A History of the World by Andrew Marr (McMillan, 2012)
Andrew Marr gives a broad brush view of global history from prehistoric times up to 2012, comparing what was happening in various parts of the world in the same era. A fascinating read and a useful counterpoint to histories of individual countries. I've quoted below some bits of the text which struck me as valuable points to think about and remember.
[Greek] city-states: a rough, political equality between citizens, speaking clearly and listening attentively, living under clear, agreed laws, could produce a better life but also demonstrated the power of competition. Laws, constitutions, political systems, artisan skills, fighting styles - all improved when constantly tested against one another. ... Is it possible to be a true republic and an empire at the same time? No. Can democracy survive vast disparities of wealth? No. Does success produce decadence? Yes.
Judaism and then Christianity were disruptive creeds because of their emphasis on equality before God and their denial of the divinity of emperors. Shlomo Sand states that 'every monotheism contains a potential element of mission - unlike the tolerant polytheisms.
[The downfall of empires follow a familiar sequence]: the extreme inequality created as loot from abroad floods in; the corruption of voting systems and of representative institutions; hoarse cries for change from the streets; the undertow of violence; the mailed fist as the army strides in 'to clean things up'. The imbalance of power created by empire, unbalances the empire itself.
Like Caesar, Zheng (of China) had a megalomaniac vision of personal power [catapulting their empires] into civil war as would-be successors fought for control.
The world grew much considerably colder between AD 200 and 500. This climatic shift not only hit farmers and produced periodic famines, it forced the tribes of central Asia to move, or else die. They were highly mobile, and so they moved, shoving earlier migrants west. Migration and trade spread unfamiliar viruses.
In the Americas, ... lacking wheels and many of the animals of Eurasia, the Mesoamericans would in general pass on few fresh ideas to world culture. Their religions were mainly darker, more blood-soaked and pessimistic than those of cultures across the Atlantic. There was no spiritual equivalent to a Confucius or Jesus native to the American cultures.
As numbers of Christians rose, the Church started to behave as an earthly power. # Old Arabia ... from around 8000 to 4000 BC had been lush and fertile. The dry period created the vast deserts of the north. Powerful but fallen civilizations were crucial to the Arabia in which Muhammad grew up. He seems to have retained much of traditional Arab tribal custom - this very flexibility produced the array of Muslim domestic and dress rules that are so controversial now. Like Christianity, Islam would suffer splits and would be compromised by having to deal with earthly problems of power and politics.
[Europe's later success was built on:] Firstly, successive waves of migration caused by hunger on the huge grasslands of central Asia ... produced a Europe of vigorously competing cultures which would forge later states. Secondly, the fact that Northern Europeans were cut off from the rest of the world [forced the growth of their towns, farming replaced forests, new skills and technologies developed which were then spread by trading.]
[Viking expansion into what is now Russia was likely to have been triggered by overpopulation.]
Dynastic despotism always leads to feuds between generations and between siblings, sometimes ending in treachery, murder and the plotting of palace coups.
Novgorod (north of Moscow) had produced a rich ruling class whose conspicuous consumption caused resentment among the ordinary citizens.
The trouble with dynasties is that they produce weaker members as well as stronger ones. # Is it ever possible for a full-scale revolutionary upheaval not to progress to mass murder and eventually to military dictatorship? Power maddens. Everyone claims to speak for the people - but the actual majority of living adults are voiceless.
Industrial revolution came at a price, forcing millions into repetitive indoor jobs and crammed, insanitary urban housing. Environmental effects could be terrible due to air and water pollution. Patents, and therefore profits, were essential for stimulating bright and ambitious people.Why Britain first is more about politics than geographical chance and could not have happened without capitalism. It can happen without capitalism, as in the Soviet Union and China, but in both cases required extreme violence, huge waste and the theft or purchase of capitalist-created technology.
Wars often radicalize, and defeats do so more than victories.
There is an interesting parallel [between freeing slaves in America and] Russian emancipation of serfs. In both places, the land without the serfs or slaves to work it was almost valueless; but both serfs and former slaves found there was very little work available except the old, hard field-work. So how real was their freedom?
Whenever you get all-male warrior bands unleashed on normal settled family-based people, there is a high risk they will behave abominably ... likely to kill randomly and even rape and torture.
Democracy is a culture not a system. It is based on habits, attitudes, long-established divisions of power, ingrained belief in law and absence of systemic corruption and cynicism. You can import a system but not a culture.
WW1 had left a badly divided-up Europe and Middle East - the fault of US President Woodrow Wilson and British and French leaders Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Europe was left to deal with the consequences of American state-making, resulting in the grievances of Austria and Germany. This was intensified by the Great Crash of 1929 which took the world to a general trade depression [which in turn] raised the prestige of dictatorship [such as Hitler] as an alternative.
WW2: the US was a virtual empire. Ideology took second place to national self-interest. The morals drawn from this conflict, which killed perhaps seventy million people (twice as many of them civilians as soldiers) were varied. For the Russians, who lost more people both in total and as a percentage of the population, it is the Great Patriotic War. For the US, it was a war to save democracy. For the Jews (and many Gentiles) it was the Holocaust, whose consequence was modern Israel. For Arabs it was the war that persuaded Europeans to to steal their land for the Jews. For the Germans it was the consequence of their time of madness and for the British, their stand-alone moment.
Colonialism would bring benefits to India, including the rediscovery of Hindu cultures all but forgotten, but colonialism corrupts both sides. It brutalizes the colonial power, making it unable to live up to its own highest ideals; and it humiliates the colonized people, making it hard for them to respect either their rules or themselves. # Soviet Communist rule resulted in waste, shortages, cynicism and hopelessness.
The Chinese yearning for unity and order is not an obscure political shibboleth. The greater the population, the more sprawling and varied the terrain, the harder unity and order are to impose.
The Afghan and Iraq wars were battlefield successes but strategic failures. Invading somebody else's culture (as well as their land) to impose democracy is a risky business. It challenges the idea that the whole world was converging on a single politico-economic system, or could do.
Financial capitalism has always evolved through bubbles and crashes. Wherever wealthy companies or individuals are able to huddle together, improperly regulated, they will conspire against the public. Failures are located inside the same democratic-representative structures that were supposed to [prevent them]. Politicians spend too much money campaigning to get elected to get really tough on bankers, and too much time worrying about geopolitics to attend to the health of their own economies. Their voters wanted cheap goods and easy credit. Modern market capitalism put consumerism on a pedestal, while underestimating long-term human instincts such as spiritual questing, tribalism and fear - but these haven't gone away.
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