1616: The World in Motion is everything I could ever want in a history book. Let me come clean. I am not really the type of reader who picks up history books. In fact, I usually steer clear of that dreary aisle in bookstores and head instead into the expansive fiction section, or I grab a bench in the airy poetry corner, and then look at some art books until my feet hurt from standing. If I happen to come upon the history section, I am befuddled. The word war seems to loom from everywhere, presidential faces peer out, and country names are set in ominous typefaces. I retreat slowly.
1616: The World in Motion is no ordinary history book. It is illustrated, lyrical, and focuses on a single year, jumping through stories across the globe. It is beautiful to look at, containing engravings from around the world, watercolors from the Mughal court, maps from odd perspectives, soft, fleshy paintings, ink scrolls, and sketches. It is also pleasant to read, touching on the silk trade, witch-hunts, court intrigues, pirates, alchemy, wanderlust on sea and land, slaves, and refugees. Few books are conceived of in this way.
Thomas Christensen writes in the preface of this book that one day he simply woke up with the strange resolve to research and write about the year 1616 — it became an obsession. “Some years,” Christensen writes, “1066, 1492, 1776, 1945 — are emblazoned in everyone’s consciousness.” While 1616 is not one of these, Christensen argues this a good thing. “Cathartic events can so dominate an era that they make it difficult to see the deeper forces that drive long-term change.”
1616 reveals a world on the verge: science and spirituality are about to rip apart forever; globalization begins to erode the notion of the world as a magical, mysterious place; women rising to some stature suffer dire grievances; world religions clash but business is a uniting force; and people everywhere are confronted with the strange sights of foreign emissaries, opportunists, and outlaws decked in curious dress parading into their previously isolated pockets of civilization.
The book is not chronologically told, but organized around ideas. The opening chapter focuses on the silk trade and the first multinational corporation ever, the Dutch East India Company. While buoyed with interesting tidbits (“Silkworms were said to have been carried to Central Asia by a woman who hid moth eggs in her headband; eastern Christian monks supposedly brought eggs to Turkey hidden in their long walking staffs,”) international trade just fails to capture the imagination.