How the World Made the West

A 4,000 Year History

De: Josephine Quinn

Narrado por: Alix Dunmore

An award-winning Oxford history professor overturns the way the West thinks about itself, tracing its innovations and traditions to societies from all over the world and making the case that the West is, and always has been, truly global.

“Superb, refreshing, and full of delights, this is world history at its best.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity

In How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn poses perhaps the most significant challenge ever to the “civilizational thinking” regarding the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe, to name just a few examples.

According to Quinn, reducing the backstory of the modern West to a narrative that focuses on Greece and Rome impoverishes our view of the past. This understanding of history would have made no sense to the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves, who understood and discussed their own connections to and borrowings from others. They consistently presented their own culture as the result of contact and exchange. Quinn builds on the writings they left behind with rich analyses of other ancient literary sources like the epic of Gilgamesh, holy texts, and newly discovered records revealing details of everyday life. A work of breathtaking scholarship, How the World Made the West also draws on the material culture of the times in art and artifacts as well as findings from the latest scientific advances in carbon dating and human genetics to thoroughly debunk the myth of the modern West as a self-made miracle.

In lively prose and with bracing clarity, How the World Made the West challenges the stories the West continues to tell about itself. It redefines our understanding of the Western self and civilization in the cosmopolitan world of today.

©2024 Josephine Quinn (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“As our leaders and pundits glorify ‘Western Civilization’ and excoriate migration and wokeness, Josephine Quinn offers a momentous correction: the Greeks and Romans were hodgepodge people, and if we are their heirs it is only because of globe-spanning connections that always produce multifarious ways of life. . . . Brilliant and essential.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

“Bold, beautifully written, and filled with insights, How the World Made the West demands that we challenge traditional views of the past. An extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Earth Transformed

“One of the most fascinating works of global history to appear for many years . . . incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging . . . allowing us to understand just how globalized and interconnected mankind has always been.”—William Dalrymple, bestselling author of The Anarchy

Great read

How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn is an excellent and thought-provoking journey through 4,000 years of history. Quinn masterfully presents a broad and engaging narrative that traces the key influences that shaped Western civilization, making this book both informative and captivating for history enthusiasts.

However, as is often the case in works like this, there is a noticeable lack of focus on African civilizations. This omission is perhaps due to the scarcity of surviving historical records, but it remains a gap worth acknowledging. While African contributions to global history are significant, they are not thoroughly explored here.

That said, Quinn’s book is outstanding in every other respect, providing a sweeping view of cultural, political, and intellectual exchanges that defined the Western world. Her insights are clear, well-researched, and accessible. I would highly recommend How the World Made the West to anyone interested in understanding the forces that shaped our world today.

Interesting World History Stressing how Connected Europe, Asia, and Africa have Always Been

Since I know very little Ancient history, the fact that Quinn has written this book to debunk the Western view that European civilization developed in isolation doesn’t really interest me. The rest of the book, where she is talking about how knowledge spread from Africa and Asia to Europe is well told and engrossing.

Middling

There are problems with this book and production. Production/narration wise there is no reason to (selectively it would appear) to read academic footnotes which interrupts the narrative flow of the book.

The content itself is interesting, However the author’s overarching attempts to condemn “civilizational thinking,” feels at best forced and lends itself to a plot line where anecdotes are seemingly cherry-picked to fit that agenda rather than the most important considerations of the time.

It’s comprehensiveness. Very few people know this history and its value to the West.

It’s complete history of the Silk Road history. The best book in this category that I have read. Necessary to fully appreciate the role of the “Silk Road” countries in the growth and power of the West.

The millennia of human existence informs us today

The historical evidence presented in this book provides cause for rethinking fundamental assumptions about our contemporary geopolitical and societal structures worldwide. Through long term and thorough analysis of archaeological and written artifacts, Josephine Quinn examines the interrelated actions of different peoples and nations over multiple millennia—and from that our assumptions about international relations will require reconsideration. The terms West and East to denote separate civilizations is fairly common practice today. In its dominant usage, the term East refers to an Asian-centric culture and the term West refers to a European-centric culture. These assumptions pertain especially to the large cities and empires that rose and fell in the most recent millennia. This view conveniently ignores other cultures that are neither East nor West, such as Native American, Inuit, and Aboriginal Australian—and it also excludes the great pre-Columbian empires in South America. Quinn demonstrates that the problem with the idea of a Western civilization is that it’s an artificial concept.

From the best archaeological and forensic data currently available, Quinn traces the vast interconnections that were active in the period preceding the great empires of the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. This included trade with tribes as distant as present day Scandinavia, central and western Africa, and India. The introduction of the faith in Jesus held by the Messianic Jews and later the faith of Islam moved world religious perspectives closer to monotheism—and the official adoption of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine evolved into an expression of Christendom that was more about military and cultural influence than the Christian faith itself. The centers of civilization were not necessarily Athens or Rome, and instead the world of humans was much more mixed, fluid, and integrated—people sought and valued material and ideas from distant lands. Military hegemony, economic exploitation, and slaving were all parts of that world—just as they still are today in our contemporary global existence. The scientists of that earlier time developed advanced math that was lost until later, and they also knew the Earth was a globe and not a flat object—notably, they were not burned at the steak for their objective observations.

Quinn chronicles how the change to the current civilizational perspective arose in the most recent few centuries, as Europe increasingly adopted a self conscious exclusionist posture—primarily in response to its economic, academic, and military decline vis-à-vis the rest of the world. For the first time, a culture defined its most salient feature as being whom it excluded. As Europe became more culturally ingrown, the concurrent colonization push took off—instead of accommodating cultures of conquered peoples as had been done in past millennia, this tolerance became less common and cultural assimilation to the exclusion of the original cultures became the norm in European colonized areas. It is only in this era that the concept of race arose as a delineator between the imagined able and not able, intelligent and not intelligent, and the cultured and not cultured.

The author suggests no obvious lessons from these observations—this book (properly) does not present any moral assertions. However, it does provide some context in addressing our own contemporary geopolitical and societal challenges. Although many current events are destructive to humanity, the erroneous perspective of all Europeans bad, everyone else good, is not a proper conclusion and such misguided dogma is damaging to all humanity on several levels without alleviating the problems they claim to address. This book does demonstrate that humans have been horribly imperfect for as long as there have been humans—no surprise there, and they (and we) are without excuse. Among the lessons to be gained from this study are these: trade, tolerance, humility, cultural interchange, and science are all good for all of humanity—and anything that diminishes those things is to be avoided. Although armies and police will always be needed wherever there are errant humans, they must be utilized in support of those features just described above. As we humans also (occasionally) display a spiritual dimension, it should be considered (also in light of the above) bad form to appeal to the gods/or God to harm our enemies for us—that would be a selfish manipulative intention toward a deity. Although it would be difficult to predict how successful we could be in living better than all of the horrors committed throughout the millennia of human existence, we humans do need to keep trying to do right—until we get it right.

Convincing defense of the thesis that the world created the west.

You better like your history straight, no chaser. I certainly do. If your interest in BCE is just starting, this book would be a real struggle to assemble five thousand years before CE. It is scholarly and wonderful. Fills in gaps I didn’t know existed. Brilliant.

Just ok

I approached this book with certain expectations based on its title. While it offers an interesting perspective on the historical context leading up to the formation of what we recognize as Western countries, it doesn't fully address the values and significance of the formation of the West itself. It provides a broad overview of history, which is commendable, but it could benefit from a deeper exploration of the implications that arose during the emergence of the West. Additionally, the book touches on the differences between various cultures and civilizations, but it may oversimplify these complexities, ultimately concluding with an all-encompassing message of 'one world' that feels somewhat uninspired. Overall, there is potential for a more nuanced discussion that could enhance the reader's understanding.

please don't read footnotes

I listen to a lot of history on audible - but rarely hear the foot notes read aloud. definitely unnecessary and annoying. I

A fascinating and challenging journey

I loved listening to this book over the course of two weeks. I felt a deep connection with the richness of human history, from the ancient world to the classical period to late medieval times, through a framework that challenges the received wisdom of a Eurocentric reading of history. Both the writer and the narrator bring the stories to life so well that I could almost hear, smell, taste, and feel the places, and recognize the humanity of the peoples who gave rise to what became the 'known world' by the end of the 18th century. Because of my interest in linguistics, I've long assumed that cultural exchanges from India to Northern Africa shaped both European and Asian societies. I hope this book helps readers appreciate the many strands of history and culture that contribute to who we are today, whether we are in what became the Americas, Europe, West Asia, East Asia, and all the places in between.

huh

I would not recommend hard pass on this one. Authors narrative on history is palpable.