Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s book, Millennium, is a world history that reevaluates the relative importance of events, people and trends that are traditionally emphasized in the past thousand years. Perhaps the most unique and effective technique that Armesto utilizes is the broad and detached focus that he employs through his galactic museum-keepers. These imaginary beings allow Armesto to transcend the temptations of deterministic or teleological language. They also lay the foundation for a critical re-evaluation of the past thousand years on a neutral basis without regard for traditional grand-narratives or widely believed edifices like the hegemony of Western Civilization. The relative importance of events are easily re-conceptualized and re-evaluated with the galactic museum-keepers, kind of scary and omnipresent in my imagination, in Armesto’s back pocket. Armesto is like a master magician pulling a white bunny out of his hat whenever the audience needs to be reminded of the narrative focus.

The beauty of the book however, is Armesto’s ability to simultaneously persuade readers to take a birds-eye view of the world from high in the sky while seamlessly enticing readers to dive down through the clouds and “[picture] the past in significant details rather than bold strokes.” It is the unity of the two approaches that allows readers to see both the diverse differences between different locales over time but also make significant interconnections throughout the text. Armesto contends that anybody can create different patterns and interconnections in the past but “my criteria are of convenience, not of value.” His statement makes sense alongside his anti-determinist tact and his outlook of the past thousand years as shifts of initiative amongst different civilizations. Armesto broadly tracks the shift of initiative over time by their association with the different seas: from the China Sea and Mediterranean to the Atlantic and finally the Pacific.

Although the shifts of initiative seem similar to the story Arrighi tells in The Long Twentieth Century with hegemonic regions of capitalist initiative, Armesto explains these shifts not as patterns, laws or economic structural change. Each shit of initiative and story is understood in its own context and in its own way. However, there is a common thread that binds the shifts together, “the relative performance of rival cultures depends on the self-perceptions and mutual perceptions of the peoples concerned.” Empires are often undermined by talking themselves into decline. The “course of history is influenced less by events as they happen than by the constructions-often fanciful, often false-which people put on them.

Whereas Chris Harman in his book, A People’s History of the World, mostly talks about groups of people, Armesto shows the importance of individuals in shaping history. That said, Millenium is not a typical “great-man history” because it is not just highlighting various Europeans but shedding light on largely unknown individuals who are largely non-European. This is exemplified in the very beginning of the book in chapter 1 by the focus on Lady Murasaki Shikibu and her novel The Tale of Genji. Armesto uses Shikibu’s to show how the Japanese secular elite society were characterized by sensuality, peace and delicacy of feeling around the beginning of the eleventh century. Armesto contrasts Japanese elite culture with Christendom during the same time (around year 1000) where noble hoodlums and aristocratic thuggery had to be checked by the church. The Japanese culture is then compared with others around the same time, including Islamic Civilization, in order to dispel the notion of Japanese isolationism excluding their use as an example. Thus, Armesto expertly grabs the reader’s attention right from the start and lays the foundation and pattern that the rest of the book follows. Armesto also expertly uses cultural and societal specificities to compare and contrast differences between people of different groups across space and time. Harman on the other hand tended to follow a singular theme of mass exploitation throughout history and often failed to give texture to the varying existing conditions that groups encountered across the globe. The groups he addresses often come off as caricatures.

Another difference between the two authors is how Harman’s polemic almost seeps through the text to leave a stain that blots every page. An explicit polemic argument is not necessarily harmful in a history text but it does change the tone of the book and in many ways makes it harder to convince readers. This is because the general reading public, for which both books were published, desire answers and objective truths. They are accustomed to receiving knowledge on a daily basis that is supposedly, “Fair and Balanced,” or “Balanced News You Can Count On.” Thus, readers who are not true believers in whatever polemic being espoused are likely to be suspicious when confronting a book like Harman’s with a clear theoretical argument emblazoned on the cover. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is able to hide his political beliefs throughout the text until the epilogue when he consciously chooses to espouse his beliefs in predicting the future.

Armesto’s command of the narrative is intoxicating at time but its structure might be disconcerting to non-academic readers. Armesto’s choice of unusual stories instead of traditional ones can be quite jarring and possibly incomprehensible to readers without a basic grasp of traditional world history. Armesto pulls up the anchor for the book and takes readers across the oceans to visit strange and previously unknown locales. While seductively enthralling, readers without a solid background in historical knowledge are apt to be confused by not seeing familiar shores and identifiable stories. Armesto is revising history in a different way than Harman. Harman’s voyage visits all the big and traditional historical locales. Readers find comfort gazing out from the Harman’s boat because they know the scenery. Harman attempts to shock them out of their malaise by giving them socialist colored shades to view the scenery and stories anew. Armesto never needs any shades because he takes readers to far off locales that make his argument by their mere presence and scenery that illustrates the use of impressionistic evidence to prove Armesto’s argument that Western world hegemony was not inevitable or nearly as enduring as many think.

Armesto is able to take readers to foreign cultures not only though his excellent control of the narrative but with visual representations as well. This is not the first book this semester that has utilized visual aides to complement the narrative. Mike Davis’ book, Late Victorian Holocausts, also used pictures to show the exploitation of native people by the British. In fact, Mike Davis’ use of pictures is similar to Armesto’s because both authors use the visuals as more than simple illustrations of the text. The use of pictures in both texts is central to the arguments being made. Mike Davis uses grisly photos of native famine victims as accusations against British colonial rule. Similarly, Armesto uses the pictures as impressionistic evidence. A great example is when Armesto uses photos of John Brown and Thomas Jefferson’s houses to illustrate the conflicting character of American aristocracy. As Armesto says, “The point could best be proved by textual analysis but is best illustrated by a look at Thomas Jefferson’s strange country house.” Furthermore, each picture or photo has an accompanying caption that is incredibly detailed and often offers even more analysis than the text. In fact, in many sections it is possible to “read” the text solely through the illustrations and the accompanying captions. The narrative and visual aids allow readers to abscond and see, taste, smell and hear the events and locales visited in Millennium. Getting lost at sea on Armesto’s boat is truly a once in a lifetime experience and one where a three-hour tour just isn’t long enough.