Just Finished Reading: Human Race – 10 Centuries of Change on Earth by Ian Mortimer (FP: 2014)

It all started with a throw away comment as we left the 20th century and entered the 21st – that the 20th century had seen more change than ever before. Really, thought the author? More change than ANY other century in recorded history? So he thought about it a great deal, spoke to experts in their field and spent a great deal of time in world famous libraries doing what historians like best – research! The final result of all that thinking and hard work was 345 pages pointing out the major changes in the West in the last thousand years – and let me tell you there’s been some BIG changes over the years.

Now it’s difficult enough to condense 1000 years of progress (or change if you will) into 345 pages so I’m not even going to attempt to condense the whole thing into what is essentially a single page of A4. What he did manage to do was to highlight 5 major changes in each century and (most of the time) pick a single agent of change who contributed most to whatever happened during those 100 years. As you might expect much of the first part of the millennium focuses on the Church with the growth of Papal power being a major force for change throughout Europe. We had improvements of medicine – helped along by books flowing in from the Arab world – and extension of the Rule of Law which helped to reduce personal violence across the Continent. Commerce grew as did basic education and the rise of literacy. As roads improved and crime fell the number of people regularly travelling and the distances they travelled both increased. Then we had the Black Death which had a massive social, economic and political impact across Europe which echoed down the centuries afterwards. Nothing was quite the same after that. We had the growth of Nationalism and alongside that the rise of vernacular languages based within recognisable nation-states. Then we had the great age of discovery where horizons expanded and expanded again. We started accurately measuring time and with it looked to the past and the future in different ways. We started seeing ourselves as individuals and not merely as members of a community. With that idea we started writing dairies and having our portraits painted. The printed word had a huge impact – not just on literacy and even the spread of knowledge – but on the way people saw the world, saw each other and saw themselves. It allowed people to sit in the privacy of their own homes and read the Bible (in the vernacular) and then interpret it in ways that the local priest may never have even considered. It gave people power over their lives. We had the growth and increased power of firearms and, conversely, the decline (still further) of personal violence but a significant increase in the power of European empires.

Then of course, in the 17th century, things started to get really interesting with the Scientific Revolution and all that entailed. Inevitably the Scientific Revolution led onto a revolution in medicine and a slow but steady increase in life expectancy. As we approached the present at increasing speed (so it seemed) there was an expansion – and then explosion – of the Middle Class, improvements in transportation and communication, a revolution in Agriculture which produced ever increasing food surpluses which effectively banished the previous ever present fear of famine. We moved into a period of enlightened liberalism and finally began to understand the workings of the economy. Not surprisingly this was the time of the Industrial Revolution and the political revolutions that followed it. As we reached the 19th century and a world looking recognisably modern the West became increasingly urbanised and continued improvements both in transportation and communication. Public health and sanitation became the major concerns and projects of the day and social reform quickened its pace. Then we reach the 20th century famous (or infamous) for its destructive wars the likes of which the world had never seen before. Yet rather ironically average life expectancy shot up just about everywhere and is still increasing. The media became a huge influence, for good or evil, on millions of people’s daily lives and helped fuel the desire for an increasing number of electrical appliances. Finally the 20th century more than any other effectively invented the future which we race towards with hope or trepidation. So which century saw the most change? I’m afraid you’ll need to read the book to find out.

This was an excellent romp through 1000 years of Western history. Of course, because of its brevity, much was missed out or ignored all together but the gist of things and the highlights remain. Over all I found the whole thing extremely illuminating and full of interesting, not to say thought provoking, ideas. Then unfortunately the author fell into the trap normally avoided by most historians – he looked forward. In the future he saw two possibilities – a planned move to a more sustainable world or a crash and burn scenario followed by the struggle to produce a more sustainable world. Future growth, he maintained, just wasn’t an option as natural resources run out and we start fighting over what’s left. He even made great play over the fact that there’s no economic future off-world so we need not bother even trying. Apart from the fact that both of his future scenarios are unnecessarily pessimistic I think he’s dead wrong about the economic possibilities in space. It might cost hundreds of millions of dollars to find a suitable asteroid and bring it safely back here but the revenue generated by such an act would be staggering. There are HUGE fortunes to be made in space once people figure out how to make them. Growth is not dead, progress is not dead and we don’t need to resign ourselves to the next 1000 years of sustainable existence on this rock we call home. The 21st century is not when we finally arrive at the end of history. We still have far to go and the will to go there.

Oh, and this was the last of my triple read on Humanity. After a one book break the next triple will be on the Working Class.