Xin Wen

Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

Xin Wen is a historian of medieval China and Inner Asia. He is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled “Connectors of the Medieval World: Silk Road Envoys between China and Central Asia (850–1000).” This book offers a micro-history of the lives of traveling envoys on the Silk Road on the basis of the multi-lingual manuscripts from the “Library Cave” in Dunhuang. It argues that the network these envoys established is the hallmark of a connected medieval world. His research interests in medieval China also include manuscript culture, urban history, and digital humanities.

The Economics of Silk Road Diplomacy: Evidence from Dunhuang (850–1000)

In this paper, I discuss the economic role of diplomacy on the Silk Road by examining medieval documents from Dunhuang. I show that Dunhuang envoys routinely acquired large amounts of gifts and goods on their trips. As household income was limited in the agrarian society of Dunhuang, traveling as envoys provided an exciting economic opportunity for Dunhuang residents, and many of them took great personal and financial risk in pursuing this opportunity. Such risk and fortune were further transferred to and redistributed among residents of Dunhuang at large, who often pooled resources to support the envoys and shared the goods after they returned. Once we “follow the money,” it is clear that diplomacy not only connected Dunhuang politically with other states on the Silk Road, it also promised material gains that animated and transformed the local economy in Dunhuang.