A review of the book 'The Earth Transformed: An Untold History' written by Peter Frankopan.
In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history ─ and not just of humankind.
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Coming up: A review of the book 'The Earth Transformed: An Untold History' written by Peter Frankopan.
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:
Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He is the author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, published by Bloomsbury in 2015, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, remained in the top 10 for nine months after publication and has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. It was named one of the ‘Books of the Decade’ 2010-2020 by the Sunday Times. The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World was published by Bloomsbury in 2018 and won the Human Sciences prize of the Fondazione Carical in 2019.
Let me read what is written on the back cover of the book cover:
QUOTE
Our world has always been one of transformation, transition and change. From the Big Bang to the present day, solar activity, volcanic eruptions, floods and droughts have shaped natural history and that of humankind. The ways in which we have used, exploited and adapted the Earth has brought enormous benefits ─ but has often come at a cost. As we face a precarious future, learning lessons from the past has never been more important.
UNQUOTE
Now, let me read what is written on the inside flap of the book cover:
QUOTE
When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time.
In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history ─ and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origin of our species; about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.
Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
UNQUOTE
Now, coming to the book review, The Earth Transformed is packed with riveting examples of how history has been affected by our environment. Indeed, argues Frankopan, the start of the modern human era owes its existence to climatic changes.
Around 12,000 years ago, global temperatures rose, prefiguring what’s known as the Holocene epoch, which coincided with the rapid growth of humans. As the author observes: “Agriculture may not have been impossible before the Holocene, but it suited conditions perfectly after its onset.”
In other words, if the planet hadn’t warmed up when it did, the agricultural revolution that gave rise to cities, empires and the explosion of the human population might never have happened. Fascinating.
Here are a few extracts which I found even more fascinating:
1st ─ Variola virus, better known as smallpox, claimed the lives of 300 million people in the twentieth century alone, and perhaps as many as half a billion between 1850 and the eradication of the disease in 1977.
Among its first victims were members of the ruling dynasty of Egypt, including Pharaoh Ramses V, whose mummified body bears traces of the virus’s unmistakable pustules, especially on his cheeks.
2nd ─ Three of the most lethal pandemics of the last two millennia ─ the Justinianic plague of the sixth century, the Black Death of the 1340s and the plague of the seventeenth century ─ were heavily influenced by climate variation. In each case, warmer springs and wetter summers produced sharp spikes in the prevalence of the bacterium that caused bubonic plague.
3rd ─ The author has given a few examples to say that: the worse the weather conditions, the greater the likelihood that minorities would be attacked.
4th ─ Some scientists have claimed that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that this had an impact on the global carbon cycle and lowered atmospheric CO₂ content ─ a proposition that gained attention in the press around the world, generating headlines such as ‘Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet.’
5th ─ The first Mughal emperor Babur’s views on India:
QUOTE
‘India is a place of little charm. There is no beauty in its people, no graceful social intercourse, no poetic talent or understanding, no etiquette, nobility, or manliness. The arts and crafts have no harmony or symmetry. There are no good horses, meat, grapes, melons or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets. There are no baths and no madrasas. There are no candles, torches or candlesticks.’
UNQUOTE
6th ─ Adam Smith in 1776 wrote:
‘The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama just six years later were the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.’
7th ─ Some Europeans believed that indigenous peoples were being punished by God because of their belief systems which were not so much pagan as diabolical and demonic.
8th ─ Recent research suggests that counties (in the US) with large populations of enslaved people at the time of the abolition of slavery in the 1860s are more likely today not only to vote Republican, but to oppose affirmative action and express racial resentment and sentiments towards black people.
9th ─ Britain was able to mass-produce weapons and ammunition ─ helped by control of the saltpetre of Bengal and Bihar, by far the richest in the world, which produced vast quantities of nitrates, the essential ingredient in gunpowder.
In the years 1808-11, during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the British were able to supply 336,000 muskets, 100,000 pistols and 60 million cartridges to help Spanish guerillas opposed to Napoleon, to say nothing of the production of weapons, cannon and ordinance for use by British forces in their own campaigns.
10th ─ As many as 16 million died in hunger in India in the decades between 1875 and the start of the First World War ─ a prolonged catastrophe that colonial administrators treated as a fact of life.
Huge numbers died in famines, often during times when massive consignments of wheat from India continued to be exported, especially to Britain. This mattered little, according to one blunt official writing to the Viceroy in the second half of the nineteenth century: ‘still they reproduce themselves with sufficient rapidity to overcrowd every employment that is opened to them.’
11th ─ Some estimates suggest that the Coronavirus pandemic cost the US economy alone some $16 trillion.
The book is littered with numerous such mind boggling examples and anecdotes which will surely surprise you.
Conclusion:
As Frankopan pointedly concludes, the environment is “the very stage on which our existence plays out, shaping everything we do, who we are, where and how we live” – and if “the theatre closes or collapses, that marks the end for us all.”
Given the heartbreaking damage we’re doing to our planet today, us poor players would do well to listen.
The book is over 650 pages and doesn’t bore you one bit. I give the book a rating of 4.5/5.
The book is available for around Rs. 590/- on Amazon India and for around the same price on Flipkart. And it is available for around $27 USD on Amazon USA. I will provide all the respective buy links in the show notes. Please check them out for the latest prices.
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