Daily Times

If history repeats itself, I’m so getting a Dinosaur – Unknown. Is not history all about repeating itself? Look around at the states and civilisations going from the zenith of power to the ghettos of darkness; the rise and fall of best of empires happening since inception, Ottoman, Roman Holy Empire and Mughals etc. Nothing remains constant except change itself.

Most of the times, being a reader, I take my time in coming out of a book after I have finished it however it had not been the case until lately when I read three books without a pause; not that I had to meet a deadline but because I felt they overlapped in a coherent way. Reading them, one after the other, somewhat made it easy for me to connect the past and present for they served to be continuation of each other covering historical aspects of ancient times until present. It really amazed me how three different vantage points of three different writers written at three different times and places, provided answers to the questions asked in the end of each book.

No truly global ‘World Order’ has ever existed – Henry Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger, in his book World Order, begins with a thesis that, “The mystery to be overcome is one, all people share divergent historical experiences and values, so how can be shaped into a common order.’ After this thought provoking statement, Kissinger provides a thorough region-wise analysis of all the ones who are playing a major role in world politics ie United States, Asia, Europe and parts of Middle East, furthermore compresses this analysis with a prologue and epilogue on Question of World Order. His analysis sheds light on history of continents when they were being ruled by an Emperor, Priest or Caliph and leaves us with a question that what made these regions have divergent historical experiences for rise and fall of civilizations had been a common practice among all.

Diseases have been the biggest killer of people, they have also been decisive shapers of history – Jared Diamond.

To answer this question, I read ‘Guns, Germs & Steel’ by Jared Diamond who takes a multi-disciplinary approach and presents a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. He highlights how history followed different courses for different people and tells that stupefying disparities among states from America to Africa is not only because of geographical or racial differences but because of factors much deeper than these. Despite the fact that every region faced wars and fall of empires following different sense of time, Diamond scratches history more than Kissinger and provides a prehistory of each continent through a scientific approach and starts off with historical developments of different continents around 11,000 BC. He starts off with the tale of surviving species of apes in Africa, who from there began to move around the other continents like Eurasia and then Australia. Diamond does not include Antarctica as a continent for it was not inhabited until the 19th century. And so the continents of North and South America were the last ones to be inhabited by Neanderthals and cro-Magnons because they required boat to cross the rivers around. And so the settlement of the world’s remaining islands was not completed until the modern times. Although human history began in Africa yet Africa remains below the poverty line despite its human genetic diversity. Perhaps the cycle of colonization, adaptation and population explosion were what selected for the Great Leap Forward which then diffused back. To further explain the divide Diamond gives the example of civilization Moriori and Maori as both groups diverged from a common origin less than a millennium earlier. They both developed from same ancestral societies but along very different lines of colonialism and adaptation.

Many relatively prosperous nations have succumbed to and supported repressive dictatorships and extractive institutions (Japan & Germany) – Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson

Now to understand what makes one region rich and the other poor, comes the book ‘Why Nations fail’ by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. The book begins with a proposal that to understand why there is such inequality in the world today we have to delve into the past and the historical dynamics of societies. According to the authors, the roots of discontent in the underdeveloped countries lies in their poverty and questions if that poverty is immutable or can be eradicated. Interestingly, the title of each chapter in the ‘List of Contents’ is accompanied with a question reading which you feel are already brewing inside your mind and so till you reach its last page most of your queries and ambiguities have been nicely catered. Questions like: How institutions change through political conflict and how the past shapes the present; how institutions evolve after time; how European colonialism impoverished the large parts of the world; how some parts of the world took different paths to prosperity; institutions, institutions, institutions; How a few countries changed their economic trajectory by changing their institutions. By analyzing the model of economics of 38th parallel, the book formulates a theory that operates on two levels; institutional interpretation of history & shaping of institutional trajectories of nations through history.

As a student when we attend certain lectures in class, our mind instinctively starts to boil questions and so we satisfy ourselves by raising hands and actively ask our questions right away. However, while we read the process of asking questions remains there but results in the process of self-help in which one may or may not succeed in getting the right answers. And so I feel while reading History books one should accompany one piece with another of similar theme (without taking a pause as a continuation of previous), hence treating both as different volumes of same collection so that one is able to let the respective questions rest in peace!

The writer can be reached at hirashah@hotmail.com