H G Wells Omnibus, page 863
4. Elliot Smith and Rivers: George Elliot Smith (1871–1937), Australian anatomist and ethnologist; W. H. R. Rivers (1864–1922), British medical psychologist and anthropologist.
14
Primitive Neolithic Civilizations
1. main mass of humanity: Few people today would accept that there are safe criteria for judging different races as ‘of various value’. Modern scientists, having found race to be a comparatively superficial aspect of human biology, would endorse Wells’s well-informed warnings in the third paragraph of this chapter.
15
Sumeria, Early Egypt and Writing
1. the great history of Egypt was beginning: These first cities are now dated to around 3500 BC.
16
Primitive Nomadic Peoples
1. favourable regions of India and China: From around 3500 BC towns were indeed appearing in east and north-east China and the Indus Valley.
2. to the Mediterranean Sea: Sargon’s conquests took place between 2400 and 2350 BC. One of the most engaging characters in Wells’s later fiction, Albert Preemby in Christina Alberta’s Father (1925), becomes convinced during a seance that he is a reincarnation of Sargon, with highly unfortunate consequences.
3. yet known to history: Hammurabi’s laws are now dated nearer to 1750 BC.
17
The First Sea-going Peoples
1. still remains to be deciphered: The Linear B system of writing at Knossos was eventually deciphered in 1952. It proved to be an early dialect of Greek, showing, in contradiction to the notion current in Wells’s day, that the Mycenaean culture was after all produced by forebears of the Greeks. As of 2005, the Linear A script has yet to be deciphered.
18
Egypt, Babylon and Assyria
1. New Assyrian Empire: By modern reckoning, Tiglath Pileser III came to power in 744 BC and claimed the kingship of Babylon in 729 BC.
2. blood and iron: The Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) used the phrase ‘blood and iron’ in speeches of 1862 and 1886, referring to the military force a nation-state requires to achieve its goals.
3. Mesopotamia or Egypt: We are now aware of India’s ‘Harappan’ culture, which by 2250 BC seems to have been the equal of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
19
The Primitive Aryans
1. Nordic race: Partly due to its perversion by Nazi Germany, this use of the term ‘Aryan’ has been abandoned by modern anthropologists. The ‘race’ which Wells describes is now treated as several different ethnic groups, though with a shared language history, and the term Aryan is applied solely to that group which conquered India.
20
The Last Babylonian Empire and the Empire of Darius I
1. God has numbered… to the Medes and Persians: The quotations are adapted from Daniel 5:25–28.
22
Priests and Prophets in Judea
1. hardship, adventure and oppression: Wells believed that modern civilization needed an equivalent to the Bible, a constantly updated set of texts which would set out a consensus view of our core knowledge and ideas, supplying a ‘framework for the thoughts and imaginations of every citizen in the world’ (The Salvaging of Civilization (1921)). He regarded his own historical writing as a pilot project towards this end.
2. harnessed our race: As early as 1896, in an article entitled ‘Human Evolution, an Artificial Process’, Wells had hailed the Hebrew prophets as the forerunners of modern ‘eccentric and innovating people, playwrights, novelists, preachers, poets, journalists, and political reasoners and speakers’, a group which implicitly included Wells himself.
23
The Greeks
1. about 960 BC: Solomon is now thought to have reigned from about 965 to 925 BC.
2. as Milton composed Paradise Lost: John Milton (1608–74) began to compose the Christian epic poem Paradise Lost some time after 1652 when he became completely blind. Wells respected Milton as a militant republican and defender of free speech, quoting him at considerable length in The Salvaging of Civilization (1921).
25
The Splendour of Greece
1. better than any existing community: Wells himself was a leading advocate and practitioner of Utopian thinking, most notably in A Modern Utopia (1905).
27
The Museum and Library at Alexandria
1. Professor Mahaffy: Sir John Mahaffy (1839–1919), Professor of Ancient History at Trinity College, Dublin, wrote several studies of Ancient Greece.
28
The Life of Gautama Buddha
1. in the sixth century BC: Gautama lived from around 563 to 483 BC.
2. Nautch dance: A traditional performance by professional female dancers.
3. canopy of the skies: Wells took this quotation, attributed to the ‘Burmese Chronicle’, from the writings of T. W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922), Professor of Pali and Buddhist Literature at University College London, 1882–1912.
29
King Asoka
1. Madras… Kalinga (255 BC): Asoka ruled from about 273 to 232 BC, and invaded Kalinga in about 261 BC.
2. resumed their sway: A number of Indians marched through London in 1923, carrying a banner which read ‘Down with H. G. Wells’ Short History of the World’. This may well be one of the passages which offended them.
30
Confucius and Lao Tse
1. sixth century BC: Confucius lived 551–479 BC; Lao Tse’s dates are unknown.
2. Shang… Chow: By modern reckoning, the Shang dynasty ended in 1028 BC, the Zhou dynasty (the currently accepted spelling) succeeding it from 1027 to 256 BC.
31
Rome Comes into History
1. over against: near.
33
The Growth of the Roman Empire
1. Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, SPQR, the elder Cato, the Scipios: The Lays of Ancient Rome (1842), a highly popular collection of poems about Roman history by the journalist, politician, administrator and historian Thomas Macaulay (1800–59); SPQR, an abbreviation of ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus’ (the Senate and People of Rome); Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), a conservative Roman statesman who campaigned for the destruction of Carthage; Scipio Africanus (236–c. 183 BC), Roman general who defeated Carthage, and Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 BC), his adopted grandson, famed both as a general and a patron of the arts.
35
The Common Man’s Life under the Early Roman Empire
1. British Peace in India: Having been taken over by stages during the nineteenth century, India remained under British control until 1947.
37
The Teaching of Jesus
1. parable of the Good Samaritan… parable of the labourers… parable of the buried talent… incident of the widow’s mite: These teachings of Jesus may be found, respectively, in Luke 10:30–37, Matthew 20:1–16, Matthew 25:14–30 and Luke 21:1–4.
2. While he yet talked… and mother: Wells’s quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James ‘Authorized Version’ of 1611.
42
The Dynasties of Suy and Tang in China
1. oldest mosque in the world: The Huaisheng mosque (dated from 627) still exists in Canton, a city usually known today as Guangzhou.
44
The Great Days of the Arabs
1. 634: Modern reckoning places the battle of Yarmuk in 636.
2. Spain was invaded in 710… 672 and 718: The invasion of Spain is now placed in 711 and the sea attacks on Constantinople between 674 and 717.
46
The Crusades and the Age of Papal Dominion
1. grows with what it feeds upon: Cf. Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘Why, she would hang on him / As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on’ (I.ii. 143–5).
2. Franciscans… Marseilles: The Franciscans were later reinstated and today constitute the largest Roman Catholic religious order, noted for its social and missionary work.
47
Recalcitrant Princes and the Great Schism
1. able writer: It has not been possible to trace the ‘able writer’ cited here. Most later authors who have used the phrase seem to have taken it from Wells.
2. J. H. Robinson: James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) was a leading practitioner of the ‘New History’ in America, which focused less on past political events than on past social, scientific and intellectual developments and how these might help our understanding of contemporary problems. Wells contributed an introduction to the 1923 revision of Robinson’s book The Mind in the Making (1921).
48
The Mongol Conquests
1. Jengis Khan… Kieff: Some of Wells’s dates in this paragraph vary slightly from modern reckoning. The war of Jengis (or Genghis) Khan against the Kin (Jin) Empire is now dated from 1211, and the capture of Pekin (Beijing) is placed in 1215. The invasion of Russia is dated at 1237; Kieff is today known as Kiev.
2. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Edward Gibbon (1737–94) produced his classic account of the Roman Empire in five volumes from 1776 to 1788. John Bagnell Bury (1861–1927) was a leading British historian who edited Gibbon’s history in an edition published between 1896 and 1900.
3. 1505: 1515.
49
The Intellectual Revival of the Europeans
1. Lucretius: Roman philosopher of the first century AD. His long poem On the Nature of Things puts forward a materialist view of the universe as composed of atoms, and denounces religion as a source of evil and misery.
2. Wisby: Visby is the capital of Gotland in south-east Sweden. In the medieval period it was an independent republic and prominent trading centre, but declined after 1280 owing to civil unrest and to attacks from Sweden and Denmark.
3. burthen: Refrain, leading idea.
4. cum impetu inaestimabile: With incalculable speed.
5. scythed: With blades attached to the wheels.
6. second century BC: The earliest known form of paper was developed in AD 105 by a Chinese official called Ts’ai Lun.
51
The Emperor Charles V
1. Prescott: William Hickling Prescott (1796–1859), American historian, best known for his accounts of the European conquests of Mexico and Peru. In 1857 he edited The History of the Reign of Charles V (1796) by the Scottish churchman and historian William Robertson (1721–93).
2. jour maigre: Meatless day.
3. catafalque: A decorated, tomb-like construction used to carry a coffin or effigy.
52
The Age of Political Experiments
1. Dr Gilbert… New Atlantis: William Gilbert’s De magnete (1600) was the first major English book of science. Gilbert invented the term ‘electricity’ and proposed that electricity and magnetism might be products of a single force. Bacon wrote The New Atlantis, an unfinished story, around 1624. It was published in Latin in 1627, in English in 1629.
2. faience: Glazed coloured earthenware.
3. Voltaire’s Candide: Candide, or Optimism (1759) by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) is a wide-ranging satire on human folly and complacency. Wells was a lifelong admirer of the book and dedicated his 1928 satirical novel Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island ‘to the Immortal Memory of CANDIDE’.
53
The New Empires of the Europeans
1. Portuguese possessions: Mozambique became independent in 1975; Goa was occupied by India in 1961; Macao was returned to China in 1999; East Timor declared itself independent in 1975 but was seized by Indonesia.
2. silver streak: The origin of this euphemism for the English Channel is obscure. It is often attributed to an unspecified newspaper article of 1885.
3. Clive… Hastings: Robert Clive (1725–74) was effectively sole ruler of Bengal (1757–60), during which time he made an enormous fortune and was thought by many to have set an influential example of corruption. He defended himself in the British Parliament, but committed suicide the following year. Warren Hastings (1732–1818), Governor-General of India 1772–85, was impeached for injustice and corruption in 1786, tried before the House of Lords and acquitted.
54
The American War of Independence
1. Oglethorpe: General James Oglethorpe (1696–1785), soldier and politician, resettled ex-prisoners and victims of religious persecution in Georgia from 1732.
55
The French Revolution
1. C. F. Atkinson: Charles Francis Atkinson (b. 1880), noted historian and translator.
2. chicane: abuse of the law.
56
The Uneasy Peace in Europe
1. cantonal system: A system of small, self-governing districts.
2. German Fatherland: The song is ‘Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?’ by Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860).
57
The Development of Material Knowledge
1. human locomotion: 1909 was the year that the French aviator Louis Blériot made the first flight from France to England. Wells recorded the event in an article, ‘The Coming of Blériot’, later collected in his book An Englishman Looks at the World (1914), known in the United States as Social Forces in England and America. Wells saw Blériot’s flight as the key moment when airpower began to threaten the security of the nation-state, and did not subscribe to the view that the Wright brothers’ experiments in 1903 were of especial significance.
58
The Industrial Revolution
1. Defoe… Fielding: Both authors are best remembered as novelists; the writings of Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) include Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Henry Fielding (1707–54) The History of Tom Jones (1749). Defoe, nonetheless, wrote extensively on economics and trade and Fielding worked for a decade as a political journalist.
59
The Development of Modern Political and Social Ideas
1. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia… Campanella’s City of the Sun: Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1477–1535) appeared in 1516 in Latin and was published in an English version in 1551. City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) was written around 1602, during its author’s twenty-seven-year imprisonment after interrogation and torture by the Spanish Inquisition.
2. John Locke… Montesquieu: The chief writings of John Locke (1632–1704) are Two Treatises of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (all published in 1690). The most influential book by Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, is the Spirit of Laws (1748).
3. a new world (1766): The Encyclopédie appeared 1751–66.
4. Code de la Nature: A defence of communist ideas, published in France in 1755. Virtually nothing is known about Morelly except his last name and the fact that he was a teacher.
5. Marx: Karl Marx (1818–83) remains one of the most influential and controversial of modern social thinkers. His writings include The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867).
6. Adam Smith: Adam Smith (1723–90), famous Scottish intellectual, so in calling him an ‘English economist’ Wells presumably means ‘economist in the English language’. Smith’s principal work is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
60
The Expansion of the United States
1. one-horse shay: A light open carriage, drawn by a single horse.
62
The New Overseas Empires
1. the present time: India became independent of Britain in 1947.
64
The British Empire in 1914
1. Ireland: Ireland, except for Ulster, was made a self-governing Free State within the Empire in 1922, declared itself a republic in 1937 and quit the Commonwealth in 1949.
2. Indian Empire… Aden: In 1947 the Indian empire became the two independent states of India and Pakistan, the latter incorporating Baluchistan as a province. Burma became independent in 1948. Aden became the major port city of South Yemen from 1968, and part of the Republic of Yemen from 1990.
3. Egypt: Egypt became partially independent in 1922, fully independent in 1936.
4. Sudan: Sudan became an independent state in 1956.
5. Malta, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Bermuda: Malta became fully independent in 1964, Jamaica in 1962, the Bahamas in 1973. Bermuda continues to be a self-governing British territory.
6. Ceylon, Trinidad and Fiji: Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) became independent in 1948, Trinidad and Tobago in 1962, Fiji in 1989. Gibraltar and St Helena remain British territories.
7. Basutoland… Rhodesia: Basutoland became independent as Lesotho in 1966, Northern Rhodesia as Zambia in 1964, Southern Rhodesia as Zimbabwe in 1980.
