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1688: A Global History
Historian John E. Wills presents a picture of the world over just one year, a time when only a few travellers and merchants were aware of societies beyond their own. The book reflects the variety, splendour and strangeness of the human condition.
330 pages, Paperback
First published January 3, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
January 6, 2018
excellent idea, excellent execution
When I was in 9th grade we had "World History"--that is, we studied ancient Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages in Europe, the Renaissance, England, France, and the discovery and conquest of the Americas. I guess world history came to an end when white people settled in California. But Africa, South America, Australia, the Pacific Islands, India, China, Japan, the Islamic world, and Eastern Europe plus Russia? Forget it. I remember India occurred exactly once---the tea dumped into Boston Harbor in 1773 came from there. All my life I regretted that our course didn't have more and I've tried to make up for it ever since by reading what I could.
After reading 1688, I thought, "If only we could have had a book like this, even if it were a bit modified for kids." This is world history, but focused on a single year. Of course, nothing occurs in a vacuum, so some background is necessary, but the author has done a brilliant job discussing events, people, and trends of that single year. He shows how European voyages, technology, and economic activity were beginning to tie the world together in a different way. From Mexico and Bolivia (the silver mines of Potosi) to Manila, from West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope to China, Japan, Thailand, and India, we move around the world through a well-written text with interesting asides and occasional links to the present. Wills talks about the political, scientific, and philosophical leaders of Europe as well as the early signs of decline in the Ottoman Empire, Peter the Great, the Jesuits in China, Jews in the Germanic countries, and various female figures from different societies of the time. Australian Aborigines and American Indians are not neglected either. Often the subject is approached through the lives of particular people. If you are at all interested in world history or in the late 17th century, you should find this book.
When I was in 9th grade we had "World History"--that is, we studied ancient Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages in Europe, the Renaissance, England, France, and the discovery and conquest of the Americas. I guess world history came to an end when white people settled in California. But Africa, South America, Australia, the Pacific Islands, India, China, Japan, the Islamic world, and Eastern Europe plus Russia? Forget it. I remember India occurred exactly once---the tea dumped into Boston Harbor in 1773 came from there. All my life I regretted that our course didn't have more and I've tried to make up for it ever since by reading what I could.
After reading 1688, I thought, "If only we could have had a book like this, even if it were a bit modified for kids." This is world history, but focused on a single year. Of course, nothing occurs in a vacuum, so some background is necessary, but the author has done a brilliant job discussing events, people, and trends of that single year. He shows how European voyages, technology, and economic activity were beginning to tie the world together in a different way. From Mexico and Bolivia (the silver mines of Potosi) to Manila, from West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope to China, Japan, Thailand, and India, we move around the world through a well-written text with interesting asides and occasional links to the present. Wills talks about the political, scientific, and philosophical leaders of Europe as well as the early signs of decline in the Ottoman Empire, Peter the Great, the Jesuits in China, Jews in the Germanic countries, and various female figures from different societies of the time. Australian Aborigines and American Indians are not neglected either. Often the subject is approached through the lives of particular people. If you are at all interested in world history or in the late 17th century, you should find this book.
July 31, 2009
Fine popular history book. Clearly written and compellingly organized. It didn't launch me into orbit or anything, but I do recommend it.
November 4, 2017
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2890995.html
This is an interesting concept - looking at a single year and the political events of the entire world that happened in that year, casting the net as widely as possible to capture every continent. Of course in the home archipelago this is the year of the so-called Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic James II of England and VII of Scotland was overthrown by a suspicious Protestant elite; in the eastern Mediterranean, the Venetians and Austrians were fighting the Ottomans; up north near St Petersburg, 1500 Old Believers burned to death rather than submit to Russian rule.
However, I confess I'm writing this up some months after I read it, and I remember very little about it. The best bit is an exploration of Japanese poetry and sexual customs of the period. There are also good bits about Australia, science and the Dutch East India Company. But it doesn't hang together as one might have wished.
The problem with taking a snapshot like this is that you necessarily get a static rather than dynamic picture. Stories in history depend on capturing long-term trends to illustrate why particular moments are so important. If you have picked your moments for chronology rather than story, you throw away your advantage.
This is an interesting concept - looking at a single year and the political events of the entire world that happened in that year, casting the net as widely as possible to capture every continent. Of course in the home archipelago this is the year of the so-called Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic James II of England and VII of Scotland was overthrown by a suspicious Protestant elite; in the eastern Mediterranean, the Venetians and Austrians were fighting the Ottomans; up north near St Petersburg, 1500 Old Believers burned to death rather than submit to Russian rule.
However, I confess I'm writing this up some months after I read it, and I remember very little about it. The best bit is an exploration of Japanese poetry and sexual customs of the period. There are also good bits about Australia, science and the Dutch East India Company. But it doesn't hang together as one might have wished.
The problem with taking a snapshot like this is that you necessarily get a static rather than dynamic picture. Stories in history depend on capturing long-term trends to illustrate why particular moments are so important. If you have picked your moments for chronology rather than story, you throw away your advantage.
December 28, 2010
In 1688, Louis XIV was the Sun King of France (Sun as the source of light and warmth, not the center of the universe, which was not yet the politically correct viewpoint). After his wife died, he secretly married Marquise de Maintenon, the tutor of his children by his mistress, a pious Catholic, and revoked the Edict of Nantes that guaranteed religious freedom to Protestants, although his second wife's influence on this decision has been exaggerated. Hundreds of thousands of Protestants illegally emigrated - some to England, some to Holland, where one of them edited a journal of literary and philosophical reviews, and some to South Africa, where the Dutch East India Company maintained a provisioning station for ships going between Holland and the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). Blacks had not yet migrated to the Cape area, which was populated by the Khoikhoi (whom the Dutch called Hottentots); the Dutch supported and armed one Khoikhoi chief against his rivals, but later changed their minds and imprisoned him on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned 300 years later. Batavia in the East Indies, modern-day Jakarta, was the capital of the Dutch East India Company, which worried about overproduction and fought for its monopoly as vigorously as a certain software company we shall not name. A half-Dutch half-Japanese rich widow of a high Company official, born in Japan but living in Batavia since childhood, remarried another official, but when her second husband tried to get hold of her inheritance from her first husband, she refused and sued for divorce; he counter-sued and beat her; she sailed to Holland to plead her case, since the Batavian court did not dare offend her second husband. The widow wrote letters to her mother's relatives in Japanese. Confucius Sinarum Philosophus was published in Paris in 1687, containing eighty years' worth of translations from the Classical Chinese by Jesuits working in China, and reviewed by the French Protestant emigre in 1688; Gottfried Leibnitz may have read it. Jesuits were trying to spread the Good News in China, where the Kangxi Emperor respected them and a classical poet converted to Christianity, in the North American desert among the Pima Indians, and in Amazonia. When the Russians and the Chinese were negotiating the Treaty of Nerchinsk, the negotiations were conducted in Latin: the Russians brought a Polish translator with them, and the Chinese Jesuit fathers. An Englishman captured by Algerian pirates converted to Islam and visited Mecca. The spice plantations in the Dutch East Indies were worked by Asian slaves, the sugar islands in the West Indies by African slaves, the silver mines of Bolivia by Native American slaves. An Englishwoman who had visited Surinam published an antislavery novel about an enslaved noble African prince who raises a revolt, trying to capture a ship and go back to Africa, which is put down by sadistic whites, who kill the prince. The book was made into a play; Henry Purcell wrote the musical score. In reality, slaves tried to escape inland; one republic of escaped slaves survived in Brazil for over a hundred years. And so on; this book is about a great many people alive in 1688, who were connected to each other in many unimaginable ways.
The world was already globalized in 1688. True, wooden ships could only profitably carry plants with psychoactive (nutmegs, coffee) and neuroactive (pepper) properties and luxury goods such as the otter pelts the Boston was going to buy from the natives of Vancouver Island and sell in China. My local Japanese supermarket sells big bags of Thai rice; to a 17-th century man, transporting bags of rice across the Pacific from Siam to North America would have seemed insane, and he would have found it unbelievable that it is the cheapest food on sale. Yet the world of ideas knew no such barriers. I wonder if the antiglobalization activists who want to protect local cultures from the forces of globalization realize that, with the possible exception of remote Papuans and Amazonian Indians, all of the world's cultures have already been transformed by the contact with the Europeans since 1492 (less than 200 years ago in 1688), and the European culture has been transformed by the contact with the rest of the world - from Leibnitz promoting Chinese characters as a universal language to the antislavery novelist's depiction of the African prince and white sadists.
The world was already globalized in 1688. True, wooden ships could only profitably carry plants with psychoactive (nutmegs, coffee) and neuroactive (pepper) properties and luxury goods such as the otter pelts the Boston was going to buy from the natives of Vancouver Island and sell in China. My local Japanese supermarket sells big bags of Thai rice; to a 17-th century man, transporting bags of rice across the Pacific from Siam to North America would have seemed insane, and he would have found it unbelievable that it is the cheapest food on sale. Yet the world of ideas knew no such barriers. I wonder if the antiglobalization activists who want to protect local cultures from the forces of globalization realize that, with the possible exception of remote Papuans and Amazonian Indians, all of the world's cultures have already been transformed by the contact with the Europeans since 1492 (less than 200 years ago in 1688), and the European culture has been transformed by the contact with the rest of the world - from Leibnitz promoting Chinese characters as a universal language to the antislavery novelist's depiction of the African prince and white sadists.
June 10, 2025
DNF’d at 22%. Much information about other places/peoples around the world in anno domini 1688, but NOT the tumultuous BRITISH history of that year, at least not at the point that I decided it was simply too dry to hold my interest at this point.
May 13, 2012
I like this kind of thing. The year in question is mostly known to history for events in Europe that more or less defined the shape of the modern world, in particular the 'Glorious Revolution' in England. Wills takes a global perspective, showing the interconnections between events as far distant from each other as Edo and the Hague. He tells the story well, though at times (particularly in his treatment of Ottoman decline from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century) he forces the pace to the detriment of his narrative.
There is really no Big Picture being presented here. The author sometimes evokes the conceit that this was the Baroque age, suggesting that the incrustation of formal ornament and allusive, masking detail that characterises the Baroque style could be glimpsed all over the world in the political, social and religious accommodations that were being made in this age when formerly isolated cultures around the world were beginning to interpenetrate. To my mind, the metaphor is somewhat forced; it does seem to suit the Ottoman Empire rather well, but is somewhat less of a fit with William Dampier's description of Australian aborigines.
The failed metaphor doesn't mar the book, though, mostly because Wills doesn't bring it up too often. On the whole, I enjoyed what I read and didn't find the going too arcane or tedious. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
There is really no Big Picture being presented here. The author sometimes evokes the conceit that this was the Baroque age, suggesting that the incrustation of formal ornament and allusive, masking detail that characterises the Baroque style could be glimpsed all over the world in the political, social and religious accommodations that were being made in this age when formerly isolated cultures around the world were beginning to interpenetrate. To my mind, the metaphor is somewhat forced; it does seem to suit the Ottoman Empire rather well, but is somewhat less of a fit with William Dampier's description of Australian aborigines.
The failed metaphor doesn't mar the book, though, mostly because Wills doesn't bring it up too often. On the whole, I enjoyed what I read and didn't find the going too arcane or tedious. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
April 20, 2010
Gets to a 3+ for me. I like the notion of packing global history for a single year into a single book and Willis finds a lot of detail and information that I hadn't read before. The international context is pretty compelling and he's got an excellent writing style for this kind of social history. Where it doesn't work for me is that a lot of the information comes across as vignettes, presumably due to the publisher's desired page count. There isn't enough backdrop to really follow one series of events to another. Some of the sections on individuals are also brief to the point of meaningless (Aphra Behn and Henry Purcell, for example). Overall, worth reading though.
December 15, 2018
I let several years lapse in the middle of reading this book. When I got back to it, my bookmark was still in place, and the individual chapters don't really build on each other so it was easy enough to pick up where I left off.
August 30, 2022
Sixteen eighty-eight is familiar to many English-speakers as the year of Britain’s Glorious Revolution, when William of Orange invaded England and restored the primacy of the Protestant religion in the nation’s affairs. But University of Southern California historian John E. Wills Jr. chose the year 1688 to illustrate the grand sweep of events all across the planet. He pictures the world in the early stages of globalization, focusing on the interaction of people speaking different languages and worshipping God (or gods) in different ways. The Columbian Exchange. The slave trade. Ongoing Muslim expansion into sub-Saharan Africa. Spanish silver flooding into China and Europe alike, bolstering trade and altering the balance of power between East and West. In 1688, a book of global history, Wills explores these themes, lending a human dimension to what we often regard today as the bloodless process of globalization.
A HARBINGER OF TIMES TO COME
As the author notes in a prologue, “we can see in the world of 1688 signs of the basic shifts that created our own very different world: the rise of science; the growth of cities and commerce; government policies promoting economic growth; an immense variety of writing and publishing, some of it for broad urban audiences; some very individual and idiosyncratic acceptances and reinterpretations of the great religions; protests against slavery and the subordination of women.” But, above all, the increasing scope and intensity of contact across borders of men seeking wealth, power, or religious fulfillment.
GLOBAL HISTORY VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF INTERESTING PERSONALITIES
Wills is a talented writer as well as an accomplished historical scholar. In other hands, this global history book might well have become a recitation of historic events with brief profiles of the richest and most powerful figures of the time. Instead, he paints an impressionistic picture of the world of 1688 by zeroing in on lesser-known personalities whose experiences and accomplishments lend color and a sense of movement to the story. For example, among them are:
** Father Vincenzo Coronelli, a Venetian friar who founded the world’s first geographic society
** A cloistered Hieronymite nun named Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican who “is recognized today as one of the great poets in the history of the Spanish language”
** An English buccaneer named William Dampier, whose beautifully written journal provides some of the earliest glimpses of the Aborigenes of Australia
** Georg Everard Rumpf or Rumphius, a “brilliant and obsessed German in the service of the [Dutch East India Company],” which affords us “a sense of the Spice Islands in 1688”
** “An adventurer of Greek origin who called himself Constantine Phaulkon [who] had risen to great power as director of the [Thai] kingdom’s finances and foreign trade
There are many more fascinating personalities like these, scattered throughout the pages of 1688. Together, they convey a far more vivid picture of the world in that year than any recitation of kings and battles and shifting borders.
GAINING PERSPECTIVE ON GLOBAL HISTORY
Western histories of the seventeenth century typically and understandably devote the greatest attention to the expansion of the Spanish, English, and Dutch empires. But Ball brings new perspective to that time. “The greatest geopolitical transformation of the world of the seventeenth century,” he writes, “was the explosive expansion of Russian trade and settlement across Siberia.” Driven by the aggressive policies of Tsars Ivan V and Peter the Great, the Russian Empire expanded eastward into contact with the Qing Empire. The consequences in centuries to come were considerable.
We Westerners most frequently look to Paris, London, Madrid, and the Italian city-states whenever we venture into the history of the seventeenth century. But many of the world’s greatest cities of that era were located in China, Japan, India, and the Americas. For example, “In 1688 Edo [today’s Tokyo] was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of more than nine hundred thousand.” In Europe, the biggest city was Istanbul, “with perhaps seven hundred thousand.” And many of the most consequential events of that time were rooted in such places, where people with darker skins held sway.
In 1688, John Wills wrote history the way it should always be written.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John E. Wills Jr. (1936-2017) taught Chinese history at the University of Southern California from 1965 until his retirement in 2004. However, he continued actively researching and meeting with students for many years afterward. A lengthy obituary on the USC website provides abundant details about his life. He held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and master’s and doctorate from Harvard. Wills was married for 58 years and was survived by his wife, Caroline.
A HARBINGER OF TIMES TO COME
As the author notes in a prologue, “we can see in the world of 1688 signs of the basic shifts that created our own very different world: the rise of science; the growth of cities and commerce; government policies promoting economic growth; an immense variety of writing and publishing, some of it for broad urban audiences; some very individual and idiosyncratic acceptances and reinterpretations of the great religions; protests against slavery and the subordination of women.” But, above all, the increasing scope and intensity of contact across borders of men seeking wealth, power, or religious fulfillment.
GLOBAL HISTORY VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF INTERESTING PERSONALITIES
Wills is a talented writer as well as an accomplished historical scholar. In other hands, this global history book might well have become a recitation of historic events with brief profiles of the richest and most powerful figures of the time. Instead, he paints an impressionistic picture of the world of 1688 by zeroing in on lesser-known personalities whose experiences and accomplishments lend color and a sense of movement to the story. For example, among them are:
** Father Vincenzo Coronelli, a Venetian friar who founded the world’s first geographic society
** A cloistered Hieronymite nun named Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican who “is recognized today as one of the great poets in the history of the Spanish language”
** An English buccaneer named William Dampier, whose beautifully written journal provides some of the earliest glimpses of the Aborigenes of Australia
** Georg Everard Rumpf or Rumphius, a “brilliant and obsessed German in the service of the [Dutch East India Company],” which affords us “a sense of the Spice Islands in 1688”
** “An adventurer of Greek origin who called himself Constantine Phaulkon [who] had risen to great power as director of the [Thai] kingdom’s finances and foreign trade
There are many more fascinating personalities like these, scattered throughout the pages of 1688. Together, they convey a far more vivid picture of the world in that year than any recitation of kings and battles and shifting borders.
GAINING PERSPECTIVE ON GLOBAL HISTORY
Western histories of the seventeenth century typically and understandably devote the greatest attention to the expansion of the Spanish, English, and Dutch empires. But Ball brings new perspective to that time. “The greatest geopolitical transformation of the world of the seventeenth century,” he writes, “was the explosive expansion of Russian trade and settlement across Siberia.” Driven by the aggressive policies of Tsars Ivan V and Peter the Great, the Russian Empire expanded eastward into contact with the Qing Empire. The consequences in centuries to come were considerable.
We Westerners most frequently look to Paris, London, Madrid, and the Italian city-states whenever we venture into the history of the seventeenth century. But many of the world’s greatest cities of that era were located in China, Japan, India, and the Americas. For example, “In 1688 Edo [today’s Tokyo] was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of more than nine hundred thousand.” In Europe, the biggest city was Istanbul, “with perhaps seven hundred thousand.” And many of the most consequential events of that time were rooted in such places, where people with darker skins held sway.
In 1688, John Wills wrote history the way it should always be written.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John E. Wills Jr. (1936-2017) taught Chinese history at the University of Southern California from 1965 until his retirement in 2004. However, he continued actively researching and meeting with students for many years afterward. A lengthy obituary on the USC website provides abundant details about his life. He held a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and master’s and doctorate from Harvard. Wills was married for 58 years and was survived by his wife, Caroline.
July 16, 2019
This is one of those books that I wish were longer, unlike most which I think could be improved by being shorter. It is a collection of vignettes that describe events all over the Earth in 1688, tied together rather loosely. There are no big themes; this is about what was happening, not why.
My regret that it wasn't longer comes on two paths. First, I would have liked a bit more detail in some of the vignettes, more background and more "what happened next". Also, there were a few places that he didn't get to, and I would have liked to see more. Both broader and deeper, in other words.
Since these are vignettes, and since this is a rather arbitrary selection of items, the author's taste and style are important. I liked both. I thought that Wills wrote elegantly and with feeling, and with enough reserve that I felt he was not lecturing his readers. I also liked his balance, between Japan, India, China, the Islamic world, various places in Europe, and touching on the Americas.
Africa got short shrift, and so did the native American world, but Wills notes the challenge of finding source material in his introduction, so it is understandable.
This book does not need to be read in sequence; most of the stories stand alone. Each chapter is reasonably short. This is a book that could be dipped into in quiet moments. I read through it rather quickly.
My regret that it wasn't longer comes on two paths. First, I would have liked a bit more detail in some of the vignettes, more background and more "what happened next". Also, there were a few places that he didn't get to, and I would have liked to see more. Both broader and deeper, in other words.
Since these are vignettes, and since this is a rather arbitrary selection of items, the author's taste and style are important. I liked both. I thought that Wills wrote elegantly and with feeling, and with enough reserve that I felt he was not lecturing his readers. I also liked his balance, between Japan, India, China, the Islamic world, various places in Europe, and touching on the Americas.
Africa got short shrift, and so did the native American world, but Wills notes the challenge of finding source material in his introduction, so it is understandable.
This book does not need to be read in sequence; most of the stories stand alone. Each chapter is reasonably short. This is a book that could be dipped into in quiet moments. I read through it rather quickly.
November 11, 2024
An interesting idea with some interesting anecdotes, but it didn't really meet my expectations. A lot of the book, by necessity, was of events/background before 1688, but it was sometimes tough to keep track of what actually pertained to 1688. In some ways, the episodes want more background, but that would obviously detract from the idea of exploring the world in 1688. The material was also presented in rather haphazard order--chronological order would have had us bouncing all around the globe and not telling a consistent story, but geographical order might have worked and given us a sense of working our way around the world.
February 4, 2024
A lot of very boring material….
A disappointing read. The concept was intriguing but its reality was very mixed. Some chapters were quite interesting; others very much not. Some were very detailed about individuals and others were more broad in their approach. I found myself dozing off many times doing my best to absorb the message of the book and see the inter-relations of various countries and cultures in the year 1688. I cannot recommend this book.
A disappointing read. The concept was intriguing but its reality was very mixed. Some chapters were quite interesting; others very much not. Some were very detailed about individuals and others were more broad in their approach. I found myself dozing off many times doing my best to absorb the message of the book and see the inter-relations of various countries and cultures in the year 1688. I cannot recommend this book.
February 18, 2018
The book's title ought to be:
Random Stories About Stuff that Happened Around 1688:
A Very Incomplete Geography of the World.
Peeved mostly because the idea could have been developed into some useful world survey, yet it served up nothing but trivia---at least for the first 100 pages. Couldn't stand wasting more time to see if this actually had a point somewhere.
Random Stories About Stuff that Happened Around 1688:
A Very Incomplete Geography of the World.
Peeved mostly because the idea could have been developed into some useful world survey, yet it served up nothing but trivia---at least for the first 100 pages. Couldn't stand wasting more time to see if this actually had a point somewhere.
December 10, 2022
"Those who would not reform might be whipped, often with a tanned bull's penis. Many visitors also reported a more serious lesson in the necessity for work, a cistern or small cellar that filled with water if not constantly pumped; the miscreant would be confined to it and told to pump or drown." (of the Dutch "House of Virtue", 208)
October 27, 2017
History focused on a single year.
Focusses on a year in world history that many see as the birth of the modern age. Easy to read by the general public. High school reading level. Covers a number of important women as well as men.
Focusses on a year in world history that many see as the birth of the modern age. Easy to read by the general public. High school reading level. Covers a number of important women as well as men.
October 12, 2020
An interesting way to look at world history--by date (one single year) rather than by region. I know we generally look at history chronologically, but the whole world in one year was quite different. I quite enjoyed it, and learned a lot about less-well studied (less Eurocentric) areas.
December 20, 2019
NICE BOOK.
May 28, 2020
Interesse/comoção: 2
Escrita e estrutura: 3
Aprendizagem: 3
Escrita e estrutura: 3
Aprendizagem: 3
June 3, 2022
Praise to the author for taking on a tough job and doing it competently. In the end though,this is a format that I found unsatisfying.
October 25, 2022
絕板：1688 這一年全球歴史一面觀
September 18, 2024
4.25/5
March 21, 2020
This is a beautiful piece of popular history - endlessly readable, packed with information and reliable in its judgements. Some might consider it Eurocentric, since Europe and Europeans take up more than half of the page-count in a purported Global History, but - since it describes the world at the point when Europe established its impending two-century global hegemony - that seems legitimate.
April 7, 2013
hardcover and dustjacket
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
x
Acknowledgments xi
January 3, 1688: A Baroque Prelude 1 (8)
PART I. A WORLD OF WOODEN SHIPS 9 (58)
The Empire of Silver
13 (19)
Many Africas
32 (13)
Slaves, Ships, and Frontiers
45 (15)
Dampier and the Aborigines
60 (7)
PART II. THE WORLD OF THE GREAT COMPANY 67 (26)
The Cape of Good Hope
69 (5)
The Island World
74 (13)
Phaulkon
87 (6)
PART III. THREE WORLDS APART: RUSSIA, CHINA, JAPAN 93 (74)
Tsar Peter's Russia
95 (10)
Survivors and Visionaries
105 (8)
At the Court of Kangxi
113 (15)
The Jesuits and China
128 (17)
Kanazawa, Edo, Nagasaki
145 (13)
Saikaku and Basho
158 (9)
PART IV. VERSAILLES, LONDON, AMSTERDAM 167 (52)
The Sun King and the Ladies
169 (11)
A Family Quarrel and a Glorious Revolution
180 (14)
Echoes across the Oceans
194 (13)
A Hundred Years of Freedom
207 (12)
PART V. WORLDS OF WORDS: STYLES AND THOUGHT IN EUROPE 219 (34)
In the Republic of Letters
223 (14)
Aphra Behn
237 (5)
Newton, Locke, and Leibniz
242 (11)
PART VI. ISLAM AND ITS OTHERS 253 (40)
The World of the Great Sultan
255 (14)
Mecca
269 (7)
Hindus and Muslims
276 (9)
Englishmen, Indians, and Others
285 (8)
PART VII. EXILE, HOPE, AND FAMILY 293 (12)
Next Year in Jerusalem
295 (7)
O Well Is Thee
302 (3)
Sources and Further Reading 305 (10)
Credits 315 (2)
Index 317
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
x
Acknowledgments xi
January 3, 1688: A Baroque Prelude 1 (8)
PART I. A WORLD OF WOODEN SHIPS 9 (58)
The Empire of Silver
13 (19)
Many Africas
32 (13)
Slaves, Ships, and Frontiers
45 (15)
Dampier and the Aborigines
60 (7)
PART II. THE WORLD OF THE GREAT COMPANY 67 (26)
The Cape of Good Hope
69 (5)
The Island World
74 (13)
Phaulkon
87 (6)
PART III. THREE WORLDS APART: RUSSIA, CHINA, JAPAN 93 (74)
Tsar Peter's Russia
95 (10)
Survivors and Visionaries
105 (8)
At the Court of Kangxi
113 (15)
The Jesuits and China
128 (17)
Kanazawa, Edo, Nagasaki
145 (13)
Saikaku and Basho
158 (9)
PART IV. VERSAILLES, LONDON, AMSTERDAM 167 (52)
The Sun King and the Ladies
169 (11)
A Family Quarrel and a Glorious Revolution
180 (14)
Echoes across the Oceans
194 (13)
A Hundred Years of Freedom
207 (12)
PART V. WORLDS OF WORDS: STYLES AND THOUGHT IN EUROPE 219 (34)
In the Republic of Letters
223 (14)
Aphra Behn
237 (5)
Newton, Locke, and Leibniz
242 (11)
PART VI. ISLAM AND ITS OTHERS 253 (40)
The World of the Great Sultan
255 (14)
Mecca
269 (7)
Hindus and Muslims
276 (9)
Englishmen, Indians, and Others
285 (8)
PART VII. EXILE, HOPE, AND FAMILY 293 (12)
Next Year in Jerusalem
295 (7)
O Well Is Thee
302 (3)
Sources and Further Reading 305 (10)
Credits 315 (2)
Index 317
April 22, 2011
I really wanted to like this book. Wills has crafted a competent overview of the state of affairs in 1688, picked a number of cities and famous people and introduces them without much overlapping in separate chapters. Among other things we learn about the Spanish dealings in the New World, struggles between Protestants and Catholics in Western Europe, the coming of Tsar Peter in Russia, the slave trade along the West African coast, court politics under the Kangxi Emperor and we follow the faithful on the Hajj to Mecca.
Appearances sometimes do decieve you. This 300-pager was a tome by no means as accessible as it lured me to believe, and I struggled with it for a few months coming back and forth. I was flying through the chapters describing various locations; Wills is expert at making cities come alive in your mind. I was eagerly consuming the words and reports of 17th century travellers' reports, yet I got bogged down in the minutiae of Jewish marriage contracts or the plottings between European heads of state and the mannerisms around the French court.
All in all this is a fascinating read and if you like history there is something for everyone to be found, but it is extremely condensed. I still do recommend it to those with a lot of patience, since there is a wealth of useful information for further reading to be found.
Appearances sometimes do decieve you. This 300-pager was a tome by no means as accessible as it lured me to believe, and I struggled with it for a few months coming back and forth. I was flying through the chapters describing various locations; Wills is expert at making cities come alive in your mind. I was eagerly consuming the words and reports of 17th century travellers' reports, yet I got bogged down in the minutiae of Jewish marriage contracts or the plottings between European heads of state and the mannerisms around the French court.
All in all this is a fascinating read and if you like history there is something for everyone to be found, but it is extremely condensed. I still do recommend it to those with a lot of patience, since there is a wealth of useful information for further reading to be found.
July 1, 2016
This book is an interesting conceit -- vignettes from around the world in a single momentous year. Although there are some 'famous' names (kings, scientists, philosophers, etc), many of the players are less eminent: local officials, poets, travellers, businessmen, religious leaders. John Wills, who teaches history at USC, is a very fine prose stylist who has consulted a great many primary sources which are not available to the general public: records of the Dutch East India Company, Jesuit memorials from the Vatican archives, Chinese and Indian government records, and other books that are not found in most local or even university libraries. The book is very readable and an excellent indication of the way the people of the world were actually living in 1688. Spanish silver mines in South America, the slave trade from Africa to the New World, the Dutch & English is South Africa, Russia under Peter the Great, the Jesuits in China, Basho the haiku poet in Japan, Louis XIV (the Sun King) & his dazzling court at Versailles, the European Enlightenment of Newton, Locke and Leibniz & the Republic of Letters that held it all together through lively correspondence, the Muslims in India ... It's a fascinating look at the world through an unusual lens. I recommend this book for anyone interested in a different and unusual look at history.
May 23, 2007
Wills does a creditable job of reporting what Europeans wrote about various parts of the world in 1688, but the book obviously suffers from a lack of indigenous writing. In writing about West Africa, for example, he writes, “We are disproportionately dependent of Europeans feeling their way along the coast of Africa.”
Chapter 21: The World of the Great Sultan” talks of the decaying of the Ottoman empire. It contains an excellent excerpt of an autobiography of Osman Agha, a practicing Muslm from Romania, Gavurlarin Esiri (prisoner of the Unbelievers) (available in the German edition Der Gefangene der Giauren, 1962) For the rest of his information on the Muslim world, the author has depended on non Muslim, Europeans and American sources.
This is an excellent book only for those who want to know what European visitors thought of various parts of the world in 1688.
Chapter 21: The World of the Great Sultan” talks of the decaying of the Ottoman empire. It contains an excellent excerpt of an autobiography of Osman Agha, a practicing Muslm from Romania, Gavurlarin Esiri (prisoner of the Unbelievers) (available in the German edition Der Gefangene der Giauren, 1962) For the rest of his information on the Muslim world, the author has depended on non Muslim, Europeans and American sources.
This is an excellent book only for those who want to know what European visitors thought of various parts of the world in 1688.
April 24, 2014
This book is more or less a collection of vignettes about what was happening all over the world at the end of the 17th century. For the most part, each little story is about one person. To get any sense of what that person was up to in 1688, it is necessary to tell what happened before and after that year, so it's not specifically about 1688.
None of the stories are about the natives of the Americas, Africa, or Australia as those peoples lacked the written word. So what we learn about those folks is from the point of view of Europeans for the most part.
Many of the people in the book are well-known historical figures - Tsar Peter, the Sun King, Newton, Leibniz - but a good many were new to me.
I found the construct of telling a slice of world history in this manner interesting - it's a different way of slicing history, if you will.
None of the stories are about the natives of the Americas, Africa, or Australia as those peoples lacked the written word. So what we learn about those folks is from the point of view of Europeans for the most part.
Many of the people in the book are well-known historical figures - Tsar Peter, the Sun King, Newton, Leibniz - but a good many were new to me.
I found the construct of telling a slice of world history in this manner interesting - it's a different way of slicing history, if you will.
April 8, 2011
The title tells it all, really. The year 1688 is probably best known (amongst those who have studied British history, that is, not me) as the year of the Glorious Revolution. This book touches on that, of course, but it also tries to give a fairly complete snapshot of life pretty much everywhere else in the world at the same point in history. It's very interesting to compare the same year in Edo, Australia, Mexico, and Paris. Of course, it's all very brief, but I did kind of like that. Considering what the author was trying to do, there was no way to get in depth with anything and still cover, well, everything. But if you can get past that, it's a very enjoyable history.
May 9, 2015
Interesting enough, the book takes a broad look at what was happening in the world in the year 1688. I'm not entirely sure why the year 1688 was chosen - there was the Glorious Revolution in England, but otherwise no one particular thing stood out as world-changing. I appreciated the authour's attempt to provide a glimpse into what was happening in all corners of the globe, not just the usual European powers. A neat idea, but I think limited by the intrinsic interesting-ness of the year itself.
January 26, 2011
A series of historical vignettes from a pivotal year in world history. Wills examines cultural commonalities (and differences) in an increasingly interconnected globe, emphasizing the intercultural exchange in material goods and ideas that came to define the eighteenth century. Astonishing in its breadth and ambition, and fascinating in its detail.
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