I've heard that Britain was regarded in the East as "backward and unimportant islands at the end of the Silk Road". How accurate a representation of Eastern views of Britain during the 'Middle Ages' is this?

I think that it is fairer to say that traders in the East (which I interpret as meaning East Asia) probably didn’t think of England at all.

While obviously impossible to prove this negative, we can get an impression of the kinds of information that was circulating from the writings of a Chinese inspector of foreign trade named Chua Ju-kua [Zhao Rukuo] (1170-1228), who worked in Fukien during the Sung Dynasty and collected information about foreign countries and their trade products in a book entitled Chu-fan-chi [Records of Foreign Nations]. Chua was a civil servant rather than a traveling merchant, so his book necessarily recorded the information he gleaned from foreign traders in the port city of Fukien. Compiling these second-hand reports, Chua assembled extensive descriptions of Southeast Asian counties which were regular destinations for Chinese traders. His description of central Java – then the center of the Majapahit Empire – details Javanese clothing, rituals, and local medicines in addition to an extensive list of available trade products.

While his entries describing the locations closest to him were quite detailed, his knowledge of more distant countries was fragmentary as accounts of these distant lands were gathered from second-hand stories and travelers’ tales. Drawing on the testimony of Arab traders, he included a brief entry on Ssi-kia-li-ye [Sicily] describing Mt. Etna, as well a lengthy description of southern, Arab-controlled Spain. As he described it, Spain was a fantastic world:

"The products of this country are extraordinary; the grains of wheat are three inches long, the melons six feet round, enough for a meal for twenty or thirty men. The pomegranates weigh five catties [1 catty = approx. 500g], the peaches two catties, citrons over twenty catties, salads weigh over ten catties and have leaves three or four feet long. Rice and wheat are kept in silos for tens of years without spoiling. Among the native products are foreign sheep, which are several feet high and have tails as big as a fan. In spring-time they slit open their bellies and take out some tens of catties of fat, after which they sew them up again, and the sheep live on; if the fat were not removed, (the animal) would swell up and die."

This entry contains obvious exaggerations about the scale of European produce interspersed with specific facts such as the use of silos to store grains. Significantly, certain mundane practices were entirely misunderstood and wildly distorted as Chua attempted to make sense of what he was being told. For example, the description of the springtime extraction of fat from sheep is most easily understood as his misinterpretation of an image of the spring shearing. One can imagine how the scene of a medieval Spanish shepherd holding shears and removing a white mass of wool from the sheep’s belly could lead to the curious description that he provides.

This was the extent of his descriptions of Europe, however and was limited to the ports that Arab traders went to on the Mediterranean coast. England was very far removed from traders and trade routes along the Silk Road as a later inscription explains.

Two centuries later, in the 1490s, when the prospect of long distance trade was being revived, Martin Behaim made an illustrated globe that most complete information that he could find as he constructed his globe. The details of geography were apparently gleaned from secret Portuguese navigational reports, while the descriptions of the flora and fauna include quotes and citations from the Marco Polo’s Travels. Next to the Indonesian spice islands, Behaim included a long inscription that gives an idea of what the trade route from Asia to England was like. It reads:

Item, be it known that spices pass through several hands in the islands of Oriental India before they reach our country.

First, the inhabitants of an island called Java Major buy them in the other islands where they are collected by their neighbors, and sell them in their own island.

Secondly, those from the island Seilan [Ceylon/Sri Lanka], where St. Thomas is buried, buy the spices in Java and bring them to their own island.

Thirdly, in the island of Ceylon or Seilan they are once more unloaded, charged with customs duty, and sold to the merchants of the island Aurea Chersonesus [the Golden Peninsula, perhaps Malaysia, first mentioned by Herodotus], where they are again unladen.

Fourthly, merchants of the island Taprobana buy the spices there, and pay customs duties, and take them to their island.

Fifthly, the Mohammedan heathen of Aden go there, buy the spices, pay customs, and take them to their own country.

Sixthly, those of Cairo buy them, and carry them over the sea, and further overland.

Seventhly, those of Venice and others buy them.

Eighthly, they are again sold in Venice to the Germans, and customs are paid.

Ninthly, at Frankfort, Bruges, and other places.

Tenthly, in England and France.

If East Asians were getting their information second hand from traders and travelers who were involved in the Silk Road, this inscription suggests that there were four layers of intermediaries between Cairo and England alone, making it unlikely that much information filtered back about England.

Does this mean that no one new anything about England in East Asia – no. In his travels to the Mongol court, William of Rubruck, a european pilgrim who traveled to the Mongol court, described the range of people who attended an Easter dinner in Karakorum. Curiously, the list included “Basil, an Englishman” so at least some English were living in Asia in the 13th century who could have described their country to the locals.

Sources:

Zhao Rukuo, Chau Ju-Kua : his work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fanchï, ed. and trans. Friedrich Hirth and W.W. Rockhill (St. Petersburg : Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911).

Ernest George Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (London: G. Philip & Son, Ltd., 1908).

Dawson, Christopher, ed. (1955). The Mongol Mission : Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries. Translated by a Nun of Stanbrook Abbey. London: Sheed and Ward