About the Book
A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: The Times/Sunday Times, Observer, Economist, Guardian, BBC History Magazine, i-paper, Novara Media and History Today
'Quinn has done a lot more than reinvent the wheel. What we have here is a truly encyclopaedic and monumental account of the ancient world' THE TIMES
'One of the most fascinating and important works of global history to appear for many years' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn’t true?
In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. So much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate ‘civilisations’.
Moving from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, How the World Made the West reveals a new narrative: one that traces the millennia of global encounters and exchange that built what is now called the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. From the creation of the alphabet by Levantine workers in Egypt, who in a foreign land were prompted to write things down in their own language for the first time, to the arrival of Indian numbers in Europe via the Arab world, Quinn makes the case that understanding societies in isolation is both out-of-date and wrong. It is contact and connections, rather than solitary civilisations, that drive historical change. It is not peoples that make history – people do.
'A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination' RORY STEWART
'Bold, beautifully written and filled with insights . . . Extraordinary' PETER FRANKOPAN
About the Author :
Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, the first woman to hold this Chair. She has degrees from Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, has taught in America, Italy and at Oxford, and co-directed the Tunisian–British archaeological excavations at Utica. She is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, as well as to radio and television programmes. She is the author of one previous book, the award-winning In Search of the Phoenicians.
Review :
Quinn keeps the revelations coming at a fair lick . . . Quinn has done a lot more than reinvent the wheel. What we have here is a truly encyclopaedic and monumental account of the ancient world. In 400 crisp pages, 30 societies are paraded before us with comparative reflection and world-weary wit. Better still, Quinn’s book is polemical. These days, far too many academic historians worship at the altar of nuance rather than argument, with the result that the reader closes the book not with a spirit of contentment, but rather with a question: so what? Not here
The book is rich in marvellous detail, and succeeds in making the pre-classical world come to life . . . Full of little gem-like shifts of perspective . . . Most of all, the book triumphs as a brilliant and learned challenge to modern western chauvinism
Quinn demolishes the underlying concept of what she calls “civilisational thinking”. Her argument is simple, persuasive and deserving of attention . . . A brisk, scholarly romp across the arc of European history . . . This retelling of the West’s story scintillates with its focus on the unexpected and on the interstices between realms and eras rather than on history’s big, solid bits. But it is also an admirable work of scholarship . . . Even seasoned history buffs will find much that is new and fascinating. How the World Made the West joins a growing sub-canon of works that explores the broad sweep of history using new intellectual framings, such as Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (2011), Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads (2015) and Fall of Civilisations . . . Whoever thought history was passé could not be more wrong
The evidence Quinn has accumulated is rich in arresting detail and she delivers it with engaging gusto . . . Quinn is acutely alive to the ways in which the remote past can serve modern political uses . . . An immense achievement
Quinn’s purpose is to dethrone the “privileged connection” between the ancient Greeks and Romans and the modern west, and focus instead on the millennia of interaction with other cultures . . . Quinn pursues this claim with an impressive display of rigorous scholarship lightly worn, successfully covering a huge amount of material
How the World Made the West has plenty of myths about the ancient world to dispel . . . Show[s] that progress in the ancient world and beyond was driven by connections between peoples and places rather than by discrete cultural centres (namely Greece and Rome) . . . The vicissitudes in each centre’s fortunes make for a dynamic narrative, as cities that were once great are swept away, and new ones spring up in their wake . . . It is one of the strengths of How the World Made the West that it forces us to think outside the usual parameters of antiquity
A broader view of antiquity, and indeed of the Middle Ages, is required. Quinn is the right person to provide it . . . Quinn is admirably thought-provoking and deploys plenty of fascinating evidence, based on the latest discoveries . . . This is a very readable book, whose lively and original ideas should stimulate plenty of debate
Quinn brings archaeology, DNA analysis and history together to show how such dividing lines mislead us about an ancient world defined by connections, both peaceful and violent . . . Each chapter’s excellent map helps to keep such journeys in perspective . . . It is extremely impressive to follow the dynamic flow and breadth of her narrative . . . A masterfully woven story
A revelatory account of how the ancient world was much wider and more interconnected than traditionally thought - and the lessons that holds for today
Astounding . . . Both erudite and witty, sweeping and granular, this book is revisionist history at its best
An ambitious, fast-moving history of the premodern world that sheds light on an array of people and languages . . . This is, in every way, a big book . . . Urgent and timely
How the World Made the West ranges far and wide, both geographically and chronologically . . . It begins in the eastern Mediterranean 4,000 years ago and ends with the Black Death in the 14th century, covering the intervening span of history with lucidity, erudition and breadth of vision
Sensational ... Reading it, one begins to grasp the true debt the West owes "the rest"
Incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging, it connects disparate parts of the ancient world with dazzling shafts of insight and intuition, held together by vast scholarship, elegant prose and an enviable lightness of touch. It is not just revelatory, it is also hugely important, completely reframing our conception of the Western classical world as something whose influences and inspirations stretch far beyond 'Mare Nostrum', allowing us to understand just how globalised and interconnected mankind has always been
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
An eye-popping, mind-blowing, ground-breaking juggernaut of an argument, from a writer ready to roar
Erudite, inventive, playful – a work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination
No one but Josephine Quinn could have written a book like this - a book of enormous erudition and curiosity; a book that teaches you something new on almost every page. With a sense of growing political urgency, How the World Made the West reveals the folly of civilisational thinking. In its place, Quinn traces the many entangled paths of art, commerce, religion, and language, forging a deeper and truer understanding of our common world
A masterpiece that gives us a new lens to understand 4,000 years of history
This book – full of memorable stories – is nothing less than a reorientation of the history of “the West.” Josephine Quinn persuasively shows that the mingling of cultures through trade and migration is as old as civilisation itself, breaking down the hackneyed idea of the uniqueness of the Greco-Roman world . . . This is a book to unite us in divided times
Josephine Quinn is one of the few scholars writing today who could possibly present such a masterful sweeping overview as an accessible and compelling story . . . A marvelous, majestic book. This will be an instant classic
Jo Quinn gives us a fascinating insight into the entanglements that have driven change in our collective past: the journeys, meetings, relationships and exchanges that, more than anything else, have helped shape our world today. It is a brilliant reminder that our human story is – and always will be – empty if we don’t acknowledge the ways in which we have constantly interacted with, and depended on, one another
