A Short History of the World by H. G. Wells, with updates by G. P. Wells and Raymond Postgate. Penguin Books, 1965 [Original version 1922]. 363 pages.
(A quick search indicates that the version I discuss here is no longer in print. The link above is to a reprint of the original version of this book.)
Nowadays, we mostly remember H. G. Wells as a pioneer of science fiction, but in his own day, he was better known for his nonfiction. Although he had no remarkable academic credentials, he was a prolific writer and a bold thinker, and he set England abuzz with often outrageous ideas, which changed constantly. A few years ago, I happened upon a volume of his Short History of the World, which is his second attempt at summarizing world history, the first and longer being the Outline of History. I finally sat down to read it recently and might as well offer my thoughts.
Wells opens the book by assuring us that this will be a dispassionate review of the history of the world with no personal editorializing, but anyone with a passing knowledge of Wells probably knows that refraining from editorializing was something of which he was incapable, so this is very much a vision of world history through the eyes of its particular author. But Wells is a difficult man to pin down because his ideas changed from year to year: Right at the turn of the century, he advocated the genocide of all non-white races, but a handful of years later, he was reading Booker T. Washington and expressing sympathy for the plight of the American negro. He liked eugenics one minute and later rejected it. He was a member of the Fabian Society but got kicked out when he argued in favor of polygamy. G. K. Chesterton gives Wells some backhanded compliments in his book Heretics, describing him as always growing—but it’s unclear if he was really growing or simply throwing ideas against a wall to see what would stick.
If Wells had any consistent principles, they were his atheism and his belief in the goodness and inevitability of a future worldwide government. The latter appears to have been his guiding light throughout his intellectual life and the reason why he was mostly a socialist and at times (maybe) a fascist. We may take this as his religious belief, something he clung to despite all obstacles and evidence to the contrary. It is remarkable that he could study history as he did and still believe in some far-off utopia: His portrayal of the past is a catalog of folly and duplicity, yet he continued to believe that this foolish animal called man would in the future produce global unity. Therefore, despite his atheism and malleability, we may say that he was a man of deep faith.
The Outline
I begin by noting that this is the 1965 edition of this book, which includes additional chapters by G. P. Wells (H. G. Wells’s son) and Raymond Postgate, as well as some silent corrections of earlier chapters. The break between H. G. Wells’s own writing and that of his successors is obvious, and the later chapters are inferior. The book ends suddenly with no summary or denoument, but that is appropriate since history continues. I suspect a final commentary from Wells has been removed, but I have not compared this volume with earlier printings to make sure.
This book is an admirable summary and, despite some errors and outdated information, would make a great introduction to world history. I think something like this should be offered to schoolchildren: As I remember my schooling, we tended to study history in bits and pieces, looking in detail at one event and then another, so that I came away with partial, fragmentary ideas. Wells, in his two works on the subject, attempts to correct this kind of education and give an outline of the whole, which can form a sure basis for a more focused study of a particular region or era.
Notable Achievements
Wells, like many men of his day, envisions the history of the world as an intellectual development moving gradually but inevitably from primitive shamanism to Le Science, which he takes to be the pinnacle of thought. This is simplistic and offers some points of criticism, but it ensures that this short work has a coherent theme and does not become merely a history of disconnected vignettes. Also, because of his focus, and because of the time in which he wrote, he is not beholden to any niceties about cultures: A reader will note that, although Wells’s history bounces back and forth from the Middle East to Europe to China and highlights connections between, Africa south of Meroë gets ignored, as does the New World before Columbus—because, like it or not, those are regions whose role in world history as a whole was negligible.
We should also note that, in keeping with the steady changes in Wells’s ideas over time, this book does away with most (but not all) of the attempts to define people in terms of strictly delineated racial characteristics. Early on, he points out, correctly, that different groups of humans have interbred indiscriminately throughout all of history and that racial groupings are therefore approximate at best. He even argues that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals, which unless I’m mistaken was not widely accepted until more recently. Cultural prejudices do reassert themselves in later chapters, however, so he occasionally attributes certain behavioral characteristics to peoples being mongoloid or Semitic, or what have you.
Speaking as an American, I particularly enjoyed his evaluation of the growth of the United States, which he attributes (I think correctly) to the inventions of the railway and the telegraph, which gave Americans the ability to maintain a relatively homogenous culture over a large geographical area. He also points out that, despite its ideals of freedom, America’s political system quickly fell prey to corrupt machine politics, a fact that holds true to this day despite our continued attempts to deny it.
Errors
I am made to understand that, in the original version of this book, Wells referenced the Piltdown Man, which was subsequently proved a hoax. That, at least, is corrected in the version I read. The only outright error that I as a non-historian was able to find (though there are probably others) is Wells’s conflation of Darius I of Persia with the character of Darius the Mede from the Book of Daniel.
I’m not sure how he made this mistake: By the time Wells wrote this book, men of his atheistic bent already considered Daniel to have been written during the Maccabean Period and Darius the Mede to be a purely literary character, yet Wells treats Daniel as an authentic historical source and then proceeds to muddle the chronology of its contents. But even those who maintain that Daniel was written during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires do not try to identify Darius the Mede with Darius I and never have, so we must simply conclude that Wells was confused.
Aside from the one actual mistake, the book contains some outdated information that even a non-specialist like me can spot. Wells begins his story with the formation of Earth and the descent of species. In keeping with his theme of intellectual development, he tries to portray the origin of mammals as a mental change in Earth’s history, the beginning of the herd instinct that ultimately begat all our concepts of family and society. Although clever, this is no longer tenable: While Wells assumed dinosaurs were basically big lizards, we now know that many of them ran in packs or herds and cared for their young, and that some later species were more bird than reptile. Whatever mental advancements the first mammals might have introduced, herd instinct was not one of them.
Wells makes a similar claim for mental advancement with the Aryan migration. Like many men of his day, he believed the Aryan race originated in northern Europe and spread throughout all of Eurasia. Wells believed that these northern Europeans were the first men to differentiate the operations of government from the operations of the temple and therefore (in his atheistic view) offered an intellectually superior arrangement of society to that of the people they displaced. This theory, which is no longer given credence, apparently arose from the confusion of language groups with people groups; today, the Aryan migration is believed to be a much more limited movement from what is now Khazakstan into what is now northern India, something that would not have affected Eurasia as a whole.
Peculiarities
Wells’ own philosophy colors his writing most particularly in a few places.
First, his discussion of religious figures: His description of Jesus Christ, while unusual, is defensible and even shows one or two insights. His description of the Buddha, however, is indefensible: Like many Western men of the early twentieth century, he wanted to commandeer the Buddha as an emissary of Enlightenment rationalism, which he assuredly was not. His discussion there is worse than useless.
Second, his description of the Punic Wars: Perhaps from sheer bloody-mindedness, Wells castigates Rome and sympathizes with Carthage in this conflict. He avoids mentioning the Carthaginians’ human sacrifice except in a single oblique reference, perhaps because he assumes that was merely Roman propaganda. (We now know from archaeology, however, that this was not a fiction Rome invented as an excuse to destroy Carthage but a real practice.) Wells also attempts to link the animosity of ancient Rome—which he thinks is Aryan—for Carthage—which he thinks is Semitic—with modern antisemitism, a claim that is strained at best.
Third, his discussion of the Industrial Revolution: This is the part of the book that comes close to undermining Wells’s personal faith, so his rationalization is understandable. Wells was a strong believer in the inevitable advancement of humanity through science, so when he observed the inhumanity and debasement that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, he had to find some way to excuse it. He does this by proposing a “Mechanical Revolution” (a term he uses elsewhere in his writing) that existed alongside but apart from the Industrial Revolution. This Mechanical Revolution, as he sees it, was an advancement in science and engineering created by detached intellectuals who did not recognize or concern themselves with the use of their inventions in the real world, whereas the Industrial Revolution and its ills were brought about by greedy businessmen who used those inventions to grind down their fellow man with over-long work shifts, environmental pollution, unsafe conditions, and child labor.
I don’t know if historians give Wells’s theory of two simultaneous but distinct revolutions any credence, but I doubt it. I do know that the myth of the disinterested and detached scientist has been exploded—and I also know that this section of the book smells like baloney. It has a whiff of “no true Scotsman” about it, as in, “No real scientist would institute sixteen-hour workdays!”
Conclusion
As usual, I have focused on the negatives in my review, but this is an enlightening and challenging work, and it can serve as either an excellent refresher or as an introduction for someone who thinks he’s never received a good overview of history as a whole. The prominence of its author and its importance as a literary work make up for any deficiencies of content. A fast reader could relax with it in the course of an evening. A slightly slower but attentive reader could enjoy it over the course of a few days. The breadth combined with brevity makes it superb.
