65 pages • 2 hours read
E.H. GombrichA Little History of the World
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 1936A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Invention
Human invention is both a constant and a mechanism of change for Gombrich, and he frequently includes the contributions that each society or culture made to civilization as a whole. Far from just describing new technologies or tools, he discusses the advent of new ideas, perspectives, and techniques as types of invention. From fire to the alphabet to philosophy to arithmetic to the steam engine, he details the origin and impact of a new innovation. He often frames this description by encouraging the reader to imagine the world without this invention and to therefore feel a sense of gratitude.
War
The reliable pattern of violent battle and conquest is a motif that appears throughout Gombrich’s history, though it manifests in different ways as technology changes. He presents conflicts, like the wars between Athens and Sparta, as inevitable. The constant invasion of Eastern hordes is described as a repeating verse of the poem of history (130). Gombrich dedicates a great deal of his book to the stories of powerful conquerors, warriors, and military strategists like Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Napoleon, suggesting that these figures are some of the most important characters in the story of history.
Forces of Nature
The natural world and its phenomena are evoked often by Gombrich as a way of explaining history or time. In his final chapter, he describes time itself as a turbulent river and our lives are only a moment of water bubbling to the surface (271). He describes the invasion of the Mongols as being like a storm. In doing so, he alludes not only to the power of the invasion, but also to the fact that it was foreshadowed by warnings of its arrival, like the accumulation of dark clouds. He directly connects the advent of the Middle Ages to this event by describing the new era as a “starry night” following a storm, and he describes the Renaissance as a new dawn.
