A Short History of the World (39 page)

1.
(Old Stone) phase
: Scientists have more recently added a bridging period of small stone tools and greater settlement called the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age).

2.
Neolithic level
: By modern reckoning, agricultural settlement began around 9000
BC
in the ‘Fertile Crescent' between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, then spread slowly to other areas.

3.
Sir J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough: The Golden Bough
is the best-known work by the classical scholar James George Frazer (1854–1941). It appeared in 1890, was later expanded to twelve volumes and in 1922 appeared in an abridged edition for the general reader. The book is probably best remembered today for its influence on T. S. Eliot's landmark modern poem,
The Waste Land
(1922).

4.
Elliot Smith and Rivers
: George Elliot Smith (1871–1937), Australian anatomist and ethnologist; W. H. R. Rivers (1864–1922), British medical psychologist and anthropologist.

1.
main mass of humanity
: Few people today would accept that there are safe criteria for judging different races as ‘of various value'. Modern scientists, having found race to be a comparatively superficial aspect of human biology, would endorse Wells's well-informed warnings in the third paragraph of this chapter.

1.
the great history of Egypt was beginning
: These first cities are now dated to around 3500
BC.

1.
favourable regions of India and China
: From around 3500
BC
towns were indeed appearing in east and north-east China and the Indus Valley.

2.
to the Mediterranean Sea
: Sargon's conquests took place between 2400 and 2350
BC.
One of the most engaging characters in Wells's later fiction, Albert Preemby in
Christina Alberta's Father
(1925), becomes convinced during a seance that he is a reincarnation of Sargon, with highly unfortunate consequences.

3.
yet known to history
: Hammurabi's laws are now dated nearer to 1750
BC.

1.
still remains to be deciphered
: The Linear B system of writing at Knossos was eventually deciphered in 1952. It proved to be an early dialect of Greek, showing, in contradiction to the notion current in Wells's day, that the Mycenaean culture was after all produced by forebears of the Greeks. As of 2005, the Linear A script has yet to be deciphered.

1.
New Assyrian Empire
: By modern reckoning, Tiglath Pileser III came to power in 744
BC
and claimed the kingship of Babylon in 729
BC
.

2.
blood and iron
: The Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) used the phrase ‘blood and iron' in speeches of 1862 and 1886, referring to the military force a nation-state requires to achieve its goals.

3.
Mesopotamia or Egypt
: We are now aware of India's ‘Harappan' culture, which by 2250
BC
seems to have been the equal of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

1.
Nordic race
: Partly due to its perversion by Nazi Germany, this use of the term ‘Aryan' has been abandoned by modern anthropologists. The ‘race' which Wells describes is now treated as several different ethnic groups, though with a shared language history, and the term Aryan is applied solely to that group which conquered India.

1.
God has numbered
…
to the Medes and Persians
: The quotations are adapted from Daniel 5:25–28.

1.
hardship, adventure and oppression
: Wells believed that modern civilization needed an equivalent to the Bible, a constantly updated set of texts which would set out a consensus view of our core knowledge and ideas, supplying a ‘framework for the thoughts and imaginations of every citizen in the world' (
The Salvaging of Civilization
(1921)). He regarded his own historical writing as a pilot project towards this end.

2.
harnessed our race
: As early as 1896, in an article entitled ‘Human Evolution, an Artificial Process', Wells had hailed the Hebrew prophets as the forerunners of modern ‘eccentric and innovating people, playwrights, novelists, preachers, poets,
journalists, and political reasoners and speakers', a group which implicitly included Wells himself.

1.
about 960
BC
: Solomon is now thought to have reigned from about 965 to 925
BC
.

2.
as Milton composed Paradise Lost
: John Milton (1608–74) began to compose the Christian epic poem
Paradise Lost
some time after 1652 when he became completely blind. Wells respected Milton as a militant republican and defender of free speech, quoting him at considerable length in
The Salvaging of Civilization
(1921).

1.
better than any existing community
: Wells himself was a leading advocate and practitioner of Utopian thinking, most notably in
A Modern Utopia
(1905).

1.
Professor Mahaffy
: Sir John Mahaffy (1839–1919), Professor of Ancient History at Trinity College, Dublin, wrote several studies of Ancient Greece.

1.
in the sixth century
BC
: Gautama lived from around 563 to 483
BC
.

2.
Nautch dance
: A traditional performance by professional female dancers.

3.
canopy of the skies
: Wells took this quotation, attributed to the ‘Burmese Chronicle', from the writings of T. W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922), Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature at University College London, 1882–1912.

1.
Madras… Kalinga
(255
BC
): Asoka ruled from about 273 to 232
BC
, and invaded Kalinga in about 261
BC
.

2.
resumed their sway
: A number of Indians marched through
London in 1923, carrying a banner which read ‘Down with H. G. Wells' Short History of the World'. This may well be one of the passages which offended them.

1.
sixth century
BC
: Confucius lived 551–479
BC
; Lao Tse's dates are unknown.

2.
Shang… Chow
: By modern reckoning, the Shang dynasty ended in 1028
BC
, the Zhou dynasty (the currently accepted spelling) succeeding it from 1027 to 256
BC
.

1.
over against
: near.

1.
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, SPQR, the elder Cato, the Scipios
: The
Lays of Ancient Rome
(1842), a highly popular collection of poems about Roman history by the journalist, politician, administrator and historian Thomas Macaulay (1800–59); SPQR, an abbreviation of ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus' (the Senate and People of Rome); Cato the Elder (234–149
BC
), a conservative Roman statesman who campaigned for the destruction of Carthage; Scipio Africanus (236–c. 183
BC
), Roman general who defeated Carthage, and Scipio Aemilianus (185–129
BC
), his adopted grandson, famed both as a general and a patron of the arts.

1.
British Peace in India
: Having been taken over by stages during the nineteenth century, India remained under British control until 1947.

1.
parable of the Good Samaritan… parable of the labourers… parable of the buried talent… incident of the widow's mite
: These teachings of Jesus may be found, respectively, in Luke
10:30–37, Matthew 20:1–16, Matthew 25:14–30 and Luke 21:1–4.

2.
While he yet talked… and mother
: Wells's quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James ‘Authorized Version' of 1611.

1.
oldest mosque in the world
: The Huaisheng mosque (dated from 627) still exists in Canton, a city usually known today as Guangzhou.

1.
634
: Modern reckoning places the battle of Yarmuk in 636.

2.
Spain was invaded in 710… 672 and 718
: The invasion of Spain is now placed in 711 and the sea attacks on Constantinople between 674 and 717.

1.
grows with what it feeds upon
: Cf. Shakespeare's
Hamlet
: ‘Why, she would hang on him / As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on' (I.ii. 143–5).

2.
Franciscans… Marseilles
: The Franciscans were later reinstated and today constitute the largest Roman Catholic religious order, noted for its social and missionary work.

1.
able writer
: It has not been possible to trace the ‘able writer' cited here. Most later authors who have used the phrase seem to have taken it from Wells.

2.
J. H. Robinson
: James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) was a leading practitioner of the ‘New History' in America, which focused less on past political events than on past social, scientific and intellectual developments and how these might help our understanding of contemporary problems. Wells contributed an introduction to the 1923 revision of Robinson's book
The Mind in the Making
(1921).

1.
Jengis Khan… Kieff
: Some of Wells's dates in this paragraph vary slightly from modern reckoning. The war of Jengis (or Genghis) Khan against the Kin (Jin) Empire is now dated from 1211, and the capture of Pekin (Beijing) is placed in 1215. The invasion of Russia is dated at 1237; Kieff is today known as Kiev.

2.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
: Edward Gibbon (1737–94) produced his classic account of the Roman Empire in five volumes from 1776 to 1788. John Bagnell Bury (1861–1927) was a leading British historian who edited Gibbon's history in an edition published between 1896 and 1900.

3.
1505
: 1515.

1.
Lucretius
: Roman philosopher of the first century
AD
. His long poem
On the Nature of Things
puts forward a materialist view of the universe as composed of atoms, and denounces religion as a source of evil and misery.

2.
Wisby
: Visby is the capital of Gotland in south-east Sweden. In the medieval period it was an independent republic and prominent trading centre, but declined after 1280 owing to civil unrest and to attacks from Sweden and Denmark.

3.
burthen
: Refrain, leading idea.

4.
cum impetu inaestimabile
: With incalculable speed.

5.
scythed
: With blades attached to the wheels.

6.
second century
BC
: The earliest known form of paper was developed in
AD
105 by a Chinese official called Ts'ai Lun.

1.
Prescott
: William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859), American historian, best known for his accounts of the European conquests of Mexico and Peru. In 1857 he edited
The History of the Reign of Charles V
(1796) by the Scottish churchman and historian William Robertson (1721–93).

2.
jour maigre
: Meatless day.

3.
catafalque
: A decorated, tomb-like construction used to carry a coffin or effigy.

1.
Dr Gilbert… New Atlantis
: William Gilbert's
De magnete
(1600) was the first major English book of science. Gilbert invented the term ‘electricity' and proposed that electricity and magnetism might be products of a single force. Bacon wrote
The New Atlantis
, an unfinished story, around 1624. It was published in Latin in 1627, in English in 1629.

2.
faience
: Glazed coloured earthenware.

3.
Voltaire's Candide: Candide, or Optimism
(1759) by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) is a wide-ranging satire on human folly and complacency. Wells was a lifelong admirer of the book and dedicated his 1928 satirical novel
Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island
‘to the Immortal Memory of CANDIDE'.