WHY IS WORLD HISTORY LIKE AN ONION?

WHY IS WORLD HISTORY
LIKE AN ONION?
THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF
everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the
book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case
this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are
about to read a racist treatise, you aren't: as you will see, the answers
to the question don't involve human racial differences at all. The book's
emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back
the chain of historical causation as far as possible.
Most books that set out to recount world history concentrate on histor-
ies of literate Eurasian and North African societies. Native societies of
other parts of the world—sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Island South-
east Asia, Australia, New Guinea, the Pacific Islands—receive only brief
treatment, mainly as concerns what happened to them very late in their
history, after they were discovered and subjugated by western Europeans.
Even within Eurasia, much more space gets devoted to the history of west-
ern Eurasia than of China, India, Japan, tropical Southeast Asia, and other
eastern Eurasian societies. History before the emergence of writing around
3,000 B.C. also receives brief treatment, although it constitutes
99.9%
of
the five-million-year history of the human species.
Such narrowly focused accounts of world history suffer from three dis-
advantages. First, increasing numbers of people today are, quite under-
standably, interested in other societies besides those of western Eurasia.
After all, those "other" societies encompass most of the world's popula-
tion and the vast majority of the world's ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
groups.  Some  of them  already  are,  and  others  are  becoming,  among  the 
world's  most  powerful  economies  and  political  forces. 
Second,  even  for  people  specifically  interested  in  the  shaping  of  the 
modern  world,  a  history  limited  to  developments  since  the  emergence  of 
writing cannot provide deep understanding.  It is not the  case that  societies 
on the  different continents were comparable to each other until  3,000  B.C., 
whereupon  western  Eurasian  societies  suddenly  developed  writing  and 
began  for  the  first  time  to  pull  ahead  in  other  respects  as  well.  Instead, 
already by  3,000  B.C.,  there were Eurasian and North  African societies not
only  with  incipient  writing  but  also  with  centralized  state  governments, 
cities,  widespread  use  of  metal  tools  and  weapons,  use  of  domesticated 
animals  for  transport and traction  and mechanical power,  and reliance  on 
agriculture  and  domestic  animals  for  food.  Throughout  most  or  all  parts 
of other continents, none  of those things existed at that time; some  but not
all of them emerged later in parts of the Native Americas and sub-Saharan
Africa,  but  only  over  the  course  of  the  next  five  millennia;  and  none  of 
them  emerged  in  Aboriginal  Australia.  That  should  already  warn  us  that 
the  roots  of western  Eurasian  dominance  in  the  modern  world  lie  in  the 
preliterate past before 3,000  B.C.  (By western Eurasian dominance, I mean
the  dominance  of western  Eurasian  societies  themselves  and  of the  socie-
ties  that  they  spawned  on  other  continents.) 
Third,   a   history   focused   on   western   Eurasian   societies   completely  
bypasses  the  obvious  big question.  Why were those  societies  the  ones that
became  disproportionately  powerful  and  innovative?  The  usual  answers 
to  that  question  invoke  proximate  forces,  such  as  the  rise  of  capitalism, 
mercantilism,  scientific  inquiry,  technology,  and  nasty  germs  that  killed 
peoples of other continents when they came into contact with western Eur-
asians.  But  why  did  all  those  ingredients  of  conquest  arise  in  western 
Eurasia,  and  arise  elsewhere  only to  a  lesser  degree  or  not  at  all? 
All  those  ingredients  are  just  proximate  factors,  not  ultimate  explana-
tions.  Why  didn't  capitalism  flourish  in  Native  Mexico,  mercantilism  in 
sub-Saharan  Africa,  scientific  inquiry  in  China,  advanced  technology  in 
Native  North  America,  and  nasty  germs  in  Aboriginal  Australia?  If  one 
responds  by invoking idiosyncratic cultural  factors—e.g.,  scientific inquiry
supposedly  stifled  in  China  by  Confucianism  but  stimulated  in  western 
Eurasia  by  Greek  or  Judaeo-Christian  traditions—then  one  is  continuing 
to  ignore  the  need  for  ultimate  explanations:  why  didn't  traditions  like 
Confucianism  and  the  Judaeo-Christian  ethic  instead  develop  in  western 

Eurasia  and China,  respectively?  In addition,  one is  ignoring the fact that
Confucian   China   was   technologically   more   advanced   than   western  
Eurasia until about A.D. 1400.
It is impossible to understand even just western Eurasian societies them-
selves,  if one  focuses  on  them.  The  interesting  questions  concern  the  dis-
tinctions  between  them  and  other  societies.  Answering  those  questions 
requires us to understand all those other societies as well, so that western
Eurasian societies can  be fitted into the broader context.
Some  readers  may  feel  that  I  am  going  to  the  opposite  extreme  from 
conventional  histories,  by  devoting  too  little  space  to  western  Eurasia  at 
the  expense  of other parts  of the world.  I would  answer that  some  other 
parts  of the world are  very  instructive,  because  they encompass  so  many 
societies and such diverse societies within a small geographical area. Other
readers may find themselves agreeing with one reviewer of this book. With
mildly  critical  tongue  in  cheek,  the  reviewer  wrote  that  I  seem  to  view 
world history as an onion, of which the modern world constitutes only the
surface, and whose layers are to be peeled back in the search for historical
understanding. Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling
back  of the  onion's  layers  is  fascinating,  challenging—and  of overwhelm-
ing importance to  us today, as we  seek to grasp our past's lessons for our
future.