One more for the Silk Road

One of the biggest connectors is China's Belt and Road Initiative, launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, and which is one of the central focuses of the new book.

The second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is set to be held in China later this year and already $1 trillion has been committed to 1,000 projects since the initiative was launched.

"Five years is not a great period of time in historical terms to assess it. The key test will not be whether infrastructure projects look good but whether they can actually significantly improve the GDP and productivity of China's neighbors," he says.

In the book, Frankopan quotes Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as saying: "Other countries have lots of ideas but no money. But for China when it comes with an idea it also comes with the money."

"I think he is right," says Frankopan.

"These projects, for the large part, do have the capability to raise living standards and do the kind of things that large-scale international development does."

At one point Frankopan contrasts the Belt and Road Initiative with the Northern Powerhouse, a British government initiative to improve infrastructure in the north of England, which was launched at the same time. Its main achievement, according to Frankopan, seems to be just a new second entrance to Leeds railway station.

"Yes, that is right. There is a different scale of ambition. Belt and Road (Initiative) has had some criticism for lacking definition. As a historian I quite like that because many things in history are open to interpretation. Belt and Road (Initiative) is not saying here is a highway and this counts as being part of the belt and this other one doesn't. The fact that it is abstract, inclusive and adaptable seems to be quite a good thing."

Although British, Frankopan, 47, also has a distinction of being a Croatian prince due to his Dalmatian ancestry.

He was educated at Eton College, the top British public school, and initially read Russian at Jesus College, Cambridge, before eventually specializing in Byzantine history.

In 2016, following the success of his book, he was given the impressive and somewhat portentous title of professor of global history at Oxford University.

"I was giving a talk in Vienna and the translator got a bit carried away and I was referred to as the 'professor of universal history' when I got up to speak, which made me feel as though I had nowhere else to go," he says, laughing.

"All it really means is that I am director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research here but it is global in the sense that if you work on the history of Constantinople or Baghdad, you can't do it without looking at China, Russia, Africa and so on.

"Global history is highly recognizable to a Byzantine historian because it is important to understand plural and different systems which are often thousands of miles apart, and then to try and work out how they configure together," he adds.

Frankopan is also an accomplished linguist but despite his increasing interest in China, he has yet to take on Chinese.

"I am sort of thinking I might be too old. I can get (in terms of languages) from Portugal to more or less the Himalayas with a few gaps here and there. I can't read Hungarian, for example.

"I wouldn't necessarily want to be interviewed on TV in all of them (languages) but reading newspapers is not a problem. People in England think that speaking foreign languages is a miracle and that you have to be really clever, which I think is great. I am very lucky they think like that."

One aspect the book touches upon is Brexit, which in some respects is a breakage in the links in the new connected world.

"It is very hard to know what is going to happen. I don't like change as a historian. I also don't like volatility because it produces unpredictability and unforeseen consequences. I think the solution we'll get will weaken the European Union and will weaken the UK significantly," he says.

Frankopan says what he wanted to demonstrate in the book was how cities on the new silk roads are no longer backwaters.

"If you want to see the best art in the world then the Loevre in Abu Dhabi and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha are hard to beat," he says.

"You have only to look at the ownership of football teams, with many of them coming from China, Russia or the Gulf, to see that the center of gravity of the world is shifting eastward," he adds.

Frankopan says many people in Asia now have a sense that "tomorrow will be better than today" something no longer felt in the West.

"According to the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality in societies), if you are born in Kazakhstan or Sierra Leone in the bottom 20 percent, you have a better chance of getting out than if you are born in the US and the UK," he says.

"No one here in Europe thinks that in 10 years' time we are going to be significantly richer than we are."

Frankopan says China is aware the world is changing.

"They (China) are preparing themselves for a more open outlook on the world. Like in any relationship a lot depends on developing a communication where you talk as well as listen. We are not very good at listening here in the UK or in Europe right now."

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan (Bloomsbury)

Contact the writer at andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn