'Histories of Nations' - Peter Futado - Review

This is a massively ambitious project by Furtado. Telling the stories of 28 nations using essays of about 3000 words written by citizens of each of those countries is a brilliant concept.  However, Furtado misses the mark.  Some of the authors are up to the challenge and give revelatory, original insights into national identity.  Ladurie’s essay on France stands out in terms of humour and how it challenges orthodox thought on the French ‘hexagon’.

However, others such as Hussein Bassir’s Egypt, is simply an overview of the events of his country’s past.  In his narrative he merely traces the rise and fall of pharaohs, despots and democrats without giving any sense of how the Egyptian people regard themselves. 

Although it is unavoidable, Furtado’s project to capture the essence of 28 cultures within a single essay is defeated by the authorship.  Each writer is an academic, aloof from the everyday lives of their countrymen.  This bias means that we don’t get a true ‘history of nations’ but a history of nations as seen through the bubble of academia.  I find it unlikely that the average Iranian defines themselves by the works of Rumi and Haifz, or that the average Israeli is an incarnation of Zionist ideals.  Therefore, while informative, the book is slightly disappointing as I had hoped for a more subjective account of each nation, rather than a backbone of key events.  The format of this book had a huge potential of escaping the bias intrinsic to world histories, however Furtado overreached by believing that a selection of academics can define their entire cultures.

While it fell short of my expectations, it was still informative and I learnt much about different countries it therefore gets 3.5/5