A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (100 page)

Tribute:
Sum of money levied from people of a conquered country.

UGT:
Socialist Party influenced trade union organisation in Spain.

Ultraquists:
Religious denomination based on Hussite principles in Bohemia. Did not grant priest any special position in mass.

Ultras:
Term sometimes used to mean out-and-out reactionaries, not to be confused with ‘ultra-left’.

Umayyads:
Dynasty that ruled Islamic Empire in Middle East from mid-7th to mid-8th centuries.

Unionists:
Supporters of British rule over Ireland.

United Front:
Tactic of defensive alliances between revolutionary and non-revolutionary workers’ parties and unions, formulated by Lenin and Trotsky in 1920-21.

Urban revolution:
Term for transformation of society that involved rise of classes, state, towns, and often metallurgy and literacy.

USSR:
See Soviet Union.

Utopian Socialism:
Set of doctrines in early 19th century that society needs to be organised along planned, cooperative lines, but that this can be done without revolution, by finding a benevolent ruler or by forming cooperative communities—associated in France with Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, in Britain with Robert Owen.

Vedic:
Ancestor of present day Hindu religion, involved sacrifice of cattle.

Vendée:
Region in west of France where royalist revolt against revolution occurred in 1792.

Viceroy:
Governor of colonised country enjoying near-kingly (absolute) powers.

Vietnam syndrome:
US ruling class fear after mid-1970s of getting involved in a war it could not win.

Villeins:
Medieval serfs.

Whig:
Forerunner of Liberal Party. Party originally associated with constitutional settlement in Britain in 1688. In early 19th century came to identify with industrial as opposed to landed section of ruling class. Also used of view of English history which sees everything as perfect evolution to liberal present.

Workhouse:
Building where unemployed and poor were compelled to work in return for food and shelter.

Zamindars:
Class of local notables who lived off share of land taxes in Mogul India, transformed into modern landowning class after British conquest.

Zapotecs:
People in southern Mexico who established Monte Alban civilisation after AD 500.

Zoroastrianism:
Religion of Iran before rise of Islam. Involves belief in eternal struggle between good and evil. Survives today among small Parsee communities in Indian subcontinent.

This list is not meant to be at all comprehensive. It aims simply to suggest a few easily readable books which will enable the reader to go a little deeper into the issues raised in each section. Anyone who wants to do more than that should look at the end notes to the main text. Books in print can be ordered from Bookmarks bookshop, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE, telephone 020 7637 1848.

Part one: The rise of class societies

Eleanor Leacock’s
Myths of Male Dominance
is the most accessible account of hunter-gatherer societies. Richard Lee’s
The !Kung San
looks in depth at one of them, as does Richard Turnbull’s
The Forest People
. Marshall Sahlins’
Stone Age Economics
examines the original affluent society and the change from egalitarian societies to chieftainships.

V Gordon Childe’s
What Happened in History
remains by far the most accessible account of the Neolithic and urban revolutions in Eurasia, although some of its material and chronology is dated. For a revised chronology, see Colin Renfrew,
Before Civilisation
. For ancient Egypt, see Bruce Trigger and others,
Ancient Egypt, A Social History
, for the Americas, Frederick Katz’s
Ancient American Civilisations
.

Part two: The ancient world

Again Gordon Childe is invaluable. Jean Gernet’s
A History of Chinese Civilisation
is a very good introduction, as is Romila Thapar’s
Penguin History of India
volume 1. Geoffrey de Ste Croix’s
Class Struggles in the Ancient Greek World
is a detailed analysis of Greek slavery and the decline of the Roman Empire. For the earlier history of Rome, see P A Brunt’s
Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic
. I am critical of some points in Karl Kautsky’s
The Foundations of Christianity
, and of many points in his politics, but it should be read. Henry Chadwick’s
The Early Church
is useful in looking at the institutionalisation of Christianity.

Part three: The ‘Middle Ages’

Peter Brown’s
The World of Late Antiquity
and
The Rise of Western Christendom
look at early developments in Western Europe, Byzantium and the Middle East. Gernet again provides a good account of Chinese developments. The collection of essays edited by W Haeger,
Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China
, examine a key period in depth, and the various volumes of Colin Ronan’s abridgement of the work of Joseph Needham on Chinese science, C Ronan and J Needham,
The Shorter Science and Civilisation of China
, are a revelation not only about Chinese science and technology, but also about technical development in general. The most accessible introduction to the Byzantine Empire is Cyril Mango’s
Byzantium
. Bernard Lewis’s
The Arabs in History
provides the most accessible overview of early Islamic history, as do Maxine Rodinson’s
Mohammed
and
Islam and Capitalism
.

Basil Davidson played a pioneering role in exploring African history and his
Africa in History
and
The Search for Africa
are very useful, although new discoveries are continually being made in this field now the hold of colonial prejudice is finally dying. For Europe, Marc Bloch’s two volume
Feudal Society
remains the best general introduction, and Jacques Le Goff’s
Medieval Civilisation
is very accessible. Guy Bois’s two books,
The Transformation of the Year 1000
(on the rise of feudal production) and
The Crisis of Feudalism
, are more technical but invaluable. Rodney Hilton deals with this crisis, in a similar way to Bois, in his
Class Struggle and the Crisis of Feudalism
. Jean Gimpel’s
The Medieval Machine
is a readable account of the changes in technology and the first rediscovery of ancient learning in the 14th century.

Part four: The great transformation

There is still nothing to beat the first part of
The Communist Manifesto
for providing an overview of the sweep of the changes which occurred. The three volumes of Fernand Braudel’s
Capitalism and Civilisation
, covering the 15th to the 18th centuries, spell out in detail the changes in people’s lives and world politics with the rise of market, but are necessarily a little detailed. R S Duplessis’s
Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe
provides a shorter summary account of economic changes in Europe over the three centuries. The social character of the German Reformation is dealt with well in Thomas Brady’s
The Politics of the Reformation in Germany
, P Bickle’s
Communal Reformation
, and J Abray’s
The People’s Reformation
. Karl Kautsky’s
Communism in Europe in the Age of the Reformation
remains worth reading, as does Engels’
The Peasant War in Germany
. Henry Heller’s confusingly titled
The Conquest of Poverty
is a marvellous analysis of the class roots of Calvinism in France. J V Polisensky’s
The Thirty Years War
is central to understanding one of the most confusing events in European history. So much has been written on the English Revolution, particularly by Christopher Hill and Brian Manning, it is difficult to know what to recommend, but for a good starting point try Hill’s
The Century of Revolution
and
God’s Englishman
, Brian Manning’s
Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution in England
, and Gentile’s
The New Model Army
. On China, once again Gernet is to be recommended. On India, read Burton Stein,
A History of India
, while Irfan Habib’s
Agrarian Structure of Mogul India
is important for a deeper understanding of what happened in India while Western Europe was first beginning to overtake the rest of the world—but avoid Spear’s
History of India
part 2 as it is dry and difficult to follow.

Part five: The spread of the new order

George Rudé’s
Europe in the 18th Century
provides an overview of West European developments, R S Duplessis an overview of economic changes, and Angus Calder’s
Revolutionary Empire
an overview of the rise of Britain and its colonies. Robin Blackburn’s
The Making of New World Slavery
updates Eric Williams’ classic
Capitalism and Slavery
and details the rise of racist ideas. Patrick Manning’s
Slavery and African Life
looks at the impact on Africa. Keith Thomas’s
Religion and the Decline of Magic
details the growth of scientific ways of looking at the world in the 17th century, while various books by Robert Darnton (for instance,
The Business of the Enlightenment
) look at its social roots in the 18th. Isaac Rubin’s Marxist work
A History of Economic Thought
contains a very useful account of Adam Smith’s ideas.

Part six: The world turned upside down

Eric Hobsbawm’s two volumes,
The Age of Revolution
and
The Age of Capital
, provide a view of the long sweep, especially as regards Europe. Gernet provides a similar overview for China, worth supplementing with Franz Schurmann and Orville Scholl’s compilation,
Imperial China
. Edward Countryman’s
The American Revolution
is indispensable for the War of Independence, as is James McPherson’s
The Battle Cry of Freedom
for the American Civil War. Albert Soboul’s
The French Revolution
, Peter Kropotkin’s
The Great French Revolution
and André Guerin’s
Class Struggle in the First French Republic
provide three differing perspectives, all very readable. C L R James’s
The Black Jacobins
is the classic account of the slave rebellion in Haiti. Edward Thompson’s
The Making of the English Working Class
covers the period from the 1780s to the 1830s, and Dorothy Thompson’s
The Chartists
carries the story through into the Chartist movement. Frederick Engels’
The Condition of the Working Class in England
gives a graphic accounts of what the industrial revolution did to working people’s lives, and John Saville’s
1848
is a detailed study of the conflicts in Britain and Ireland in that year. Roger Price’s
Documents on the French Revolution of 1848
is very useful, as is Jonathan Sperber’s
Rhineland Revolutionaries
. Karl Marx’s
Class Struggles in France
and
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
and Frederick Engels’
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
(mistakenly published in Marx’s name in some older editions) are pioneering analyses. On Marx and Engels themselves, there is Alex Callinicos’s excellent
The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx
and Franz Mehring’s classic biography
Karl Marx
. Lissigaray’s
The History of the Paris Commune
, Jelinek’s
The Paris Commune
, and Alistair Horne’s
The Siege of Paris
are all good, and Marx’s
The Civil War in France
remains spellbinding.

Part seven: The century of hope and horror

There are few satisfactory overviews of the century. The BBC television series and book
The People’s Century
present most of the major events of the century as experienced by participants, but in a somewhat haphazard manner. Eric Hobsbawm’s
The Age of Imperialism
provides a useful introduction to the forces at work at the beginning of the century, and his
The Age of Extremes
provides some insights on some of the major events and cultural currents of the century, but suffers from not really examining either the development of social classes or the great clash between them that were so important in shaping the century. Gabriel Kolko’s
A Century of War
is good at dealing with certain episodes but is far from comprehensive. There are, however, numerous very good books dealing with concrete developments and events.

Thomas Packenham’s
The Scramble for Africa
shows what imperialism did to the peoples it conquered. Leon Trotsky’s
History of the Russian Revolution
remains the best single work on the Russian Revolution, but the abridged version of the Menshevik N N Sukhanov’s
The Russian Revolution of 1917
is good. The first two volumes of Tony Cliff’s biography of Lenin are a good introduction to the history of the socialist movement in Russia, and the second volume also provides an accessible outline of the events of 1917. Paul Frölich’s
Rosa Luxemburg
is good biography and guide to the arguments inside the German Social Democratic Party, while Carl Schorske’s
German Social Democracy
is the best account of the party.

There is a mass of stuff in German on the revolutionary years 1918-22, but in English the most comprehensive work remains my own
The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-23
. The book
The Rise of Italian Fascism
which Angelo Tasca wrote under the name Angelo Rossi is the best on that subject but difficult to find. Giampiero Carocci’s
Italian Fascism
is helpful, and can be supplemented by J M Cammett’s
Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism
and Paolo Spriano’s
Occupation of the Factories
. Donny Gluckstein’s
The Western Soviets
draws together the experience of workers’ revolts in Europe in the period. Duncan Hallas’s
The Comintern
and Alfred Rosmer’s
Lenin’s Moscow
describe the early years of the Communist International. C L R James’s
World Revolution
carries the story through to the early 1930s, and Fernando Claudin’s
The Communist International
provides a full history. Victor Serge’s
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
is a marvellous introduction to the movement and the period. Jean Chesneaux’s
The Chinese Labour Movement
is the fullest account of its growth and defeat in the 1920s. Harold Isaacs’s
The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution
is excellent and easier to find. The second volume of Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky,
The Prophet Unarmed
, and the third volume of Tony Cliff’s
Trotsky
both deal, from slightly different standpoints, with the changes in Russia in the 1920s, while Moshe Lewin’s
Lenin’s Last Struggle
details Lenin’s distrust of Stalin. J K Galbraith’s
The Great Crash
is a fascinating account of the crash of 1929 but unfortunately does not go into the economic crisis of the 1930s in any depth. Charles Kindelberger’s
The World in Depression
concentrates mainly on the international financial wranglings of governments. Donny Gluckstein’s
The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class
deals with the slump’s most disastrous political effect. France in the 1930s is covered very well in Julian Jackson’s
The Popular Front in France
. G E R Gedye’s
Fallen Bastions
tells the story of the Vienna rising. There are a number of very good books on the Spanish Civil War, notably Broué and Temime’s
The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain
, Ronald Fraser’s oral history
Blood of Spain
, Felix Morrow’s contemporary account
Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain
, and George Orwell’s
Homage to Catalonia
. The fascinating story of the US labour movement in the 1930s is to be found in Art Preis’s
Labor’s Giant Step
, and the story of one of the most important strikes is told by one its leaders in Farrell Dobbs’s
Teamster Rebellion
. A J P Taylor’s
The Second World War
provides a simply factual account of the war. Gabriel Kolko’s
The Politics of War
looks at the manoeuvrings of the Great Powers that led to the suppression of the resistance movement and then the Cold War. Ian Birchall’s two books,
Bailing Out the System
and
Workers Against the Monolith
, deal with the behaviour of the social democratic and Communist parties of the West in the post-war period. Brian Lapping’s
End of Empire
(based on a television series from the mid-1980s) is an excellent account of some of the major anti-colonial movements in the British sphere of influence. Nigel Harris’s
The Mandate of Heaven
is a critical account of the Mao period in China. Tony Cliff’s
State Capitalism in Russia
(first written in 1947) looks at the real dynamic of Stalinist society, while my own
Class Struggles in Eastern Europe
describes the establishment of the Stalinist regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and elsewhere, and the crises that beset them between 1953 and 1981. There are now dozens of books on the black movement in the US in the 1960s. Garrow’s
Bearing the Cross
tells the story of the civil rights movement through a biography of Martin Luther King. The compilation edited by Colin Barker,
Revolutionary Rehearsals
, tells the story of some of the upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s, while his
Festival of the Oppressed
is full of the Polish workers’ movement in 1980-81. Paul Ginsborg’s
A History of Contemporary Italy
and Robert Lumley’s
States of Emergency
both provide accounts of the movements which swept Italy between 1969 and 1974.