The fact that you can travel overland from Shanghai to Lisbon seemed irrelevant during the cold war. The Berlin Wall divided Europe. Mao’s China was isolated and inward-looking.

But with the fall of the wall and the opening of China, these politically imposed barriers are coming down and the Eurasian landmass is once again emerging as a distinct entity, with great economic and strategic significance. In particular, China’s “Belt and Road” initiative is creating new infrastructure links that highlight the commercial potential of linking Europe and Asia by land.

Bruno Ma??es believes that the re-emergence of Eurasia as a contiguous and coherent landmass is the most important factor in an emerging new world order. The 21st century, he argues, will not be American or Asian, but rather “Eurasian” — dominated by the interplay of the powers on a Eurasian supercontinent, above all China, Russia and the EU. This, he suggests, is simply a return to a historic pattern: “Eurasia happens to be the largest landmass on earth, the place where most of the great civilisations of human history were developed”.