History as should be taught

What do you do when you have a question google can't answer? Go to quora? Yahoo Answers?

In our small group of friends, we never had to rely on the replies of an unknown genius far far away. We have our own HRH to answer stuff for us.

My friend recently had an itch of curiosity. And for answers, he did what we all have always done since we learned to frame questions.

He approached HRH.

Y: All hail HRH!!

If HRH would, in all his majesty, look at this map, I have a few questions that need drops of your knowledge.

--Who exactly were Dravidians?

--This doesn't seem to be population weighted, is it power weighted? If yes, how is 'power' defined?

-- Who were the Assyrians?

-- The map shows Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrian, Persians, Roman, Arab, Christians, Mongolians, English-French and Americans as powerful, but never once Indians. Historically, there was only 1 great empire at a time, last 500 years and there's never been a monoply, which puts US's latest power into perspective. What are your thoughts on that?

HRH: Live happily my dear peasant. You shall reap the rich fruits of your inquiries here, and be satisfied:

Dravidians

Dravidians are the speakers of Dravidian (South-Indian) languages, which form a different language family. Their origins are still not clear but this much is agreed that they have inhabited the Indian subcontinent for longer than Indo-Aryans (branch of Indo-Europeans who came to India during 1800-1500 BCE and settled across north India). Some people suggest that Harrapans (who were settled in Indus valley from 3300-1800 BCE) were also Dravidians and got pushed to the south because of environmental reasons or coming of Indo-Aryans from the north-west or something else. But this is still debated. Over the course of time, Dravidian languages have got significantly influenced by the Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit. Dravidian languages have very rich literary tradition. For example, Tamil literature spans 2000 years whereas most of Hindi/Hindustani/Urdu literature is only 300 year old. Of course, we have much older Sanskrit literature but then it was never a language of masses.

Assyrians

It’s hard to explain any historical concept in isolation. Nevertheless, I can give it a try.

If we put aside East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia) for time being, around 2500 BCE major civilizations in Eurasia and Northern Africa were those of Sumerians (in south Iraq), Harappans (Indus valley) and Egyptians. During 2500-2000 BCE two major groups of tribal people, namely Semitic and Indo-Europeans, displaced/subjugated/absorbed these societies. If we discount the Turkic and Mongol (both having East Asian origin) hegemony during medieval times, these two groups have dominated the region to this day.

Here is a bit more about Semitic and Indo-European linguistic groups:

Today Semitic people include Hebrews (almost all are Jews) and Arabs (mostly Muslim but not all) and are settled around North Africa and West Asia. Jews were pretty widespread across Europe, but as it has happened, most of them are back to their base in Israel. Anyway, point is Arabic and Hebrew are part of same language family.

Indo-Europeans include:

Asia: Kurds (North Iraq), Iranians, Tajiks, Afghans, Balochs, Kashmiris, Punjabi, Sindhi, Rajasthani, Gujarati .... Bengali, Assamese

Europe: Almost all Europeans with dominant groups being Germanic, Latin and Slavs.

There is a geographical discontinuity between the regions inhabited by European branch and Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-Europeans because of Turkification of Anatolia (now called Turkey) and Central Asia during medieval times. Turks, as mentioned earlier, were from East Asia.

Persian and Urdu have very similar script to that of Arabic and also share considerable vocabulary with it but they are part of different language family. Arabic is a Semitic language whereas Persian and Urdu are Indo-European. Similarly, Turkish has both influenced and got influenced from Indo-European and Semitic languages, but is part of an entirely different family.

Idea of discussing spatial distribution and dynamics of language is that it embodies within itself a great deal of history. Moreover, linguistic influence is a good marker of wider cultural exchanges taking place.

Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians (I like their names! :P)  empires were established by Semitic groups whose relative influence rose and fell in the region of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel & Jordan) during 2400-500 BCE.

Together Mesopotamia and Levant forms the Fertile Crescent. Agricultural fertility supported many ancient societies in the region and is thus called as 'cradle of civilizations'. This region has been the first to saw the advent of agriculture (10000 BCE) and also development of writing (3000 BCE), which in my opinion are the first two of the four great revolutions that has shaped humanity. Other two being: Industrial Revolution and Information Revolution.

After the decline of non-Semitic group of Sumerians in South Mesopotamia, Akkadians built the first Semitic empire (2400-2100 BCE) in the region. Then Babylonians became powerful for some time and finally Assyrians rose to prominence around 1300 BCE in Upper Mesopotamia and are credited with inaugurating the 'age of empires'. They were the first one to maintain standing army and developed elaborate administrative apparatus for collecting taxes, essential to maintain an empire. They were real badass and quite unpopular among people (as suggested by biblical texts). Subsequently, Assyrian empire was destroyed by the west-ward expansion of Persians (who were of Indo-European stock) around 600 BCE.

Persians (first under Median and then Achaemenid empire) dominated West Asia, in addition to Persia (or Iran, their homeland), from 600 BCE to 300 BCE and were even trying to subjugate the Greeks across the Aegean Sea. They were not Muslims back then. Islamization of Iran happened in 7th century CE.

Remember 300 and Persian war with Athens and Sparta? The movie exemplifies Eurocentric historiography by romanticizing Spartans and portraying Persians in bad light. Historically speaking commoners were much better-off under Persians than Greeks. Greeks had a huge slavery problem. This is a good example how history is often twisted by the powerful group to suit their narrative. In the movie, Greeks are portrayed as Americans of the classical age, torchbearers of "freedom".

At their greatest extent Achaemenid Empire stretched from Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River. But then Alexander crushed it in 330 BCE. And it goes on like this!

Meanwhile, after the decline of urbanism with Harappans in Indus valley around 2000 BCE and inflow of Indo-European tribal during 1800-1500 BCE, India was first dominated by pastoralists in upper Ganga valley (1500-1000 BCE) and then agriculturists in middle Ganga valley (1000-500 BCE). Second wave of urbanism in India started in 500 BCE with rise of Magadha and other provinces across north India and centred on middle Ganga valley. First major empire rose in India around 300 BCE under Mauryas, after Alexander had already destroyed the Persian Empire.

Map

This map was made during a time when Euro-centrism was quite dominant. As a result, European and West-Asian (as it was the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and there was relatively more knowledge of this region because of geographical proximity) societies have been assigned disproportionate power. Moreover, there was not much research done about the history of East Asia and South Asian history was often seen through colonial lens. In spite of its shortcomings, it gets few things right. As shown in the chart, Chinese and Indian civilizations are the only ones having an unbreakable presence.

From the following figure, which is based on a more objective and measurable parameter, it’s clear that as a unit China and India dominated world economy and trade from 1-1700 CE.

But that was because India and China had substantial proportion of world population throughout history, as it is today. However, unlike today, there was no large scale disparity in per capita income around the world. And that made India and China very powerful as a unit. Pre-eminence of India and China was probably because of vast cultivable land that is available, and before Industrial revolution economy was largely dependent on agriculture. However, India and China were also major producers of industrial goods too. Mughal Empire in 1700 CE produced 25% of global output.

Economy should be the major component of assigning power. You can judge it by anything like degree of urbanism, composition of workforce, share of world trade, share of world GDP etc. And all these parameter will put China and India as major power blocks historically.

My thought on the histomap is that the cartographer tried to represent a very subjective concept such as power and that too without providing any information on what parameters he used to judge it. However, it does give an overview.


Missing monopoly in modern times

I guess there is no dominant power during last 500 years in the chart because we know lot more about modern history of different empires and political units. Consequently, the cartographer had to accommodate a lot of comparable groups for the modern times which don’t leave room for anyone to dominate. On the other hand, for medieval and ancient time, little is known about some regions and groups. This seems to have resulted in the empires which have been well researched being assigned a lot more weight.

Current Hegemony

As far as most powerful group today is considered, here is what I noticed going through Human Development Report last year: In top 23 countries according to HDI, 17 are the ones where mother-tongue of majority is a Germanic language (English, German, Dutch, Swedish etc.). Moreover, there are only 17 Germanic nations in the world. That means there is no Germanic country in the remaining 164 countries (a total 187 were considered). And of course this is very much visible. Their share in major industrial, financial, educational, and cultural institutions is disproportionately high. Therefore, I would say that since last 300 years, most powerful group is that of North Europeans and not US or UK. And this is probably because they were pioneers of Protestantism, capitalism and were the first to capitalize on the benefits of public education.

Now, power of a political unit doesn't make much sense to me. Notion of power should be connected to how much control an average person feels over his life. And this power can be derived from income, education and health. Since these are the exact variables that go into HDI, I think thats the best measure of power we have at present. Countries such as India, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. can be thought as reasonably powerful but that is because of large population/geographic/natural-resource base. Power of a political unit may make some sense to ruling elite but it has no significance for an individual. When we get down to per capita power, South Asians are almost at the bottom today. Maybe better than 10-15% of world population at best.

It seems, only people who are putting up a challenge to the Germanics are the East Asians, both at an individual and block level.

R : But O mighty HRH, hear my opinion. 

Correlation does not imply causation. That Germanic languages are in the list of top countries by HDI is an interesting observation, but to say that the 'Germanic' people are the current power group will not be correct. The power groups are dominated by trade, and as a result all Western European countries are there (thanks to colonialism). The other major groups I saw in the list are the Arabs (Oil power), and South Korea, Japan and Singapore (Tiger and Tiger Cub economies). And the wikipedia page mentions Afrikaans as another Germanic language, but I don't see any African countries in the list.

Clear my doubts as well, O modern sage, and let us bath in your wisdom.

HRH: Hear me O peasant, lest you return unpacified

Afrikaans is a mischievous name. Dutch settlers in South Africa named the variety of Dutch language they spoke there as Afrikaans!!! It is spoken by less than 15% of South African population and hardly anywhere else. So that doesn't count as South Africa is not a majority Germanic nation.

You are right about causation and correlation. It’s difficult at times to differentiate the two. It’s hard to say what exactly make Germanic people so advanced. But the figures to support the case are hard to ignore. I am not saying they are advanced because of their language. But their pre-eminence does suggest that they share certain historical or cultural advantage which has enabled them to be so. Moreover, it would be too simplistic to assign colonialism as its only cause. Except UK and Netherlands, no other Germanic country such as Germany, Sweden, Norway or even US had vast colonial empires. French, Spanish and Portuguese on the other hand ruled over much larger territories but in EU today, they are the underdogs. Therefore, as you correctly pointed out, trade (Dutch) and technology (US, Germany) seems to be some of the factors which have contributed to Germanic success other than colonialism (which itself was made possible because of superior technology). Dutch for example, found the first multinational corporation in 1602 (Dutch East India Company, most badass corporation ever! And yes, its older than Taj Mahal and Red Fort!) financed by shares traded on stock exchange. India is yet to have that sort of financial maturity.

South Koreans developed because of huge investment in public education. They were poorer than many African countries and had almost no natural resources 60 years back. Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau because of facilitating trade, which was in turn was facilitated by a highly literate population. Japan probably because of their strong commitment to work and investment in education and technology. China seems to working on similar ideas. Arabs on the other hand just got lucky! They may be rich but still lag on many other parameters. Had there been no oil I don’t think they could have done better than Sub-Saharan Africans as Indian ocean trade, which was their economic mainstay, had been was taken over by the Europeans. So education it seems to be the common thread running through these success stories which can enable a nation to advance even in the absence of colonies and natural resources.

And the reason why South Asia is backward, and most probably going to be so in foreseeable future, is mostly because there is hardly any political will to deliver quality education to everyone, which is essential to develop technology, facilitate trade and for almost everything. Here are priorities of government of a supposedly better off state in India during last 2-3 months:

Gita Lessons to be Included in School Syllabus: Haryana CM
RSS ideologue part of Haryana education panel
Haryana plans to flow water in ancient Saraswati riverbed
Acharyakulams to be opened across Haryana

And if you read the research articles by current Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research, you will think he must be trolling.

To know more about the awesomeness of the Dutch East India Company, check this youtube video

R and Y: We announce ourselves well satisfied. All hail the mighty sage, the omniscient, HRH!!