Notes from 'A Radical History of the World' Part 1.

Faulkner N, 2018. Marxist historian. As he admits in his introduction, the book is to some degree European or Anglo-centric. His approach is that "history is continuously created and recreated by conscious, collective human action... the struggles of the common people - slaves and serfs, handloom weavers and mine workers, women fighting oppression, black people fighting racism, colonised people fighting imperialism... drive the historical process."

The history begins with the various homo species expanding over the Earth (possibly driven by climate change) and the emergence of homo sapiens, who live for a time with and interbreed with homo neanderthal and others but ultimately either wipe out or at least out live all the other homo species. The adaptations that homo species have are enlarged brains, the capacity to communicate, tool making. Homo sapiens are the most adaptable, and at the end of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, essentially the only species.

The success of sapiens as hunter gatherers leads to extinction (circa 10,000 years ago) of most big game across the world, the wiping out of the mammoth, giant deer, etc. The combination of this and climate change leads to famine and a drive to change the way of life. Homo Sapiens develop pasturalism on the one hand and horticulture on the other in Asia (although it also develops independently in various places). Horticulture leads to the first surpluses, grain silos, and specialisation of labour to a never before seen scale. Population increase follows surpluses and traps all agricultural cultures to continue doing so forever more as no other way of life can support the larger populations.

Farming spread from central and west Asia in waves, taking thousands of years to spread across the continents. Different cultures adopted these new technologies at different times as the ecologies / environment required it. Larger populations destroy ecologies as land becomes scarcer and farming degrades the soil. This leads to the development of territories and property, which must be defended. The first wars occur during these periods as raiding parties seek to steal surpluses and communities decided to wipe out opposition for control of land resources. Society begins to develop primitive classes in the form of warriors, chieftans and religious leaders. [Presumably early agricultural societies push out other hunter gatherers by chopping down forests, clearing land etc., putting a pressure on huntergatherers to adopt farming methods. Possibly this also leads to wars].

The combination of animal knowledge and metalworking leads to the invention of the plough. Combination of herding and farming regenerates the field and leads to greater surpluses. Hand-based horticulture gives ways to the tilling of fields, and this leads to the formation of Patriarchy. Previously societies had gendered division of labour with adult women spending much of their lives pregnant or suckling, and therefore predominantly employed gathering rather than hunting, however both forms of work are seen as equally valuable. Even in early horticultural communities women can look after babies while hoeing, deweeding, planting etc. But the plough requires heavy manual labour and the management of large beasts like ox, difficult to do while looking after children, and the control of this is mostly given to men. Additionally the development of the warrior casts, necessary to protect surpluses from neighbours, moves the balance of power to men. Matrilineal/matriarchal societies become increasingly patriarchal/patrilineal: for men to pass on 'property' to their children, they begin to control women's reproduction in order to know who is the father.

The combination of the above technologies and social organisation leads to the 'urban revolution' around 5,000 years ago, which produces the first class societies. Most have some combination of god-kings, priesthood, warrior, free citizen, artisan, serfs and slaves. This develops first in Sumer (Southern Iraq) but in a similar time period in Pakistan, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt and others, and does so independently - civilisation does not 'spread' so much as pop up where the circumstances create it. Civilisations war with each other, engage in long distance trade, annex regions for control of resources (metal, timber, etc) with their standing armies and demand tributes, and ultimately, collapse. Over the period called the Bronze age empires rise and fall repeatedly without great change in technology or social organisation.

Faulkner outlines three engines of historical progress:

1. Technique, the continuing accumulation of knowledge that makes possible better control over nature.

2. Struggle among rulers for wealth and power - either within the ruling class (struggles between eg. different aristocratic families) or between ruling factions i.e. war between rival states and empires.

3. Class struggle within society, serfs against lords, slaves against pharaohs, etc.

[Why does he not include climate as one of the drivers of history?]

Each of these moves differently at different times and places, and so each historical moment has to be considered on its own grounds. What is the state of technique in each historical place and moment? What is the struggle between rulers at each time and place? What is going on in the class struggle? What is the relation between each of them? Therefore, each moment in history is different and history is complex. But nonetheless general patterns can be interpreted.

For example throughout the bronze age the ruling classes were generally conservative in the sense of suspicious of new technology, and therefore hindered technical development. Surpluses were invested into armies and other forms of ideological control, such as religions and their temples or pyramids. This in turn limited technological growth by mystifying the nature of the universe. These ideological forms make scientific progress more difficult. As ruling classes compete with each other they have to amass greater surpluses. Without improving technology they have to further oppress lower classes, squeezing them for ever more productivity through taxation. This drives the development of class struggle, pressuring slaves/serfs/workers to strike and rebel, and further reduces the opportunity for development of technique.

Egypt develops glass (a luxury good), Babylonians accounting (a way to measure wealth) and Phoenicians writing (a way to record it). Technology develops to some extent, but only to the needs of the ruling classes and not to improve productivity of farmers or manual labourers. The development of revolutionary technology has often occurred at the periphery of empires for this reason, which has enabled raiders, barbarians, pirates to develop technologies to attack empires and undermine them. Internal conflict in an empire or class conflict make them vulnerable to aggression from neighbouring elites, particularly if these have improved weaponry.

Empires periodically rise and fall as these social orders lead to stagnation, which often lead to climate degradation, famine, rebellion and/or invasion by neighbours and collapse.

Around BC 1,300 the late Bronze age empires begin to collapse, and the invention of iron working starts to spread. Iron is plentiful, harder than bronze, and can be used to create tools and weapons. As the technique for high temperature furnaces spreads it democratises access to metal, improving farming techniques. Faulkner argues that Iron working leads to smaller polities and less top-down societies.