Simons: Riding the tides of history
The history we’ve inherited will prepare us for what 2013 brings
I am a child of the 20th century. Almost 13 years into this millennium, it still feels strange to me to print the date at the top of a cheque.
I grew up in a world divided in half, dominated of two mighty rival empires. Today, the old Soviet Union is the stuff of history books. The United States of America, still the world’s dominant political, cultural and economic power, looks to be losing more and more ground to the rising powers of Asia.
As 2012 ends, “Communist” China is assuming a new role of banker and venture capitalist for the world. A South Korean pop star who sings, unapologetically, in his own tongue, becomes the world’s hottest musical performer. Muslim missionaries go door-to-door in Edmonton, handing out leaflets the way Mormons did a generation ago. Pages of this very newspaper are edited and laid out in the Philippines.
Indeed, the world on the brink of 2013 looks more like a science fiction fantasist’s vision of the future than anything I could have anticipated when I was an Edmonton high school student.
The ebb and flow of history and of power isn’t so easy to predict.
As 1012 turned into 1013, the world’s greatest city, based on size and power, was probably Kaifing, China, capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. The 11th century would be a Golden Age for Chinese culture, one which would see the development of paper money and movable type, the invention of the compass, and an outpouring of great painting. According to some sources, 1013 was the year the scholar-prime minister Wang Qinruo finished work on a massive encyclopedia called The Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau, a collection of political essays, autobiographies of royal leaders, official decrees, and memorials.
Kaifing’s rival for the title of the biggest and most intellectually vibrant city was Cordoba, capital of al-Andalus, the caliphate of Islamic Spain.
In 1013, Cordoba was renowned for the skill of its leather workers and smiths, for the richness of its agriculture, as a centre of mathematics, architecture, horticulture and philosophy. It was home to more than 1,000 mosques, including the renowned Great Mosque of Cordoba, not to mention 600 public baths. The royal library of Caliph al-Hakam II, who ruled from 961 to 976, was said to hold 400,000 books.
In 1013, the great Mayan Empire was in steep decline, the Inca Empire not yet born. In West Africa, the great Kingdom of Ghana was near the height of its economic power, buoyed by its immense gold wealth. Meanwhile, Mahmud of Ghazni, the first ruler in history to take the title of sultan, had established his Ghaznavid Empire, which encompassed much of what we now know as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and northern India, including the Punjab.
In 1013, the King of Denmark, who rejoiced in the name of Sweyn Farkberd — “fork beard” — led an invasion of England and drove out King Aethelred the Unready, who fled into exile in France. The conclave of Anglo-Saxon nobles, known as the Witenagemot, rather treacherously decreed Sweyn I the King of England. Sweyn’s son would be the mighty King Canute.
How could any 1013 observer have imagined which empires would rise and fall and sometimes rise again, how great nations would be destroyed by civil strife or regional rivalry or lethal inertia?
We have a bad habit of forgetting our past. That’s one reason we fail to imagine the possible permutations and combinations our future might take. History teaches us that no empire lasts forever and that the shock waves, when they fracture or crumble, can reconfigure the globe. What it doesn’t teach us is how to predict the way the future will grow, vaster than empires, and more slow.
Here in Edmonton, as 2013 breaks, we are splendidly situated both to synthesize the past and enter the future. We are home to the descendants of Danes and Anglo-Saxons, of the empires of Ghana and Ghazni. We are the heirs of the Song and of al-Andalus, and of dozens of other kingdoms, great and small.
The world has gathered here, where the taiga meets the prairie, bringing its history with it. How lucky we are as children of the 20th century, and adults of the 21st, to have such a rich legacy on which to build, to help us prepare for what comes next — whatever it may be.