A significant weak point is his omission of international influences, especially as communication methods of people and goods, and speed of movement of information, have accelerated, along with productivity. He does not look into Jews ('the Phoenician Navy') and their different model of what a 'nation' should be. The Mediterranean link there is obvious, but there seems to be an analogous land empire and circuit, first exploited by the Khazars, eastwards in Russian and China and other areas such as Siberia and Kamchatka. Arabs are associated with Jews and Islam, but Khazars as a force for expansion haven't yet been codified. — RW 4 June 2021
CONTENTS:
1 .. PEOPLE..
2 .. 'GEOGRAPHY'..
3 .. PLANET..
4 MAPS..
5 .. SEASONS..
6 .. DRY LAND.. CONTINENTS..
7 .. EUROPE..
INTERLUDE
8 GREECE.. LINK BETWEEN THE OLD ASIA AND THE NEW EUROPE
9 ITALY.. SEA-POWER OR LAND-POWER..
10 SPAIN.. AFRICA AND EUROPE CLASHED
11 FRANCE.. EVERYTHING SHE WANTS
12 BELGIUM.. CREATED BY SCRAPS OF PAPER
13 LUXEMBURG, HISTORICAL CURIOSITY
14 SWITZERLAND..
15 GERMANY.. FOUNDED TOO LATE
16 AUSTRIA, THE COUNTRY THAT WAS AN EMPIRE
17 DENMARK.. SMALL COUNTRY MAY ENJOY ADVANTAGES..
18 ICELAND.. POLITICAL LABORATORY..
19 SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA.. SWEDEN.. NORWAY
20 NETHERLANDS.. SWAMP THAT BECAME AN EMPIRE
21 GREAT BRITAIN.. ISLAND OFF THE DUTCH COAST.. 1/4 OF HUMAN RACE..
22 RUSSIA.. [NEVER FOUND OUT] WHETHER SHE WAS PART OF EUROPE OR ASIA
23 POLAND.. SUFFERED FROM BEING A CORRIDOR.. NOW HAS A CORRIDOR..
24 CZECHOSLOVAKIA, PRODUCT OF TREATY OF VERSAILLES
25 YUGOSLAVIA, ANOTHER..
26 BULGARIA, THE SOUNDEST.. WHOSE KING BET ON THE WRONG HORSE..
27 RUMANIA.. HAS OIL AND A ROYAL FAMILY
28 HUNGARY, OR WHAT REMAINS OF HER
29 FINLAND.. HARD WORK AND INTELLIGENCE..
30 DISCOVERY OF ASIA
31 WHAT ASIA HAS MEANT
32 CENTRAL ASIATIC HIGHLANDS
33 GREAT WESTERN PLATEAU OF ASIA
34 ARABIA - WHEN IS A PART OF ASIA NOT A PART OF ASIA?
35 INDIA.. NATURE AND MAN .. IN MASS-PRODUCTION
36 BURMA, SIAM, ANNAM, MALACCA..
37 REPUBLIC OF CHINA, THE GREAT PENINSULA..
38 KOREA, MONGOLIA, MANCHUKUO.. MANY WILL CONTINUE TO CALL 'MANCHURIA'
39 JAPANESE EMPIRE
40 PHILIPPINES, AN OLD ADMINISTRATIVE PART OF MEXICO
41 DUTCH EAST INDIES, TAIL THAT WAGS THE DOG
42 AUSTRALIA
43 NEW ZEALAND
44 PACIFIC ISLANDS, WHERE PEOPLE NEITHER TOIL NOR SPIN..
45 AFRICA.. CONTRADICTIONS AND CONTRASTS
46 AMERICA, THE MOST FORTUNATE OF ALL
47 A NEW WORLD
A FEW FACTS [One page summary of areas, size of earth, populations, longest rivers]
INDEX [About 17 pages double columns - roughly 1,700 place-names]
• Van Loon's main things are: 'What if the [body of water] would run dry' with his own sketch e.g. of hilly Atlantic, to absurd scale; I think this must reflect then-recent advances in charting the seas but looks wrong - for instance the English channel is surely part of a continental shelf, and nowhere near as chasmic as he's drawn it (though I haven't checked this).
And migrations of peoples (including explorers), and trade routes. I think it's fair to say his social dynamics of history relies just on these two things, plus of course the killings going along with them; he takes essentially an economic view of history.
It's all of course pre-plate tectonics. [Though p 83 with sketch of possibility of floating islands is a bit like it, presumably copied from 'continental drift'].
He knows about mountains and rain; therefore land surrounded by mountains [African continent; Australia] gets his thumbs-down. And he knows about rivers flowing downhill. He also knows mountains can be obstructive; stuff new to me on mountainousness of Spain and the effects of this on the Spaniards; the Alps; the relative lack of mountain ranges in Russia despite appearances.
He seems not good on winds - e.g. what makes them blow; one gathers elsewhere that trade winds, for example, are extremely important. I think he's not good on ocean currents, which need a similar grasp of physics. He knows poles are cold; I think he has little grasp of ice ages.
He's not much good on geology, treating minerals as random occurrences; similarly he's uncertain on crops and biology generally. [At one point he states Danes eat lots of butter because of their moist climate]. His astronomy has weak points; e.g. a diagram is labelled 'only round objects give round shadows'. He knows scarps are steep.
I don't think he knows much about vegetation, except that trees take quite a long time to grow; for instance I think the stuff in Macfarlane distinguishing grassland from forest, and characteristics of soils, are out of his range.
• On a more macro scale, he discusses England ['centre of all the world's land masses' he says]; Spain ['part of Africa and part of Europe.. inevitable fight..']; why Sweden and Norway are essentially different; the Japanese empire; China is in three parts; and many other parts of the world.
• 'America' i.e. both north and south, and Russia, get longest chapters.
DETAILED CONTENTS:
CHAPTER 1 .. PEOPLE..
CHAPTER 2 .. 'GEOGRAPHY'..
CHAPTER 3 OUR PLANET, HABITS AND MANNERS
- 34: 'The layers of the atmosphere.. keep us warm like so many blankets'
- 35: 'The three factors which make our climate what it is.. are the temperature of the soil, the prevailing wind, and the amount of moisture .. in the air. [Note: etymology:] Originally 'climate' meant the 'slope of the earth.' For the Greeks had noticed that as the surface of the earth 'sloped' further and further towards the poles, both the temperature and the humidity.. changed..'
-49: '.. the Romans.. practical men.. in less than five generations completely changed the climate of their own peninsula by the senseless destruction of everything that had thus far helped to make Italy a country of well-balanced and even temperature. And what the Spaniards did to the mountains of South America, when they allowed the fertile terraces, built by countless generations of patient little Indians, to go to ruin, is a fact of so recent occurrence as to need no further elucidation.
Of course that was the easiest way to deprive the natives of their livelihood.. by way of starvation - just as the extinction of the buffaloes by the United States Government was the most practical method of turning fierce warriors into dirty, slovenly reservation-parishioners. But these cruel and senseless measures carried their own punishment with them, as anyone familiar with the North American plains or the Andes will tell you. [Sic; not clear to me what this means, until:] .. No Government today would tolerate such scandalous interference with the soil upon which we all depend.. ' [Note: US usage is 'dirt' for soil; does this convey anything?]
- 53: '.. it is.. doubtful whether we could exist if it were not for this vast reservoir of heat.. the sea. The geological remnants.. show.. there have been times when there was more land and less water.. but.. these were periods of intense cold..
This vast ocean.. is in constant motion. ..
A map of these ocean rivers .. Gulf Stream.. Japan Current or Kuro Siwo.. means Blue Salt Current..'
55: [Gulf Stream, 'fifty miles wide and 1500 feet deep..' And Sargasso Sea about which medieval myths accumulated, we're told. It's a 'dullish stretch of water'. Is it possible 'eutrophication' or something of the sort wasn't known when Van Loon wrote? And the 'Cold Wall']
CHAPTER 4 MAPS..
Van Loon nods towards medieval and Roman maps and things like 'Polynesian woven maps'. Notes tendency to put Jerusalem in the middle replaced by tendency to put London, Paris or Berlin in the middle. However, he retains e.g. north at the top, rather than (say) direction you're facing. He has one or two special purpose maps, e.g. 413 of Africa as seen in early times, as fragments arranged Portolano-map style around a presumed mass; and there's another of America like that. Generally he seems to have a naive attitude; e.g. stating that Greenland looks as large as South America, implying this is true on any projection. Nothing on Chinese maps.
[Note: Joke: it would be amusing to construct a sketch map of 'the world' as held by ancients, with 'middle of the world' sea and others, Asia as in Matthew Arnold, ?place of reeds, ?Ethiopians as having 'burnt faces', etc]
- Also has stuff on compass and on chronometers and latitude and longitude, all unacknowledged. He didn't anticipate satellites or their use in position-fixing
- 63: [Sketch of 'a Roman map', the so-called Peutinger map. Medieval maps something of a joke.
63-4 Polynesian woven maps 'exceedingly handy and very accurate']
- 65: 'If they [medieval merchants on Med] found themselves.. in the open.. they knew that pigeons would take the shortest route to the nearest bit of dry land.'
- 66: [(Note: secret which might have been kept?) Account of compass and possible story of its spread and manufacture:] '.. funny little needle.. bewitched by Satan.. bring them one too the next time he came from the East. .. Merchants in Damascus and Smyrna.. within a few years the little glass-covered metal box had become such a common-place sight that no one thought it worth while to write about [it]..'
CHAPTER 5 .. SEASONS..
CHAPTER 6 CONCERNING THE LITTLE SPOTS OF DRY LAND.. WHY SOME OF THEM ARE CALLED CONTINENTS AND SOME NOT..
81: [Certain localism, of course]
82: [Note: legend of Atlantis? Sketch of rock in sea captioned 'Rockall - the top of a submerged continent in the North Atlantic']
83: [Continental drift put forward tentatively as a possibility]
CHAPTER 7 .. EUROPE..
Van Loon's description of the special features of Europe which made it so wonderful:
convoluted coastline, many isolating mountain ranges, inland seas stabilising temperature; furthest south part not too near equator; furthest north part warmed by Gulf Stream [cp Labrador]; almost all major rivers 'from Madrid to Moscow' go north-south allowing access to sea or Mediterranean
INTERLUDE
CHAPTER 8 GREECE.. LINK BETWEEN THE OLD ASIA AND THE NEW EUROPE
97: 'The Venetians who conquered Greece during the Middle Ages were prosaic merchants..'/ 101-102: Attica and Thermopylae and Leonidas vs Xerxes in 480 BC, Gauls c 300 BC, 1821-2 important against the Turks/ 103: '... both Athens and Rome (like modern London or Amsterdam), the most important settlements of ancient Europe, were situated not immediately on the sea but several miles away from it. [Note: was this true of Carthage?] The example of Cnossus.. may have acted as a warning of that dreadful thing that may happen if one is for ever exposed to a surprise attack by pirates. ..
.. these inhabitants of the 'top most city' (Etym: for that is what acro-polis meant), moved to the plain, built houses etc etc..'/ 104: '.. idyllic land of Arcadia.. they did not steal, but there was nothing worth the taking in a country of dates and goats. They did not lie, but their hamlets were so small that everybody knew everything about everybody anyway. .. Pan.. easily outdistanced the other Olympians when it came to coarse jokes and the low wit of country yokels. ..'
- 97: BALKANS: 'there are two mountain-ranges.. In the north.. the Balkans which have given their name to an entire peninsula. The Balkans are merely the southern end of a half circle of hills of which the northern part is known as the Carpathians. They are cut off from the rest of the Carpathians by the so-called 'Iron gate' - the narrow ravine through which the Danube has cut itself a path .. to the sea; ..'
106: '.. three half-submerged ridges of the great Balkan hand.. from Europe to Asia. .. islands.. nowadays belong to Greece except for a few in the eastern Aegean which Italy has occupied.. we divide these islands into two groups, the Cyclades near the Grecian coast, and the Sporades near.. Asia Minor. Those islands, as St Paul knew, are within short sailing distance of each other. And they formed the bridge across which the civilization of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria moved westward until it reached the shores of Europe. ..'
107: '.. a nation overrun .. by Macedonians, by Romans, by Goths and Vandals and Slavs, conquered and turned into a colony by Normans, Byzantines, Venetians, and the unspeakable riff-raff of the Crusades, then almost completely depopulated and repopulated by the Albanians, forced to live under Turkish domination for almost four entire centuries, and used as a base of supply and a battlefield by the forces of the Allies in the Great War - such a nation has suffered certain hardships from which it will find it extremely difficult to recuperate. ..'
CHAPTER 9 ITALY.. SEA-POWER OR LAND-POWER..
CHAPTER 10 SPAIN.. AFRICA AND EUROPE CLASHED
CHAPTER 11 FRANCE.. EVERYTHING SHE WANTS
French stated to be self-sufficient and complacent because of it [I noted this elsewhere and contrasted with Belloc's view]
Paris positioned in saucer-like structures, he says, with a sketch; perhaps this is the 'logical reason for Paris being where it is' that Gerald Levy's wife Margot struggled to remember, before coming up with bridgeable-width-of-river (Belloc had a theory of distance to which water is still fresh and/or not tidal).
155: '.. peasant.. as a rule his own proprietor. .. In England and in east Prussia.. where there is a great deal of agriculture, the farms often belong to some vague and distant landlord. But the French Revolution did away with the landlord, whether noble or cleric, and divided his property among the small peasantry. That was often very hard on the former proprietors. But their ancestors had acquired those possessions by right of eminent plunder, so what was the difference? .. it gives more than half the people a direct interest in the welfare of the whole nation. .. may explain the provincialism which makes every Frenchman stick to people of his own village.. so that Paris is full of little hotels catering for certain groups of regional travellers. ..'
CHAPTER 12 BELGIUM.. CREATED BY SCRAPS OF PAPER
[Rather long history including Reformation, Dutch closing off Antwerp, coal deposits in the Meuse, French-speaking minority becoming richest]
162: '.. the Congress of Vienna of 1815.. a sort of Versailles.. had seen fit to make Belgium and Holland into a single kingdom, so as to have a powerful northern balance against the French.
.. in 1830.. the Belgians rose against the Dutch, and the French (as was to be expected) rushed to their assistance. The Great Nations interfered. A prince of the house of Coburg, uncle of Queen Victoria. Leopold.. was made King of the Belgians. .. Henry Stanley.. heart of Africa.. Leopold prevailed upon him to come to Brussels..' [NB: atrocities are mentioned in another chapter at the very end; I suspect this addendum illustrates that Van Loon compiled his book from standard clichéd sources.)
CHAPTER 13 LUXEMBURG, HISTORICAL CURIOSITY
CHAPTER 14 SWITZERLAND..
CHAPTER 15 GERMANY.. FOUNDED TOO LATE
CHAPTER 16 AUSTRIA, THE COUNTRY THAT WAS AN EMPIRE
Austria [meaning Austria-Hungary]: survival depended on geography
CHAPTER 17 DENMARK.. SMALL COUNTRY MAY ENJOY ADVANTAGES..
CHAPTER 18 ICELAND.. POLITICAL LABORATORY..
CHAPTER 19 SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA.. SWEDEN.. NORWAY
CHAPTER 20 NETHERLANDS.. SWAMP THAT BECAME AN EMPIRE
Change in the habits of herrings, attributed by Russell to Trevelyan, and (I think) in my book 'The Geography Behind History' in here; he says it had beneficial effects on Holland, disbeneficial effects on the Baltic.
[Note: could this be a myth? Could they really know that much about herrings? Isn't it possible just that the Dutch improved their fishing technique, or that the Baltic people overfished?]
CHAPTER 21 GREAT BRITAIN.. ISLAND OFF THE DUTCH COAST.. 1/4 OF HUMAN RACE..
CHAPTER 22 RUSSIA.. [NEVER FOUND OUT] WHETHER SHE WAS PART OF EUROPE OR ASIA
Russia and geographical aspect: 'not just a result of Peter the Great' ... 'country whose geographical position prevented her from finding out whether she was part of Europe or Asia.'
238: [on warm water ports:] '.. not unlike a structure consisting of eighty floors and eight thousand rooms, but with no other means of entrance and exit than two little windows connecting with the fire-escape of the third floor rear.'
CHAPTER 23 POLAND.. SUFFERED FROM BEING A CORRIDOR.. NOW HAS A CORRIDOR..
CHAPTER 24 CZECHOSLOVAKIA, PRODUCT OF TREATY OF VERSAILLES
CHAPTER 25 YUGOSLAVIA, ANOTHER..
CHAPTER 26 BULGARIA, THE SOUNDEST.. WHOSE KING BET ON THE WRONG HORSE..
CHAPTER 27 RUMANIA.. HAS OIL AND A ROYAL FAMILY
CHAPTER 28 HUNGARY, OR WHAT REMAINS OF HER
CHAPTER 29 FINLAND.. HARD WORK AND INTELLIGENCE..
CHAPTER 30 THE DISCOVERY OF ASIA
277: Some unsourced etymological stuff; here he discusses the original meaning of the word 'Asia'. Elsewhere is e.g. Summer is Sanskrit word meaning the whole year; equator is line at equal distances - though he doesn't say what the 'tor' bit means. His explanation of the element of convention in distinguishing 'islands' from 'continents' has some etymological input.
CHAPTER 31 WHAT ASIA HAS MEANT TO THE REST OF THE WORLD
282: [Asia gave 'us' dog, cat, cow, horse, sheep, hog, 'practically all of our fruits and vegetables, most of our flowers, and practically all of our poultry'. And the three greatest monotheistic religions. And the spadework of Greek science. Isn't this overstating it?
And of course, he says, the Huns, Tartars, and Turks.]
CHAPTER 32 CENTRAL ASIATIC HIGHLANDS
CHAPTER 33 GREAT WESTERN PLATEAU OF ASIA
CHAPTER 34 ARABIA - WHEN IS A PART OF ASIA NOT A PART OF ASIA?
CHAPTER 35 INDIA.. NATURE AND MAN .. IN MASS-PRODUCTION
CHAPTER 36 BURMA, SIAM, ANNAM, MALACCA..
CHAPTER 37 REPUBLIC OF CHINA, THE GREAT PENINSULA..
'Great Wall of China only thing visible from the moon' is in here, but it's not clear to me whether he pinched it. His unconvincing sketch makes me suspect he did, and that this is a common idea at the time; I don't know who could have started it - perhaps related to canals on Mars idea and debunking of that..
CHAPTER 38 KOREA, MONGOLIA, MANCHUKUO.. MANY WILL CONTINUE TO CALL 'MANCHURIA'
CHAPTER 39 JAPANESE EMPIRE
356: '.. oldest Japanese chronicle about AD 400..' [Van Loon talks about Shinto, but has no conception that it is new - if Russell is right; you could read this passage and never suspect such a thing. Therefore Van Loon must be regarded as suspect in other matters]
CHAPTER 40 PHILIPPINES, AN OLD ADMINISTRATIVE PART OF MEXICO
CHAPTER 41 DUTCH EAST INDIES, TAIL THAT WAGS THE DOG
CHAPTER 42 AUSTRALIA
Rabbits in Australia
CHAPTER 43 NEW ZEALAND
390: [Note: historical chance:] If a French squadron had arrived three days earlier, it would now be a French colony, he says
CHAPTER 44 PACIFIC ISLANDS, WHERE PEOPLE NEITHER TOIL NOR SPIN..
CHAPTER 45 AFRICA.. CONTRADICTIONS AND CONTRASTS
Malaria and sleeping sickness in Africa; and remark on two men, Ross being one, who found the cause [Van Loon seems to ignore the problem of cure]
417: Suez canal and opposition from Britain, disbelieving it would only be commercial/ Verdi's Aida/ Khedive/ Disraeli
CHAPTER 46 AMERICA, [i.e. both north & south] THE MOST FORTUNATE OF ALL
- 473: 'Bolivia.. land-locked.. once upon a time had direct access to the sea. But during the famous saltpetre war of 1879-1882, when Peru and Chile fought for the Arica district, Bolivia was foolish enough [sic] to side against Chile. [and] Chile lost her coastal region. Bolivia was a very rich country. [sic] .. the third tin-producing country of the world.. but a density of population of less than five per square mile..'
CHAPTER 47 A NEW WORLD [Partly about spelling and transcription inconsistencies and also inconsistencies in reference books e.g. as to heights of mountains. But mostly on the world being now more unified etc etc & it makes sense to plan ahead as we now know we've been on earth rather a long time..]
A FEW FACTS [One page summary of areas, size of earth, populations, longest rivers]
INDEX [About 17 pages double columns - roughly 1,700 place-names, with things like Anatolian plateau, and few names like Commodore Perry and Columbus.]