A review of the book 'How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History' written by Josephine Quinn.
The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true?
In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. So much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate 'civilisations'.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History' written by Josephine Quinn.
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Before I proceed, a full disclosure: This book was bought with my own money and not been provided to me by the author or publisher.
Little bit about the author:
Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University, and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford. She has degrees from Oxford and UC Berkeley, has taught in America, Italy and the UK, and co-directed the Tunisian-British archaeological excavations at Utica. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, as well as to radio and television programmes. She is the author of one previous book, the award-winning In Search of the Phoenicians.
Let me read what is written on the backcover of the book:
QUOTE
The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true?
In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. So much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate 'civilisations'.
Moving from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, How the World Made the West reveals a new narrative: one that traces the millennia of global encounters and exchange that built what is now called the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. From the creation of the alphabet by Levantine workers in Egypt, who in a foreign land were prompted to write things down in their own language for the first time, to the arrival of Indian numbers in Europe via the Arab world, Quinn makes the case that understanding societies in isolation is both out-of-date and wrong. It is contact and connections, rather than solitary civilisations, that drive historical change. It is not peoples that make history – people do.
UNQUOTE
Some of the arguments/points put forth by the author in this book:
1. The “western civilisation” would not exist without its Islamic, African, Indian and Chinese influences.
2. That separate cultures don't even exist – it is dubious, the weak version, that “there has never been a single, pure western or European culture.”
3. Constantine is described as introducing “an Asian god” (the Christian one) into the Roman empire.
4. Of classical Athens, she writes: “Like pederasty and public nudity, democracy was a distinctive local practice that worked to distinguish some Greek-speaking communities … ”
5. The Crusades, she argues, were not a “clash of civilizations” but rather took place in a world where “culture has no natural location”.
6. Carbon dating techniques applied to recent archaeological findings provide compelling evidence about just how “globalized” the Mediterranean already was, 4,000 years ago.
Welsh copper went to Scandinavia, and Cornish tin as far as Germany, for the forging of bronze weapons. Beads of Baltic amber, found in the graves of Mycenaean nobles, were made in Britain. A thousand years later, trade up and down the Atlantic seaboard meant that “Irish cauldrons became especially popular in northern Portugal.”
7. It didn’t take until the 19th century for the idea of “the west” to arrive, as Quinn notes. The “earliest known version of a binary polarity setting Europe against Asia”, she observes, is found already in Herodotus’s tales of the Persian wars; and Frankish Christians began thinking of themselves as “European” in the wake of the Arab conquest.
Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1996), for example, notoriously predicted that future wars would occur not between states but between monolithic and homogeneous “civilisations” such as the “western”, “Islamic”, “African” or “Sinic” (Chinese).
It's rather imposing subtitle, A 4000-year history, gives an idea of the book's scope. The author begins with the ancient city of Byblos (in modern Lebanon), moves through the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, Babylon, Persia and Carthage, offers brief accounts of Islam, Charlemagne and the Vikings, and ends with Renaissance humanism and European colonialism. This is, in every way, a big book.
This wonderful book is spread over 500 pages (including 120 pages of Notes) and contains 30 chapters written in marvellous detail and succeeds exceedingly well in bringing the pre-classical world to life. For the author, “civilisational thinking” itself is the enemy, not only in historiography but in modern geopolitics.
I give this book 4.5/5.
The printed price of the book is Rs. 699/- but is available for around Rs. 500/- on Amazon India and for around the same price on Flipkart. And it is available for around $35.00 USD in hardcover format and for around $22.00 USD in paperback format on Amazon USA. I have given the respective buy links in the show notes. Please check them out for the latest prices.
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