It's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel aboIt's complicated and highly interconnected. That is the biggest takeaway from this engaging, well done and highly scholarly informed graphic novel about the set of events involved in the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, which eliminated the civilizations of the Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians (although they re-emerged centuries later), and others.
I started reading the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline but it was too scholarly for me (sorry!), with way too many names of people, cities, civilizations, and also academic controversies for me to follow it very well or feel engaged. So I put it aside. Then my daughter, not knowing any of this, pointed out this graphic novel version of it in the bookstore and I was excited to buy it. It too is quite complicated with lots of people, cities, civilizations but the pictures are really good and engaging and the story is slimmed down and shorter than the original scholarly book. So I ended up liking it a lot.
(I confess that although this graphic novel version looks like it was written for me I'm not sure who else would read it, most "serious" adults would not want to be caught reading a comic book and most younger people would be put off by the complexity of even this version. But hopefully there are others like me out there and that is why we have this book and hopefully will have many more like it.)
Back to substance, the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations was extraordinary. Flourishing societies with urban areas, writing, rulers, advanced agriculture disappeared around the same time in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the centuries that followed writing disappeared in Greece, for example, and people were left with legends of a previous advanced society in the form of epics like The Iliad.
Eric Cline argues that to understand this we need to appreciate how interconnected the societies of the time were by trade, migration and intermarriage. The one mega event that looms large is a huge drought lasting 200 years that has only recently been conclusively (?) established by scientific studies of things like ancient sediment. But this interacted in Cline's interpretation with migrations of people (the "Sea People" loom large in this), possibly some earthquakes, illegitimacy or rulers and other factors.
Eric Cline has now written another book After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations that I'm planning to read--hoping that this background and the greater familiarity of the Iron Age make it more enjoyable and easy to follow. But if I have to set that one aside too I'm very much hoping that Cline once again teams up with Glynnis Fawkes on another excellent graphic adaptation of a scholarly work.
An impressive (although to my taste overly detailed and complex at times) reinterpretation of why the (Hebrew) bible was written the way it was over tAn impressive (although to my taste overly detailed and complex at times) reinterpretation of why the (Hebrew) bible was written the way it was over the last millennia BCE and how it came to be continuously transmitted to us since that time. Jacob Wright's overarching argument is that it was written to make sense of a series of defeats--of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and then the Persians, Greeks and (as the final touches were being put on it), the Romans. Rather than treating these defeats as rejections of their god and religion the Bible reinterpreted them as reaffirmations of it--god was using the defeats to punish people for straying from his word. In the process it created a "nation" that was distinct from a "state" and that could live on after the state was long gone.
Where the complexity comes in is that, of course, it was not like one person sat down in a particular year with all of these ideas in mind. Instead Wright's account is grounded in the documentary hypothesis of various authors J, E, Priestly, etc., who came from different places and wrote at different times. They were writing different narratives that suited their purpose, with the most important tension between the "palace narrative" which centers on David and Solomon and making the people part of a state (note, Wright interprets recent archeology as rejecting a unified monarchy and instead argues that the scribes who wrote that part were exaggerating the power to suit their purposes) vs. the "people's narrative" that centers around a family, great individuals, prophets and others--all of which are independent of any particular state.
The law too comes in, Wright argues, for this same purpose--of making a people/nation that is independent of a state. Wright points out two false assumptions about the Bible (the second part of this is him quoting New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman): "1) the Bible originated as religious scripture and 2) most ancient religions required scriptures. Both assumptions are demonstrably false... books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of the ancient Western world." As Wright points out, most of the other ancient Near Eastern literature we have not because it was transmitted and studied continuously for thousands of years but because it was rediscovered by archeologists in the last 150 years (e.g., Gilgamesh: A New English Version was rediscovered in 1849).
The strength of the book is Wright's breadth and (at least to my amateur understanding) depth in drawing on biblical exegesis (from a historical critical perspective), archeology, the study of other near eastern civilizations, and other literatures. He approaches all of it with a skeptical eye (e.g., he does not believe in the unified kingdom and accepts the modern view that the Babylonian exile only applied to a minority of the people, particularly the elites, not to everyone). I take him at his word that other Near Eastern accounts of kings were 100 percent positive with none of the flaws the Bible depicts for all of its kings and prophets. And that they were based on their victories--so when those victories turned to defeat the texts simply disappeared without living on in any way.
At times the book tries to shove too much of the Bible into supporting its thesis that the Bible is a celebration and rationalization of defeat. The accounts of the historical books are persuasive to me because you can picture the scribes from the different kingdoms, whether they are from a currently powerful kingdom or a recently defeated one. Applying the idea to Genesis, however, felt stretched and more like a possible literary interpretation than something that had a combination of historical and archeological evidence to support it.
Finally, the book is very strong on compare and contrast to the Ancient Near East (which I am not very familiar with, although I read Gilgamesh some time ago). But I wish it had included more thoughts on Homer and the ancient Greeks. From Homer's depiction of the Trojans to Aeschylus's depiction of the Persians the ancient Greeks also wrote about defeated people (albeit not themselves). They also depicted heroes whose flaws prevented them from succeeding, much like Moses flaws prevented him from entering Canaan. All of this, together with philosophy, helped create something that was more like a nation than a state (in fact, of course, until Alexander there never was a unified state in Greece). In many ways, of course, the Bible is unique and different in holding a special place in its religion, codifying laws, and the like. But some of what Wright argues is unique about it does seem to have a certain amount in common with the Greeks. I would love to know what Wright thinks about this possibly misguided view....more
This was a sweeping world history that covers roughly from 500 BC to the present. It puts attempts to put the “center” of Asia (which he sometimes calThis was a sweeping world history that covers roughly from 500 BC to the present. It puts attempts to put the “center” of Asia (which he sometimes calls the center of the world) at the center of the story, with the plurality of this “center” being about Persia but also Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan, the former USSR stans, and a bit of China as well. I say “attempts” because most of the events it covers are the same that a standard history of the world would cover (the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity, its collapse, the “dark ages”, European discovery and conquest of the Americas, the renaissance, World War I, World War II, etc.) but it covers all of them from a slightly different angle, with the role of or impact on Central Asia being an important part of the story. But rarely does it tell much of the history of Central Asia beyond the way in which it is affected by or affects the more standard histories.
The different angle can be fascinating, from the ways in which Christianity was really defined and developed in the East not the West to a better understanding of the role that places like Crimea and Afghanistan have played in the global game from the 19th century through today.
Overall I quite liked the book and am glad I read it. But I found a number of aspects irritating, all of which are getting more space in this review than is representative of my feeling about the book.
Naturally, I read the last part of the book last so I will dive in there. The conclusion is all about the rise of Central Asia with the assertion, “We are seeing the signs of the world’s centre of gravity shifting—back to where it lay for millennia.” He then treats us to a whirlwind tour of the huge monuments, museums, airport, luxury hotels and mines of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and more. (He includes a dig at economists who he believes have focused insufficiently on these countries and instead been distracted by overstating the importance of emerging markets like Brazil, China, and India.)
This conclusion bizarrely asserts that China’s belt and road is the equivalent of the British Empire (“As late as the middle of the twentieth century, it was possible to sail from Southampton, London or Liverpool to the other side of the world without leaving British territory, putting in at Gibraltar and then Malta before Port Said; from there to Aden, Bombay and Colombo, pausing in the Malay peninsula and finally reaching Hong Kong. Today, it is the Chinese who can do something similar.”). Also that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is the equivalent of the European Union (“Originally set up to facilitate political, economic and military collaboration between Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and China, the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO) is becoming increasingly influential and gradually turning into a viable alternative to the European Union.”)
But what was particularly jarring, and I think emblematic of one of the issues with the book, was that after the concluding chapter which stated “New intellectual centres of excellence are also emerging in a region that at one time produced the world’s most outstanding scholars. Campuses have been springing up across the Persian Gulf that have been endowed by local rulers and magnates” the acknowledgments begin with "There is no finer place in the world for a historian to work than Oxford” and go on to also thank the British government archives, Cambridge University and the U.S. National Security Archives—with the only reference to anything global being “travels across Britain, Europe, Asia and Africa have helped refine good ideas, and sometimes prompted bad ones to be discarded.”
This was emblematic of three of the issues I had with the book:
1. It is dripping with contempt for the West (e.g., “Rome had long cast a greedy eye over Egypt”). The loaded, pejorative terms for anything the Romans do, describing its ruthless expropriation with language that is not repeated even in describing the vast conquests of the rise of Islam—which are treated as a benign force for standardizing rules, Ghenghis Khan or any other empire or conquerers that came from Central Asia.
2. Although the book ostensibly is trying to center the history around Central Asia, it often feels as if the author is denying their agency, at least in the last 500 years or so. The Romans, the Europeans, the United States all have agency—they make decisions and execute on them. The Central Asians just react, and anything bad they do is because they were reacting to whatever the West did (e.g., bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center was not his agency but just his reacting to the way the United States treated him). In that way it really does seem more like the view from Oxford than the view from Baku.
3. The allocation of attention in the history is very unbalanced. The rise of the empires in Central Asia to Alexander in 336 BC gets 3 pages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars get 19 pages. Not only is that overly chronocentric and US centric, it was also a little disappointing because it meant more pages on something I already knew a lot about it.
Overall I’m glad I read the book. Most of the issues I had with it were about the last quarter of so of the book, although those issues showed through—both as I read and in retrospect—in the earlier parts as well. I would recommend you read it, just not uncriticially....more
A fantastic one volume history of Ancient Greece, exactly what I was looking for. It covers the Mycenean period through the height of Periclean AthensA fantastic one volume history of Ancient Greece, exactly what I was looking for. It covers the Mycenean period through the height of Periclean Athens and then Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic period, the relationship of the Greeks to the Romans and the relationship of the Greeks to the Christians. Edith Hall passionately argues for the uniqueness and importance of Ancient Greek civilization in helping to create what we have today, rebutting claims that this is somehow arbitrarily Eurocentric or an excuse for white supremacy. At the same time, she pays particular attention to women, slavery, Greek atrocities, and so does not herself use Ancient Greece in the way some conservative scholars do. The book itself traverses political history, cultural history, intellectual history, and more, with particularly sensitive and nuanced discussions of the development of ideas. At the center of all of this is her argument that a combination ten characteristics made the Greeks unique including seafaring, skepticism of authority, openness to ideas, love of pleasure, and more. These traits, she argues, lasted more than a thousand years and each of her chapters illustrates one of them in the context of a particular time and place.
Note, I did a combination of listening to the Audible recording and reading the book....more
An excellent single volume history of Venice (not that I have any others to compare it to), it goes from the foundation of Venice by a bunch of refugeAn excellent single volume history of Venice (not that I have any others to compare it to), it goes from the foundation of Venice by a bunch of refugees from Attila the Hun and the Fall of the Roman Empire to the hordes of cruise ships and tourists that descend on Venice today. In the course of the narrative it tells an amazing story I had never known about how the Venetian Republic lasted for roughly a millennium, essentially a continuation of the Roman Empire, up until it was dissolved by Napoleon Bonaparte. And he tells an interesting history that it exploits being at the intersection first of the Eastern and Western Roman empires, then of Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire and then of the Ottomans and Great Western European powers. Venice would alternate between various alliances, neutralities, and trading relationships. to prosper and expand without ever being absorbed into one of the sides. But then it ended up caught between Napoleon and the Hapsburgs--which it could not survive.
Madden also tells an interesting story about how as essentially a landless city-state Venice could never develop the same type of feudalism that dominated in much of Europe, so instead based its economy and society on merchants--which were inherently somewhat less stable and more changeable/meritocratic overtime (although one presumably would not want to overstate the point). But that the discovery of the New World, the improved navigation around the Cape of Africa, shifted the locus of trade to the Atlantic powers like Spain, England and France--and away from Venice's strategic trading position at the intersection of East and West.
The book also does a good job of covering everything from the crusades to the renaissance in Venice to Venice's role in the Grand Tour to literature about Venice. And it does it all in an enjoyable, readable way.
But the downside of the enjoyable, readable manner is a painful awareness of how it sometimes transforms the story into something overly crude, generalizing about the Venetian people and character (without drawing distinctions within Venice) and being overly defensive of Venice (it is invariably the barbarians/French/Turks/Napoleon or whoever else that is being tyrannical, inhumane and imperialistic while the Venetians are more justified and civilized in everything they do). But that is a minor flaw and it is hard to imagine a better comprehensive history of Venice....more
A fascinating attempt by a leading economic historian to work through a new area--ancient economic history--and to explain the concepts and tools of eA fascinating attempt by a leading economic historian to work through a new area--ancient economic history--and to explain the concepts and tools of economics to ancient historians. The limits of the book are not Peter Temin's fault, but the fact that we have so little in the way of economic facts and data to go on--especially as compared to the rich political histories we have for Ancient Rome. But this sparsity almost makes the puzzle more interesting. One chapter, for example, is based on a regression analysis of the complete data set of Roman wheat prices--all six prices that we know of. Yup, six data points over several centuries from around the Mediterranean. Attempts to make inferences about growth depend on even sparser data, or else indirect links like the number of shipwrecks discovered or the number of pottery shards.
Through all of this, Temin has a number of specific arguments that he makes in a compelling manner:
--Rome was a market economy (unlike medieval/feudal economies), in that prices were set by markets, allowed to fluctuate, and integrated across markets. This was true not just for commodities like wheat, but also for labor (Temin has an extensive discussion about why Roman slavery does not violate this analysis, in part because he argues it was effectively much more benign than just about any other slavery in any other civilization) and financial products.
--Rome at least temporarily escaped the Malthusian trap, having sustained growth (at pre-industrial revolution rates) and incomes well above subsistence, and not just for the elites.
--The Roman economy can be understood using the same tools/procedures we use for modern economies....more
Reads like something between a novel and a Shakespeare play, Foundation is the first a planned multivolume history of England. It covers pre-history tReads like something between a novel and a Shakespeare play, Foundation is the first a planned multivolume history of England. It covers pre-history through the beginning of the Tudor's. It is good old fashioned history that alternates between essentially a Royal-focused story and shorter chapters on various aspects of social history. It has essentially no historiography or attempts to grapple with other histories or even present any specific thesis or organizing principle. But I'm perfectly happy without one, especially once it got to the Medieval monarchs from Edward III onward and the story really took off.
I'm looking forward to the next volume on the Tudors, although I'm not positive that this style/presentation will work as well after that period....more
This joint biography of Cleopatra and Antony is a great man's (and woman's) history of their times. It is a fast and entertaining read. Diana Preston This joint biography of Cleopatra and Antony is a great man's (and woman's) history of their times. It is a fast and entertaining read. Diana Preston is not a specialist in the period and appears to take some care in interpreting the imperfect and unreliable ancient sources, but does not always help herself from reprinting the striking and romantic versions of the story as true. Learning more about Egyptian history and the amazingly brutal incest and murders in the royal family puts an interesting counterpoint on what is normally related as a Roman-centric story....more
Not nearly as good as his biography as Cicero, maybe because this book was not meant to be a biography. It tells the history of Rome from Vespasian thNot nearly as good as his biography as Cicero, maybe because this book was not meant to be a biography. It tells the history of Rome from Vespasian through Hadrian, with about half of the book being focused on Hadrian's rule. Unfortunately, the underlying sources are relatively sparse and the book is filled with perhaps and maybes that link Hadrian to the world and events of his time. You don't feel like you know Hadrian and to the degree you do he doesn't seem particularly complex or interesting, unlike Cicero.
That said, overall the book presents a good history of the Roman empire at it's peak -- about 50-150 years after the well chronicled period of the end of the Republic and first series of Emperors. The portrait of that time through the lens of a relatively tranquil and consolidation period was interesting and worth reading -- although lacking in the drama and excitement of the end of the Republic....more
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