HERODOTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS - The Revenge of Geography - page 30

HERODOTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS
During the middle to latter twentieth century, when Hans Morgenthau taught in the political
science department at the University of Chicago, two other professors were also forging
prodigious academic paths in the history department: William H. McNeill and Marshall G.
S. Hodgson. The university was bursting with rigor and talent, and by concentrating on these
three professors, I do not mean to slight others. Whereas Morgenthau defined realism for
the present age, McNeill quite literally did so for the history of the world and Hodgson for
the history of Islam, in massive works of Herodotean scope, in which geography is rarely
far out of reach. The very audacity that McNeill and Hodgson showed in the choice of their
subjects is to be admired in this current academic era, with its emphasis on narrow special-
ization—in truth, a necessity as the mass of knowledge steadily accumulates. But to read
McNeill and Hodgson is almost to be wistful for a time not that long ago when scholars'
horizons were seemingly limitless. Specialization has brought its own unique sort of flower-
ing, but the academy could use more of what these two University of Chicago professors
represent. Geography, they demonstrate, is in and of itself a means of thinking broadly.
William Hardy McNeill, born in British Columbia, was in his mid-forties when in 1963 he
published The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community , a topic which runs
well over eight hundred pages. The overarching theme is to challenge the viewpoint of Brit-
ish historian Arnold Toynbee and German historian Oswald Spengler that separate civiliza-
tions pursued their destinies independently. Instead, McNeill argues that cultures and civil-
izations continually interacted, and it has been this interaction that has forged the core drama
of world history. If the topic is about anything, it is about the vast movements of peoples
across the map.
To wit: a northerly movement brought the so-called Danubian cultivators into central and
western Europe between 4500 and 4000 B.C . Meanwhile, a southerly movement of pioneer
herders and farmers crossed North Africa unto the Strait of Gibraltar, “to meet and mingle
with the Danubian flood.” But the older hunting populations of Europe were not destroyed,
McNeill writes; instead, there was a mixing of populations and cultures. 1 Thus, the heart of
the topic commences.
Both these population movements, north and south of the Mediterranean, originated from
the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia, where political instability was largely a function of geo-
graphy. “While Egypt lies parallel and peaceful to the routes of human traffic, Iraq is from
earliest times a frontier province, right-angled and obnoxious to the predestined paths of
man,” writes the late British travel writer Freya Stark. 2 Indeed, as McNeill indicates, Meso-
potamia cut across one of history's bloodiest migration routes. “As soon as the cities of the