peoples of this multicultural region were the Uyghurs, one of the Turkic people from the Steppe, and the Khotanese.

Yes, well, okay, but did this constitute bias in the way that the messaging was framed? Was I being subjected to a dose of the “Diversity is our greatest strength” mantra? Or was I being over-sensitive?

Then it struck me. The real reason for my discombobulation, that is. It had to do with colonization … and thence, ultimately, decolonization.

A sequence of claims is involved here:

Top of the list is multiculturalism and the claim that “Diversity is our greatest strength” which requires us to believe that all cultures are different and of equal worth.

However, alongside that claim comes an “Ah, but …” qualifier. This states that an exception to the above rule has to be made because the Western culture has been jolly beastly to everyone else. Therefore, “All cultures are equal except the culture of the West, which is inferior and nasty”.

The fact that, particularly in the past few hundred years, the West did a massive amount of the heavy lifting that got us to the advantageous point in history where we now all are, is, apparently, as nothing. Hence the aggression currently meted out in our direction by a significant chunk of the population.

A dominant strand of the propaganda has it that the West and Western culture has been: a colonizer that was violent and uniquely cruel (including, of course, in its slavery practices); robbed everyone else blind; and had the audacity to consider itself superior to other cultures.

Presumably it follows that other cultures had not engaged in colonization, had not been violent or cruel (including, presumably, not having engaged in slavery), had not benefited from the resources or treasures of others, and would never dream of claiming to be superior?

I do apologize for my sarcasm!

Okay, let’s then go back to the Silk Roads exhibition.

The basis of my discomfort, I finally fathomed, was that the exhibition seemed to perpetuate the concept of an ‘unequal’ attribution of sin. Let me briefly explain.

A culture that exerted huge influence over the history of the Silk Roads was … Islamic. This is hardly surprising because the geography and the timing meant that Islam was bound to have a significant role in many of the activities. But my quibble is with the way that the information was expressed in the exhibition.

Let’s go back to those Sogdian folks, introduced above. One of the exhibition panels informed us that:

Their success peaked in the AD 500s to 700s, before their assimilation into the Islamic world.

“Assimilation”, huh? Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Possibly quite nice, in fact. My Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘assimilate’ as ‘absorb and incorporate.’

Another exhibition panel informed us that …

Just as the Silk Roads had provided a network for the transmission of the teachings of Buddhism, it also facilitated the spread of a new religion, Islam.

Oh, I get it! So, presumably, just in the same way that those gentle, saffron-robed souls tried peacefully to communicate the value of the pursuit of enlightenment and the alleviation of suffering, these new chaps had quietly explained that their philosophy was really rather lovely, possibly, even, a religion of peace?

And yet, and yet, we know this is not true. Indeed, one of the exhibition panels did slip an unvarnished sentence in:

Arab forces conquered much of these territories, and by the early 700s Muslim rule spanned from present-day Pakistan to Spain.

The truth surely is that a major strand of the story of the Silk Roads is the military conquest - very impressive military conquest, actually - of countries and peoples by Muslim forces.

But, advancement and acquisition by military force … isn’t that just another way of saying ‘colonization’?

And if so, shouldn’t these former aggressors at least give the opportunity for countries to back out of the deal, to participate in some decolonization? After all, for all of its sins, the wicked West did assiduously decolonize.

Bring back the Sogdians, I say. Dear heavens, they might even be owed a huge amount in reparations!

Thanks for reading.