There’s history, and then there’s history
History, as we usually think about it in the United States, has about a 500-year range.
That’s if you go all the way back to Columbus.
I was struck recently by two books that provided a bit more perspective. I’ve been reading some of the stories in the Cadfael Chronicles series. The novels by Ellis Peters are set in 12th century England, built around the lives of monks in a monastery in Shrewsbury.
Part of the fascination has been learning about everyday life in rural England 850 years ago. There were castles, knights in armor and maidens in distress, but there also were ordinary, hard-working millers and bakers, farmers and sheep herders.
Then last week I stopped an an airport bookstore to find something to read on the flight home. I picked up Genghis, Birth of an Empire, a novel about the early life of Genghis Khan. I was about to put it down and move on when I realized it was set in nearly the same years as the Cadfael Chronicles.
A book about life on the Mongolian steppes in the year 1200; a book about life in rural England in the year 1143. I couldn’t resist.
It’s been a couple days since I put Genghis down, and I’m still troubled. I’m not sure what author Conn Iggulden had in mind, but I’m guessing that he set out to demonstrate the combination of lifestyle and circumstances that led to one of the most ruthless and ambitious minds in military history.
Genghis Khan’s childhood was hard, so hard that it’s virtually incomprehensible to us today. It was a world far, far away from the peaceful countryside of England, and it bred hard men - warriors who were unstoppable when sweeping across the plains of Asia - and eventually Europe. The violence is difficult to read about - we simply don’t have anything to compare with it, even in the midst of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m not a historian. I wouldn’t want to try to explain the impact that Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes or the Catholic monks of the dark ages had on the development of modern society.
I just know that reading Cadfael and Genghis gives me a tiny bit more perspective - and a sense of awe at how much more went on before us than we normally consider.
In the sweep of history, our wars of today will be minor footnotes. At the same time, for the brave soldiers who are fighting and for their families waiting at home, history is unimportant. What’s happening right now matters most.