World History in Short Episodes — From the Alhambra to the Vikings

The subtitle promises a complete review of world history in three hours. Even the history of one region can take years to get to know. A short book has to decide what to show and what to leave between the scenes.

As an introduction, it can still give readers some events and questions to come back to.

History One Question at a Time

• Why is the Alhambra, a palace of Islamic Spain, in Granada?
• How did the caste system in South Asia take shape?
• Did Ming China anticipate Europe’s age of oceanic exploration?
• What role did Joseph-Ignace Guillotin have in the invention named for him?

The book uses episodes like these to give readers a point of entry. Each starts with a question concrete enough to ask without first knowing the whole period.

The scope is broad. A reader looking for a sustained account of any one subject will have to follow it elsewhere.

From Antiquity to the Modern Era

The episodes are arranged roughly by period. The book starts in the ancient world and moves toward modern history in short steps.

It ranges through Korea, China and Europe, including Britain. The story of Antony and Cleopatra also gives a reader who knows Shakespeare somewhere familiar to begin.

Religion and Political Power

There are episodes on Muhammad and the origins of Islam, and on the Crusades and the encounters between Christian and Muslim powers.

The Walk to Canossa illustrates a struggle between pope and emperor. In 1077, Henry IV went to Canossa to seek reconciliation with Gregory VII after being excommunicated.

Another episode concerns the Avignon Papacy, the decades in the fourteenth century when the popes resided in Avignon. The relocation gives a different view of the relationship between church and secular power.

Reading about Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and Martin Luther’s Reformation made me think about the conditions in which these ideas found an audience. Even with a different person at the centre, some of the questions of the period would still have had to be answered.

Vikings and Normans

The image of Viking raiders as formidable and ruthless has supported a great deal of fiction and film. The historical movements behind that image give the book one of its livelier subjects.

Norse seafarers from Scandinavia raided, settled and traded around Europe. In the eleventh century, England came under the rule of the Danish king Cnut. The larger story is about travel and political power as well as war.

A Few Events That Help You Place the Rest

There is no practical way to keep every world event in mind. A few well-chosen episodes can give readers landmarks for what they encounter later.

It makes a reasonable companion to another Japanese book, Takashi Saitō’s Five Forces That Move World History. Saitō begins with themes and follows each one across different periods.

• Related reading Takashi Saitō’s Five Forces That Move World History

The short episodes keep the book light enough to dip into. A question that remains after a chapter can be a reason to keep reading about the period elsewhere.

Book Information

A Concise, Clear World History (Korean title, translated)

Editorial supervisor and translator

Supervised by Kazuyuki Tsuruma. Korean translation by Hwang Seon-hui.

Publication

1 February 2011 (Korean edition)

ISBN13

9788984454378

View the book on YES24

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