Civilizations - Softcover

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe

3.89

365 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330487981 ISBN 13: 9780330487986

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 2001

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Felipe Fernandez-Armesto closely examines the world's societies, from the maritime civilizations of the Polynesians to the Dawada people of the Sahara. It is here that the author seeks the birth of civilization as we know it. Instead of stopping off at the usual cultural tourist spots of Imperial Rome, Enlightenment Paris and Renaissance Florence, Fernandez-Armesto takes us to unfamiliar territories that redefine our understanding of what it is to be civilized.The whole book is crammed with wonderfully anecdotal historical tales, shrewd insights and engaging arguments. In Civilizations Felipe Fernadez-Armesto has written an uniquely challenging and controversial work that shows us not just who we are, but also why we are. 'Fernandez-Armesto is a superb storyteller, with a barrel-full of anecdotes and a language as finely textured as any novelist's' Independent on Sunday

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Review:

"Civilization" is a tricky term, one that means many things to many people. For some, it denotes great buildings, canals, codes of law; for others, it offers a contrast between one group and another, with the advantage always going to the more "civilized" bunch against the "barbaric," "savage," or "primitive."

All such distinctions, writes Oxford University historian Felipe Fern�ndez-Armesto, are arbitrary and laden with subjective value; they speak to unscientific notions of progress, to hidden agendas. What matters, he continues, is the extent to which a culture has developed means to separate itself from nature: "Civilization makes its own habitat. It is civilized in direct proportion to its distance, its difference from the unmodified natural environment." A culture such as the ancient Han Chinese, the medieval highland Maya, or the Renaissance Venetian, then, is highly civilized inasmuch as its members dammed and diverted rivers, drained lakes, stripped forests, and built monumental structures to celebrate their achievements; people content or resigned to "live off the product and inhabit the spaces nature gives them" are markedly less so by virtue of that accommodation.

No culture, Fern�ndez-Armesto writes, is inherently exempt from becoming civilized; nor, he adds, does "civilized" equate to "good." In exploring history as a branch of historical ecology, he sometimes abandons his thesis, intriguing and provocative as it is, to engage in a wide-ranging survey of the world past reminiscent of (but much better-written than) Toynbee and Durant, touching on the ancient Greeks here, the herding peoples of the African savanna and Central Asia there, the Moundbuilders of prehistoric North America and the hunting peoples of the Arctic there. Unlike many standard textbooks, his narrative manages to offer something new wherever he turns. Allusive and learned, his book repays close reading--and should inspire plenty of argument along the way. -- Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO is a Professorial Fellow in History and Geography at Queen Mary College, London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University. He is the author of ten books and the editor of several more, including the Times Atlas of World Explorations. He is a frequent journalist and has presented Analysis on BBC Radio 4.

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