ประวัติศาสตร์โลกฉบับออกซฟอร์ด

by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, นำชัย ชีววิวรรธน์ (Translator), ธวัชชัย ดุลยสุจริต (Translator)

ลองนึกภาพโลกในสายตาของผู้สังเกตการณ์นอกโลก จากห้วงเวลาและระยะทางอันแสนห่างไกล ที่กำลังมองมาด้วยสายตาเป็นกลาง ไม่เอนเอียง อันเป็นสิ่งที่มนุษย์ผู้ติดในบ่วงประวัติศาสตร์ของตนเองไม่อาจทำได้

"ประวัติศาสตร์โลกฉบับออกซฟอร์ด" เล่มนี้ ครอบคลุมตลอดหน้าประวัติศาสตร์ของมนุษย์ มันคือการรวมตัวกันของนักประวัติศาสตร์ระดับโลกมากมาย โดยมี "เฟลิเป้ เฟอร์นานเดซ-อาร์เมสโต" เป็นหัวเรือนำทางในการเล่าเรื่องราวของมนุษยชาติกว่า 200,000 ปี ตั้งแต่จุดกำเนิดของเผ่าพันธุ์โฮโม เซเบียนส์ ไปจนถึงศตวรรษที่ 21 พร้อมทั้งสืบสาวถึงการเปลี่ยนแปลงครั้งใหญ่ทางประวัติศาสตร์ การไหลเวียนของแนวคิดต่าง ๆ (ทั้งดีและไม่ดี) พัฒนาการและการแลกเปลี่ยนทางวัฒนธรรม กรณีข้อพิพาทและความร่วมมือทางการเมือง การสืบทอดอำนาจของรัฐและจักรวรรดิต่าง ๆ การค้นพบพลังงาน ระบบนิเวศ เศรษฐกิจ การติดต่อ ความขัดแย้ง และโรคระบาดที่ล้วนมีส่วนทำให้โลกของเราเป็นอย่างทุกวันนี้ ไม่เพียงเท่านั้น หนังสือเล่มนี้ยังอัดแน่นไปด้วยแหล่งข้อมูลและภาพประกอบหลากหลาย มีการอัปเดตข้อมูลใหม่ ๆ มากมาย นี่จึงสามารถกล่าวได้อย่างเต็มปากว่านี้เป็นประวัติศาสตร์โลก "ฉบับใหม่ที่สุด" ในขณะนี้แล้ว!

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World History

712 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2019

About the author

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author presents the world’s spirit as it reveals itself to itself, unfortunately the world doesn’t have a spirit and while the author does understand Hegel he forgets the main lesson from Hegel: never ever take him too seriously.

The author slips from time-to-time into making the world’s spirit a neo-liberal fantasy for the world formed by continuous progress and for which he provides a fabricated meta-narrative as revealed to the author from his version of history.

The author presumes a certainty in his version of history and forgets that sometimes things just happen, that humans really don’t have free will as he claims, and that in no realistic way would I ever say as the author does: ‘Abortion has replaced infanticide in some parts of the world.’ He put that sentence in his introduction and that sets the tone for the book and gives the reader an early warning to how the author sees the world wrongly.

The real spirit of history if there were such a thing would be ignorance subsumes the myth-of-progress while getting exploited by the privileged. The willful manipulation of the masses by the privilege perpetuates the myth-of-progress through neo-liberal panaceas as we inauthentically lose sight of meaning by outsourcing truth to harmful agents. Germany for the Aryans made sense to the self-identified privileged class, and make-America-great-again needs their myth to succeed. There is no meta-narrative except for the ones we make up, and at times this book is making up a neo-liberal fantasy.

The author at times also had a creepy certainty in Evo devo (evolutionary psychology development) as an explanation for preferred modern behaviors and mental processes and seemed to embrace superstitious religious beliefs otherwise known as myths as fundamental for progress. I'm ashamed at one time I fell under the spell of evo devo and now see it as a pseudo-science best mocked.

Oddly, I am not negative towards this book. At times the author does knock it out of the ball-park, but his certainty in his own story about the story is tedious. Integrating climate changes and plagues as fundamental to history is responsible and his warning about human’s continuous stupidity is appropriate especially during this time of MAGA madness. We are just one election away from their neo-liberalism fantasy state to prevail and their preferred myth to run roughshod.

H. G. Wells in his slightly better book than this one, “The Outline of History,” also assumed Marco Polo told the truth as this author did and not recognizing him as just a liar, a myth-maker. Wells saw history unfolding through a socialistic lens and unfettered capitalism soften by neo-liberalism as a threat and the real enemy was ignorance and the exploitation the privilege have over us. This author explained slavery through the lens of labor saving cost for the slaveholders not through freedom, a neo-liberal’s preferred lens.

I did enjoy this book, but the author’s arrogance in his own certainty did grate at me at times. The last thing the world needs now is to re-enforce a myth about the past that enables the privileged to pretend to believe in teleologic destiny as they destroy the world. Another better book than this one is “The Dawn of Everything,” they get that there is no story-about-the-story and that the myth of neo-liberalism’s continuous progress is bogus.

[Amrit Sufi]

Now that I have read world history I feel the urge to display some pompous superiority to those who haven't. Having read about the causes behind post modern ways of thinking, it is also tempting now to let go of my literary pretentious way of expressing myself, but since I'm still writing like this it seems like I won't.

[Eden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had lots of nitpicks with it, but a great book nonetheless. The effects of climate change on human history (largely missing from world histories written before the 2010s) were enlightening to learn about. A lot more research is still needed to paint a more refined picture, but I'm glad historians are beginning to take it into account. I was quite surprised by the revival of the idea of the "dark ages" again due to the focus on climate change. The grand sweeps made throughout the book focusing on themes were striking. The last two parts dealt mostly with intellectual, political and cultural aspects of the last two centuries. The scholars chosen for this book were good choices.

At a time when we are probably entering a new era of world history, this book feels like a great encapsulation of everything up to this point.

[F J Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very informative and clearly written book, which promotes an enligthened view of history, looking at how geographical, metereological, social, ethnic issues have influenced human history. Every chapter is written by an acknowledged academic expert, and the illustrations are fascinating and telling. I personally found
'A History of the World in 7 Cheap Things' more compelling, but the chapter called 'The Anthropocene Epoch' covers much the same areas. The book, for me, could have more harshly critiqued capitalism, foregrounding the destructive effects of unbridled neo-liberal economics.

[Ana]

Bought book at Hatchard’s on Sunday August 20th 2023 on Piccadilly St London

[Lara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading for uni

[Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't the history of the world that I expected but I am glad I was offered a different perspective, climate change. It's no kidding. Climate change was pivotal in the history and will be in the future. Now back to the book, it's a daunting task of write a book on the world history in so few pages considering around one-fifth is illustration, which doesn't make sense all the time. The writers for the book were a few. Some wrote better others. Chief editor Felipe Fernández-Armesto wrote about idea just as his latest book. That's the problem of the book as for me. You will eventually find yourself familiar with most of the content of the book. So few pages can only illustrate what the most important events of the world are, which might be too well known for you if you were educated well enough.

[Alex]

I managed to get halfway through it, but I think I'd rather read several books with more detail. This one is often too broad for me to stay interested, and I also really don't click with the style of one or two of the chapter authors.