Climate – The Secret Agent of History

A review of “Transformed Earth. An Exposed History” by Peter Frankopan by Nicu Ilie

The study of history has permanently reconfigured history itself. And each age had its specific way of looking, judging and instrumentalizing history. From Egypt to China and from the Bible to gesture or historical novels, the past of human communities has been a permanent source of legitimizing normativity, but also of political innovation and social change.

The modern era was no exception. A romantic history, centered on remarkable historical figures and impressive victories, permanently self-contaminated by legends and anecdotal, created the era of nations and justified both great revolutions of thought and unimaginable atrocities.

The Need for a New History

Today this low history in battles and marriages no longer fascinates anyone and no longer explains anything. It has become far too political and propaganda. Blind to what is not convenient ideologically and short-sighted to the great social and social developments.

The need for a new, much deeper history that integrates other knowledge capabilities has been signaled for many years. Some works have not been delayed to appear, first at the academic level. Biothematics and biostatistics have provided outstanding studies on the evolution of human communities from prehistoric times or from poorly documented historical spaces. Genetic studies, after three decades of extensive testing, globally, also provide clues to the internal and external dynamics of societies of all eras. Human geography, benefiting from the new computing power that allows it to catalog and classify resources globally, is becoming more and more competent to provide predictions of social evolution, but also in rethinking the past and historical logic.

Climate and Society

In turn, climatology has been promising for years to make an outstanding contribution to reconfiguring a history that is needed today. Deep exploration of polar caps and new geological study methods have allowed the establishment of a precise chronology of the great cataclysms that have hit the planet in recent epochs, but also the highlighting of subtle developments that have influenced and continue to influence the evolution and social and economic dynamics. Such studies have shown, for example, that an increase in average temperature in Scandinavia of just two degrees has triggered profound demographic changes that culminated in the great invasions of the Vikings. Or that similar changes are responsible for moving the populations in the steppe that have resulted in the era of great migrations.

In essence, Frankopan’s book, “The Transformed Earth. An unspeakable history,” it brings nothing new. It does not rely on self-research and does not bring an innovative vision. His great merit is to graphically integrate dozens of researches in recent times and to take them out of the academic arid environment, making them useful to a wide audience. With all the inherent and less inherent minuses of such a book, the “Transformed Earth” is certainly one of the books that will reconfigure history, making it useful to our age.

A Bianistologist from Oxford

Peter Frankopan became famous ten years ago after the appearance of a book on the Silk Road, subtitled “A New History of the World”. At the level of the general public, this volume was considered innovative for the importance it attaches to Central Asia in the configuration of the history of the Eurasian continent, often seen as dominated by one of its two extremes: Europe or the Far East. Beyond that, perhaps the main merit of the book is that it emphasizes the importance of cultural, religious, economic exchanges, where “classic” history still operates with political entities designed as self-sufficient and almost hermetically isolated.

Frankopan is a British historian with Croatian origins, a specialist in Byzantium, a professor at Oxford. It is a little over 50 years old and represents this generation of historians who consider history an essential tool of geopolitics, insofar as it has the ability to integrate all other dimensions of human knowledge and fixed sciences. Aware of the public’s difficulty in following such a complex speech, he has developed an accessible style, in which scientific references are only dotted. Its interest is the configuration of a more accurate chronology, on multiple geopolitical axes. To this end, it also sacrifices the effort of typologizing the impact of natural events or the search for an eco-historical philosophy. Simply, the data of human and natural history are put together, correlated as accurately as possible, and this effort itself is a huge one, which makes the reading of the 800 pages an exhilarating and suspenseful one.

Second year, second edition

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History appeared in 2023 at Bloomsbury and in 2024 already had a reissue. Success is global, with nearly 40 versions, in many languages indexed on Goodreads.

The book proposes an ambitious review of human history viewed through the prism of our relationship with the environment. It provides a holistic view of the past that places the accent on the interaction between man and nature, arguing that the history of humanity has been fundamentally shaped by climatic, geological factors and the availability of natural resources.

Climate, a neutral name for “mother nature”

The first chapter, “Origini,” explores how climate and geographic conditions have influenced the evolution of mankind and the emergence of the first civilizations. The author looks at how climate change in the prehistoric period has prompted human migrations and facilitated the transition to sedentary agriculture.

In the chapter “The Empires of Nature”, the book details the relationship between the great empires of antiquity and natural resources. It is examined how access to water, fertile land and the availability of strategic raw materials (relative to the technological capacity of the period) has determined the expansion and organization of Egyptian, Persian, Roman and Chinese empires.

“Catastrations and Rebirth” presents the impact of natural disasters on human societies throughout history. The author is documenting how volcanic eruptions, epidemics and periods of climate cooling have caused the collapse of some civilizations, but they have also created opportunities for innovations and social reorganizations.

The Beginnings of War with Nature

In the chapter “Exploration and exploitation”, Frankopan sums up the period of great geographical discoveries and the beginning of the intensive exploitation of natural resources. The ecological significance of the meeting between the Old World and the New World is discussed, with the unprecedented transfer of species, diseases and agricultural techniques.

In the “Industrial Revolution and its costs” examine the radical transformation of the perception of natural space caused by (or which caused) industrialization. It looks at how access to fossil fuels has reconfigured the global economy, social structures and the balance of political powers.

The “anthroposcope” addresses the contemporary period, in which human influence on the planet has reached an unprecedented level. The author presents in the historical context the scale of the current climate change and discusses their implications for the future of civilization.

Today

The final chapter, “Lessons from the Past”, extracts, quite predictable, but without any pathos activist, the conclusions of the whole endeavor: the response of our age to unprecedented ecological challenges. Frankopan argues that understanding how past societies have adapted to environmental change can provide valuable insights for managing the contemporary climate crisis.

Through meticulous documentation of how epidemics, famines, volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena have reconfigured societies and changed historical trajectories, The Earth Transformed provides an essential insight into understanding current challenges related to climate change and environmental degradation. The temporal and geographical scale of the work, covering thousands of years and the entire planet, allows the reader to perceive human history as an integral part of a complex and dynamic natural system.

Impact

The book is valuable even for the “unseasonists” of the climate crisis. Even if, in their case, the need for action to stop environmental degradation is not relevant and does not seem by any circumstances an emergency, the chronology created by Frankopan is unrefutable.

“The Transformed Earth. An untold history” combines, in a coherent image, history, geography, climatology and economy. The perspective is really global. Europe is not privileged, as the main creator of history, as we are still calibrated to believe. The world of “populations without history” (with the expression of Eric Wolf) – Asia, Africa or the Americas benefit from the same attention. But first, the value of the work is given by the topicality of the theme. The links between history and the current climate crisis, warning of the repetition of destructive models, are certainly making it a must read.

A dose of infotainment

The book is not aimed at historians, but to the general public. Although academic fairness is an important stake of the author, its objective is to capture the unhappy audience with the available histories. Not even history enthusiasts seem to be the target core, but those readers who are looking for a general, pan-scientific framework, for understanding the world and recent developments.

However, perhaps reading is too complex for many. You can’t expect such a volume to be read unbreamind. It requires attention and does not hurt even if you have an adjacent knowledge about each of the topics. Some will read it with the pencil in their hands, others will not read it at all. Those who will read it by making annotations should be advised that some causalities set by Frankopan are questioned by professional historians. (In many cases, the author himself draws attention to risky generalizations.) Also, those who will seek practical solutions to end the “war with nature” will not find them. The book is only analytical. It provides insight and insight into the problem. The solutions must come from the political action: of politicians and electorates alike.

So,

The volume is compared to the works of Harari and Jared Dimond. It resembles the complexity of the matter, but also this new type of integrative history. Unlike Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens,” Frankopan’s book doesn’t limit the perspective just to cultural consistency; without their environment, communities are harder to understand. And Jared Dimond’s “Colaps” comparison, the difference is that ecological determinism is not (seen) as so constraining and definitive and that, after all, “The Transformed Earth” is not a pessimistic book.

Frankopan’s book is shaping up as an essential one for understanding the interdependence between man and the environment. Man is vulnerable to climate change, just as the climate itself is vulnerable to human actions. For decades such a speech was delivered by remarkable figures – from David Attenborough to Al Gore or Greta Thunberg – but he has always had little impact. Arguments of this type were considered particular and partisan. Now, through Frankopan’s book we have as a working tool a general scheme of history. What do we do with it?

(translated from Romanian: review in Revista Cultura. Courtesy of author)