The Twenty-five Years that Changed the World

An appreciation of world history requires: (1) a temporal framework relating to today; (2) the identification of principal entities; and (3) the presentation of memorable characters. The purpose of the "Our Place in Time" trilogy-The Twenty-five Years that Changed the World being the second volume-is to provide the above for a more constructive understanding of world history.

Drawn to the center of world history in Washington DC, I left my PhD research at UCLA for a satisfying thirty-year career as a federal executive often relating to Capitol Hill. While living history large, readings continued with favorites being the vast volumes of Will (and Ariel) Durant. This trilogy is an interweaving of independent studies and decades of observation.

Samuel Huntington wrote that "History is the history of civilizations-it's impossible to think of human development in any other terms." Karl Jasper postulated an Axial Age in the centuries surrounding 500 BC when great prophets-Zoroaster, the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates-independently taught a common theme of morality and love (all championed the Golden Rule) leading to today's great civilizations-the Islamic Middle East, Hindu India, Confucian China, and the Christian West. These four principal entities, with their expansion, today account for 85% of humanity.

As to the temporal, we note that 2,500 years before Jasper's Axial Age the centuries surrounding 3000 BC are generally accepted as when knowledge developed unto intelligence and modern civilizations first took form. We argue that 2,500 years after 500 BC in AD 2000 we are dealing with the last and most dangerous aspect of human realization-the use of power. That control of power requires its dissemination, is why, since 1800, large scale republics began to form to contest the empires of old. In 1800 there was only one true republic. Today 164 of the 193 members of the United Nations are either republics or feel compelled to call themselves so. The battle is on between empires and republics involving the four civilizations in our place in time.

A remarkable element emerges in these works that we call "harmonies of history." Close to Mark Twain's quip about history not repeating itself but rhyming, they are more like the "meaningful consequences" in Carl Jung's Theory of Synchronicity-events very unlikely to occur together by chance that have a connective principle in a connotative manner. Jung was after a common unconscious mind; we just find their existence somehow satisfying.

The trilogy began with Tales of Invasions and Empires when the four civilizations started to meaningfully interact in 1100 with the Crusades and runs to 1400. The Twenty-five Years that Changed the World covers 1400-1700. It is something of a harmony itself in that a major aspect of each account remarkably touches on the years from 1501-1526. The people we meet are memorable:

   The imposing eunuch admiral whose ...