The Columbia History of the World
The Columbia History of the World is a large tome covers most of recorded history and the current hypothesis about what happened before. This book was very helpful because it gave me a brief overview of many sections of history about which I knew little or nothing. However, it is definitely a euro-centric view of history. It was written mostly by Americans and most of the space is devoted to Europe and the West. China , India, and the Middle East are covered in much less detail.
Even though The Columbia History of the World did not cover the East as thoroughly, I learned a lot about the non-western world from this book. I got a general understanding for how Chinese history has played out. I did not realize that most of Chinese history has been one dynasty after another. Nearly all the dynasties were foreign invaders who came in and conquered the current rulers. I had previously thought new dynasties came from within China.
The Chinese have been constant historians and biographers. For a long time they have kept a continual recorded history. Each dynasty has written the history of the previous dynasty. This is somewhat surprising since most dynasties are led by people who were not born Chinese.
Another interesting aspect of Chinese culture is that they have always held civil servants and bureaucrats in very high esteem. Advancement in Chinese society has always been possible through either parentage or by doing well on official tests which allowed one to enter the beaucracy. The government has generally always run everything in China (even before the current communists). A commoner always had the ability to get in to the ruling class through doing well on tests.
Throughout its history China has always expanded westward across the continent. There have been many contractions over China’s history, but chosen mode of expansion has been overland into the Asian continent. This has left Japan to be independent even though it is geographically close to China.
India is another region of the world which has a bad recent history with invaders. In the long past India was conquered by an outside people who instated the caste system and became the upper caste. More recently the Mughals conquered nearly all of India during the age of Islamic expansion. However, India was one of the few areas which they were unable to convert the popular to Islam. The Mughals were very successful militarily compared to previous Indian kings who had been unable get most of the sub-continent under their control.
Finally as the Indians were just driving out the Mughals and rolling back their gains, the British arrived. The British mostly traded and actually bought out or took over the declining Mughal system and breathed new life into it. They remained in control of India until after World War II.
Another currently unmentionable aspect of history is the role of minorities in many countries. We often think of minorities (especially the Jews) as being oppressed and always taking a beating. We do not look deeper beneath the surface. It may be a chicken and egg question, but generally minorities are not innocent bystanders who just happen to be the victims of prejudice.
What commonly happens is that a foreign power will conquer a nation. The new rulers want to keep the beaten nation down and are afraid of the masses of people (the majority ethic group). What the invaders do is elevate one or several minority groups and give them power over the country. The minorities’ loyalty will be to the conquerors because they do not have the ability to maintain power by themselves. The minorities often mistreat the majority people badly and take all the benefits for themselves. Can the majority ethnic group be blamed for disliking these traitors who aid their oppressors.
Another interesting point which is covered is that as the world has ceased to have “real problems” people have started making problems for themselves and become unhappy. People today don’t have any of the major difficulties that those who lived long ago. However, we are even more unhappy and have self destructive feelings and tendencies. I have noticed this myself and it is a puzzling aspect of modern society.
The Columbia History of the World is a great book and I would recommend that anyone who has some extra time on their hands sit down and read it. It took me a while to finish, but that is because I took a lot of notes on the book to preserve it in my memory. You would be able to read it fairly quickly if you just read–although you will forget more.
