Category Archives: History

The Restoration of Rome (Theoderic) – Peter Heather

Rather than review Peter Heather’s The Restoration of Rome directly, I’m doing to try something a little different; I’m going to summarize the lives of three major leaders, Theoderic, Justinian, and Charlemagne, who attempted to recreate the Western Roman Empire. Roman history is good for the soul! For those interested in the book as a whole, I’m not wild about Peter Heather as an author (he’s a little too certain of his opinions for me), but the book is one of his better efforts, except for the final section on the Catholic Church as a new Roman Empire, which I found neither convincing nor particularly insightful.

Anyway, on to Theoderic. Born in 454 AD, he spent 10 years of his youth in Constantinople (modern Istanbul, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire) as a hostage for the good behaviour of his father, a Goth leader, in return for which his father was sent 300 pounds of gold each year. Durin this time, the Western Roman Empire would fall, breaking apart into independent regions controlled by various Germanic, Goth, or Vandal groups. The Eastern Roman Empire would continue, but the loss of the West was painful.

After Theoderic’s father’s death, he would take his troops towards Constantinople, exploiting his insider knowledge, and wander around demanding bribes and payments. Constantinople, in the meantime, would attempt to get him to fight another large group of Goths in the same area, hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

All the political manoeuvering came to nought, however, by one of the coincidences that makes history interesting. The other leader of the Goths (also named Theoderic; it meant King of the People in Gothic, so it was a popular name) attempting to mount his horse, fell onto a spear and died. Lacking a clear heir, the other Goths joined up with our Theoderic, and suddenly he was a force to be reckoned with, to Constantinople’s dismay.

After some quick thinking by Constantinople, the two sides agreed that Theoderic would go to capture Italy, thereby getting rid of him. He promptly did so, defeating the leader of Italy, agreeing to share power with him, and then ten days later at a feast running at him with a sword and killing him. Mission accomplished. Once he was in power, however, Theoderic didn’t stop. For the next 33 years, he would conquer and ally with various states until he controlled Italy, Spain, Southern France, the Dalmatian Coast, and indirectly North Africa. He was seen as a wise ruler and the spiritual heir to the Roman Empire, and the Roman nobility in Italy hailed him as such. It may seem strange to modern eyes that Italian Romans would so quickly accept a Goth leader as emperor, but at the time it seemed natural: many Roman emperors had come from distant parts of the Empire, and the promise of restoration to their former glory was a powerful incentive.

After his death, though, it all fell apart. Without him, Goth unity could not be maintained and so their control of other lands also disappeared. Only a few years later, therefore, another attempt would be made to restore Western Rome, this time by the new Eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian. We’ll discuss him next!

Zero-Sum World – Gideon Rachman

“It is the argument of this book that the international political system has indeed entered a period of dangerous instability and profound change.” – Rachman

Gideon Rachman, a journalist with the FT who spent 15 years at The Economist, has considerable experience talking about politics and international relations. His book focuses on the last 30 years, and divides it into three distinct eras: an Age of Transformation, an Age of Optimism, and an Age of Anxiety. Most of this post will be a summary of that structure; I found it a nice way to think about recent political history.

From 1978 to 1990, under Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, Thatcher, and Reagan, Rachman argues that in an effort to revive economies world leaders transformed the structure of international trade, loosening controls (to varying degrees) and encouraging globalization. China would begin to join the world economy; the USSR would disintegrate; and free markets would reign in the UK and US.

1990 to 2008 Rachman labels as the Age of Optimism. Trade and globalization flourish, with Clinton as a classic case. American power, whether military, economic, financial, technological, or intellectual, reigned supreme, and with the collapse of the USSR the world looked forward to peace and prosperity. No longer was competition between nations relevant: the success of any nation helped everyone, and the real threat to international security was not rivalries between powers, but failed states. International relations were win-win.

By 2008, however, the limits of American military power had been made painfully clear, and the financial crisis would do the same to American economic power. Global political problems, like terrorism and climate change would emerge, but the world seemed incapable of coordinating global political solutions. Authoritarian countries like Russia and China would gain power and confidence, and though no broad challenge to democracy would emerge, the rise of authoritarian powers spread like a rot through the system. No longer were disputes win-win; instead, they were zero-sum, with one country losing if the other won.

Such is Rachman’s story, and if somewhat politics and developed-world centric, it is compelling. Today’s discussion tends to be left vs. right, but for much of history it was authoritarian vs. democracy, and that’s the axis Rachman wants to focus on. He argues that in the long run authoritarian powers will struggle due to an inability to project power globally and a lack of a convincing alternative vision of how the world should be run, but in the short run, they can pose a significant problem.

I had a good time reading the book: each chapter is devoted to key events in recent history, and though I had a passing knowledge of most of them, having them detailed in a clear, structured manner was useful, and Rachman’s occasional dry observation didn’t hurt. No particularly revolutionary new ideas, perhaps, but it’s well explained and nicely expressed. A light but interesting read.

Nation Maker 2 – Richard Gwyn

“He had no high cards, but he knew how to play almost any game.”

1868 onwards were tough times for John A Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada. He would lose a national election for the first (and only) time; he would face accusations of corruption about railway construction; he would endure national division over the rebellion of Louis Riel. He would overcome all this, and be re-elected while establishing the RCMP, building a railway across Canada, expanding Canada from coast to coast, and as usual, going around being his witty and charismatic self.

Louis Riel is perhaps the best known figure from that period, now recognized as a symbol of Manitoba, but at the time he was seen in Ontario as a Metis rebel, while in Quebec he was seen as the victim of the abuse of English power. His demands for land for the Metis, and his armed rebellion against Canada, polarized the country and aroused strong feelings. In the end, he would be executed for treason and for many years forgotten about, but he remains a source of controversy today, though for different reasons. The treatment of the First Nations in the same area, and the execution of 8 of them in public without lawyers or translators, remains all but forgotten, however.

This is the second part of Gwyn’s John A Macdonald biography: I reviewed the first part here. In brief, the first part covers a younger John A and Canada’s Conferation, while the second is focused on the second half of John A’s life, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Louis Riel. Though still good, I liked this one less than the last; Gwyn’s sympathy for and love of John A, though it serves him well in many respects, can feel apologist when it comes to the scandals surrounding the construction of the railway.

The thesis of the biography, if biographies are allowed to have theses, is that with no John A, there would have been no Canada. Without John A’s constant worry over the Americans, Canada would simply be America North. That may well be true, but in the same time period lies the roots of much more of modern Canada; French/English divisions, political corruption (definitely political corruption), and perhaps even why the Liberal party has done so well over Canada’s history. That, of course, is why reading history is interesting.

John A: The Man Who Made Us – Richard Gwyn

“Macdonald made us by making a confederation out of a disconnected, mutually suspicious collection of colonies, and by later magnifying this union into a continental-sized nation.”

This is part 1 of Gwyn’s classic biography of the first Prime Minister of Canada, John A MacDonald; part 2 is on my shelf, so I imagine a review of that will appear in time. For non-Canadians reading, I provide this interesting fact: The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the year of the American Revolution, while Das Kapital (Pt 1) was published in 1867, the year of Canadian Confederation. 

A worry of mine with biographies is that they can sometimes feel like they’re trying to cut the subject down to size. A key role of biographies is to explore the weaknesses as well as the strengths of an individual, but to try to insult Napoleon’s strategic sense, for example, seems to me to reveal more about the biographer than the biographee.

Fortunately, Gwyn’s biography of John A Macdonald does none of that. Instead, it is an insightful, well researched analysis of a great man who is often considered one of the Fathers of Canada, but was also a raging alcoholic, happy to distribute appointments to his friends and to buy support, and at best mediocre father of his actual child. My only criticism is that for an international reader, it might feel too Canadian in its focus, but as a biography written for a Canadian audience, that’s hardly a surprise.

It explores themes both large and small: from how the origins of Canada lie with the first alliance between French and English politicians, which John A would wholeheartedly adopt, to how he appears to have coined the word Shero for a female hero. It also studies John A himself, arguing his greatest strength was his practicality, in contrast to Lincoln’s idealism, which allowed John A to understand the lives of the people of Canada as they were actually lived.

Summarizing the history of Canada in a blog post is a bit beyond my brief, and so instead of attempting to do so I’d say for those interested in Canadian history and even world history of the time (John A traveled frequently to the UK for political reasons, and as a contemporary of Lincoln the book also takes on the Civil War, though from a Canadian perspective), the book is an exciting read. For those of us who experienced high school Canadian history, which seemed to suggest that the only thing that happened in Canadian history was something about coureurs de bois, the book is almost required reading. 

Plus, John A’s a fun guy! When accused of being drunk (he was – he repeatedly threw up in the House of Commons), he replied “Yes, but the people would prefer John A. drunk to George Brown sober.”

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations 2 – David Landes

“The one lesson that emerges is the need to keep trying. No miracles. No perfection. No millennium. No apocalypse. We must cultivate a skeptical faith, avoid dogma, listen and watch well, try to clarify and define ends, the better to choose means.”

I gave broad thoughts on David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations earlier this week, but today I’m going to try to give a flavour of the kind of broad themes he talks about. This, I think, is the real strength of the book: the breadth of scope and insight it brings to bear,

The kind of broad questions he tackles are not thought about enough, I think. Sung China had mechanized power in ironmaking; Europe had windmills; early modern Italy had shipbuilding. Why didn’t they have an Industrial Revolution? Why did England? And why in the 18th century?

He argues it occurred in the UK for 3 reasons. The autonomy of intellectual inquiry, the method and language of understanding science and discovery, and the invention of invention (the routinization of research), all, he argues, contributed to England’s success. Other countries in Europe had obstacles to development, holdovers from the medieval period like serfs, guilds, and trade barriers, while the UK led the way in changing those institutions to suit the new economy. In addition, he gives some credit to Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic, though he is equally happy to credit a Buddhist work ethic that emphasizes the same virtues. A follower of any religion can have the virtues of hard work, self-discipline, etc., he points out, but perhaps the incentives were higher for Protestants.

Most of us have heard of the industrial revolution, but it’s the uncommon book that can really capture the industrial evolution from mechanized textiles, which led to steel through a focus on process, which led to dyes made with coal byproducts, which would in turn spawn modern chemistry, of critical importance to World War I. After that, food refrigeration and processing would further modernize and globalize the world, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Something he doesn’t appear to be familiar with is some work I’ve seen by Bob Allen, the economic historian at Oxford. He has built estimates of real wages for labour in countries around the world for much of history, and argues a key driver of the location of the industrial revolution was the price of labour. In the UK, the return to adopting a spinning jenny was 40%, because the employees it replaced were so expensive: in India, the return was negative 4%, because labour was cheap. I suspect Landes would happily agree with this as a driver, so it was a shame it didn’t appear he’d seen it.

For me, his thoroughness on the industrial and colonial periods is his greatest strength, and he does well to spend considerable time on other regions, like South America and Asia. The one notable exception is Africa, which though mentioned in reference to other regions is given little time itself. It’s possible he left it out due to time, but it is an unfortunate absence. For perhaps the same reason, his concluding chapters feel weak. Still, for the middle chapters alone, the book may well be worth it.

If you do want that deep knowledge of how rich countries developed their wealth, you get can the book here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, just subscribe to the Subtle Illumination email list!

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations – David Landes

“The Industrial Revolution brought the world closer together, making it smaller and more homogenous. But the same revolution fragmented the globe by estranging winners and losers. It begat multiple worlds.”

If I had been asked what I thought 100 pages in, I would have been quite negative, I think. Landes attempts to write an economic history of the world, and in his first hundred pages or so he covers pre-industrial revolution. It felt disorganized: he has vast knowledge of the subject, but the interjections and tangents were overwhelming, and I am dubious about the accuracy of some of them.

Once he got onto the era of the Industrial Revolution though, he began to shine. His chapters on Japan (he argues that had Europeans not intervened, they might well have had an industrial revolution of their own – I had no idea that because early Japan guaranteed riparian cultivator rights so strongly, they actually built boat-mounted waterwheels!) are fascinating, and he does well to focus on finding the reasons why things happen, instead of ascribing historical events to chance. His studies of colonial powers are equally interesting, highlighting differences between the different powers and their influences in a comprehensive way that is not done enough. Where else can one learn that early England was mostly about privateers and piracy rather than colonies, and as a result the crown issued sailor uniforms without pockets so they couldn’t steal things from the captured ships before the crown got its share?

In some ways it’s a good but weaker precursor to Why Nations Fail: Landes too emphasizes institutions, though he also gives credit to geography, culture, and other factors. His knowledge, however, is considerably more comprehensive, and flipping to any point in the book can reveal an enormous depth of knowledge on the subject at hand (Galileo was in trouble for the same reason inexpensive pornography used to be banned in Italy: such things were fine for those with refined tastes, but not appropriate for the masses. Galileo published in Italian, not Latin). That can be both fascinating and frustrating, but it’s certainly impressive.

Overall, then, I’m impressed. I might skip the first few chapters and the last few, but the middle is well worth the read. Whether that means the book is worth reading overall, I suppose, depends on how much of a hurry you’re in: I’d suggest Why Nations Fail as a speedier, but less comprehensive and content-rich, alternative.

If you do want that deep knowledge of how rich countries developed their wealth, you get can the book here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, just subscribe to the Subtle Illumination email list!

The Art of War – Sun Tzu

Having reviewed Good Strategy, Bad Strategy earlier, I thought it might be worth posting some quotes from Sun Tzu’s Art of War to provide some balance – there’s nothing like going back to the classics, after all.

Deception

 “All warfare is based on deception.”

“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, then crush him.”

Leadership

“Confront your soldiers with the deed itself; never let them know your design. When the outlook is bright, bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when the situation is gloomy.”

“At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him. He carries his men deep into hostile territory before he shows his hand.”

Victory

“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

“The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.”

“Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.”

“In war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”

“In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain.”

Want more? Get it here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, join the email list to your right for more subtle illumination…

Who Killed Canadian History? – J.L. Granatstein

“[T]he achievements of the past, and even the failures of the years gone by, can be a source of strength to meet not only today’s challenges, but tomorrow’s, too.”

Yup, it’s another Canada post. In my defense, I do try to focus on the underlying themes of these books, but I grant they’re not interesting to everyone.

Granatstein disapproves of how history is taught in Canada, and I have a suspicion he feels that way about how history is taught in a lot of places. For him, history is about narrative and causality, about learning what happened in the past, and he worries that too much of history today is about exploring political themes like racism and sexism. He doesn’t disagree that those are important, of course, but argues they should be in politics classes, not history: history should include them, but not be limited to them.

In saying so, he’s not afraid to take a controversial stance. Social history, labour history, women’s history: all as equally important as political history, he says, but too often taught at the expense of political history. In practice those are the sorts of ideas that historians fight internecine wars over, and I suspect the knives were out for him when the book was released.

I don’t know what the right way to teach history is: one has only to look at textbooks in the West Bank to see how difficult it can be. Even an attempt to have each side write alternating pages of a textbook failed in that particular case, as the views of the two sides were so different as to be irreconcilable. As this blog may betray, however, I personally love history, and so definitely believe that knowing history is important in order to be a successful citizen of a democracy. Based on the polling data, it’s not clear North Americans (I haven’t seen data for anyone else) are learning any history at all, and so there is definitely room for improvement. As perhaps with all school subjects though, the challenge is finite hours and almost infinite subjects people think should be required. Assembling a common list appears to be almost as difficult as coming up with a common history.

The World Until Yesterday 2 – Jared Diamond

“[T]he Sirionos’ strongest anxieties are about food, they have sex virtually whenever they want, and sex compensates for food hunger, while our strongest anxieties are about sex, we have food virtually whenever we want, and eating compensates for sexual frustration.”

Earlier this week, I gave my broad thoughts on The World Until Yesterday. Today, I’ll highlight a few of the more interesting examples Diamond gives.

Dispute Resolution

Many traditional cultures use what is Diamond refers to as “sorry money” – one cannot compensate someone for the death of a child or a parent, but one can say sorry. Parties are forced to interact until both feel satisfied and their previous relationship is restored. This contrasts sharply with the modern court system, which attempts to ensure reparations are paid or justice is served, but does not attempt to restore any previously existing relationship between the parties. To some extent, this makes sense: in a traditional society, you will almost certainly interact with the same people again, while in a modern one you will not. Still, Diamond suggests that the modern system can often leave people feeling unsatisfied or lacking closure. Justice may well be served, but it lacks the personal relationship of traditional societies.

Leisure

Children’s games in New Guinea, for example, almost never involve competition. One example would be when each child gets a banana. Each of them divides it in half, eats half, and gives the other half to another child, who then divides that half into quarters. They do this for as long as possible. How much children’s games say about a society is up for debate, but it’s a striking difference.

Risk

At one point, Diamond is about to put his tent under a dead tree, and his New Guinea companions refuse point blank to join him. At first he is surprised: the chance of a dead tree falling is miniscule, perhaps one in a thousand. On reflection, though, he points out that locals of New Guinea may sleep under trees over one hundred nights per year: even a miniscule risk, if repeated, is not worth taking. The modern world, in contrast, frequently takes such risks, whether driving cars or, dare I say it, designing financial systems.

Diet

Don’t eat so much sugar. Or salt. You should know this. I was interested though in the idea that the massive prevalence of diabetes in some developing countries (up to 30%), may not be a natural difference, but rather a result of natural selection. When sugar became popular in Europe, Diamond suggests, Europe too might have had an epidemic of diabetes deaths, and individuals who were most sensitive to it died off; western societies today have lower rates of diabetes simply because the most vulnerable have not survived.

The whole thing is great. You can get it here (or in the UK or Canada).

River Notes – Wade Davis

“To walk down a gravel road just south of the border town of San Luis Rio Colorado and watch what remains of the Colorado pass through rusted culverts, bringing not fertility but toxicity to the land, is to ask what on earth become of this stream so revered in the American imagination, and yet now so despoiled that it today reaches the ocean a river only in name.”

If you’ve ever been in North America during the winter and eaten lettuce, you’ve drunk from the Colorado. The Yuma region, which gets 4 inches of rain a year, grows 95% of North America’s winter lettuce, watered almost exclusively by the Colorado. Without the river, America would be forced to largely abandon southern California and Arizona, and much of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming; upwards of 25 million people forced to relocate, not to mention eat less lettuce. As it withers, the animals, plants, and natural beauty that rely on it wither too.

Wade Davis mourns its treatment. Wade Davis, for those who don’t know him, is a possessor of one of the coolest jobs I’m familiar with, being one of the seven permanent Explorers-in-Residence at National Geographic, and is the guy who explored how zombies were created in Haiti.

Framed by his own rafting journey down the Grand Canyon, he weaves together stories of the native people around the river, both the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones, whose ruins cover the area, as well as extant groups; the stories of the first Europeans to explore the river; its geological and natural history; and its exploitation through dam construction and water diversions.

Americans may find his lament particularly powerful, but beyond enjoyment of his beautiful writing, I also took away a number of broader lessons. Water is a resource we tend to squander, and we have not yet begun to bear the costs of such behaviour, at least in the Western world. We also tend to lionize dams as a solution to global warming, and as such River Notes is a useful reminder that they too have costs, like all sources of energy. Most of all, though, he ends on an optimistic call to action: to maintain the Colorado ecosystem may take as little as 1% of the total flow, and if it were not for “cows eating alfalfa in a landscape where neither really belongs,” he points out, the entire crisis could be averted. It takes, after all, over 1800 litres of water to raise a pound of beef.

Disclosure: I read River Notes as a free advance reader copy – it is released on Saturday. You can get it here (or in the UK or Canada).