2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
World history matters, May 5, 2009
"World Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture" (6th ed., 1982) by Burns, et al., is a college-level textbook covering world history from the earliest civilizations 5000 years ago (in the valleys of the Nile (Egypt), Tigris and Euphrates (Mesopotamia), Yellow (China) and Indus (India) Rivers) to our present technologically and economically advanced global society. In a notable effort to provide comprehensive coverage of world cultures, the authors interweave Asian (mainly India, China and Japan) and African history, and sections on Latin America, the Middle East, Australia and other countries, with a circa-1980s approach to historical interpretation focused largely on tracing the development of Western civilization from Ancient Greece and Rome, through the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, to the rise of the U.S. and Soviet Union as dominant military-industrial superpowers. Overall, the 1400-page work is a substantive, readable presentation spanning a broader cultural spectrum than popular and more Western-centric treatments (such as those by H.G. Wells and Will Durant) written a generation or two ago, yet clearly less integrated and balanced than recent textbooks (e.g., "World Civilizations: The Global Experience" by Stearns, et al., 2007).
Viewing world history and societies through the framework provided by the authors, I highlight three key determinants of the course of civilization:
Social Demographics: From the earliest Homo sapiens in the Paleolithic era about 50,000 years ago, humans have distinguished themselves both biologically from other species of animals and socially from other groups of humans. As much as the explosive growth of the human population impacts our world's ecosystem--from a rate of increase of only 9% per century from 0 A.D. (200 million people) to 1800 (978 million), to a growth rate more than 25-fold higher at 250% per century in recent times (1.65 billion in 1900, leaping 6.7 billion today)--the tendency of humans to segregate themselves into clans and tribes, often representing conflicting interests, determines how civilizations flourish, struggle and perish. Borders drawn between India and Pakistan in 1947, or Israel and the surrounding Arab countries in 1948, evidence the continuation of ethnic and social turmoil in these regions and, more generally, the unfortunate inability of tribes of us humans, simply put, to "get along."
Cultural Influences: Tracing of settlement patterns throughout history reveals the profound impact that foreign cultural influences have on how societies develop. One striking example is the divergent paths of South American and North American societies over the past five centuries. When European explorers discovered the Americas around 1500, South and Central America were home to the more advanced (Aztec, Mayan and Inca) civilizations. In the 16th century, Spain introduced to South America their semi-feudal, Middle Ages-oriented institutions built on a colonial monarchy and the traditional Catholic church, and created a local class structure with the conquered native Indians at the bottom of the hierarchy. By contrast, the strongest formative influence in North America arrived with settlers from England in the 17th century, whose political institutions based on individual liberties created the foundation for unparalleled industrial and economic growth into the 20th century, albeit also resulting in the virtual extermination of the native Indians who stood as an impediment to Manifest Destiny and Western ideas of progress. An important earlier example is the transferring of Greek culture and ideas to the West, fostered by the conquests of Julius Caesar around 50 B.C., versus the analogous conveyance by Alexander the Great into the eastern half of the Roman Empire, Byzantine and beyond. The former effectively laid the foundation for institutions that subsequently arose in Western Europe, while the latter's influence on the Near East and Asia seems to have been muted by the vagrancies of history.
Scientific and Technical Knowledge: One way to understand the often-cited causes of World War I (1914-1919) and World War II (1939-1945)--nationalism, militarism, economic conditions, etc.--is to interpret the era by considering the role of science and technology. During the second Industrial Revolution from 1870 onward, Germany, with a strong educational system conducive to encouraging new technologies, began for the first time to outpace England in exported goods (steel and chemicals), creating a dynamic shift in "spheres of influence" in a world that had been dominated by France and England for centuries. Around the same time, beginning in 1868 with the Meiji Restoration, Japan opened its ports to trade and undertook deliberate study and adoption of Western institutions, leading to rapid political and social change, industrialization and, to the surprise of the world, military victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1904. While we cannot naively blame science and technology for global military aggression, it is clear that technological advances at least enabled the new powers, Germany and Japan, to expand their influence and, for better or worse, demonstrate their "equality" to more established players on the world stage. Ironically, just as technology (particularly airplanes) played an instrumental role in enabling new forms of the military aggression in World War I, deployment of still newer technology, namely the atomic bomb, marked an ominous silencing of conflict at the end of World War II.
Ultimately, for understanding ourselves, history does matter. As the authors remark in the closing line of their work: "The lesson of history is . . . that the present can be clearly perceived, and the future intelligently planned for, only when those responsible for the world's destiny understand the workings of human nature. And for knowledge of that extraordinarily complicated and fascinating mechanism, there is no better source than history." Amen.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
