Made in America

Title: Made in America

Author: Bill Bryson

Publisher:  Black Swan, 1998 (First published 1994)

ISBN: 978-0-552-99805-5

Pages: 431

The irrresistible Bill Bryson is out again with an immensely appealing narrative on American life evolved over the centuries since its colonization by Europeans and how it has affected the language spoken there. Rather than a history of American English as such, it is a description of how words in many walks of life such as politics, literature, automobiles, cookery, and such diverse things came to crystallize out of thin air. The differences between the languages spoken in the U.S. and Britain is examined wherever necessary. As usual, Bryson’s works need not be subjected to examinations of analytical depth, but rather should be an object of wonder for its ideological width. The extensive research did by the author is amply evident in the wide-ranging notes and ‘Select Bibliography’. What differentiates him from others is the humorous undertone which permeates every sentence and phrase of the book. In fact, it may soon become possible for me to identify Bryson’s work even if no distinguishing mark regarding authorship is present in a book, like the definition given by some authorities for identifying obscenity – I know it when I see it!

The real history of English settlement in Americas begin with the arrival of Pilgrim Fathers in 1621 on the bark ‘Mayflower’ in Virginia. Though there were earlier European settlements on the East coast, the seed of the future nation lay in the tiny community they created. The puritans jealously preserved their divinely ordained ways of life, along with words and phrases in usage in the 16^th century England, which continue to be used even today. Early settlers found life immensely difficult in the vast and dangerous New World. Sometimes, the rate of attrition was as high as 80%. The first American revolution was in the cultivation of tobacco, in the first half of 17^th century, which proved to be a wonder crop on Virginian soil and reaped huge profits that could sustain larger populations. It catalyzed migration and slavery. The large scale immigration continued until 1700 when the government in Britain realized the drain on their own human resources and put a stop to it. But it didn’t prevent people of other nationalities like Irish and Caribbean settling there. The resultant mix of cultures and people resulted in the slow but definite emergence of America and its English as a separate dialect.

Bryson then moves on to the 18^th century and elucidates in a thoroughly humorous yet respectful way how the founding fathers of America built the nation after a heroic revolutionary war with Britain (1776-83) and framing a constitution (1789). It soon developed a flag, anthem and symbol (Uncle Sam), the minimum prerequisites for any nation worth its salt. The analysis of several inspiring incidents related to America’s war of Independence brings the author to reach the inevitable conclusion that most, if not all, of the narrations about it were greatly embellished by later biographers and historians. The 19^th century also saw American English consolidate its position vis-à-vis its sister on the other side of the Atlantic. Abraham Lincoln, with his mesmerisingly simple speech which conveyed great ideas and marshalled his compatriots to action, set a definitive tone of what the language in the continent was up to.

Real material progress dawned on America during the latter half of 19^th century. Automated production techniques and mechanisms invented by ingenious adventurers and supply of abundant raw material made the new nation surpass Britain as the world’s largest manufacturer in 1894. Also, it was a less stratified society than the British where a man could indeed make money and be respectable in society with his own effort, and not with resort to his aristocratic pedigree. Encouraging inventions go hand in hand with legal protection and time-limited monopoly for the production of newly invented things. We must note with astonishment at the very early year (1793) in which the American patent office was established, to cater to exactly the same need. Though its application was not entirely foolproof, the safeguarding of intellectual property rights yielded wonders in the industrial arena. The purchase of Louisiana (1809) and nearby states from France, coupled with Californian gold rush literally paved the way for migration inland on an unheard-of scale to the wild west. Population in the isolated communities multiplied many times in a few decades.

Immigration grew once again during the 19^th century and early 20^th, riding piggyback on the surging economy. At first, the Northern Europeans came in large numbers, and after 1880, it was the turn of South and Eastern Europeans, who were comparatively less well off than the former. By the end of the century, protests were heard about the refugee influx and by 1924, it was effectively curtailed with a quota system. However, Blacks and Asiatics were never favoured. They were not even given citizenship until much much later. It was also around this time that many symbols which the world now would unhesitatingly associate with America came into being. Automobile and soft drinks like Coca-Cola marked the free character of American life indelibly and expounded to the world the liberal principles which made its constituent parts.

With rising international trade came a lot of trade-related words, stemming from intense advertising and competition in America during the early 20^th century. Bryson illuminates the differences between the words patents, trademarks and trade names as “A patent protects the name of the product and its method of manufacture for seventeen years. Because patents require manufacturers to divulge the secrets of their products and thus give rivals the opprtunity to copy them, companies sometimes choose not to seek their protection. Coca-Cola for one has never been patented. Trademark is effectively the name of a product, its brand name. Trade name is the name of the manufacturer” (p.287).

World War II and its aftermath saw the United States catapult to dizzying heights of prosperity and quality of living as compared to the rest of the world which languished under the heavy damages inflicted by the struggle. The war machinery was effortlessly converted to commercial production, supported with vast cash from the government in the form of unused war bonds. The 1950s saw U.S. cornering 40% of all global output. The share of imports and exports constituted only about 4% of its total turnover. America produced, marketed and consumed all of it themselves in a near-ideal case of self sufficiency. Things turned problematic around 1970s. U.S. businesses, particularly automobile and electronics lost the edge to Japanese competition. Lower educational standards among Americans probably accentuated the difference. Bryson however ends the book with the positive note that immigration was always beneficial to the nation as the incoming people would surely assimilate themselves to the country and provide value to America in the long run.

The book is thoroughly enjoyable and very easy to go through. The author’s caustic humour leaves many moments to cherish in the text. While explaining the craze to find an acronym for anything, which became a fashion after World War II, Bryson pronounces that the army declared TESTICLES as the qualities looked for in military recruits to Vietnam. The letters amusingly referred to teamwork, enthusiasm, stamina, tenacity, initiative, courage, loyalty, excellence and a sense of humour! The book also includes an illuminating history of the development of domestic electrical equipments which we now take for granted.

Practically nothing is there to point out against the book except the fact that it should not be confused with serious reading. It brings out a lot of urban legends, and that’s about the size of it. As mentioned in previous reviews of Bryson’s titles, some parts may be challenging the sensibilities of people with a morally or religiously stringent ideas of what constitute decent expression.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Supercontinent

Title: Supercontinent – Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet

Author: Ted Nield

Publisher:  Granta Publications, 2008 (First published 2007)

ISBN: 978-1-84708-041-7

Pages: 270

The earth is our home which holds myriad wonders in her bosom, unwilling to expose them except only to the adventurous few. That chosen few people come in one variety – geologists. It may seem surprising and counterintuitive to us today the fact that plate tectonics and continental drift, which explain the movement of continents on the surface, came into vogue only during the last fifty years, after mankind had invented nuclear power, electronics and computers. Though the discovery of plate tectonics does not in anyway was a consequence of the three marvelous inventions that changed human lot incomparably, it vindicates the case of geologists that their field of research is so hard and time consuming. Nield’s book would go a long way in popularizing the arcane topic so that young mids sufficiently awed by the wonders of earth would choose to follow on the footsteps of great geologists like Lyell and Wegener.

Our earth housed a supercontinent, which included all the presently existing continents in one whole landmass, hundreds of millions of years ago, which got fractured into many pieces and travelled on the crust to their present positions. The geological forces which effected this phenomenon are still at work. We see that the Atlantic ocean is widening itself by pushing away Europe and America, while the Pacific is shrinking on the opposite side. The pace of the system is so slow as to measure on our everyday scales, but on the scale of a several millions of years, a whole landmass will once again form a supercontinent which will be surrounded by a huge ocean. Other changes are also going on simultaneously – Africa is moving northward, crushing the Mediterranean sea out of existence. Curiously, the idea of a lost continent coloured the imaginations of both poets and scientists for a very long time. Around the beginning of 20^th century, scientists believed that human life originated on an island, named Lemuria, which submerged in the Indian ocean. The author then dwells at some length on this idea based on outdated science. It still animates popular minds in Tamil Nadu, which nurses a myth and contends that their island of origin sank into the sea. However, the author hints that the old reference must be to a previous tsunami which might have devastated the shoreline of ancient India.

The supercontinent Pangea, from which our present-day continents emerged, consisted of two interlinked landmasses, Laurasia and Gondwanaland. It may amuse us, but the name of Gondwanaland was christened by eminent 19^th century geologist Eduard Suess in memory of the Gond tribals of Madhya Pradesh, who had entered geological lore earlier, thanks to some very old plant species found in their midst. Alfred Wegener, who first proposed the idea of a supercontinent and continental drift didn’t find easy acceptance among U.S. geological community where the real money lay, when it was first proposed during the beginning of last century. Brilliant though Wegener’s idea was, he couldn’t propose a mechanism that drove the entire process. His appeals for the congruency of American and African coastlines and the distribution of mountains and rocks on continuous lines across the two continents couldn’t satisfy the demands for evidence. It was an Irish geologist, John Joly who proposed the mechanism by which continents split apart and moved across the crust of the planet. Joly found radioactive elements in layers of rock which emitted heat radiation from below. This radioactivity produced immense heat which is blanketed by the crust. As a result, the heat accumulates and a time will come when the crust can no longer sustain it. It breaks apart, with outpouring of molten lava from beneath. This drives the pieces further away, resulting in continental drift.

The making and undoing of supercontinents repeat in cycles, Rodinia being the name of the supercontinent preceding Pangea where complex life forms probably evolved. The geological events like ice house and greenhouse helped foster or eradicate the prevailing life forms during several periods of its chequered history. Nield illustrates several examples of how a geological event led to the growth of a new chapter in life’s story. He ends the book with a good admonishment at the charlatans who espouse myths and stories of ancient poets envisioned in religious texts and still try to enslave people to outdated beliefs (like America’s infamous Creation Museum). Awareness and preparedness of geological disasters such as the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami has helped save thousands of lives in the form of quake sensors and early warning systems that the scale of damage would be considerably less if such an event recurred. It all point to the need for a new thinking among people to cast off old and redundant beliefs and embrace the scientific worldview.

The book is a heroic attempt to popularize geology. It also includes a lively criticism of mystic traditions camouflaging as scientific concepts, with special reference to the Urantia Book and the religion it spawned. Referring to quotations put forward by its sympathisers, Nield’s opinion is valid for any religious text masquerading as science, “These quotations are selective, of course, which is always the key to making the prophecies of mystics look ‘uncanny’. If you look at other parts of the same passage from which those quotations come, you can find a rich and colourful mixture of half-correct ideas and plain nonsense.” (p.189). Also, “The trick of a successful prophet is to say enough things, and to phrase them sufficiently elliptically, so that the occasional correct hits within the general rambling leap out at the prepared mind. Just like cloud patterns or the face of the Man in the Moon” (p.190).

However, some parts of the book are heavily sodden with geological parlance which the author has not bothered to explain. It hinders the flow of interest from cover to cover. Also, any book on geology should include some good pictures of the so called faults and ridges which this book sadly lacks. It does not fully justify the title either. Though formation and destruction of supercontinents are discussed in detail, the readers quickly discern the thrust is on popularization of the author’s preferred field of study – geology.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Galileo's Daughter

Title: Galileo’s Daughter – A Drama of Science, Faith and Love

Author: Dava Sobel

Publisher:  Fourth Estate, 2000 (First published 1999)

ISBN: 978-0-00763-575-7

Pages: 384

Galileo is considered the father of modern physics, or modern science rather, since the founder of the most basic branch of science may be thought of as the father of modern science as well. However, the endowment of the cherished title is not as a result of a path breaking invention. Rather, Galileo enjoys the pole position due to the vindication of scientific method, the system to test the veracity of a theory by trial and error which survives to this day as the ultimate test to accept or reject a hypothesis. The eminent Italian scientist personified the now famous motto of Royal Society, “Nullius In Verba” (on nobody’s words). He courageously challenged long-held opinions when he found them to be trash, based on his experiments. Religion, which overarched all walks of life during the 17^th century, was not prepared to allow a frontal assault on the fabric of their very existence, namely unquestioned faith, go scotfree. The establishment arraigned Galileo of heresy and sentenced him to house arrest. He died while still in custody. Dava Sobel is a renowned science writer, whose work Planets was reviewed earlier in this blog. In this book, Sobel dwells on the biography of the great scientist with recourse to the communications he established with his eldest daughter, Virginia, who was later rechristened Suor Maria Celeste upon becoming a nun. Sobel, true to her stature as a lively author, has lived up to her reputation in making this biography so enchanting, so lucid and so appealing. There is no dearth of biographies of Galileo, but Sobel has did all that were needed to ensure a prominent place for her work in the literature.

Virginia was born out of wedlock, since Galileo never married. Though he had two more children by the same woman, their position in society was always as illegitimate children. They couldn’t hope to be decently married off and Galileo sent both of his daughters to the San Matteo Convent to take up the veil. His real scientific career began at this time, when he refined lens making techniques and made great telescopes for astronomical work. He found four new moons of Jupiter and named them Medicean stars in honour of his patron, the archduke of Tuscany who came from the Medici family, who stood behind their loyal courtier through thick and thin. He also observed sunspots and the periodic fluctuation in Venus’ visible disk, like moon’s cycle.

The publication of details regarding sunspots rekindled the debate whether the sun or earth was moving. The long held view, first propounded by Aristotle and Ptolemy and held dear by the Catholic church was that earth stayed immobile and the other heavenly bodies circled around it. Though Copernicus in 1543 had posited that sun was at the centre, the idea never reached public domain and Copernicus, who was himself a priest, remained silent about it. Now, it fell upon Galileo to claim that the earth moved. The Catholic church might have treated the issue more leniently at some other time, but the 16^th century was really a tough one for them, after the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther. Efforts to reconcile with the breakaways made Vatican convene a series of theological councils, collectively called Council of Trent, which categorically asserted that the Bible must not interpreted by personal choice and it need to be believed as such without question. An ecclesiastical committee called together by Pope Paul V in 1616 stated that Copernicus’ sun-centred theory was heresy and admonished Galileo from adhering to it, to which he readily agreed.

Galileo was pestered with illnesses frequently during the years 1616-23, but it didn’t slow down his intellect. He continued discourse on comets, three of which mysteriously appeared in 1618. In 1623, his star was thought to be in the ascendant, when his long time friend and admirer, Cardinal Barberini ascended papacy as Pope Urban VIII. Galileo immediately started working on his new book, ‘Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic and Copernican’ as a comparison between the two. It was structured in the style of a dialogue between three learned men, two supporting Copernicus and one holding on to Ptolemy and the church. The 1616 edict prevented Galileo from coming out in the open in support of his true belief, so he presented it as only a hypothesis. He submitted the completed manuscript to the committee of censors in Rome in 1630, who proposed only minor corrections. The book finally appeared in print in 1632.

Unfortunately, the publication found Urban VIII ill-disposed in general. The Thirty-Years War between German catholics and protestants had engulfed other countries and turned into a European conflagration. The pope was portrayed as a weak one, unable to defend the faith. He grew restless and sleepless over the allegations that he ordered all the birds in his garden killed so as not to be disturbed by their nocturnal calls. Jesuit fathers, who hated Galileo from the start, insinuated against him and his book, making the pope grow into a rage. Pope’s enmity with Galileo’s patron, the Archduke of Tuscany on land issues also precipitated matters. He ordered Galileo to submit in person and explain matters. The inquisition began in April 1633 and met in four sessions in which the 70-year old scientist had to answer gruelling questions about his intentions and true beliefs on the matter. Alert to the imminent punishment, which included torture, Galileo recanted his ideas. On the question of whether he believed Copernican theory, his replay was, “A long time ago, that is, before the decision of the Holy Congregation of the Index, and before I was issued that injunction, I was undecided and regarded the two opinions, those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, as disputable, because either the one or the other could be true in Nature. But after thed said decision, assured by the prudence of the authorities, all my uncertainty stopped, and I held, as I still hold, as most true and indisputable, Ptolemy’s opinion, namely the stability of the Earth and the motion of the Sun” (p.284). Note how cleverly he submitted to authority! Two months later, 7 out of the 10 cardinals in the committee judged that he has committed the offense of heresy and sentenced to imprisonment. He was also forced to kneel before them, and abjure the crime. Stories that Galileo muttered eppur si muove (but it still moves) is probably apocryphal. After a few days in the dungeon in the Holy Office, he was transferred to the Embassy of Tuscany in Rome, then to the archbishop of Siena. The book was properly banned. In 1757, Vatican removed objections to the Copernican theory, but the book remained prohibited. It was finally lifted in 1822 in which year the church could no longer propound its faulty astronomical beliefs.

Galileo was later sent back to his home town of Arcetri near Florence under permanent house arrest. Maria Celeste, his daughter who had looked after his household matters from within the convent, rejoiced at the home coming at last, though her joy was to be short-lived. She was very weak, due to deprivations in the convent and succumbed to an infection from which she never recovered. She died on Apr 2, 1634, four months after her father returned home. She was 33. Galileo laboured on, under immense grief, and completed work on a new manuscript, ‘Two New Sciences’, dealing with mechanics and motion. This was published in 1638 from protestant Holland where the Pope’s writ did not run. By the time he received a copy of his own printed work, Galileo was blind in one eye with cataract. By the next winter, he lost his eyesight completely, while still languishing under house arrest.

The book presents several letters written by the daughter to her father, which are filled with filial piety and attachment. Reading it all together, we wonder whether Galileo was really stone-hearted to send such a loving daughter to the confines of a convent. The book also describes a touching moment when 95 years after Galileo’s death the Church relented a bit and allowed a tomb to be built for him. When his sarcophagus was lifted from the pit, the retrievers were surprised to find a similar one immediately below it. It too contained a skeleton, and they couldn’t identify Galileo’s. Experts were called in, all of them concurred that one skeleton belonged to a woman who had died in her youth, around the same period of the other, aged man’s death. It then dawned on them that they are seeing the remains of the beloved daughter who seemed attached to her father, even in death. Consequently, her remains were also reverently moved to the new tomb.

The book is an excellent one with no blemish to be marked against. It portrays the miserable plight of nuns in contrast to unstained plenty of the higher echelons of clergy. The nuns had to live in self-imposed poverty, couldn’t go out of the four walls of the convent, had their sleep deprived at certain hours for night-time prayers and no recourse to proper medical care in case they fell ill. However, we have to acknowledge with wonder at the things they could handle from inside their convent. Several illustrative diagrams and portraits add interest to the content and are quite engaging. The balance between the emotional and the objective is kept on a razor-sharp knife edge and is kept likewise throughout the narrative.

Plague was a scourge of the ancient world. Many a times it was subjected to the ravages of bubonic plague. The disease, spreading through air, was so contagious and deadly that quarantine was the only effective remedy. Whole families often vanished in a matter of a few days. The lament of poet Francesco Petrarca given in the book when the Black Death robbed him of his beloved wife is worth ruminating on. He exclaimed, “Oh, happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable” (p.209).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Title: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Author: Paulo Coelho

Publisher:  Harper Collins, 2012 (First published 1994)

ISBN: 978-81-7223-530-7

Pages: 210

The indefatigable Paulo Coelho, again with his magic touch which moves mountains and illuminate the daily lives of millions of people with his grand, positive outlook and kindly style of writing which refills hope in the lives of many who see only desolation before them. If we are to analyse his works threadbare, there may not be anything which you can point out as world class or perfectly original. The present volume, which in fact is a novel, is so ordinary in its plot and narration that it stands no chance to ascend the international best seller list were it not for the fact that Coelho’s incomparable manner of diction transformed it to appeal to all classes of readers. The Coelho-isms, if we may say so, fills every nook and cranny of the narrative, enlivening the reading experience and fills the booklover’s mind with positive thoughts and inspiring enthusiasm. Perhaps the author serves a good purpose in today’s fast-paced world where we need constant reminding of our true place in society and to remould our selves, both internal and external, in accordance with the rapidly changing requirements our living environment demands from us. The language is so easy and fluid that nobody is bothered with its finer nuances as we constantly endure from some other authors. This fact is also to be counted as an augmenting factor in favour of the wide popularity of the author.

The present book is a work of fiction, recounting the tale of a 29-year old woman, named Pilar, who meets her childhood lover after a gap of 12 years in which a lot changes took place in both of them. The man had become charismatic spiritual teacher in the meanwhile who had turned to religion as a refuge from his inner conflicts. Even though he was away, and leading a spiritual life all the years, a silent fire of love was raging on in him, which found expression in another spiritual experience which compelled him to seek out his sweetheart again. They travel together, share spiritual and physical familiarity and reache a point of divergence where the man has to take a decision whether to continue on the path of salvation his mind had chosen many years ago, or to follow the path of love, as his heart would like him to choose. After several mystic encounters with the supernatural, the couple arrive at a congenial decision which glorifies the plot like nothing else.

The book litters with several memorable quotes which stand out on its own, regardless of the small size of the book. Their stature is taller than any work of fiction and share a prominent place in the collective mind of human society. It would be prudent to mention some of them here. “At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could’ve happened but didn’t. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything” (p.10). And, as a sequel to this, we find “sometimes an uncontrollable feeling of sadness grips us. We recognize that the magic moment of the day has passed and that we’ve done nothing about it” (p.27). About life, Coelho says further, “Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown – even when we don’t want to and when we think we don’t need to” (p.49). Then again, “It is better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for” (p.56). The author felicitate happiness like, “Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided” and “Only a man who is happy can create happiness in others”. The pain of waiting is immortalized in another phrase, as “waiting is painful, forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering”. In a bout of energy, Coelho exerts, “Free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of” (p.170).

Though it is foolhardy to propose how the author should proceed to align his writing in conformity to rational thought and to make his books attract an even wider audience, some aspects may be clearly spelt out. His dependence on religious mysticism and charms are quite a hindrance to enjoyment of the book, but which the readers turn a blind eye to, out of respect and high regard for the author and his work. The descriptions of charismatic prayer enunciated in this book is verging on the comical, but we patiently turns the chapters in search of the sense of fulfilment that we obtain after reading one of Coelho’s works. The master story teller’s pen strokes are so evident in every page of the book.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

From Hydaspes to Kargil

Title: From Hydaspes to Kargil – A History of Warfare in India from 326 BC to AD 1999

Author: Kaushik Roy

Publisher:  Manohar Publishers, 2004 (First)

ISBN: 81-7304-543-7

Pages: 241

Military history is one subject having very few takers and is always marginalized by mainstream historians. The power and authority of a state depends on the efficiency of its army. This book is an attempt to review the military strategies, formations and warfare over the two millennia from the battle with Alexander on the banks of river Hydaspes (Jhelum) in 326 BCE to the battle with Pakistan on Kargil in 1999 CE. Kaushik Roy is a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. He has published numerous articles in various journals and his book reviews appear regularly in The Telegraph. He is also a passionate collector of books on military history.

Ancient Indian army constituted the four-fold divisions of infantry, cavalry, chariots and elephants, called chaturanga bala. These wings were never very coordinated in the battlefront. Alexander’s phalanx could cut through them with ease, beating Porus. However, the world conqueror was sufficiently impressed by the mighty elephants of whom his cavalry were mortally afraid. Alexander imported the elephants to his battle formations and its repercussions could be seen in Punic wars between Carthage and Rome. Hannibal, the mighty Carthaginian general marched African elephants against the Romans. The chaturanga bala declined in efficacy on the face of highly maneuverable mounted cavalry archers of the steppe nomads, like Parthians, Sakas and Huns. By 600 CE, the traditional army shrunk to three-fold, eliminating chariots.

Invention of metallic stirrup around 700 CE resulted in greater stability for the mounted archers, who proved to be no match for the indisciplined Indian infantry. As the local rulers relied excessively on the samantha system, in which each warlord was supposed to supply soldiers to the soverign in times of need. These were mainly marginal farmers who had no previous military training and who fought for booty and loyal to their own chieftains. Also, the concept of chivalry and the laughable kshatra dharma of the Rajput clans caused them to fall like ripe plums before invading Turkish Muslims. The Turks established sultanates in Delhi and adopted Indian systems in warfare, like elephants. The gradual indigenisation denied them the advantages of gunpowder and cannon. When this was coupled with the stoppage of the flow of Central Asian horses by Mongols, the days of the sultanate were numbered. They fell before Babur in 1526, at the First Battle of Panipat when Ibrahim Lodi lost to the Mughal before noon.

Babur introduced a novel concept of warfare he borrowed from Ottomans, the field artillery. The gunners performed well by scaring away elephants and stunned sultanate infantry by their booming guns. Ibrahim Lodi, the Delhi sultan himself was killed in the battle. Mughals consolidated their power across the subcontinent in the next 150 years, but the slow indigenisation of technology and introduction of mansabdari system eroded their battle-worthiness. The mansabdars, who were given surplus land revenue maintained a military strength which were many times more than the contingent directly commanded by the emperor. Light cavalry forces like Marathas and the tecnologically superior Persians sounded the death knell of Mughals after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. Nadir Shah crushed them to powder in 1739.

By the 18^th century, military strategy again went a transformation. Elephants and cavalry archers faded away and infantry with light firearms and field artillery manned or trained by European gunners took its place. Strategically located forts also couldn’t provide asylum as heavy guns tore through them. The English East India Company (EIC) used Indian manpower to conquer all of the subcontinent. Their ordnance factories produced ammunition using Indian raw materials like salt petre. The company imposed its monopoly in purchasing salt petre. Connected to these developments was the fact that EIC was bankrolled by rich Gujarati merchants. We must marvel the ease and slothfulness with which we allowed a foreigner to fasten the noose of slavery tightly around our necks for the next two centuries! We allowed our motherland to be subjugated under the yoke of imperialism meekly.

The First War of Independence of 1857 finds due mention in the book. The munitions, man power, tactics and formations of the rebels and their white opponents are described in an analytical way, bringing out excellent comparisons and providing speculations about what went wrong for the rebels. Roy states that instead of merely practicing what they were taught in the military schools of East India Company, the sepoys should have adopted guerrilla hit-and-run warfare and should have destroyed the telegraph lines which provided a vital means of communication for the British. The importance of telegraph in British victory is amply expressed in the last cry of a sepoy condemned to the gallows. Pointing to the telegraph cable, he was said to have remarked, “It is that accursed string that strangled us”!

From 1857, the author takes a quantum leap to 1999, bypassing the two Pakistan wars and the Chinese war. Kargil conflict is analysed threadbare and the inadequacies of Indian military and its tactics are explained clearly. Contrary to popular belief, Roy argues that what was evident in Kargil was the ineffectiveness of Indian armed forces. Even with heavy artillery, assisted by aerial bombardment, India couldn’t evict the semi-regulars from their mountain hideouts. We had to let them go back safely, in order to end the war! India needs to take lessons from this episode.

Kaushik Roy ends the book with a consideration on why military coups do not take place in India, while it is a more than usual occurrence in Pakistan, even though both armies share the legacy of the British sepoy army. Indian army is said to have imbued with non-militaristic Hindu tradition where the fighting Kshatriyas always enjoyed only the second turn against the priestly Brahmins. Subservience to civilian authority is implicit in such a scheme. Indian army is quite diversified in its ethnicity, contrary to Pakistan, where the lion’s share comprises of people from a few districts of West Punjab. India also provide military employment to Gurkhas, who are Nepali citizens, but who constitute 10% of the Indian army! Also, Indian army does not enjoy the pride of place in its society as enjoyed by their counterparts in Pakistan where they are revered. To prevent occurrences of coups, the author suggests to transform the army as an occupational one, instead of institutional as at present. More manpower turnover in the form of short service commissions is a sure guarantee to keep the soldiers in their allotted spot in national polity.

The book is neatly written in a systematic way, with lots of reference material. In fact, Roy provides enough material for an enthusiast to do further research and come out with a book of the same size on any of the chapters contained in this work. The author’s sharp insight into the psychology of rebels and loyal sepoys during the First War of Independence deserves appreciation. The rebels almost fully consisted of upper caste Hindus, who refused to serve shoulder to shoulder with their lower caste brethren. That’s one of the reasons the backward castes supported the British regime and fought hard to eliminate the ancient regime which stifled their materialistic and spiritual growth.

The text could’ve been made more lively with more examples to prove the author’s point. In many places, it fails to arouse readers’ interest and falls to the level of a school text book on history. Perhaps in future editions of the work, the author may care to consider this specific point to enliven the narrative.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Salt

 

Title: Salt – A World History

Author: Mark Kurlansky

Publisher:  Penguin, 2003 (First published 2002)

ISBN: 978-0-14-200161-5

Pages: 449

We’d wonder why anyone should bother to write a considerably sized book about a common mineral which is almost taken for granted due to its cheapness and ubiquity. Then again, we would be forced to accord the respect it deserves to salt when we remember that the most essential things for life are abundant and cheap or free – like air or water. Salt, the only rock we eat is so essential to sustain life that its production and trade influenced world history to no small extent. Even though ordinarily by salt we mean common, edible, table salt, it is actually a product obtained from the chemical reaction between an acid and an alkali. The book is a great collection of stories and facts related to its origins, production, trade, and the culinary aspects – over millennia. We learn about its extraction from brine lakes thousands of years ago. The earliest recorded reference to its production comes from Sichuan province in China around 250 BCE. Its governor, Li Bing, was said to extract brine by drilling bamboo poles into the earth to a depth of hundreds of feet. A quite unexpected feature of the enterprise was the oozing out of natural gas from the well. The Chinese cleverly used the gas to boil brine to make crystals of salt. Only during the last century was the secret of petroleum reserves occurring underneath rock salt beds was known. The salt seals the underground vegetation, which turns it to oil over great ages. Egyptian civilization also extensively used salt to preserve food and mummies. Since they relied solely on the annual flooding of the Nile, which was a narrow strip of fertility in an otherwise lapping sea of desert, preservation of food was a prime concern. Natron was used for mummification of the ricj, while the lay folk used common salt.

The Romans extracted salt from huge salt mines in Central Europe and also by evaportating sea water. They traded salt and transported it to great distances. The first Roman road was known as Via Salaria, the salt road. Soldiers were often paid in salt, hence the word salary, and the expressions worth his salt and earning his salt. The Latin word sal became French solde, meaning pay and the word soldier came into being. Medieval European merchant cities like Venice showed great interest in making a fortune out of salt administration. They stopped production of it at home and found that trading was far more profitable. They controlled salt production on the Mediterranean rim, sometimes forcibly and made huge profits out of it. Opening up of North American sea lines after John Cabbot’s voyages helped develop a lucrative trade in salted sea cod from Newfoundland.

Medieval European history is replete with attempts to control the salt trade. Production of salt no doubt affected the trading prospects of a region so as to name that location on the lines of salt works. In England, Anglo-Saxons called a saltworks a wich, and any place in England where the name ends in wich at one time produced salt. Newly existent American colonies found great leverage in selling salted cod to England, while importing salt from it. Soon, England was not able to find markets for the bounteous American produce, which forced the colonists to find markets elsewhere for their product. This was something impossible to acquiesce in to, by a colonizing power. It imposed harsh tariffs and taxes in the colonies, which was rejected and met with rebellion. The skirmishes ended with the birth of United States, after a protracted war of independence. The American Civil War (1861-65) employed strategies to control salt so as to cripple the war effort and administration of confederate states whose salt production was meagre in the first place. With salt works destroyed by enemies, and denied imported salt by naval blockade of ports, the South was greatly hampered in their efforts.

When thinking about salt, an Indian cannot help thinking also about the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, who led a subservient populace towards the goal of independence using peaceful means. It was heartening to note that the world also acknowledges his adroit manipulation of the lethargic masses by dangling the prize of salt in front of them. This book includes a chapter on Mahatma and his salt satyagraha. Gujarat and Orissa were the major salt-making regions in 19^th century and the British imported heavy duties on locally produced salt to make it unattractive against competition from Liverpool salt, made in Cheshire. The salt workers, called malangies, in Orissa became very poor as a result. Though the customers paid a large price, the makers were not getting enough money, as the difference went to government coffers. In 1923, the salt tax was doubled, and by 1929, Orissa reached near boiling point with discontent. Gandhi decided to use this weapon against the British. He marched in 1930 to the sea cost of Dandi, along with thousands of supporters and scraped salt on the beach – breaking British salt law. He was arrested, along with hundreds of thousands of protestors nationwide. The government found that the problem was larger than they could handle. A Round Table conference was called in 1931 to discuss a host of matters of national importance. Salt law was relaxed to allow people to make salt by evaporating brine for their own use. The movement, whose seed was sown, gradually metamorphosed into the national struggle for independence which India attained in 1947.

The use of salt has transformed dramatically over the ages. Earlier, it was mainly used to preserve meat and vegetables by salting, smoking or pickling. With the invention of canning and refrigeration, salt began to be used less and less. It lost its place of prominence on the dining table. Apart from flavouring, the most important use now is for deicing roads in Arctic countries and as an industrial raw material for producing chemicals. Salt intake has reduced considerably among all the nations of the world. It is said that a European now eats half the amount of salt than he did in the 19^th century.

The book is a great contribution to the culinary history of the world, comparable in relevance to An Edible History of Humanity, which was reviewed earlier in the blog. Recipes of many ancient formulations are given. But at one point, one wonders whether the description of old recipes slightly mars the readability of the text. The work is well structured and easily readable. The chapter on India and Gandhi illustrates the wide reading the author did while researching for the work.

Kurlansky accords undue prominence to Chinese inventions and technology, as to make irrelevant comparisons with 19^th century Western technology and reaching the consensus that ancient Chinese technology was better. He goes even to the extreme point of assigning Chinese provenance to some artifacts for which even the Chinese had not laid claim. The author says, “Some Western historians believe that the Chinese may have been the first to develop this technique (solar evaporation of salt) around 500 CE. But Chinese historians, who are loath to pass up founder’s rights to any invention, lay no claim to this one. The Chinese were not pleased with the salt produced by this technique. Slow evaporation results in coarse salt, and the Chinese have always considered fine-grained salt to be of higher quality” (p.83). Such allusions to real or imagined Chinese inventions appears several times in the text. The book is really lengthier than the subject matter warranted and it seems that the author has also become confused with how to end it properly, as evidenced by the rather haphazard finish.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star