The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (Penguin Reference Books)

Rating:
Summary: A scolarly and readable overview
Review: Mcevedy's achievement is to take a broad sweep of history spanning several millenia and present it in a form which is clear, scholarly and readily comprehensible to the layman. His prose style is entertaining and the text is amply complemented by the adjoining maps. It is possible to follow the historical narrative and place it in a geographical context which would normally elude the lay reader. I found this to be an excellent and most entertaining book, as good as if not better than his previous work.

Rating:
Summary: Keep an eye out for bias and inaccuracies
Review: The four parts of this book's contents gives a good indication of what you will find: Part 1, Setting the Scene [31 of the 120 pages to cover the period from 28 Million Years Ago until AD 1513]; Part 2. The Ocean Defined [by the Spaniards, English, Dutch, etc., of course]; Part 3. From Cook to Perry [need I say more]; and, finally, Modern Times [pp. 79-112, including much detail about WWII].

On the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the author states: ". . .as is often the case in Japan, things were not as they seemed. For instance, the idea that power was being restored to the emperor was simply humbug; the monarchy remained, as it always had been, purely ceremonial. For another, the new government was searching for a consenses and soon found it; top priority,it announced, would go to strengthening the armed forces. In a society that took great pride in its warrior caste, this was not a policy anyone could oppose. . ." And so on.

If the reader is content to understand the history of Japan simply as a series of Mifune films, topped off by "The Last Samurai", this may be the book for you. Otherwise, you will recall that the monarchy was very much in control of the government at least from the days of Prince Shotoku (d. 622) until the Gempei War (1180-85). . . He/she will also recall that the samurai class lost its political and social position from the very beginning of the Meiji Restoration. Was this a "society that took great pride in its warrior caste," or was it a society that was "opened" in 1853 with Commodore Perry's guns trained on the capital, a society quite aware of how Europe (including England) and America were on a rampage to colonize the entire world, that it might bestow upon it the blessings of democracy and Christianity? What would you do if you were a Japanese in 1868?

On the issue of inaccuracy, let me cite at least one, including one of the author's remarks that some might mistakenly consider amusing: "The Japanese script, on the other hand, though it looks similar to Chinese, was, from the start, an instrument for writing Japanese. There are several variants, which were combined with Chinese characters to produce the wildly complicated, often ambiguous hotch-potch that has proved so perfect a match for the Japanese psyche." (p. 23)

Where does one begin to address such a confused -- and bigoted -- statement? The earliest extant document in Japanese, the Kojiki (ca. 712), for the most part used Chinese characters for their PHONETIC value to convey Japanese sounds. The Nihon shoki (720), on the other hand, was written by Japanese IN CHINESE. Eventually, the Japanese developed two parallel syllabaries (kana) -- hiragana and katakana -- to complement the use of Chinese used SEMANTICALLY, for their meaning. . . The chart on p. 23 is also misleading. The Korean column contains standard Chinese characters but should probably display the Hankul script developed by the Koreans; and the "Japanese" column is, at best, some example of specialized writing style that to most Japanese today would be simply unreadable. Ask one.

For a good book on the issues, see Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, "The World's Writing Systems," New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 922 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Lot of information but maybe too many stories to tell.
Review: This is the seventh in McEvedy's series of comprehensive historical atlases. Having covered Europe and the Middle East in a group of four (ancient, medieval, modern and recent), Africa, and North America, he has now produced the largest of all -- a 120-page work dealing with Asia and the Pacific. To my mind this is not quite as good as the others.

It has some of their strength -- principally a tremendous amount of information and research, which is very enlightening on some important themes -- i.e. population growth, European voyages of discovery, and the expansion of the Malays and Polynesians into Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Also McEvedy's graceful and humorous style. For example, finding that anthropologists seem to have reached the anomalous conclusion that the native Tasmanians were more closely related to the Melanesians north of Australia than to their immediate neighbors the Australian aborigines, he quotes a Victorian on evolution: "let us hope that it is not true, and if it is, that it not become generally known."

However I note several weaknesses in comparison to the others.

First, the atlas seems to tell too many stories. It covers at least five major areas -- China & Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Central Asia & Tibet; the Pacific; and North America. Even though the atlas is physically larger than its predecessors, this reduces detail so much that events become hard to follow at times, particularly in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Tibetan plateau. This is true even of some of the Atlas's major focuses -- i.e. colonial expansion and the Second World War. If North America were dropped some information might be lost but the whole atlas would become much clearer.

Second, it covers the whole span of history. This makes coverage spotty up till around 1000 AD, and some important events (Warring States period and Three Kingdoms/disunity eras in China; Tai migration into Southeast Asia; Muslim conversion of Central Asia) are lost altogether.

Probably three and a half stars is a better choice than four. Nonetheless it has a lot of information, is well written, and has the special virtue of being the only book of its kind I have ever seen & reasonably priced as well.