Applying the principle that “lessons from the past help to project ourselves into the future”, the latest book by British historian Peter Frankopan could well become a reference work for explorers of the future. The ambition of the author, a Cambridge professor who has won worldwide renown since his work on the Silk Roads,[1], is nothing less than to ‘rewrite’ history in the light of climatic phenomena and their far-reaching consequences.
His approach lies at the crossroads of three academic currents that have recently renewed approaches to history: geohistory (initiated by Fernand Braudel), climatic and environmental history (pioneered by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie) and so-called ‘global history’. This latter approach seeks both to free historical narratives from their ‘original Eurocentrism’ and to shed light on new relationships
