Who is Martin Puchner, whose book boldly asserts that it’s “a new world history”? Is it even possible to traverse, in a single volume, the evolution of cultures during the human history of the world? No.
Puchner, a German-born comparative English literature professor at Harvard University, makes a valiant attempt, but he ignores, for instance, the systematic suppression of the native tribes of his adopted land, as well as its slave trade. He also bypasses the colonial process that ravaged the people and cultures of Australasia and the Pacific. So let’s leave “world” out of it.
However, Puchner is a respected academic writer, whose book The Language of Thieves, about his Nazi-sympathising grandfather, was well received. So, if you can accept that Culture is selective, it is an enriching and educational account. A warning, though: Puchner’s writing style can be dry and the complexity of details challenging. It’s a book best absorbed slowly.
His thesis rests on a range of pivotal periods in history when various cultures and beliefs intersected. He frames these events as bridges, when unique systems of communication, expression and knowledge “storage” (books, art, theatre, libraries) crossed over into other societies, then generated into new forms. He argues that culture is not owned by groups, nations or religions. “Culture is a huge recycling project.”
The book opens in the Chauvet Cave in France where drawings and symbols made by people dating back 37,000 years were discovered in 1994, long protected by landslides. Human intervention at any earlier period, he says, would probably have destroyed these fragile treasures.
The grave robbers of Egypt are a case in point, with most sites around the ancient city of Thebes (Luxor) heavily looted. Puchner’s chapter on the discovery of the bust of Queen Nefertiti by an archaeologist in 1912 is genuinely exciting because, unusually, the brightly coloured objects in the room where the bust was discovered had been protected by debris for more than 3000 years. But after its discovery, Nefertiti’s bust left home. It is now displayed in a Berlin museum, part of a long legacy of European cultural looting that spread like a curse across the world.
Another chapter surveys the Athenian tradition of oral storytelling, leading into the emergence of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato and the contentious arts of writing and philosophical exploration. Plato’s visions of simulated reality remain so timeless they live on – in Hollywood, of all places. Watch The Truman Show and The Matrix with new eyes.
Culture moves along – slowly – through periods that include a cruel Muslim ruler in Delhi c1356 who discovered a giant engraved stone pillar while out hunting elephants; a small ivory statue from India hidden in the ruins of Pompeii; Xuanzang, a great 7th century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim-traveller who appears on more than one occasion; and Sei Shōnagon, a Japanese lady-in-waiting who recorded 10th century courtly life in Kyoto in a diary called The Pillow Book.
Baghdad’s origins are hailed for its 9th century pre-eminence as a “Storehouse of Wisdom”, a medieval city of learning that borrowed heavily from the writings of Aristotle. Puchner’s section on the Ethiopian city of Aksum, home to the Old Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, is vividly told, linking the church’s early Christian origins to the slave trade between west Africa and the Caribbean and the rise of Rastafarianism in Jamaica.
When the British arrived in Ethiopia in 1868, Puchner notes, they plundered the treasures of Aksum, displaying “a general dismissal of African cultural history that continues to this day”. The following chapters confirm this trend, which extended to the legendary Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, brutally destroyed by the Spanish visiting in “floating castles” in 1521.
Puchner’s account of the origins of Haiti, known as Saint-Domingue, is linked to a Parisian salon where rich intellectuals gathered to discuss ideas, including abolishing slavery. A French colony from 1659 until 1804, Haiti’s independence after its slaves rose up in rebellion “struck fear in the hearts of colonists everywhere”. But Puchner fails to mention what is commonly known as “the greatest heist in history”: the French demand for “indemnity” in 1825, which crippled Haiti’s economy from the start.
The final chapter, on the carving-up of Africa into artificial borders by the 1884-86 Berlin Conference, views the consequences of Nigeria’s independence in 1960 through the prism of Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka. That section ends on a positive note, observing that Nigeria’s exuberant film industry – “Nollywood” – produces more films than Hollywood and Bollywood combined, including Soyinka’s own contribution.
Puchner’s epilogue, “Will There Be a Library in 2114CE?”, advocates strengthening our understanding of the humanities, including “reaching deep into the cultural past” to find ways to resolve the conflicts bearing down upon us. “The heroes of this book dedicated their lives to the transmission of cultural traditions,” he writes. “Purists impoverish their own cultures.”
Culture: A New World History, by Martin Puchner (Ithaka Press, $39.99).
