Krishna
A startling ‘what-if’ in the beginning where Queen Victoria bows in disgrace to the Chinese emperor Qiying, who takes Albert as a hostage vassal to the greatest Empire in the world, the Chinese Empire. Interesting points made from that starting point.
The narration takes us through the background of the Opium Wars. British East India company wanted to buy tea, of addictive importance to Brits, from China for which they wanted silver. When the company ran out of silver, they hit upon a brilliant idea. The best opium was grown in India to which Chinese were addicted (to smoke it). Problem solved. England sold the opium to China, got silver, got the tea from the Chinese company and sent to England. The epidemic of drug addiction caused Chinese government to seize all opium from the merchants. England went to war with China, won it, and reinstated the addiction spread in China by resuming opium supply. Talk about justice! The world was just like the jungle in international politics – might is right. Some would argue it even applies today.
Amazingly passionate writing that effortlessly carries you through the narration and makes this story a very good read.
The author covers first the ‘inevitable’ argument where people claim that the West was always destined to win no matter what and call it ‘long termism’. This smacks of the superiority complex that some people always had – think racism, anti semitism, anti feminism etc. Then he gives the alternate explanation of alternate accident as the other theory. The smallness of the Western nations and lack of resources engendered intense competition and that led to innovation.
More astounding explanations follow. The West and the East have been tracked down to even different human beings in the early ages, though one evolved from the other. He talks about Homo Ergaster (meaning ‘Working Man’) evolving from Homo Habilis (‘Handy Man’, and Homo Erectus (‘Upright Man’) emerging from Ergaster and populating the East, while the Ergaster remained in the West. (Interestingly, West includes India in its scope from this angle of research).
What follows is a fascinating journey around the world with the aim of uncovering the evolution that led to more and more intelligent beings. We learn that ‘thal’ in German means valley and the bones found in Neandar Valley in Germany were identified as a separate species called Neandarthal.
The man’s progress towards art is surprisingly early and so is his decision to build a ‘home’ and stay all year. The communities grow and this helps man’s development of brain power (needed to recognize friend from foe). Both rats and wolves (as dogs) learn and evolve codependence with humans which lasts to this day. He talks about receding ice as ice age ends and the hardship mankind went through due to that and how it sparked innovation. Fabulous descriptions with copious evidence on how the scientists arrived at the conclusions. Lovely arguments and sequencing. Nicely done.
The book then descends into arcana about how to measure progress. Ian tries to summarize it so that the lay reader will understand and stay interested, relegating boring details to the Appendix but still it is a lot to take on.
But how he effortlessly debunks the ‘aliens taught humanity progress’ myth still believed by some (and attributed to Erich von Dankien) and even explains the rise of kings, religion and big cities as a survival necessity in those times is breathtaking. It is interesting that early Egyptians, who themselves were migrants from elsewhere copied Mesopotamia is fascinating in itself and is but one tidbit in this endlessly fascinating book.
Uruk (Iraq or Mesapotamia) faded but the copycat Egypt, Upper Egypt to be precise, took over Lower Egypt under the command of one Nemes (or Menes or Scorpion King – remember the Mummy movies? Not that one. A human!) and emerged as the most powerful empire. The kings became Pharaohs (old priest kings who took over organization of cities and acquired power and wealth thereby) and claimed to be direct descendents of God. This is the start of the commonplace Egyptian culture so beloved of Hollywood and historical authors (like Pauline Gedge and Wilbur Smith, for example).
When God Pharaohs died like ordinary mortal men, the populace needed convincing of their still unending divinity and the pyramids and sarcophagus were invented to keep the populace in awe and belief.
Along the way he tells how love for a woman – initially his son’s wife whom he took on as a concubine – created disaster for an Italian king; how the original creed of Shia rebels who wanted to murder the Sunni preachers alarmed at the Sunni revival called themselves Assassins, reportedly due to their practice of smoking Hasish to get them in the right frame of mind before every assassination – and a lot more. The historical discussions, erudite arguments are all mixed in with such legends and tidbits that really keep the interest high and does not detract from the original message. Ian has the gift of writing that keeps you riveted to the pages.
He talks about the rise of Shia (‘the faction’) and the Sunni (‘traditional or customery’) revival. He describes the rise of religions shorn of all mysticism – be it Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity or Islam – and as a pure matter of what evidence tells us. Refreshing to read.
Temujin’s story is astounding. His father Yesugei kidnapped his mother Holein, impregnated her and named the resulting baby, Temujin, after a man the father had killed. Temujin’s parents had ‘lost’ him when moving camps (for they were nomads) and then came back to look for him – one year later. He was married off at eight, and his father was soon murdered and the mother was cast out and left to starve. When Temujin returned, he supported her mother from starvation by hunting rats. He also murdered his older half brother because he realized that the latter had a right to marry his mother after his father’s death. As if it is not enough, he was sold into slavery and when he escaped found that his own wife was abducted – he attacked the captors, killed them, and got his wife back. He grew into a hard and fearless warlord and was given the title of ‘Fearless Warrior’ or, ‘Genghis Khan’.
And amid destruction of the Mongols and their own implosion rises a son of migrant labourers called Yuanzhang, who renames himself Hongwu (‘Vast Military Power’) at the head of an army he created and the kingdom he conquered out of nothing and starts Ming (“Brilliant”) dynasty. He unfortunately clamped down on travel, trade and imports but it was just for show as business flourished anyway. He even banned coinage! His son Yongle imported Korean virgins for sex on the premise that ‘it is good for his health’. Go figure.
We also learn that in the West, it was customary for many to take every Monday off as “Saint Mondays’ in order to, as the author puts it, ‘use that day to sleep off Sunday’s hangover’. So many tidbits roll off the pages as you learn momentous changes in world history. Here are a few samples :
Everyone knows that killing of Archduke Ferdinand (by a group called Black Hand) caused the start of the First World War. Did you know that the first attempt the same day failed? A bomb lobbed into his car bounced off the side and Ferdinand moved on. But the driver took a wrong turn, caught in traffic and stopped right in front of another assassin from the same group who ‘did not make a mistake this time’. I, for one, did not realize that the debt mountain accumuated due to the war by Western countries was one of the causes of the Great Recession of 1930s.
Nor did I know that, during WW II, after the bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the emperor was ready to surrender, some diehard generals tried to start a coup so that they can fight on.
And about Mao. The economy actually recovered well after the communist takeover, until Mao fell out with Stalin and decided that the pure communism ‘or the great leap forward’ was the way. He “started” it on a specific day, causing riots, and starvation and a “great leap backward”. The farmers were forcibly moved the communes, people took the property ‘and even the children’ of others – only wives were not snatched because the secretary in charge of implementing the plan ‘was not sure if that should be allowed’. While doing forced labour, the farmers were expected to sing “Communism is paradise”. As the author so cutely puts it ‘when they were not singing, they were starving’. When a technocratic gang sidelined Mao (really?) to reinstate property and get back to prosperity, Mao struck back, inciting the young to kill the reactionaries. They created the dreaded Red Guards and started uncontrollable rage and killing against true and imagined enemies.
Finally, it is truly surprising to hear that it was Nixon who rescued the increasingly beleaguered Mao; that Soviet collapse was triggered by China’s democracy protests and Tiananman when Gorbhachev refrained from using the same repression as Deng of China.
The predictions for future are interesting but not as strong as the rest of the book. Given that promise in the beginning of the book that the past, with the right analysis can tell us what the future holds, is mildly disappointing.
However, overall a very satisfying, thought provoking, interesting book. If you want a great nonfiction book that informs and entertains, don’t miss this one.
9/ 10
– – Krishna (Feb 2019)