A history of the world

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Andrew Marr First published 2012 by Macmillan This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books CONTENTS: Dedication page Map Acknowledgements Introduction I OUT OF THE HEAT, TOWARDS THE ICE Mother Caves of Genius The Farming Puzzle Gentle Anarchists The Child-people of Stonehenge The Cities of the Plain Da Yu to You Nile Nightmares Back to the Bull II THE CASE FOR WAR Greek Glory and the First Empires Concerning Knowledge – Be Humble The Hebrew Idea Cyrus, Cross-dresser The Greek Miracle Aborigines and Aryans The Rebel at the Tree-root Kongzi’s Mid-life Crisis Dying Well Alexander the … Quite Good III THE SWORD AND THE WORD Ashoka The First Emperor The Maccabees’ Sting The Rise and Fall of the Romans Carthage, a Lost Future? Money and Politics Cleopatra and Caesar: A Story of Failure The Roman Peace The Chinese Parallel The Agitator Triumphant Lines and Spirals: The Other Quarter The Triumph of the Christians Religious Blitzkrieg IV BEYOND THE MUDDY MELTING POT Islam’s Golden Age Viking River Mali and Musa Genghis Marco the Mouth Sailing from Byzantium Leonardo V THE WORLD BLOWS OPEN Trouble in Paradise Christopher Gets Lost The Christian Frontier Choked on Silver Man in Black Pagans and Pirates Ivan, Yermak and the Making of Russia Two Rulers, One Problem In a Nutshell to New York A Very Modern Story VI DREAMS OF FREEDOM And Yet It Moves Absolutism and Its Enemies Britain Invaded The Bourbons of India: From Babur to Bust Zozo and Fred Cold Tea and Mohawks Noble Savages The Revolution Black Jacobin Cowpox VII CAPITALISM AND ITS ENEMIES The Industrial Revolution James Watt Dark, Satanic and Infectious From Card-player to Saint: Russia’s Lost Opportunity Liberty’s Victory, by the Skin of Her Teeth Samurai Agony The Mystery of Imperialism Leopold the Nasty Opium, War and Tragedy Familiar, and Strange The Cheerful Fellow from Berlin VIII 1918–2012: OUR TIMES The Problem of Politics The Man in Landsberg Hitler and the Rest of Us Katharine and Margaret A War of the Empires The Melting of Nations The Missing City Gandhi and the Empire A Cold War with Tropical Interruptions Deng & Son – Chinese Rebirth Jihad Splurge The Thinking Machine52 A Fair Field Full of Folk Notes Bibliography General Histories Books Used and Cited Index Author biography List of Illustrations Copyright page For Harry, Isabel and Emily Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people My long-suffering family, from my wife Jackie to my children Harry, Isabel and Emily, have put up with an abstracted, often absent apology for a human being for a long time But this project has also meant I have been a less good friend to my friends; and so apologies to them too I will now reform, and start drinking at lunchtime again This book would not have happened without the excellent Ed Victor, who has looked after me, and sometimes askance at me, for many years now; nor without the superb team at Macmillan, Jon Butler, Georgina Morley, Tania Wilde and Jacqueline Graham – another relationship that has been sustained for years Mary Greenham, who runs most of my life, struggled hard to stop me going insane As to whether she succeeded, the verdict remains open Among the many historians who have kindly given their advice, read parts of the manuscript or helped me find information, are Mary Beard, and the Open University team associated with the filming project Kate Sleight did a wonderful job of combing out some of my particularly embarrassing errors, while Sue Phillpott was a superb copy-editor: in thanking both, I of course wish to underline that mistakes remaining are all my own work The project itself, beginning with the BBC, was the brainchild of Chris Granlund, friend and comrade, with whom I have now made twenty-two hours of documentary television As before, I could not have worked at all effectively without the wonderful London Library Though I not use researchers for my writing, many of the BBC team contributed very useful thoughts, objections and advice and are mentioned below The BBC team was led by Kathryn Taylor, who had to juggle documentary and drama, the latter filmed in South Africa The director-producers who did the work in the field, and with whom I have spent many hours in jolting vans, airports, dodgy hotels and dusty locations, were Robin Dashwood, Guy Smith, Renny Bartlett, Neil Rawles and Mark Radice, who suffered from a horrible bike crash but is now on the mend The man in charge of the camera, who spent many happy months telling me to move to my left, or back a bit, was Neil Harvey, who is the best director of photography in the business, and the sound genius was Simon Parmenter Chris O’Donnell was a particularly enthusiastic and shrewd member of the team, and I would also like to thank Alison Mills, Julie Wilkinson, Katherine Wooton and Michaela Goncalves for organizing one of the biggest projects that BBC documentaries have had to grapple with in many years Finally this book also depended on the friendly help of local historians and archaeologists, and our fixers in Russia, the Ukraine, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, India, China, Mongolia, Australia, Japan, Mali, South Africa, Peru, Brazil, the United States and Shropshire 47 The Chinese view: during the Second Opium War of 1856–8, the Chinese had no chance against British gunboats and infantry 48 King Leopold II had nothing but contempt for the Belgians – ‘small people, small country’ – and built a personal empire in Africa, with tragic results 49 No nation drove the second industrial revolution with quite the verve of the Germans: Karl Benz demonstrates his 1886 motorized tricycle 50 The founder of Soviet power; but Lenin was brought to power, quite literally, by the Germans who sent him by sealed train to Russia 51 Hitler told the world just what he intended to do: the world refused to believe him 52 Mao, five years before he became the most lethal leader China – and the world – has ever seen 53 Arm in arm: but Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s rejection of a single successor state to the British Raj meant his Pakistan and Gandhi’s India would become sworn enemies 54 Robert Oppenheimer, the cultured liberal scientist who ended up calculating the exact height at which his bomb would burn to death the maximum number of civilian men, women and children 55 Margaret Sanger: the working-class radical who did more for twentiethcentury women than any politician, male or female 56 Castro’s successful crushing of the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was part of the prelude to the missile crisis which brought the world to the edge of annihilation 57 Protestors in Boston, 1970: ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh’ American and European students who turned against their parents’ generation found new heroes in the Marxist revolutionaries of the East 58 The blithe Western assumption that history would lead inevitably to liberalism was given a rough jolt when Iran turned to a militant Islamic theocracy in 1979 59 Prague, 1989: the collapse of the Soviet empire was remarkably fast and mostly remarkably peaceful too 60 A statue of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein being torn down after the US-led invasion: but what followed this liberation was also horrific 61 In 1997 Garry Kasparov, perhaps the world’s greatest ever chess-player, played an IBM supercomputer in a match billed as ‘the brain’s last stand’ Also by Andrew Marr MY TRADE A HISTORY OF MODERN BRITAIN THE MAKING OF MODERN BRITAIN THE DIAMOND QUEEN Copyright page First published 2012 by Macmillan This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-0-230-76753-9 Copyright © Andrew Marr 2012 The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Andrew Marr in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 BBC and the BBC logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence BBC logo © BBC 1996 The picture acknowledgements on this page constitute an extension of this copyright page Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases ... ‘Beringia’ land bridge (long gone), around 20,000 years ago By 12,000 years ago we had reached the southern areas of South America, and the final areas of human habitation were the islands of the. .. literally, rather than as a parable There are arguments about this, as there are about every aspect of early society, but the balance of probabilities is that she is your super-Mother If you are a New... America What caused the Homo sapiens push out of Africa? Again, there are rival theories Around 73,500 years ago a massive volcano erupted in what is today called Sumatra This was by far the biggest