The world through a family prism

In my new book, I have attempted to write global history with the intimacy of a biography, popular British historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore tells Stanley Carvalho

Author and popular British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore spent the lockdown writing a door-stopping 1,300-page-long book ‘The World: A Family History’ on families, kingdoms and civilisations that have shaped our world.

Starting with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago, the book features influential families and leaders such as the Caesars, Ottomans, Mughals, Bonapartes, Zulus, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis, Saudis, Trumps, Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Obama, Putin and lesser known Hongwu who started life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty.

The former journalist, whose prize-winning books have been published in 48 languages, was in Bengaluru recently. Excerpts from an interview

From biographies of Stalin, Romanovs, and Catherine the Great to a history book on families, spanning across time and geographies...

I always wanted to write about world history. I wanted to find a way to combine the span of worlds in global history with the intimacy of biography and that was the challenge. I worked out that family was an excellent way to do it because family is the basic unit of human life. There are many sorts of families in history — power families, democratically elected families, monarchies and autocracies. The book doesn’t only have royal families. It has all sorts of rulers, it has writers, dancing girls, executioners, novelists, historians, slaves even. It’s a great way to look at all the main themes of history and yet enjoy the diversity of human life.

In hindsight, did you exclude any notable families?

I have left out lots of notable families. I had to constantly make ruthless decisions. The emphasis was to make this book entirely accessible and enjoyable for the general reader. You don’t have to know any of the histories to enjoy it. Yet all the portraits are academically correct and based on primary sources.

Why was the British royal family excluded?

First of all, they’re not enormously powerful and I’m really a historian of power. I’m more interested in the Assads of Syria or Kim Jong Un or the Bush family than I am in the British royal family. I think constitutional monarchies are the least interesting in terms of unflamboyant, exciting reading. Also, I wanted to avoid being Europe-centric.

Powerful women feature in your book. Your assessment of these women vis-à-vis men when it comes to holding on to power?

I think that they were no better and no worse than men in terms of the quality of their ruling and their humanity. It’s a complete myth that women would be better than men. They can be just as ruthless and they can be just as brilliant. And in the book, there are all sorts of women.

What did it take to write this monumental book?

It took a lot of sleepless nights for about two-and-a-half years. It took Covid. It was actually a tragedy for many people but for writers, the lockdown was a sort of sanctuary. I worked really hard for two-and-a-half years; I hardly went out and became a hermit. It was the biggest challenge and the biggest satisfaction of my life. Frankly, it almost killed me!

Any lessons from this book for present-day dynastic families or rulers, some of whom are as ruthless as the historic ones?

I think the real lesson of this really is that democracy is a better system than the others despite all its disadvantages. What I think is everyone counts, or no one counts. I don’t really treat Nadir Shah that differently than I treat Robert Clive, for example, I don’t treat the Marathas that differently than I treat the Mughals.

I try to avoid all sorts of pre-judging and political ideological emphases that constantly are being used by politicians and academics in every country to fit history into a convenient straitjacket.