Fairy Tales, Patriotism and the Nation State: The Rise of the Modern West and the Response of the World

Update for readers of Fairy Tales

This text argues that the big story of the last 500 years is that  a) with unprecedented new power, the West explored and then came to dominate the non-western world; and then  b) the rest of the world fought back to win its independence, though in part by borrowing some of that new western power.  These are the two halves of the text, which might also be used for a modern western civ class that wanted to tilt a bit in the direction of world history.  For the first half, what a casual observer sees first is technology, and the first chapter is indeed on the rise of European technology from 1300-1900.  But the deeper power came from the world of ideas that changed human motivation.  The next three chapters explore political nationalism as it emerged in the Enlightenment and French Revolution, cultural nationalism as it emerged from the Romantic Age in the Germanies, and socialism as it emerged from the Romantic Age in Russia.  These three chapters also give the main background of European history down to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Three smaller European national experiences then show how political and cultural nationalism and socialism worked out there (in the context of the force field of great power politics).

The more innovative half of the book comes with the last seven chapters, one each on how western challenge and local response it played out on a key transportation corridor of each major region of the world (two for East Asia):

             – Latin America’s Veracruz-to-Mexico City corridor of Mexico;

             – The Mideast’s the Damascus-south-to-Aqaba and the Nile Delta corridor

             – Africa’s Durban-to-Johannesburg and Pretoria corridor of South Africa

             – South Asia’s Grand Trunk Road corridor of India and Pakistan

             – Southeast Asia’s Java Roads corridor from Jakarta to Surabaya of Indonesia

             – East Asia’s Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) corridor of China

             – East Asia’s Nakasendo/Tokaido corridor from Tokyo to Kyoto of Japan

It’s regional history in microcosm – sometimes more, sometimes less representative of the whole region, but in greater depth and keeping history more on a personal scale.  Every chapter begins with a nod to area language(s), and then spends somewhat more time exploring the topography and texture of the land (the stage set on which the history played out).  Pre- and early history are quickly surveyed, slowing down somewhat around 1500 and even more around 1800.  Every chapter has a matching Google Earth folder of literally hundreds of points, lines, areas and image overlays; footnotes in the text refer to matching layer numbers in the Google Earth folders.  So the text itself has not single picture, chart, map or scrap of color – but it is all done more engagingly in Google Earth, to which your students should take as ducks to water.  “Read, travel, read, travel, and repeat,” goes a famous formula for cultural education.  Though virtual travel will never replace the real thing, Google Earth’s embedded Panoramio and Cities 360 photos icons, plus the effortless 3-D-ness of its navigation, make much of that “read, travel” feedback possible.   It’s the first modern world history text that really integrates GIS.  Worth a shot?