Hendrik Willem van Loon (1882–1944)

I read this book with a mixture of awe, disgust, and pure intellectual happiness. This book was published in 1932; it was still The Great War, not WWI, and there are constant reminders that things we take for granted (routine air travel, cell phones, satellites, the Internet, etc.) just weren’t around.

Mr. Van Loon spends the first six marvelous chapters discussing peoples of the world, geography for purposes of his book, our planet, maps, the seasons and other weather phenomena, and land show more masses. It’s fascinating stuff and although there are more current theories of some of what he writes about, much of it is of a sameness. He then discusses countries, or continents, or islands, or other nationalistic entities alone or in combo with wit, inventiveness, and an ability to cut to the heart of each entity he describes.

Because it was written over 80 years ago, it is rife with the prejudices, stereotypes, and assumed white-man superiority that that have mostly gone away (or at least underground); however, I have always tried to consider an author’s writings to be of her or his own times and cut some slack.

The absolute best parts of the book are his line drawings. There are perhaps one hundred – I didn’t count exactly – and they range from “Only round objects give round shadows” to “Norway” to “Look at a Map of the Arctic and This is All You See”. The drawings of countries or continents are linear and only include mountains and rivers with the occasional city, because he is mostly discussing how geography defines how land is used and how a country or region’s history is derived from what people have to work with. To a large degree he posits that geography is destiny. Invasions, agricultural and industrial pursuits, personality types, and many other actions and behaviors are explained as a result of geographical factors controlling an area.

A very interesting, curiously dated yet prescient look at our world. show less

This is an interesting and very well written history, originally published in 1926. As Van Loon tells us very early on, "This is not a handbook of anthropology. It is a volume dedicated to the subject of 'tolerance.' But 'tolerance' is a very broad theme. The temptation to wander will be great. And once we leave the beaten track Heaven along knows where we shall land." It should be noted that, as it turns out, by "mankind," Van Loon means, essentially, Europeans. Also, as per the book's show more publication date, we are not surprised to find that basically every single person of influence or note was male.

Hendrick Willem Van Loon was clearly a fascinating fellow. For one thing, he was the recipient, in 1922, of the first Newbery Medal for his book [The Story of Mankind]. The Newbery Medal is, of course, an award for children's literature. I haven't read The Story of Mankind, but The Liberation of Mankind is described on its dust jacket as more or less a sequel: " . . . these {a series of historical figures} have been re-created in the simple and direct style of The Story of Mankind, of which it has been said, 'The words are for children, but the meanings are for men.'" I bring all this up as context for my observation that I perceive thereby that the standards for what is considered children's writing sure have changed. I don't know that very many current-day educators (at least in the U.S.) would hand this book even to a teenager with any confidence that that person would have the knowledge necessary to make heads or tales out of most of this history or the desire to work through the book's 307 pages. That's not meant as a criticism of Van Loon or of this book. I loved it, in fact. But here is a longish example of the sort of thing I mean. As Van Loon is describing the rise of the early Christian Church and one Roman emperor's reaction, he tells us:

The first elementary missionary work among the heathen of Europe had already been done. But lest the good accomplished by the apostles come to naught, the labours of the individual preachers must be followed up by the organized effort of permanent settlers and administrators. The monks now carried their spade and their axe and their prayer-book into the wilderness of Germany and Scandinavia and Russia and far-away Iceland. They ploughed and they harvested and they preached and they taught school and brought unto those distant lands the first rudimentary elements of a civilization which most people only knew by hearsay.

In this way did the Papacy, the executive head of the entire Church, make use of all manifold forces of the human spirit.

The practical man of affairs was given quite as much of an opportunity to distinguish himself as the dreamer who found happiness in the silence of the woods. There was no lost motion. Nothing was allowed to go to waste. And the result was such an increase of power that soon neither emperor nor king could afford to rule his realm without paying humble attention to the wishes of those of his subjects who confessed themselves the followers of the Christ.

The way in which the final victory was gained is not without interest. For it shows that the triumph of Christianity was due to practical causes and was not (as is sometimes believed) the result of a sudden and overwhelming outburst of religious ardour.

The last great persecution of the Christians took place under the Emperor Diocletian.

Curiously enough, Diocletian was by no means one of the worst among those many potentates who ruled Europe by the grace of their bodyguards. But he suffered from a complaint which, alas! is quite common among those who are called upon to govern the human race. He was densely ignorant upon the subject of elementary economics.

That last paragraph provides an example of Van Loon's sense of humor (in deference to him I should probably say "humour"), with which this book is laced to great effect. And the writing is certainly not dense, but I'm not sure how many "kids these days" would hang with it for too long. I'm not sure I would have tried it with the college freshmen I taught for a couple of semesters back in 1992.

Anyway, as to the book itself, Van Loon starts with the Greeks and then moves through the Roman era and then through European history up through the French Revolution, describing the movements, institutions and individuals who have the most to do with, in turn, enhancing or curtailing the cause of tolerance in society. (In a way, it works as a more entertainingly written companion piece to a book I finished earlier this year, [The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View] by Richard Tarnas.) Despite Van Loon's relative enthusiasm for the early Christian Church as described above, Van Loon is especially critical of the Church as it evolved into the Middle Ages, and then the murderous leaders among both Catholics and Protestants once the Reformation is launched. The book's second half is composed of short biographies of influential individuals, either via politics or philosophical writing, over the ebb and flow of the idea of tolerance in Western society. Erasmus, Spinoza and Montaigne get particularly interesting treatments, as do the figures of the French Revolution. Van Loon describes the repression in the Puritan settlements, but, disappointingly, misses the admirable Roger Williams. The final chapter, "The Last Hundred Years," is only a few pages long, and Van Loon concludes with a hopeful passages that beg for patience and perseverance in the struggle for overall societal tolerance. He writes with an uneasy eye backwards toward recent history (World War One and the Russian Revolution). But as he was writing in 1926, he could not be expected to be able to see what was coming.

Jeepers, I've written a lot about this book! I found it very interesting and a lot of fun to read. It never would have occurred to me, if I hadn't read it on the book's flyleaf, that Van Loon wrote in with an eye toward young adults. I had a lot of Van Loon's books scattered in various sections of my used bookstore (which I sold a year ago), but I don't recall ever selling one. I don't know how historically accurate all of his descriptions and observations are. Nevertheless, I think he's well worth reading even given, or possibly because of, the book's vintage of close to 100 years old. Van Loon's sense of humor, as already noted, is enjoyable and quite dark. For example the cover of the book itself, a book, remember, about tolerance and liberation, depicts a guiilotine! show less

An intriguing book for sure, "Van Loon's Geography" is at times a remarkable time capsule of its era (1932), with statements on who would want Austria in its then current form (thanks to van Loom I realised that Anchluss wasn't a big shock as there had been moves to "merge" the two nations for years), mixed with some of the most incredible broad sweeping stereotypical statements I've ever read (my favorite was how the people of Edinburgh were all intelligent, hard working types but were show more saddled by Glaswegians, who were all drunken layabouts).

When you mix all that with his rant about how Australian Aboriginals were the most miserable, useless people in the world, with nothing to recommend them, you get a somewhat strange result. Even more so, when, in my case, you buy a clearly bootlegged version in some dodgy bookshop in China with the odd bizarre spelling mistake (and without the sketches van Loom refers to throughout the book).

If nothing else, this book is almost the ultimate curio. show less

The Story of Mankind is the 1922 Newbery winner, and the first book to receive the award. It chronicles the history of "mankind" from its single cell origins through the end of World War I. I'm not sure what inspired the Newbery committee to choose a nearly 500 page book with such an ambitious scope, and I really can't see how this book would have gotten children excited about either reading or history.

First off, the book is incredibly Eurocentric. There is barely a mention of the world show more beyond Europe. There is brief discussion of the Middle East and one chapter entitled, "Concerning Buddha and Confucius" that deals with Eastern religions. Egypt is mentioned in chapters detailing the beginning of civilization, but the rest of Africa may as well not even exist, except for the "heathenish tribes...who worshiped sticks and stones and dead trees." The Native Americans also do not merit a mention. At times, Van Loon is apologetic about this, saying, "I wish that I could tell you what happened to Norway and Switzerland and Serbia and China. But these lands exercised no great influence upon the development of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I therefore pass them by with a polite an very respectful bow."

Towards the end of the book he talks about how he had one rule for deciding what to put in his book. "Did the country or the person in question produce a new idea or perform an original act without which the history of the entire human race would have been different?" It seems like a nearly impossible question to answer, but Van Loon doesn't hesitate to answer this question in regards to the Mongolians. "No race ever played a more picturesque role in history than the Mongolians," he writes, "and no race, from the point of view of achievement or intelligent progress, was of less value to the rest of mankind." Yikes. Not so much of a polite and respectful bow there. I can't decide if I prefer the patronizing, the condemning, or complete omitting of certain groups.

I will also mention Van Loon's cringe-worthy discussion of slavery in the Americas. He writes the "negroes were strong and could withstand rough treatment...[and] association with the white man would give them a chance to learn Christianity...so from every possible point of view, it would be an excellent arrangement both for the kindly white man and for his ignorant black brother." Wowzers. Soon after, Van Loon condemns slavery as practiced in the Americas, but his condemnation seems to be mostly an, "oops, maybe we went a little to far trying to save these ignorant heathens." (I am putting these words in his mouth.)

This review is already long, but so I won't discuss my issues with Van Loon's portrayal of the Jews killing Jesus or the fearless Muslims so excited about paradise they are running directly into European machine gun fire. Nor will I dwell on the fact that I could probably count the number of women mentioned in this book on one hand.

In spite of these things, I found some parts of the book to be surprisingly progressive. The book was written just before the Scopes Trial, but evolution is presented as a fact and there is no mention whatsoever of creationism. Van Loon also states the the Bible is not a reliable source of scientific knowledge and the most important messages in the Bible are those of love, charity, and forgiveness. He encourages his readers to question their own stereotypes, ask questions, and see history from all angles. A good student of history should attempt to uncover the hidden motives behind people's actions, because it is only through understanding that we can truly make the world a more peaceful place.

I think that Van Loon was well-intentioned, but very misguided in writing this book. He wanted kids to understand and love history, and most importantly to learn from it. If the book were written today, I would be more adamant that is an infuriating, condescending, and worthless piece of literature. Since it was written nearly one hundred years ago, I will exercise some restraint. It had its good moments.

That being said, the book was very dense, mostly very boring, and I would not recommend it to anyone unless you have taken on the senseless project of reading all the Newbery winners. show less