My interest in this book was sparked by two questions that have been bothering me for over a decade:
1. How come Asian territories couldn’t hold on to their power in the end despite being the world’s power center for thousands of years?
2. Among the scattered and relatively unsophisticated peoples inhabiting the western parts of the Eurasian Landmass, what prompted an unstoppable process of economic development and technological innovation that led to its steady rise as a world leader in military and commercial matters?
As it turned out, this book was exactly what I needed.
Kennedy has a rather pessimistic view of the rise and fall of great powers that might demoralize you. But, in retrospect, that’s the whole point. It is the complexity of matters that keeps us hopeful. For instance, he noted that poor communication due to the extreme climate hindered the Soviet Union’s rise to power in the pre-industrial era. But, it was precisely that reason why they were able to defeat Nazi Germany. As they say, what goes around comes around.
Investing time in a non-fiction book is becoming increasingly challenging. A lot of books are badly written, mostly because the ideas they contain are worth no more than a blog post. They start with an interesting idea but never finish their fundamental theses. This book is a clear exception. Kennedy skillfully manages to keep everything consistent and moving forward at a decent and a constant pace without unnecessarily sticking to a particular subject for too long. Despite the complexity of this type of text, the author’s writing style makes the book read like a novel.
True – the author has struggled to predict the future, especially when it comes to the rise of the Soviet Union at the end of the book. But, as a historian this does not, in any way, discredit his work.
Great books are “generous time machines” in the way that they provide a “tunnel” for us to walk through someone else’s life’s work in the matter of days.
And this book is exactly that — well researched and brilliantly executed.
