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 This book is for
Graham Charles Backman
Puero praeclaro, Scourge of Nations

and for my mother

Mary Lou Betker
with my best love

and in memory of my brother

Neil Howard Backman, U.S.N. (ret.)
(1956–2011)
who found his happiness just in time

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00-Backman-FM-Vol1.indd 8 8/26/15 10:45 PM
 BRIEF CONTENTS
1. Water and Soil, Stone and Metal: 8. The Early Middle Ages. . . . . . . . . . . 241
The First Civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 300–750
10,000–2100 bce
9. The Expansive Realm of Islam. . . . . 277
2. Law Givers, Emperors, and Gods: 30–900
The Ancient Near East. . . . . . . . . . . . 37
10. Reform and Renewal
2100–486 bce
in the Greater West . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
3. The People of the Covenant. . . . . . . . 71 750–1258
1200–350 bce
11. Worlds Brought Down . . . . . . . . . . 353
4. Greeks and Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 1258–1453
2000–479 bce
12. Renaissances and Reformations . . . 399
5. Classical Greece and the 1350–1563
Hellenistic World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
13. Worlds Old and New . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
479–30 bce
1450–1700
6. Empire of the Sea: Rome. . . . . . . . . . 171
14. The Wars of All against All. . . . . . . . 493
753 bce–212 ce
1540–1648
7. The Rise of Christianity
15. From Westphalia to Paris: Regimes
in a Roman World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Old and New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
40 bce–300 ce
1648–1750

ix

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 CONTENTS
Maps ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xvii
Preface��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xix
About the Author ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxvii
Note on Dates ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxviii
Prologue: Before History������������������������������������������������������������������� xxix

1. Water and Soil, Stone and Metal:

The First Civilizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
10,000–2100 bce
The interac tion of the Indo -
The Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Land
European groups and the
between the Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
primarily Semitic-speaking
Early Mesopotamia: Kings and Priests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
peoples of the Fer tile
The Idea of Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Crescent opened the way for
Mesopotamian Life: Farms and Cities, Letters
the development of the
and Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Greater West— a civilization
Religion and Myth: The Great Above and
that bridged Europe and
Great Below. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
western Asia.
Ancient Egypt, Gift of the Nile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Life and Rule in Old Kingdom Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
The Kingdom of the Dead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2. Law Givers, Emperors, and Gods:

The Ancient Near East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
The romanticization of David
2100–486 bce
and Solomon introduced an
Old Babylon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
entirely new element into
Middle Kingdom Egypt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Greater Western culture, or
The New Kingdom Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
at least one for which no
The Indo-European Arrival. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
earlier evidence sur vives—
The Age of Iron Begins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
namely, the popular belief in
Persia and the Religion of Fire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
a past paradise, a lost era of
former glor y, when humanit y
3. The People of the Covenant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
had at tained a per fec tion of
1200–350 bce
happiness.
The Bible and History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
The Land of Canaan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Dreams of a Golden Age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Women and the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Prophets and Prophecy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
xi

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 xii   Contents

The Struggle for Jewish Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Second Temple Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

4. Greeks and Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

2000–479 bce
The First Greeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
The Search for Mythic Ancestors in
Archaic Age Greece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Colonists, Hoplites, and the Path toward Citizenship. . . . 109
A Cult of Masculinity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Civilized Pursuits: Lyric Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Sparta: The Militarization of the Citizenry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Miletus: The Birthplace of Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Athens: Home to Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
The Persian Wars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

5. Classical Greece and the Hellenistic World . . . 129

The Greeks, especially the
479–30 bce
Athenians, came to regard
Athens’s Golden Age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
the mid- 5th centur y bce with
The Polis: Ritual and Restraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
a determined awe, recalling
The Excluded: Women, Children, and Slaves. . . . . . . . . . . . 136
it as a lost halc yon era that
The Invention of Drama. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
outshone any thing that came
The Peloponnesian Disaster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
before it or since. Through
Advances in Historical Inquiry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
the centuries, much of
Medicine as Natural Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Western culture has
The Flowering of Greek Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
continued the love af fair and
The Rise of Macedonia and the Conquests
has ex tolled “ the glor y that
of Alexander the Great. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
was Greece” as a pinnacle of
The Hellenistic World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
human achievement.
The Maccabean Revolt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

6. Empire of the Sea: Rome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

753 bce–212 ce
Ancient Italy and the Rise of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
From Monarchy to Republic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
The Republic of Virtue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Size Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Can the Republic Be Saved?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Rome’s Golden Age: The Augustan Era. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192

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 Contents    xiii

The Sea, the Sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Roman Lives and Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Height of the Pax Romana: The “Five Good Emperors”. . 204

7. The Rise of Christianity in a Roman World. . . . 209

The stor y fascinates, thrills,
40 bce–300 ce
comfor ts, angers, and
The Vitality of Roman Religion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
embarrasses at ever y turn,
The Jesus Mystery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
of ten all at once. It has
A Crisis in Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
touched ever y thing from
Ministry and Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Western political ideas to
What Happened to His Disciples? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
sexual mores. Christianit y
Christianities Everywhere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
began as an obscure
Romans in Pursuit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
reformist sec t within
Philosophical Foundations: Stoicism
Palestinian Judaism, at one
and Neoplatonism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
time numbering no more
than f if t y or so believers. It
8. The Early Middle Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
went on, af ter three
300–750
centuries of persecution by
The Imperial Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
the Roman Empire, to
Imperial Decline: Rome’s Overreach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
become the world’s most
Martyrdom and Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
dominant faith.
A Christian Emperor and a Christian Church. . . . . . . . . . . 248
The Rise of “New Rome”: The Byzantine Empire . . . . . . . . 252
Barbarian Kings and Warlords. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Divided Estates and Kingdoms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
The Body as Money and Women as Property . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
The Western world had never
Christian Paganism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
seen a militar y juggernaut
Christian Monasticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
like this: in 622 Muhammad
and his small group of
9. The Expansive Realm of Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 followers had been forced
30–900
from their home in Mecca,
“Age of Ignorance”: The Arabian Background. . . . . . . . . . . . 278
yet within a hundred years
The Qur’an and History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
those followers had
From Preacher to Conqueror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
conquered an empire that
Conversion or Compulsion?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
stretched from Spain to
The Islamic Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
India, an area t wice the size
Sunnis and Shi’a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
of that conquered by
Islam and the Classical Traditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Alexander the Great.
Women and Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

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 xiv   Contents

10. Reform and Renewal in the

Greater West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
750–1258
L atin Europe’s histor y had Two Palace Coups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
been shaped by t wo opposed The Carolingian Ascent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
waves of development. The Charlemagne. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
dual economic and cultural Imperial Coronation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
engine of the Mediterranean Carolingian Collapse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
region spread its inf luence The Splintering of the Caliphate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
nor thward, bringing The Reinvention of Western Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
elements of cosmopolitan Mediterranean Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
urban life, intellec tual The Reinvention of the Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
innovation, and cultural The Reinvention of the Islamic World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
vibranc y into the European The Call for Crusades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
hear tlands. Political The Crusades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
leadership, however, came Turkish Power and Byzantine Decline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
from the nor th, as the Judaism Reformed, Renewed, and Reviled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
monarchies of England and
France and the Holy Roman 11. Worlds Brought Down. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Empire pushed their 1258–1453
boundaries southward, Late Medieval Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
drawn by Mediterranean Scholasticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
commerce and the Mysticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
gravitational pull of the The Guild System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
papal cour t. The cross- The Mendicant Orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
fer tilization of nor th and Early Representative Government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
south benef ited each and The Weakening of the Papacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
fostered Europe’s abilit y to Noble Privilege and Popular Rebellion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
reform and revitalize itself. The Hundred Years’ War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
The Plague. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
The Mongol Takeover. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
In the Wake of the Mongols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .382
Persia under the Il-Khans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .386
A New Center for Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
The Ottoman Turks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392

12. Renaissances and Reformations. . . . . . . . . . . . 399

1350–1563
Rebirth or Culmination?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
The Political and Economic Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

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 Contents    xv

The Renaissance Achievement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

The three elements most
Christian Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
charac teristically associated
Erasmus: Humanist Scholar and Social Critic. . . . . . . . . . . 415
with the Renaissance —
Martin Luther: The Gift of Salvation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
classicism, humanism, and
Luther’s Rebellion against the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
modern statecraf t—
The Reformation Goes International. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
represent no essential break
Calvin: Protestantism as Theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
with medieval life at all. They
The Godly Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
may in fac t be thought of as
The Rebirth of Satire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
the culmination of medieval
Catholic Reform and the Council of Trent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
strivings.
The Society of Jesus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
What about the Orthodox East? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444

13. Worlds Old and New. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

1450–1700
European Voyages of Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
New Continents and Profits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Conquest and Epidemics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
The Copernican Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Galileo and the Truth of Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
Inquisition and Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
The Revolution Broadens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
The Ethical Costs of Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
The Islamic Retreat from Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
Thinking about Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Newton’s Mathematical Principles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Though of ten referred to as

14. The Wars of All against All. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493 the “wars of religion,” the
1540–1648
wars that wracked the
From the Peace of Augsburg to the Edict of Nantes:
Greater West in the six teenth
French Wars of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
and seventeenth centuries
Strife and Settlement in England. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
enmeshed religious
Dutch Ascendancy and Spanish Eclipse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
antagonisms with economic,
The Thirty Years’ War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
social, and political conf lic t.
Enemies Within: The Hunt for Witches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
A more accurate term might
The Jews of the East and West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
come from English
The Waning of the Sultanate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
philosopher Thomas Hobbes
New Centers of Intellectual and Cultural Life. . . . . . . . . . . 516
(1588 –1679): “ the war of all
Wars of Religion: The Eastern Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
against all.”
Economic Change in an Atlantic World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522

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 xvi   Contents

15. From Westphalia to Paris:

Regimes Old and New. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
1648–1750
The Peace of Westphalia: 1648. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
The Argument for Tyranny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
The Social Contract. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Absolute Politics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Police States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Self-Indulgence with a Purpose:
The Example of Versailles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
Mercantilism and Absolutism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
Mercantilism and Poverty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Domesticating Dynamism: Regulating Culture. . . . . . . . . 549
The Control of Private Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
England’s Separate Path: The Rise of Constitutional
Monarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Ottoman Absolutism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562
Persian Absolutism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .565
International Trade in a Mercantilist Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
The Slave Trade and Domestic Subjugation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
The Return of Uncertainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573

Reference Maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-1

Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G-1
Credits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-1
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I-1

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 Maps
Map P.1 Out of Africa
Map 1.1 Early Agricultural Sites
Map 1.2 The Ancient Near East
Map 1.3 The Akkadian Empire, ca. 2350–2200 bce
Map 1.4 Old Kingdom Egypt, ca. 2686–2134 bce
Map 2.1 The Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi
Map 2.2 Middle and New Kingdom Egypt
Map 2.3 The Middle East and the Mediterranean, ca. 1400 bce
Map 2.4 The Assyrian Empire, ca. 720–650 bce
Map 2.5 The Persian Empire at Its Height, ca. 500 bce
Map 3.1 The Land of Canaan, ca. 1000 bce
Map 3.2 Israelite Kingdom under David
Map 4.1 Minoan and Mycenean Greece, ca. 1500 bce
Map 4.2 Greek and Phoenician Colonies, ca. 500 bce
Map 4.3 The Persian Wars
Map 5.1 Athens, Sparta, and Their Allies during the Peloponnesian War
Map 5.2 Campaigns of Alexander the Great
Map 5.3 The Hellenistic World, ca. 200 bce
Map 6.1 Ancient Italy
Map 6.2 The Western Mediterranean in the 3rd Century bce
Map 6.3 Rome and Its Neighbors in 146 bce
Map 6.4 The Roman World at the End of the Republic, 44 bce
Map 6.5 The Mediterranean: Greek and Roman Perspectives Compared
Map 6.6 Trades in the Roman Empire
Map 7.1 Judea in the Time of Jesus
Map 7.2 Early Christian Communities, ca. 350 ce
Map 8.1 Diocletian’s Division of the Empire, ca. 304
Map 8.2 The Byzantine Empire in the Time of Justinian
Map 8.3 Constantinople in the 6th Century
Map 8.4 The Economy of Europe in the Early Middle Ages
Map 8.5 The Frankish Kingdom, ca. 500
Map 8.6 Monasteries in Western Europe, ca. 800
Map 9.1 Arabia in the 6th Century ce
Map 9.2 Muslim Conquests to 750
Map 9.3 Sunni and Shi’i Communities Today

xvii

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 xviii   Maps

Map 10.1 The Conversion of the Germanic Peoples to Christianity

Map 10.2 Charlemagne’s Empire
Map 10.3 Division of the Carolingian Empire, 843
Map 10.4 The Islamic World, ca. 1000
Map 10.5 The Mediterranean World, ca. 1100
Map 10.6 The Crusades
Map 10.7 The Islamic World, ca. 1260
Map 10.8 Principal Centers of Jewish Settlement in
the Mediterranean, ca. 1250
Map 11.1 Europe in 1300
Map 11.2 Medieval Universities
Map 11.3 Medieval Heresies, ca. 1200–1350
Map 11.4 The Hundred Years’ War
Map 11.5 The Black Death
Map 11.6 The Mongol Conquests
Map 11.7 The Mongol Successor States
Map 11.8 Mamluks and Ottomans, ca. 1400
Map 12.1 Renaissance Italy
Map 12.2 The Domains of Charles V, 1520
Map 12.3 The Protestant Reformation, ca. 1540
Map 13.1 Africa and the Mediterranean, 1498
Map 13.2 The Portuguese in Asia, 1536–1580
Map 13.3 Early Voyages of World Exploration
Map 13.4 The Transfer of Crops and Diseases after 1500
Map 13.5 Centers of Learning in Europe, 1500-1700
Map 14.1 Wars and Revolts in Europe, 1524–1660
Map 14.2 Expulsions and Migrations of Jews, 1492–1650
Map 14.3 Ottoman–Safavid Conflict
Map 15.1 Europe in 1648
Map 15.2 The Ottoman Empire in 1683
Map 15.3 World Trade Networks, ca. 1750
Map 15.4 The Atlantic Slave Trade
Map 15.5 The Seven Years’ War

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 Preface

I wrote this book with a simple goal in mind: to produce the kind of survey text
I wished I had read in college. As a latecomer to history, I wondered why I so
enjoyed studying a subject whose textbooks I found dry and lifeless. People, after
all, are enormously interesting; and history is the story of people. So why were so
many of the books I was assigned to read tedious?
Part of the problem lay in method. Teaching and writing history is difficult,
in large part because of the sheer scope of the enterprise. Most history survey
books stress their factual comprehensiveness and strict objectivity of tone. The
trouble with this approach is that it too often works only for those few who are
already true believers in history’s importance and leaves most students yawning
in their wake. I chose a different option—to teach and write history by emphasiz-
ing ideas and trends and the values behind them; to engage in the debates of each
age rather than to narrate who won them. Students who are eagerly engaged in a
subject, and who understand its significance, can then appreciate and remember
the details. Moreover, twenty-five years of experience has taught me that they will
do so.
This book adopts a thematic approach, but a theme seldom utilized in con-
temporary histories. While paying due attention to other aspects of Western de-
velopment, it focuses on what might be called the history of values—that is, on the
assumptions that lie behind political and economic developments, behind intel-
lectual and artistic ventures, and behind social trends and countertrends. Con-
sider, for example, the achievements of the Scientific Revolution. The advances
made in fields like astronomy, chemistry, and medicine did not occur simply be-
cause individuals smart enough to figure out new truths happened to come along.
William Harvey’s discovery of the circulatory system was possible only because
the culture in which he lived had begun, albeit hesitantly, to allow the dissection
of human corpses for scientific research. For many centuries, even millennia,
before Harvey’s time, cultural and religious taboos had forbidden the desecration
of bodies. But the era of the Scientific Revolution was also the era of political ab-
solutism in Europe, a time when prevailing sentiment held that the king should
hold all power and authority. Any enemy of the king—for example, anyone con-
victed of a felony—therefore deserved the ultimate penalty of execution and dis-
section. No king worship, no discovery of the circulation of the blood. At least not
at that time.

xix

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 xx   Preface

A history that emphasizes the development of values runs the risk of distort-
ing the record to some extent, because obviously not every person living at a given
time held those values. Medieval Christians did not uniformly hate Jews and
Muslims, believe the world was about to end, support the Inquisition, and blindly
follow the dictates of the pope. Not every learned man and woman in the 18th
century was “enlightened” or even wanted to be. The young generation of the
1960s was not composed solely of war protesters, feminist reformers, and rock-
music lovers. With this important caveat in mind, however, it remains possible to
offer general observations about the ideas and values that predominated in any
era. This book privileges those ideas and sensibilities and views the events of each
era in relation to them.
And it does so with a certain amount of opinion. To discuss value judgments
without ever judging some of those values seems cowardly and is probably impos-
sible anyway. Most large-scale histories mask their subjectivity simply by decid-
ing which topics to discuss and which ones to pass over; I prefer to argue my
positions explicitly, in the belief that to have a point of view is not the same thing
as to be unfair. Education is as much about teaching students to evaluate argu-
ments as it is about passing on knowledge to them, and students cannot learn to
evaluate arguments if they are not presented with any.
In a second departure from tradition (which in this case is really just habit),
this book interprets Western history on a broad geographic and cultural scale. All
full-scale histories of Western civilization begin in the ancient Near East, but
after making a quick nod to the origins of Islam in the 7th century, most of them
focus almost exclusively on western Europe. The Muslim world thereafter enters
the discussion only when it impinges on European actions. This book overtly re-
jects that view and insists on including the region of the Middle East in the gen-
eral narrative, as a permanently constitutive element of the Greater West. For all
its current global appeal, Islam is essentially a Western religion, after all, one that
has its spiritual roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions and the bulk of whose
intellectual foundations are in the classical Greco-Roman canon. To treat the
Muslim world as an occasional sideshow on the long march to western European
and American world leadership is, I believe, to falsify the record and to get the
history wrong. The “European world” and the “Middle Eastern world” have been
in a continuous relationship for millennia, buying and selling goods, sharing
technologies, studying each other’s political ideas, influencing each other’s reli-
gious beliefs, learning from each other’s medicine, facing the same challenges
from scientific advances and changing economies. We cannot explain who we are
if we limit ourselves to the traditional scope of Western history; we need a Greater
Western perspective, one that includes and incorporates the whole of the mono-
theistic world.

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 Preface    xxi

Because religious belief has traditionally shaped so much of Greater Western

culture—whether for good or ill is every reader’s responsibility to determine—I
have placed it at the center of my narrative. Even for the most unshakeable of
modern agnostics and atheists, the values upheld by the three great monotheisms
have had, and continue to have, a profound effect on the development of our
social mores, intellectual pursuits, and artistic endeavors as well as on our politics
and international relations.
In another break with convention, the book incorporates an abundance of
primary sources into the narrative. I have always disliked the boxed and high-
lighted source snippets that pockmark so many of today’s textbooks. It seems to
me that any passage worth quoting is worth working into the text itself—and I
have happily done so. But a word about them is necessary. For the first three chap-
ters I have needed considerable help. I am ignorant of the ancient Middle Eastern
languages and have relied on the current version of a respected and well-loved
anthology.1 When discussing the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
I have used their own authorized translations. Simple courtesy, it seems to me,
calls for quoting a Jewish translation of the Bible when discussing Judaism; a
Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant Bible whenever discussing those main branches
of Christianity; and the English version of the Qur’an prepared by the royal pub-
lishing house in Saudi Arabia when discussing Islam.2 Last, some of the political
records I cite (for example, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights) are quoted
from their official English versions. But apart from these special cases—all duly
noted—every translation in this book, from chapter 4 onward, is my own.

CHANGES TO THE SECOND EDITION

Since the publication of the first edition of Cultures of the West, I have received,
thankfully, a great number of notes and e-mails from teachers and students who
appreciated the book, as well as dozens of formal critiques commissioned by the
press. A textbook, unlike most scholarly works, affords historians the rare chance
to revise the original work and to make it better. This second edition gave me the
opportunity to realize my vision of the book, and I am pleased and grateful to
point to the following main changes, all intended to make Cultures of the West a
text that will engage students and teachers alike:

1
Nels M. Bailkey and Richard Lim, Readings in Ancient History: Thought and Experience from Gilgamesh to
St. Augustine, 7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2011).
2
Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, by the Jewish Publication Society; New American Bible, published by the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops; New Revised Standard Version, published by Oxford University Press;
and The Orthodox Study Bible. For the Qur’an I have used The Holy Qur’an: English Translations of the
Meanings, with Commentary, published by the King Fahd Holy Qur’an Printing Complex (A.H 1410).

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 xxii   Preface

• Consistent reinforcement of the history of values—as evidenced

most easily by new chapter introductions and conclusions, but
I highlighted the book’s central theme throughout the
narrative.
• A more comprehensive treatment of Western Europe to ground stu-
dents’ exploration of the Greater West—as evidenced, for exam-
ple, by fuller coverage of the Middle Ages, the French
Revolution, and the world wars. To keep the length of the book
manageable for readers, I compensated for these additions by
streamlining or excising outright subjects and passages that
instructors found too advanced for the survey course.
• A new chapter in Volume 1 and two fewer chapters in Volume 2 for
a more course-friendly periodization. The new chapter (9), The
Expansive Realm of Islam, 30–900, parallels the chapters on
early Judaism (3) and Christianity (7) for a full treatment of
the monotheistic cultures that gave rise to the Greater West.
Basically a reworking of materials previously scattered among
different chapters, I am especially proud of this newcomer to
the Western civilization textbook literature. To reduce the
number of chapters in Volume 2, I combined directly related
first-edition chapters 20 and 23 into the new chapter 22, The
Challenge of Secularism, and the final two first-edition chapters
into chapter 29, Global Warmings: Since 1989.
• Consistent treatment of women and gender in the central narrative.
The warm reception to a chapter devoted to the modern
woman encouraged me to keep a carefully revised version of
this chapter (21) in the new edition, but elsewhere I worked
hard to integrate women’s history and gender issues into the
main story of events.
• New marginal headings that identify key events and developments
to supplement the book’s well-received single-heading struc-
ture of the narrative.
• Expanded map program. The second edition includes twenty-
four new maps. All of the maps have been corrected and
­redesigned for improved clarity.
• New Prologue: Before History, for readers of Volume 1 and the
combined edition. Because the first edition neglected the
­Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, I was especially happy to add
this illustrated discussion.

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 Preface    xxiii

• Updated scholarship. The research that goes into revision of a

single-authored textbook is as rewarding as it is time consum-
ing. I am pleased to include many new titles in the chapter bib-
liographies that inform the narrative.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Working with Oxford University Press has been a delight. Charles Cavaliere has
served as point man, guiding me through the entire project with grace and kind-
ness. His cheery enthusiasm kept me going through many a difficult hour. If the
prose in this book has any merit, please direct your compliments to John Haber
and Elizabeth Welch, the talented editors who guided me through, respectively,
the first and second editions. Beth did more than edit; she reenvisioned and gave
new life to the book (and its author) by her enthusiasm, rigor, and good humor.
Christi Sheehan, Debbie Needleman, Theresa Stockton, Lisa Grzan, Eden Kram-
Gingold, Kateri Woody, Meg Botteon, and Michele Laseau shepherded me
through the production and marketing phases and deserve all the credit for the
wonderful physical design of the book and its handsome map and art programs.
I am also deeply grateful to the many talented historians and teachers who
offered critical readings of the first edition. My sincere thanks to the following
instructors, whose comments often challenged me to rethink or justify my inter-
pretations and provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail:

Robert Brennan, Cape Fear Community College

Lee L. Brice, Western Illinois University
Keith Chu, Bergen Community College
Jason Coy, College of Charleston
Marc Eagle, Western Kentucky University
Christine Eubank, Bergen Community College
Jennifer L. Foray, Purdue University
Edith Foster, Case Western Reserve University
Matthew Gerber, University of Colorado at Boulder
David M. Head, John Tyler Community College
Brian Hilly, Suffolk County Community College
Christopher Howell, Red Rocks Community College
Andrew Keitt, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Christina Bosco Langert, Suffolk County Community College
Ryan Messenger, Monroe Community College
Alexander Mikaberidze, Louisiana State University–Shreveport
Kathryn Ordway, Colorado Community College Online

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 xxiv   Preface

Jennifer Popiel, Saint Louis University

Matthew Ruane, Florida Institute of Technology
Nicholas L. Rummell, Trident Technical College
Robert Rusnak, Trident Technical College
Sarah Shurts, Bergen Community College

I thank as well the good folks at Trident Tech Community College in Charles-
ton, South Carolina, who hosted a workshop in June 2014 that provided a forum
for me to sound out the revision plan. Professors Donald West, Barbara Tucker,
Robert Rusnak, Nicholas Rummell, and several other History TTCC faculty
members were kind enough to spend a morning with me sharing their experi-
ences using Cultures of the West and offering suggestions for how it could be im-
proved. I hope they are pleased with the result. I especially want to thank
Katherine Jenkins of Trident Tech Community College, who prepared many of
the excellent supplementary materials for the second edition and saved me from
several embarrassing errors.
My former student at Boston University, Christine Axen (PhD, 2015), has
been a support from the start. She has taught with me, and occasionally for me,
through the past three years, and I appreciate the time she took away from her
own dissertation research to assist me on this project—pulling books from the
library, running down citations, suggesting ideas. When Oxford asked me to pre-
pare a companion volume of primary texts for this book, Christine proved to be
such an immense help that she deserves to share the title page with me. The
sourcebook too is appearing in a second edition.
To my wife, Nelina, and our sons, Scott and Graham, this book has been an
uninvited houseguest at times, pulling me away from too many family hours.
They have put up with it, and with me, with patience and generosity that I shall
always be thankful for. Their love defines them and sustains me.

SUPPORT MATERIALS FOR CULTURES OF THE WEST

Cultures of the West comes with an extensive package of support materials for both
instructors and students.

• Dashboard Dashboard delivers quality content, tools and as-

sessments to track student progress in an intuitive, web-based
learning environment. Assessments are designed to accom-
pany Cultures of the west, and automatically graded so instruc-
tors can easily check students’ progress as they complete their
assignments. The color-coded gradebook illustrates at a glance

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 It was well heated, and there were warm carpets on the floors, but
Mr. Bunnikins would not be comforted. He sat in a big arm-chair
close to the fire, with his toe-toes drawn up under him, shivering and
groaning.
 They had a very queer supper of dried potato-pie, dried apple
dumpling, and dried lettuce and carrot-cake, for as nothing grows on
the cold Island of the Moon, everything to eat has to be brought a
long distance in airships, and it all dries up on the way.
 The Island of the Moon
Chapter III
As Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny was very anxious to see the Moon King
and his beautiful Palace, they all started out the next morning to visit
him. At first they were told that they could not see the King, as he
slept all day and was very busy all night, but finally they were invited
to come to the Palace that evening, at eight o’clock.
 They spent the rest of the day sleighing and seeing the island. The
houses were all made of ice, and there were no trees, no flowers,
not even a blade of grass. The people were so huge that they
terrified the children, and Rosamund kept tight hold of her father’s
paw.
 No Bunnies or Squirrels had ever been seen in the Moon before,
and the people admired them very much. One little giant girl cried
tears as big as dollars, because she could not keep Rosamund for a
plaything, and when she picked her up in her big hands to pet her,
the poor little bunny was frightened almost to death. As soon as he
had eaten his supper, Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny hurried off to dress for
the Moon King’s Party. He tried one thing and then another, until
poor Mrs. Bunnikins was quite tired out trying to help him, and
thought he never would be ready in time. At last he decided to wear
a beautiful blue velvet suit embroidered in gold, and a very fine
green and white hat all trimmed with ostrich feathers. To keep
himself warm, he had a velvet cape lined with fur, and, as a finishing
touch, he wore a little gold sword. Mrs. Bunnikins advised him not to,
as she was afraid it would be in his way, but Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny
insisted that a sword was the proper thing to wear at Court.
Bobtail and Ruddy Squirrel had tied bright red bows on
themselves wherever they could find a place, and Rosamund
shouted with laughter whenever she looked at them.
 The Palace
of the
Moon King
Chapter IV
The Palace was made entirely of blocks of ice most beautifully
carved, the walls being lined with silk, so that nobody could look in. It
was brilliantly lighted, and on each of the broad steps stood a giant
soldier, in scarlet and gold uniform.
Two big footmen led the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the Gray-Squirrels
through one grand room after another, until they came to a great
silver door, on which one of the footmen knocked twice with a silver
wand. As the door slowly opened, the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the
Gray-Squirrels were so dazzled by the flood of light, that for a
moment they all covered their faces with their paws. Then they
looked up and saw the most wonderful room.
It was made of purest white ice, the floors being covered with
great white rugs, and the walls with silvery silk. The furniture was of
ivory inlaid with silver, and in every corner stood a tall silver vase full
of moon flowers, which perfumed the air.
 At one end of the great room was a silver throne, on which was
seated a gigantic figure clad in a misty white garment, from which
the silvery moonbeams streamed out in every direction, so that the
whole room was filled with a shimmering light.
 In front of the King was a great round window through which he
was intently gazing. His head was quite bald, his cheeks were fat, he
had a big mouth, and his eyes were very large and round. As he
turned with a pleasant smile to greet the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the
Gray-Squirrels, they were very much astonished to recognize the
Man in the Moon, whom they had so often seen, sitting high up in the
sky.
“Draw the cloud curtain,” he said to one of the footmen, who at
once pulled a heavy gray curtain across the great window. Then in a
very gentle voice for such a huge being, he added: “Come forward
my little people, I am very glad to see you.”
 The King of the Moon
Chapter V
As they came forward Mr. Gray-Squirrel made a polite bow, and
Mrs. Bunny and Mrs. Squirrel made nice little courtesies, but poor
Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny, in the middle of a most elegant bow, got his
legs so twisted up with his sword, that he turned a complete
somersault right into the Moon King’s lap!

“Never mind,” said the King, as he kindly helped him to his feet,
“accidents will happen. Have a piece of cheese?”
On the broad arm of the King’s throne was a plate full of green
cheese, of which he took a large piece himself, after offering it to the
Bunnies and the Squirrels.
“Do you make your own cheese?” asked Mrs. Bunnikins-Bunny, as
she tasted it.
 “It is made for me in the Milky Way,” replied the Moon King. “No
cows have been allowed in the Moon, since a very rude one jumped
right over my head many years ago.”
Just then there was a loud squeal of terror from the other end of
the room. Bobtail had found the queer cheese so horrid, that he
simply could not eat it. He had wandered off, hoping to find some
dark corner in which to hide it, and had stumbled into a mouse trap,
and been caught by the leg.

“Dear! Dear!” said the King, as they all ran to help poor Bobtail. “I
am so sorry, but you see mice like cheese almost as much as I do,
and so I have to set traps everywhere. Now you shall have a peep
from my Look-Out-Window,” he continued, taking Bobtail by the paw.
Far, far below they could see the great round earth looking like a
little ball, but it made them all so dizzy, that they did not look very
long.
“Do you never get sleepy?” asked Mrs. Gray-Squirrel.
 “Not very often,” answered the Moon King. “There are times when
I can watch with one eye, and then I have taught the other eye to go
to sleep.”
“I thought you had a dog?” said Mr. Bunnikins-Bunny.
“I did have a very fine yellow dog, but
alas, I lost him long ago,” and the King,
with a sigh, wiped away a tear. “His name
was Ebenezer, but we called him Sneezer
for short, because he was so fond of
mouse patties flavored with pepper, which
made him sneeze. He was always chasing
cats. One day he heard one miaow, and
jumping on the ledge of my Great Window,
he slipped and fell out, I don’t know where.
 “Since then, however, so many yellow dogs have been seen on
the Island of Sirius, that it is now called the Dog Star, and I believe
that Sneezer landed there.”
 While the King had been talking, the children had crept behind the
cloud curtain to try and see the Dog Star. Bobtail had leaned out so
far that he lost his balance, and would have surely gone to join
Sneezer, had not one of the King’s footmen grabbed him by his short
tail.
As it was now late, the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the Gray-Squirrels,
after thanking the King for his kindness, said good-by, and the cloud
curtain being drawn back, the King of the Moon gazed down once
more upon the sleeping earth.
 The Island of Mars
Chapter VI
Early next morning, as soon as the sun had risen and the King of
the Moon had gone to bed, the Bunnikins-Bunnies and the Gray-
Squirrels went on board the airship, and sailed off toward the Island
of Mars. The children begged Captain Hawk to stop at the Dog Star
and see Sneezer, but neither Mr. Bunnikins nor Mr. Gray-Squirrel
was willing to, as they were both very much afraid of dogs.