Cómo el mundo creó Occidente: 4.000 años de historia

by Josephine Quinn, Iván Barbeitos (translator)

'A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination' RORY STEWART'Eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking' LUCY WORSLEYThe West, history tells us, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn't true? What if the story is very different? In this bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn reveals a new one that traces the relationships that built what is now called the West from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. She makes the case that it is contact and connections, rather than distinct and isolated civilisations, that drive historical change. It is not peoples that make history – people do.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, World History, Ancient History, European History, Audiobook

672 pages, Hardcover

First published February 29, 2024

Reviews

[Malcolm Bellamy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the following quote from the book sums it up perfectly:

"Many people in ancient times spent their whole lives in small worlds revolving around farm and family, travelling no further than a local festival, shrine or market. Others, though, lived on the road - or more often on the sea learning each other's languages, settling in each other's lands and cities and adopting each other's gods. They told each other stories as well, living cultural counterparts to the glittering objects that now fill museum cabinets. Together, they created an overlapping set of legends, gods and heroes all across the Mediterranean, and then used them to tell more local stories."

The book explains how the fluidity of movement influenced the cultural development of early western societies. In many ways the influence of the east which was exemplified in Peter Frankopan's masterful book "Silk Roads" is a compliment to this book. Interestingly, the author of this book and Frankopan are colleagues at the same Oxford college.

This book shows how eastern merchants, sailors and armies gave the early Greeks religion (gods), mythologies, the template for building ships and exploring other lands. Thus the eastern influence on western culture, science,technology and in particular the use of an alphabet (writing) would create the basis of the Homeric legends that are so celebrated in the west.

This is a well written book that would appeal to anyone interested in ancient history and culture.

With thanks to Net Galley for the opportunity to read an advanced electronic copy of the book.

[Bee Dee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t understand referring to israel with the implication that it always existed, and mentioning gaza as an afterthought only for its port and trade further down

[Katia N]

The main point of the author makes in this book is:

The question we now face is not whether Western Civilisation is bad or good, but whether civilisational thinking helps explain much of anything at all. Understanding societies in terms of lonely trees and isolated islands is 200 years out of date and it is demonstrably, historically, wrong. It is time to find new ways to organise our common world.

She finds the civilisational debate of history quite misleading. Her image is rather a net of connections between the cultures and geographies, not a tree with a set of branches once separate never crossing again. It is good corrective considering current discourse of the 'uniqueness' and 'disappearing' of Western civilisation that allegedly threatens us all.

To support her argument she runs through cross-pollination of the cultures starting from the days of Mesopotamia and finishing with the epoch of discoveries. Due to the time span the history she presents is brief. I knew a lot of stories, but still it was interesting to read. One thing I did not know that there were no such thing as as complete 'Silk Road' through Asia until quite late time. Rather it was a lot of patchy and incomplete pathways and then the sea route through Indian Ocean and the Gulf was instrumental in delivering silk etc. One thing I knew that both terms 'Silk Road' and 'civilisation' were a social construct coined in 18-19th century as those concepts were not used/intellectualised/understood before that.

It would be a good book for someone who wants an intro into global(ish) ancient history.

[Mircea Petcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surse de referință respectabile descriu dezvoltarea unei culturi occidentale distincte, strict delimitate, construită pe valorile Greciei și Romei antice, pierdută de Europa în timpul Evului Mediu, dar redescoperită de Renaștere. Predecesorii grecilor și romanilor pot fi interesanți, dar nu sunt "ai noștri". Orice contribuție a lor este tratată ca fiind depășită de cea a Greciei și Romei - considerate responsabile pentru tot felul de lucruri bune, de la filosofie și democrație, la teatru și beton.

Adevărata poveste din spatele a ceea ce se numește astăzi "Vest" este mult mai amplă și interesantă.
În primul rând, grecii și romanii au avut propria lor istorie, înrădăcinată în alte locuri și populații mai vechi, și și-au preluat majoritatea ideilor și tehnologiilor din diferite părți: codurile juridice și literatura din Mesopotamia, sculptura în piatră din Egipt, irigațiile din Asiria și alfabetul din Levant. Ei știau acest lucru și îl celebrau.
În al doilea rând, nu există o legătură privilegiată între grecii și romanii antici și "Occidentul" modern (cu statele naționale). Capitala Imperiul Roman s-a mutat la mijlocul mileniului I la Constantinopol, unde va rămâne pentru mai bine de o mie de ani. Între timp, musulmanii au combinat învățătura greacă cu știința din Persia, India și Asia Centrală, iar noile tehnologii au circulat prin Africa, Arabia și Oceanul Indian, pe când marinarii de pe mările nordice și călăreții din stepe au canalizat bunuri și idei din India până în Irlanda.

Aceasta este lumea imensă, întinsă de la Pacific la Atlantic, pe care națiunile în ascensiune din vestul Europei au moștenit-o în secolul al XV-lea, atunci când au pornit spre o lume nouă. Totuși, aceste milenii de interacțiune au fost în mare parte uitate, înnăbușite de ideile dezvoltate în perioada victoriană, care au organizat lumea în "civilizații separate și adesea opuse reciproc.

Mi-au plăcut că autoarea a dedicat un spațiu generos (circa 200 de pagini) Epocii Bronzului.

Recomand

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

A great `first Chapter..for me it was downhill from there

I only managed the first 13 chapters. There was no point in continuing as I was only being bombarded with seemingly disaporganised facts I would forget, with no signposting, no reference back to the bigger themes. After such a fantastic first chapter, I had great expectations, but then was plunged into a mire of what seemed like a stream of historical consciousness. Perhaps the author just knows too much and didn’t have a good editor? or didn’t take their advice? Anyway..I see other 5 star reviews so I recognise there must be something there of value, just not for me.

[Wing · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sweeping celebration of ‘glocalisation’: ‘the way that as more places become involved in broader economic and cultural networks, they tend to emphasise, rediscover, or even invent their own local customs and identities’ (p.86). The term ‘the West’ is a nineteenth-century invention, a civilisational myth-making based on geographical curiosities misused as an ideological weapon. It should be obvious that ‘the continents were from the beginning products of human imagination, not of the natural world’ (p.211). The etymology of the word ‘Europe’ betrays its contrived origins.

History is continuous, and ‘the study of antiquity disproves the idea that everyone is born with a fixed ethnic identity tied to specific people by ancestry or ancestral territory’ (p.110). Roman identity, for example, ‘was never an ethnic concept but one based on citizenship, which could be earned through service to the state—or, for the enslaved, to its citizens’ (p.267).

The ever-interconnectedness of our world means we choose who we want to be, rather than merely succumbing to so-called ‘influences’. As the subtitle of the book implies, Ancient and Antiquity Histories are explored extensively to show their significance in understanding ‘the West’. It demonstrates repeatedly that cultural differences are based more on contact with other people and places than on local factors. The modern concept of nationalism is fantastical because ‘societies have always been entangled with the worlds around them in both space and time’ (p.332). Using archaeological finds, ancient DNA analyses, and radioisotope studies, the book provides evidence to support this view. Naturally, modern despots of the nationalist kind will not like to see these.

External threats often cause inward, in-group delusional sentiments. As it happened, ‘an ever more homogeneous Latin Christian way of life developed across much of Europe’ around the time of the Third Crusade (p.373). Despite this, ‘stories that people were really reading in medieval Europe were mobile, multicultural tales told across creeds and cultures through serial translations’ (p.391).

The book concludes with the so-called ‘Age of Exploration’, which was also an age of ‘ethnic cleansing and imperial conquest’ (p.404). It serves as a warning: the triumph of cosmopolitanism can be interrupted by ignorance and barbarism. How well we shape our world depends on how wisely we conceptualise it.

It’s indeed an amazing work. Five stars.

[Kumar Ayush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good history lesson. Learnt a lot.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thoroughly comprehensive book that describes the interactions between what we think of as “Western Civilization” and the rest of the world, going back thousands of years. The author decries 'civilizational thinking' which presumes that civilizations are more or less self-contained and homogenous. She shows how much trade there was in the world even thousands of years ago, using artifacts, written records and DNA evidence.

The book is remarkably well sourced, as might be expected by the person who in January 2025 will become the Chair of Ancient History at Oxford University. What really impressed me was how readable it was, despite the fact that almost every sentence has a source footnoted in the back section of references. In histories like this I look for weasel words like “it could be” or “perhaps”, and there are preciously few of those. Where we don't know something, she admits it. She doesn't speculate much, and when she does, there's usually a reference to back it up.

Rather than civilizations, the book shows that a series of kingdoms and empires rose and fell over time, and even then the borders were blurry.

What I also noticed was how populations and settlements changed based on the changing climate. The 4,000 year stretch is long enough that the world experienced some major warming and cooling trends over centuries, with startlingly strong effects on humans. In a world largely dependent on small scale agriculture and subsistence hunting, this is understandable. It does not bode well, however, for the impact of today's changing climate.

[Roy Kenagy]

Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024, recommended by Sophie Roell / Five Books https://bit.ly/42zOhNw

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ships back in 2,000 BCE travelled 100-150 kilometers per day, which was 2 to 3 times faster than the fastest canoe or rowboat. The Hittites were the kings of smelting iron oxide – probably by adding carbon to reduce the smelting boiling point. I know we were taught, “he who smelt it, dealt it” but smelters rarely sold their product directly to the consumer. The Hittite’s job was to free iron oxide from its slag; without Hittites, it took me a divorce lawyer to free myself from my slag. By 11th century BCE, Cypriot artisans knew the secret of making iron which then made it the choice for knives, swords, daggers, axes and agricultural tools. “The arrival of iron as a cheaper alternative to bronze had wiped out mass demand for copper and tin (used for bronze)”.

Mediterranean: The Mediterranean had pirate choke points in the first millennium BC at the Strait of Gibraltar, the Sicilian Strait, between the boot of Italy and Greece, and two more at both ends of the Sea of Marmara (Istanbul). Phoenicians were basically people from the Levant, and unlike Trump supporters, they didn’t see themselves as a group. Not one ever called themselves a Phoenician, or wrote a song about “Walk like a Phoenician”. Silver was used as cash back then in the Levant – sealed bags of a certain weight were used before the first stamped coins appeared. Camels were used to transport stuff across the North African desert – they could go 40 to 50 kilometers per day (2x human distance) and could carry a load of up to 250 kilos, and even survive on water once a week.

Chickens were rare back then. They came from “red jungle fowl that lived in the trees in Southeast Asia” and started coming down from the trees when local rice and millet farming offered them a tasty treat down below. Back then race and ethnic purity was “rarely” a thing. Modern Italian comes from medieval Tuscan. The Phoenician language was that of ninth century Tyre. The Greeks used the Tyrian alphabet. By 700 BCE, Athens only had around 5,000 people (a small US town size today), while at this time Tyre had 30,000, and Assyrian Nineveh had more than 100,000. Babylon was the largest city back then with a population of more than 150,000.

It is considered normal to see Western Civ begin in the Greek Aegean and then moving on to Roman Italy. This book briefly goes into stories of the contributions of the other power centers at the time, but this book did not stimulate any rethink of the time period – of course there were contributions to Western Civ from people of that time who were NEITHER Greek nor Roman. Of course, Greeks and Romans didn’t live in a closet. Fun Fact: The Persian Empire at its biggest, was larger than the Roman Empire at its biggest. Any American can tell you about Persian cats, but almost none can tell you where Persia would be on a map, or that Persia changed its name to Iran in 1935. Comically, few Americans could find Iran on a map of the world either. Scythians were merely semi-nomadic shepherds, riders and warriors who rode the Steppe (those who didn’t ride & drink ran a 12 Steppe Program) and produced metal weapons.

Assorted Fun Facts: Hitler had a fantasy that Aryans were white, but they came from central Asia and were also found in ancient Indian and Iranian texts. Persepolis was the ceremonial center of King Darius. Bactria back then, is now known as Afghanistan. Herodotus said Persians learned to have sex with boys from the Greeks. Did Michael Jackson learn from the Greeks or the Persians? Americans are taught about Muslim women having to cover their faces and bodies, but not that Athenian women in Greece also had to cover their heads and sometime wear veils. When Alexander the Great was 20 years old, he had been a general for two years. Diogenes the Cynics (c. 390-323), lived in a jar (you read that right) in Athens and spent his time masturbating. I wonder if he died of a stroke.

Cleopatra married not one but two of her brothers when they were about ten (p.245). I’m surprised the movie Cleopatra didn’t include scenes of her riding both ten-year-old brothers during their nap time – such family entertainment. Parthian riders could shoot arrows backward while on horses in flight. Power in Rome was restricted to a much smaller class than in Ancient Greece. The largest the Roman Empire ever got was under Trajan (r.98-117 CE). By mid-second century CE, Rome had to find 250,000 to 500,000 new slaves per year to “refresh” their slave population. By 180 CE “nearly a third of Roman senators were of African origin. In fact, by the end of second century CE, an African (Severus) ruled Rome. His half-African son Caracalla succeeded him. Rome had more than twenty-five rulers in fewer than fifty years after 235 CE – some of them never even went once to Rome.

By the end of the reign of Augustus, most Roman legions were stationed in Europe, where the greatest threat to the empire was. It was getting clear to Rome’s subjects that they were paying for their own occupation (much like in Gaza and West Bank today) while those occupied were getting nothing in return. Roman territory soon “began to break away in chunks.” In 380 CE pagan activity became illegal under Augustus Theodosius and all Roman subjects had then to kiss the ass of a militant Jesus who suddenly tolerated the cross as justifying violence against fellow humans. The lovely post-380 CE atmosphere of Christianity Uber Alles, and Rules R Us, decreased Mediterranean maritime traffic and Josphine writes, “houses became huts, pottery was now handmade, and farms appeared in cities.”

Think of the Islamic conquest of North Africa this way; incoming Muslims took advantage of the unpopularity of the Roman government in North Africa, and of how much local Berber rebels preferred the newcomers. This led to the period of religious toleration (Convivencia) over the large Iberian territory called “al-Andalus”. Churches, mosques, and synagogues co-existed for hundreds of years, proving Israel could easily do the same in peace if it chose a live in peace with equal rights solution. Islamophobes will never tell you that “the classic works of Greek science and philosophy were translated into Arabic before they were translated into other European languages – including Latin.”

Haters of Russia won’t tell you how Russia began in Kyiv/Kiev (capital of present Ukraine), a commercial capital, where the inhabitants were known as the Rus by 880 CE. Paper comes from second century BCE China. The first paper mill was built in 790’s CE Baghdad. It soon replaced papyrus. The author believes that the Vikings landed in North America in search of timber (they already cut down Iceland’s trees and Greenland had none). Viking settlement “L’Anse aux Meadows” in Newfoundland dates to 1021 CE. Rome and Constantinople broke off relations in 1054 causing the “Great Schism” between Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodoxy. If you meet a true foaming Islamophobe, tell them because of their clear hatred they should then never again say the words “tariff, traffic, bazaar or check” because they were originally Arabic words. The Lateran IV Council of 1215 barred Jews from public office; in 1218, “Jews in England were legally obliged to wear a special badge.”

The Mongols were about conquering, commerce, and offering safe passage at a price. Mongols commanded half the horses of the world during the Mongol height of power. Meanwhile, Africa was gold mining at purities of 98 to 99%, but at the mining expense of lowering local water tables. 3,000 to 5,000 African slaves arrived in Europe annually back then. Americans are consciously taught today by mainstream media to fear China (which never mentions dozens of countries the US has boldly invaded) and our media never tells you that China gave the West siege engines, gunpowder, the sternpost rudder and the compass. You can’t get into a swimming pool w/o kids shouting “Marco… Polo!” However, Ibn Battuta travelled further than Marco Polo but you aren’t taught his name instead because he “ain’t” white and mainstream media is too Islamophobic. In 29 years, Ibn travelled 75,000 miles around the world (leaving and returning to Morocco) yet never got any frequent flyer miles or met a single stewardess. Christian humanists like Petrarch “ignored entirely the literature and learning of the Islamic world.”

Coffee was brewed for the first time, not by Juan Valdez, but in Yemen (another country the US and Israel hates) around 1400. Christians began drinking it (long after the craze for it began) after 1600. The Spanish wiped out the indigenous population of the Canaries (the Guanches) and the islands were switched over to sugar production. “It had taken the Spanish 150 years to exterminate the Guanches.” Today’s Zionists and their American financial backers could have done that in half the time. Amateurs…

Explain this one: “Murano glass beads made in Venice were found in Alaska in contexts dated by radiocarbon to the mid-fifteenth century, before European ships had crossed the Atlantic, suggesting they arrived through the Bering Strait.” Wow…

I fully expected this book to show how the economic and intellectual wealth of the West came first from the West plundering the world …or to show the “World Made the West” in that the West only reached its heights by standing on the shoulders of those it controlled through brute force (after adopting their best ideas w/o credit). This book instead was instead relentlessly apolitical. This book ends with a centrist sold-out sentence that would infuriate esteemed anti-Civ warriors like Derrick Jensen, James C. Scott, David Graeber, Daniel Quinn, and even Gandhi (see his quote on Western Civilization) and Rousseau: Josephine says, “The question we now face is not whether Western Civilization is bad or good, but whether civilizational thinking helps explain much of anything at all.” This book had all the depth of reading a Time/Life book, or something by Rachel Maddow or Megan Kelly. Instead, of this book please read David Graeber’s infinitely more paradigm-shifting book, “The Dawn of Everything”, or please consider Micheal Parenti’s or Derrick Jensen’s terrific writings on history. Centrist Josephine Quinn has zero interest in writing even one sentence critical of Western Civ – anthropologist Graeber, Jensen and others clearly show that indigenous peoples were NEVER into the complete extermination of a people – even armed battles between indigenous always ended short of ethnic genocide. So far, it’s ONLY Western Civilization that doesn’t know when to stop.

Josephine will never tell you how Westerners historically consciously destroyed their land base and then travelled to a new place to destroy its landbase. Just look at the history of wood (John Perlin book) – Cut down all your trees then use force and cut down everyone’s trees (after subduing your neighbors) just because YOU want more. Josephine will never discuss the role of agriculture, capitalism, and gluttonous desire for the profits of militarism in bringing us where we are today. However, this book will be fine with most people because it is intentionally devoid of all politics and civilization critiques, that might make uncomfortable those seated in comfortable armchairs, casually searching for something witty to say during the next dinner conversation.

[Logan Kedzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

How the World Made the West is a book with a number of layers to it.

The first is as an a history of Europe from 2000 BCE to 1500 CE. Many people reading this will be limited to an exposure to that in the form of a class titled 'Western Civ' some time in secondary school. But History Marches On, as new discoveries are made and old ones reassessed. It is great, and worth it for the citations alone in compiling the most current work on a broad topic.

The second is a critique on the concept of 'Western' as a coherent thing. The author's position can be summed up as: people, not peoples; civilization, not civilizations. The cultures, cities, and nations that are now considered the West would not think of themselves so, and the author believes that they would find the idea itself confusing and contradictory to their beliefs. Identity is local and, above all else, flexible. Western Civilization is an invention of the 19th century, arising as to justify colonial ambitions, and even a concept like multi-culturalism is flawed.

The third is as polemic, and it is bad as polemic. I was reminded the most of The Daily Wire and the pressing need to dunk on the other side even if it harms the argument itself. Reasonable facts get aggravating conjecture tacked on as dicta. Events are told to accomplish effects that make them misleading. Most irritating is the futzing around with language, where the author uses idiosyncratic definitions or redefines terms. Socrates was killed for that sort of thing is all I am saying.

The first layer makes this a great book. It is probably the most useful history book that I will read this year. The third layer is a problem. I had to stop reading at points out of irritation. I am willing to mark that down as white fragility, but usually it looked like me slamming into paywalls for hours of my life as I tried to substantiate claims, which almost always lead to finding out that they were mostly accurate, it was the weasely bit that was stated as conjecture. But look, if this is what shakes up your paradigm so that you are more in line with modern historical consensus, I am glad. I feel though it probably is going to elicit an audience of who problem.

The second layer...the second layer is the topic that I see most published reviews focusing upon. Here is the thing about that layer: the argument for it stops. It will pop back in, usually on what some specific person did or thought, but from about the description of the Hellenistic period onward it stops, and the book becomes a much more principalities and powers sort of history. Some sections, the collapse of the Roman empire, both east and west for instance, feel downright historically conservative in their presentations. I found myself bouncing between the first and last chapter, trying to triangulate what was going on.

Outside of how everyone seems to forget about the Hellenistic period (shout out to the Hellenistic Age Podcast for pushing back at this), I think that there is something meaningful in the switch starting there. To take a very short go at it, I think that the idea of Western Civilization is of recent imagining, but the question of it, the idea of thinking about it, in and outside of Europe, is an old idea. And I can see why the author might not want to touch that, in the interest of not pulling her punches.

So, if the book had continued in the manner that it started, I would call it skippable. You will learn something but it is more a handbook in how to ruin Thanksgiving. However, its transition away from that to something blander makes it more useful. It does become a strong overview, intentionally broad, still occasionally misleading, but well sourced and well written. It is a good effort in this sort of modern historical reckoning. I am still waiting for someone to write what I think of as the definiative popular history to do it, though.

My thanks to the author, Josephine Quinn, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Random House Publishing, for making the ARC available to me.

[Milan]

Britanska istoričarka Džozefina Kvin polazi od notorne teze da evropska civilizacija, pa i ceo Zapad, počivaju na starom Rimu i još drevnijoj Grčkoj. Ali šta ako to nije tačno? Šta ako se u Termopilskom klancu nije odlučivala sudbina ovog dela sveta u kome danas živimo? Da li je moguće da je podli Ksereks više uticao na izgradnju Evrope nego odvažni Spartanci?

Ovaj uvod više liči na neki SF roman ili teoriju zavere, ali ne brinite. Sve je pod kontrolom racionalnog.

Knjiga „Kako je svet stvorio Zapad“ je priča o tome kako ni Grčka i Rim nisu pali sa neba, već su produkt brojnih uticaja sa drugih kontinenata. Jer istorija nije niz nasumičnih, već uzročno-posledičnih veza, međusobno zavisnih i sveprožimajućih.

Autorka nam priča četiri hiljade godina dugu istoriju sa akcentom na posledice i uticaje koje su događaji imali na potonji razvoj Evrope i Zapada.

Iako pisana se ciljem da bude popularna, nipošto nije površna, već izuzetno ozbiljna, temeljna i opširna.

Za prevod se postarao Goran Skrobonja, tako da ni tu nema greške. Šteta što je mape u dodacima prevodio neko drugi, pa se neki nazivi na mapama ne poklapaju sa nazivima toponima u tekstu.

Moj jedini problem sa knjigom je bio što sam baš suviše toga već znao, jer me baš dosta interesuje istorija, ali dobro. Obnovio sam gradivo sa malo drugačijim pogledom na okolnosti.

Izuzetno dobra knjiga za sve koje interesuje istorija. Naročito nastanak civilizacija oko Sredozemnog mora.

[Graculus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a short review for this one: it's a very enjoyable read that looks carefully at the way it's pretty much impossible to say that a civilisation develops without influence from other places. Fluidity of movement, particularly by means of the sea or river travel, means ideas and inventions moved more easily from place to place than previously thought.

It's an intriguing read, full of lots of interesting detail, and I enjoyed it very much though it's not a book to read in a couple of sittings. Instead, I ended up dipping into it for a chapter or two at a time and liked that experience very much.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

[Olga Miret · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new perspective on history and how many of the assumptions Western-centred history is based on ignoring many of the facts and the interconnectedness of cultures well before Greek and Roman "civilisation" came into being. There was far more interconnectedness than we've been led to believe between the different peoples and cultures.
It is a very detailed account with plenty of information that would be very interesting to historians and people looking to learn more. I can see how this would inspire readers to start digging in more detail into ancient history, although it is a book that needs to be read slowly: it moves beyond easy anecdotes and history as entertainment.
A good present for readers interested in ancient history and with an open mind.

[Laurent Franckx · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a history of ideas. Well, there is some history of ideas in the book, to be sure, but it I drowned in an avalanche of almost randomly selected facts in what I would rather call "A history of the regions surrounding the Mediterranean". This is a pity, as the central thesis of the book is quite interesting. Paradoxically, Quinn stops her book exactly at the point where she claims the concept of "Europe" as a distinct civilization was borne.

[Akemichan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Secondo me il libro fallisce in pieno nel mostrare la tesi con cui parte, cioè che la divisione che l'occidente ha creato sia posticcia e i nostri antenati ben diversi. Spiega troppo, e troppo a lungo, e benché capisca che a livello storico una credenza deve essere spiegata anche dagli avvenimenti, i punti in cui si parla di come gli antichi si consideravano e vedevano il mondo si perde o finisce per diventare un semplice "la gente viaggiava e si parlava" che vale ancora adesso.
Mi è piaciuto perché tra i vari capitoli racconta anche episodi e storie meno note e parla anche di esami scientifici per stabilire le cronologie, ma resta prolisso e verso gli ultimi capitoli, quando la storia si fa complessa, non è che un elenco di vicende rapidissime che non servono a nulla.
Lo consiglierei al massimo a chi di storia è proprio digiuno e vuole un'infarinatura con la possibilità di approfondire poi i singoli periodi.

[Dries · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het Westen is een ambitieus en indrukwekkend boek waarin Josephine Quinn de traditionele geschiedenis van het Westen ter discussie stelt. In plaats van een verhaal over een unieke en op zichzelf staande westerse beschaving, laat zij zien hoe handel, migratie en culturele kruisbestuiving de geschiedenis hebben gevormd.

Wat ik vooral waardeerde, is de omvang van Quinns project. Quinn weet een indrukwekkende hoeveelheid historische kennis samen te brengen en biedt een verfrissend perspectief op een onderwerp dat vaak vanuit een traditioneler westers narratief wordt verteld. Ze bestrijkt duizenden jaren geschiedenis en weet overtuigend duidelijk te maken hoe sterk culturen altijd met elkaar verbonden zijn geweest. Het boek biedt daardoor een verfrissend perspectief op een onderwerp dat vaak vanuit een traditioneler westers narratief wordt verteld. Haar centrale idee – dat beschavingen niet in isolatie ontstaan maar voortdurend door interactie worden gevormd – is overtuigend.

Tegelijkertijd is de enorme ambitie ook een nadeel. Door de overvloed aan voorbeelden, gebeurtenissen en historische details voelt het boek soms wat lang aan. Regelmatig kreeg ik het gevoel dat de rode draad naar de achtergrond verdween. Daarnaast bestaat een deel van het boek uit een opeenvolging van feiten en voorbeelden, waardoor het lezen soms inspannend wordt. Hoewel de informatie op zichzelf interessant is, ontbreekt er af en toe een duidelijk narratief dat alles samenbindt. Daardoor beklijft niet alles even goed.

Desondanks vond ik Het Westen een
boeiende leeservaring. Quinn slaagt erin om gevestigde ideeën uit te dagen en biedt een breed en genuanceerd beeld van de Westerse geschiedenis (3,5 sterren).

[Luka Versteeg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een gaaf boek voor diegenen die het verschil willen weten tussen Sumeriërs, Assyriërs, Babyloniërs Hettieten en Parthen.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written, understandable and enjoyable history book. For someone who studied Classics 30 years ago, an eye-opener for so many new insights of the ancient times. In a nutshell the author explains the concept of civilisational thinking and how it is very much: outdated and wrong.

[Nosemonkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb, thought-provoking challenge to long-established assumptions about the origins and rise of Western civilisation.

The core argument is that the dividing lines between cultures are fuzzy and porous, even over long distances, go back far further than one might assume, and that the idea of Europe or "the West" as distinct from "the East", "Asia" or "Africa" is a far more recent concept than many might think.

Is this argument new? No. But it is superbly laid out here, drawing on a vast array of up-to-date evidence from archaeology, tree ring analysis, carbon dating, DNA testing, and much more - as well as an impressive range of primary documentary sources.

Despite the vast scope and timeline - the Persian invasions of Greece in the late 5th century BCE only arrive in chapter 15 of 30 - Quinn does a superb job of keeping the argument coherent and the pace brisk. This is rare for books covering this most ancient of histories, where the evidence is often scant - with the bigger picture connecting thread providing a coherence and focus that more traditional linear histories of these early civilisations often struggle to provide.

This means that for non-specialists this is extremely accessible and highly readable - probably the best introduction to ancient history I've encountered. For the more academically-inclined, copious endnotes point the way to much, much more detail.

Are there things to quibble with? Of course. Religion plays surprisingly little role. I'd also personally have preferred a bit more about travellers' tales and myths in shaping understandings of the world. I'd have been interested too to have more on the rise of intra-European national identities as a contrast to the macro-scale emergence of a sense of West versus East (or Christendom versus Islam), and how this played out during the Crusades in particular.

But that's what makes this such good fun - it's designed to provoke thought and discussion, and succeeds admirably. Having started out listening to the audiobook, halfway through I picked up a hard copy (the maps for each chapter really help, and the notes and index are invaluable), and I'll be re-reading and returning to this again and again to take it all in, and to find more areas to disagree with and explore.

A new favourite.

[Ava · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't thrilled or anything while reading this book, but after comparing it with the other popular Big Histories my colleagues read for this week of our proseminar, I am all the more impressed with Quinn's book. To give a history of "Western Civilization" while also delivering a polemic against the post-Enlightenment construction of "Western Civilization" is a serious effort. It would be one thing to write a book that simply critiques the idea of Western Civilization and provides a history of the concept. But to do so while writing a heterodox history of what has come to be called the West is very impressive. Quinn rightly identifies that such histories are still necessary: on the first page she talks about all the students who apply to Cambridge because they want to learn the history of the West. People still want to know this stuff, and Quinn's book manages to be informative while also being critical of the root of that desire. It's really astonishing.

Quinn writes what Hegel would call history in-and-for-itself, Critical History, almost even a philosophy of history, beginning with (quoting Hegel) "the Ironic apprehension of the necessarily arbitrary and fragmentary character of all genuinely historical knowledge." Quinn successfully demonstrates the arbitrariness which is the simultaneous contingency and agency in history: history carried out by contact, which is deliberate, and yet also stochastic, borne out by the acquisitions and non-acquisitions of technologies (writing, sailing) and geographical contingencies. She a good job not being a history of Great Men but of the individuals–merchants, mercenaries–involved in contact. She also handles the time after the sack of Rome very well, staying away from familiar narratives of decline.

[Matthias]

Imagine you were writing a book on why the world wasn't flat, but didn't yet have access to the hypothesis that it was round. What you'd get is a a stupendous catalogue (certainly, reality would furnish no shortage of material!) of facts totally inconsistent with the flat earth theory, but without them adding up to much of anything. Each paragraph is great, but it's less than the sum of its parts, especially if you didn't think much of her target in the first place.

I find myself mostly reinforced in my pre-existing belief: "the West" *is* a relatively coherent thing, you just have to include West Asia from the Levant to Persia, as well as North Africa, as core parts of it, and Europe north of the Pyrenees as a relatively late addition, like the Americas. This zone has a relatively coherent and highly interconnected history that you can tell. Nobody wants to do this because "the West" *in practice* means "white people/NATO," which is useless from the perspective of historical understanding, but flypaper for anyone who wants to grind a political axe (in any direction.)

Also: I very much doubt that Quinn wrote this with ChatGPT, but it has a bunch of prose tics that FEEL like it and thus end up grating, things like pointing to a concept through three alliterative examples, like (I'm making this example up) "prostitutes, porters, and pickpockets strolled, strutted, and swam along the harbor." Not her fault but I've developed a yuck reaction over the last year regardless.

[Simon B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very ambitious and learned history of interaction and mutual-influence between Europe, Asia and Africa over 1000s of years. It's a convincing riposte to hackneyed notion of a "Western Civilization" with a unique, independent course of development from ancient Greece and Rome to today's New York, Paris and London. The context of this historical deep-dive is obvious: The idea that a superior "Western Civilization" emerged independently from and in conflict with inferior rival civilizations has been a key ideological weapon justifying modern imperialist military adventures (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam etc) and obscene systems of racist discrimination (e.g. Apartheid in South Africa & Palestine, Islamophobia). What Quinn calls "civilizational thinking" is a 19th century invention that has next to zero historical justification. Quinn's argument is that debates over whether Western Civilization is good or bad miss the point. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests rival, separate civilizations do not and have never really existed. Rather, mutual connection, trade and cultural exchange between peoples is a critically important aspect of the past. None of us are a product of a civilization that arose independently from other civilizations, like individual trees in a forest - save that kind of thinking for the Sid Meyer game.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the book I thought it was going to be, though it could be my fault for checking it out based on the title alone. I assumed it would expound on “The West” being a relatively modern invention used to justify colonialism, genocide, paternalism, etc., in service to capital, Christianity, racism, etc., while ignoring how these civilizations came to be in the first place. That last bit is close to the book’s major theme, which is that “civilizational thinking”—the idea that “western” civilizations developed independently from the rest of the world—runs counter to the evidence that the world has been cosmopolitan for millennia. I should have paid attention to the subtitle, A 4,000 Year History, because that’s exactly what this is. The author presents the history of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilizations that run through the Greeks and Romans and lead to early ideas of “Europe.” While they make it a point to show the sorts of cultural exchanges that support the concept, this is mostly a straightforward and apolitical history book. It’s well-written, researched, and presented, just not a book I needed or wanted to read as it doesn’t shed new light on any of these cultures.

[Scott West · Rating 4 out of 5]

An erudite summary of 4000 years of western civilisation from the Sumerians to the age of exploration.

Quinn challenges the notion of Western civilisation as an independently formed Greco-Roman entity with tact and poise. Instead a wider variety of influences are outlined on the modern West from the Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians in ancient times, to the Ottomans and Mongols in the medieval period.

Where Quinn truly shines is elaborating on the interaction of the Greco-Roman civilisations cultural exchanges with other major powers su h as the Persians, Celts and later Vikings to form Europe. Discourse on the Roman Empire and its role as a trading hub in a larger interconnected network was excellent.

I felt the part on the Age of Exploration was glossed over and the significance of the interactions between Castile and the Almohad’s to influence the literary, economic and religious culture of Europe could use further depth to enhance her central hypothesis.

A worthy historical effort, well worth a read for any enticed by a summary of Western history up to the early renaissance period.

[Twirlsquirrel · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those rare books that makes the world as a whole seem suddenly, qualitatively, nearly breathtakingly more comprehensible.

How the world made the west overturns centuries of colonial European propaganda about the world. It does this with a narrative elegance and scientific straightforwardness inconceivable to the targets of its overarching critique: The imperial propagandists and colonial apologists - figures like Francis Fukuyama, Niall Ferguson, and all the other classic liberal darlings of historiographic mummery. The legacy dumped upon the worlds of historiographical discourse by these hacks is best described, in strict academic terms, as the dying hopes of empire and its curdling dreams of power, a toxic mix of pompous eugenicist myth and intellectually desperate wish.

This book topples those reactionary frameworks like the teetering heaps of trash they are. That would be fun in its own right, particularly because Quinn accomplishes this not through equivalently fantastical myth-making of her own but simply by being an excellent scholar and researcher. She lets modern scientific techniques and historiographic methods tell a story that instantly makes infinitely more sense to literally any person who didn't grow up in a hermetically sealed colonial European bubble.

But this is not even close to everything Quinn is doing in this book. After all, however good the research and comprehensive the approach, an author still needs to craft a coherent narrative out of it all. This is a daunting task for any author, let alone in a book of this historical scope, but Quinn absolutely nails it. The result is a clean, clear history that is at once more complex and more comprehensible than any other history I've read that tries to cover a comparable timespan.

Even better, you don't need to have read a single history book in your life to enjoy the writing and imagery here. This is especially true in the several passages where Quinn paints detailed scenes of daily life from various eras and places; during such moments I found all my senses activating in the same manner I experience with unusually good historical fiction. Moreover the author strikes a good balance in the quantity and duration of these scenes, letting them bring things to life every now and then but never enough to bog down the bigger picture.

But Quinn's skill as a historical writer is more generally on display throughout the book in the way she so easily links historical threads normally sequestered between separate books about one or another continent, kingdom, region, trade network boundary, etc. She does this temporally too, constantly reviving older threads from decades, centuries, or millennia prior in the narrative to show their continuing influence on contemporary dynamics as the timeline progresses.

On the other hand, even if you've read many histories, this book is likely still worth your time. In addition to the unusually comprehensive structure, which is nice in its own right, there are many nuggets of clever interpretation here that spawned one epiphany after another even in a seasoned and somewhat cynical history buff like myself. If you study ancient or global history at the graduate level or above, this book might not give you much you didn't already have, but I'd certainly recommend it even to the average history major in college, even to many in the upper levels of coursework. I wouldn't be surprised if many college curricula are already assigning this book - and I certainly hope they are.

To be clear, no single thing this book does is unique. There are many great histories that challenge colonial narratives, synthesize modern research from unusually comprehensive fields, paint clear pictures of ancient life, and so on. Some great modern examples of works that accomplish various of these tasks are The dawn of everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow, Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson, War and revolution and Liberalism by Domenico Losurdo, The capital order by Clara Mattei, The darker nations and Red star over the third world by Vijay Prashad, and What is antiracism and why it means anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani, to name just some of my favorites among many great options.

Rather, the strength of How the world made the west is the balance it strikes between all these aspects, over a 4,000-year global narrative, and in language that is completely friendly to beginners while retaining markers of rigor for experts. That is quite the accomplishment. No college-level history textbook I've ever seen compares to this, and neither does any popular history text for general audiences. Of the authors I mentioned above, Prashad probably comes closest to striking a similar balance of all these elements, but so far his histories have been limited to the timespan of a century or less, which is one fortieth of the timespan covered here.

The audiobook narrator also did an excellent job in her delivery. She either practiced for this performance, or already has a working grasp of the subject matter, because even following along in the written copy I couldn't spot a single point where the delivery was a mismatch to the syntax. There were no egregious mispronunciations I caught either, at least for words in the languages I know - though admittedly I read better than I listen, so take that for what it's worth. My only complaint with the audiobook version is that there were something like one or two dozen instances throughout this heavily annotated book where the narrator, seemingly at random, read out the entire citation at the end of a sentence. It's too infrequent to be a significant problem, but it was still annoying and slightly confounding each time it happened.

Overall, kudos to Quinn. Truly an excellent book that I will be revisiting multiple times. This is the only book I've read from her, but on the strength of what's in here I will be checking out her older catalogue and keeping an eager eye on whatever she publishes in the future.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressive display of learning and command of much information and facts. It covers a lot on the theme of the interconnectedness of ancient and medieval empires . However , in my view, although countries, empires have always traded together it really fails to persuade me that this means we are all the same. There is no discussion of the development of liberal democracy and the rights of the individual which distinguish The West from countries such as China and Russia with their autocracies let alone countries such as Iran . The West is a distinctive mindset based on the rights to personal freedom which seems increasingly fragile today.

[Priyam Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid work of historical writing, Josephine Quinn has obviously spent a lot of time researching for this book and it shows - there's an abundance of detail. She navigated the fine line between detail and engaging writing well, I didn't find myself bored at all. Do think there was room to tell a narrative story in some of the chapters, sometimes Quinn went on wild tangents that had nothing to do with the title of that chapter and I found those moments quite distracting.

[Dakota Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of potential but for me lacked structure and felt rather jarring most of the time. I think some aspects I didn't like might have been improved by reading the book rather than listening to this one though hence the two stars.

[Jerrid Kruse · Rating 2 out of 5]

The connective work the author claims to do does not come through because there is simply too much emphasis on details. The book is a great example of why people don’t like history classes. It misses the forest for the trees. That said, it is thorough.