A Child's History of the World

STORY		PAGE
1	How Things Started	3
2	Umfa-Umfa and Itchy-Scratchy	10
3	Fire!Fire!!Fire!!!	16
4	From an Airplane	20
5	Real History Begins	24
6	The Puzzle-Writers	30
7	The Tomb-Builders	36
8	A Rich Land Where There Was No Money	42
9	The Wandering Jews	49
10	Fairy-Tale Gods	56
11	A Fairy-Tale War	64
12	The Kings of the Jews	70
13	The People Who Made Our A B C’s	74
14	Hard as Nails	79
15	The Crown of Leaves	84
16	A Bad Beginning	89
17	Kings with Corkscrew Curls	94
18	A City of Wonder and Wickedness	99
19	A Surprise Party	103
20	The Other Side of the World	109
21	Rich Man, Poor Man	114
22	Rome Kicks Out Her Kings	119
23	Greece vs. Persia	124
24	Fighting Mad	132
25	One against a Thousand	137
26	The Golden Age	143
27	When Greek Meets Greek	151
28	Wise Men and Otherwise	156
29	A Boy King	162
30	Picking a Fight	168
31	The Boot Kicks and Stamps	173
32	The New Champion of the World	177
33	The Noblest Roman of Them All	184
34	An Emperor Who was Made a God!	191
35	“Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory”	197
36	Blood and Thunder	203
37	A Good Emperor and a Bad Son	210
38	I — H — — S — — — — V — — — — —	215
39	Our Tough Ancestors	219
40	White Toughs and Yellow Toughs Meet the Champions of the World	225
41	Nightfall	231
42	Being Good	236
43	A Camel-Driver	242
44	Arabian Days	250
45	A Light in the Dark Ages	257
46	Getting a Start	264
47	The End of the World	269
48	Real Castles	272
49	Knights and Days of Chivalry	278
50	A Pirate’s Great Grandson	284
51	A Great Adventure	292
52	Tit-Tat-To; Three Kings in a Row	297
53	Bibles Made of Stone and Glass	304
54	John, Whom Nobody Loved	311
55	A Great Story-Teller	316
56	“Thing-a-ma-jigger” and “What-cher-ma-call-it”; or, A Magic Needle and a Magic Powder	322
57	THELON GEST WART HATE VERWAS	327
58	Off with the Old, On with the New	333
59	A Sailor Who Found a New World	337
60	Fortune-Hunters	346
61	The Land of Enchantment; or, The Search for Gold and Adventure	354
62	Born Again	359
63	Christians Quarrel	365
64	King Elizabeth	372
65	The Age of Elizabeth	378
66	James the Servant; or, What’s in a Name?	384
67	A King Who Lost His Head	390
68	Red Cap and Red Heels	395
69	A Self-Made Man	402
70	A Prince Who Ran Away	407
71	America Gets Rid of Her King	412
72		420
73	A Little Giant	428
74	From Pan and His Pipes to the Phonograph	435
75	The Daily Papers of 1854-1865	443
76	Three New Postage Stamps	449
77	The Age of Miracles	454
78	Germany Fights the World	460
79	Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow	465

This page is not for you, boys and girls.
It is for that old man or woman—twenty,
thirty, or forty years old, who may peek
into this book; and is what they would
call the

PREFACE

To give the child some idea of what has gone on in the world before he arrived;

To take him out of his little self-centered, shut-in life, which looms so large because it is so close to his eyes;

To extend his horizon, broaden his view, and open up the vista down the ages past;

To acquaint him with some of the big events and great names and fix these in time and space as a basis for detailed study in the future;

To give him a chronological file with main guides, into which he can fit in its proper place all his further historical study—

Is the purpose of this first Survey of the World’s History

This part is not for you, either. It is for
your father, mother, or teacher, and is
what they would call the

INTRODUCTION

In common with all children of my age, I was brought up on American History and given no other history but American, year in and year out, year after year for eight or more years.

So far as I knew 1492 was the beginning of the world. Any events or characters before that time, reference to which I encountered by any chance, were put down in my mind in the same category with fairy-tales. Christ and His times, of which I heard only in Sunday-school, were to me mere fiction without reality. They were not mentioned in any history that I knew and therefore, so I thought, must belong not to a realm in time and space, but to a spiritual realm.

To give an American child only American History is as provincial as to teach a Texas child only Texas History.Patriotism is usually given as the reason for such history teaching.It only promotes a narrow-mindedness and an absurd conceit, based on utter ignorance of any other peoples and any other times—an intolerant egotism without foundation in fact. Since the World War it has become increasingly more and more important that American children should have a knowledge of other countries and other peoples in order that their attitude may be intelligent and unprejudiced.

As young as nine years of age, a child is eagerly inquisitive as to what has taken place in the ages past and readily grasps a concept of World History.Therefore, for many years Calvert School nine-year-old pupils have been taught World History in spite of academic and parental skepticism and antagonism.But I have watched the gradual drift toward adoption of this plan of history teaching, and with it an ever-increasing demand for a text-book of general history for young children.I have found, however, that all existing text-books have to be largely abridged and also supplemented by a running explanation and comment, to make them intelligible to the young child.

The recent momentous studies into the native intelligence of children show us what the average child at different ages can understand and what he cannot understand—what dates, figures of speech, vocabulary, generalities, and abstractions he can comprehend and what he cannot comprehend—and in the future all text-books will have to be written with constant regard for these intelligence norms. Otherwise, such texts are very likely to be “over the child’s head.” They will be trying to teach him some things at least that, in the nature of the case, are beyond him.

In spite of the fact that the writer has been in constant contact with the child mind for a great many years, he has found that whatever was written in his study had to be revised and rewritten each time after the lesson had been tried out in the class-room. Even though the first writing was in what he considered the simplest language, he has found that each and every word and expression has had to be subjected again and again to this class-room test to determine what meaning is conveyed. The slightest inverted phraseology or possibility of double meaning has oftentimes been misconstrued or found confusing. For instance, the statement that “Rome was on the Tiber River” has quite commonly been taken to mean that the city was literally built on top of the river, and the child has had some sort of fantastic vision of houses built on piles in the river. A child of nine is still very young—he may still believe in Santa Claus—younger in ideas, in vocabulary and in understanding than most adults appreciate—even though they be parents or teachers—and new information can hardly be put too simply.

So the topics selected have not always been the most important—but the most important that can be understood and appreciated by a child.Most political, sociological, economic, or religious generalities are beyond a child’s comprehension, no matter how simply told.After all, this History is only a preliminary story.

Excellent biographies and stories from general history have been written.But biographies from history do not give an historic outline.They do not give any outline at all for future filling in; and, indeed, unless they themselves are fitted into such a general historical scheme, they are nothing more than so many disconnected tales floating about in the child’s mind with no associations of time or space.

The treatment of the subject in this book is, therefore, chronological—telling the story of what has happened century by century and epoch by epoch, not by nations.The story of one nation is interrupted to take up that of another as different plots in a novel are brought forward simultaneously.This is in line with the purpose, which is to give the pupil a continuous view or panorama of the ages, rather than Greek History from start to finish, then, retracing the steps of time, Roman History, and so on.The object is to sketch the whole picture in outline, leaving the details to be gradually filled in by later study, as the artist sketches the general scheme of his picture before filling in the details. Such a scheme is as necessary to orderly classification of historical knowledge as is a filing system in any office that can function properly or even at all.

The Staircase of Time is to give a visual idea of the extent of time and the progressive steps in the History of the World.Each “flight” represents a thousand years, and each “step” a hundred—a century.If you have a spare wall, either in the play-room, attic, or barn such a Staircase of Time on a large scale may be drawn upon it from floor to reaching height and made a feature if elaborated with pictures or drawings of people and events.If the wall faces the child’s bed so much the better, for when lying awake in the morning or at any other time, instead of imagining fantastic designs on the wall-paper, he may picture the crowded events on the Staircase of Time.At any rate, the child should constantly refer either to such a Staircase of Time or to the Time Table as each event is studied, until he has a mental image of the Ages past.

At first a child does not appreciate time values represented by numbers or the relative position of dates on a time line and will wildly say twenty-five hundred B.C. or twenty-five thousand B.C. or twenty-five million B.C. indiscriminately. Only by constantly referring dates to position on the Staircase of Time or the Time Table can a child come to visualize dates. You may be amused, but do not be amazed, if a child gives 776 thousand years A.D. as the date for the First Olympiad, or says that Italy is located in Athens, or that Abraham was a hero of the Trojan War.

If you have ever been introduced to a roomful of strangers at one time, you know how futile it is to attempt even to remember their names to say nothing of connecting names and faces.It is necessary to hear something interesting about each one before you can begin to recall names and faces.Likewise an introduction to World History, the characters and places in which are utterly unknown strangers to the child, must be something more than a mere name introduction, and there must be very few introductions given at a time or both names and faces will be instantly forgotten.It is also necessary to repeat new names constantly in order that the pupil may gradually become familiarized with them, for so many strange people and places are bewildering.

In order to serve the purpose of a basal outline, which in the future is to be filled in, it is necessary that the Time Table be made a permanent possession of the pupil. This Time Table, therefore, should be studied like the multiplication tables until it is known one hundred per cent and for “keeps,” and until the topic connected with each date can be elaborated as much as desired. The aim should be to have the pupil able to start with Primitive Man and give a summary of World History to the present time, with dates and chief events without prompting, questioning, hesitation, or mistake. Does this seem too much to expect? It is not as difficult as it may sound, if suggestions given in the text for connecting the various events into a sequence and for passing names and events in a condensed review are followed. Hundreds of Calvert children each year are successfully required to do this very thing.

The attitude, however, usually assumed by teachers, that “even if the pupil forgets it all, there will be left a valuable impression,” is too often an apology for superficial teaching and superficial learning.History may be made just as much a “mental discipline” as some other studies, but only if difficulties of dates and other abstractions are squarely met and overcome by hard study and learned to be remembered, not merely to be forgotten after the recitation.The story part the child will easily remember, but it is the “who and when and where and why” that are important, and this part is the serious study. Instead of, “A man, once upon a time,” he should say, “King John in 1215 at Runnymede because—”

This book, therefore, is not a supplementary reader but a basal history study.Just enough narrative is told to give the skeleton flesh and blood and make it living.The idea is not how much but how little can be told; to cut down one thousand pages to less than half of that number without leaving only dry bones.

No matter how the subject is presented it is necessary that the child do his part and put his own brain to work; and for this purpose he should be required to retell each story after he has read it and should be repeatedly questioned on names and dates as well as stories, to make sure he is retaining and assimilating what he hears.

I recall how once upon a time a young chap, just out of college, taught his first class in history.With all the enthusiasm of a full-back who has just kicked a goal from field, he talked, he sang; he drew maps on the blackboard, on the floor, on the field; he drew pictures, he vaulted desks, and even stood on his head to illustrate points.His pupils attended spellbound, with their eyes wide open, their ears wide open, and their mouths wide open. They missed nothing. They drank in his flow of words with thirst unquenched; but, like Baron Munchausen, he had failed to look at the other end of the drinking horse that had been cut in half. At the end of a month his kindly principal suggested a test, and he gave it with perfect confidence.

There were only three questions:

(1) Tell all you can about Columbus.
(2) “ “ “ “ “ Jamestown.
(3) “ “ “ “ “ Plymouth.

And here are the three answers of one of the most interested pupils:

(1) He was a grate man.
(2) “ “ “ “ “
(3) “ “ “ “ “ to.

Here is the

STAIRCASE OF TIME

It starts far, far, below the bottom of the pages and rises up, Up, UP to where we are NOW—each step a hundred years, each flight of steps a thousand.It will keep on up until it reaches high heaven.From where we are NOW let us look down the flights below us and listen to the Story of what has happened in the long years gone by.

TIME TABLE

with

DATES AND OTHER FOOD
FOR THOUGHT

Don’t devour these dates all at once, or they’ll make you sick, and you’ll never want to see one again.

Take them piecemeal, only one or two at a time after each story, and be sure to digest them thoroughly.

			PAGE
		Beginning of the Earth	3
		First Rain-storm	7
		Plants	7
		Mites	8
		Insects	8
		Fish	8
		Frogs	8
		Snakes	8
		Birds	8
		Animals	8
		Monkeys	8
		People	8
4000	B.C.	Bronze Age Begins	16
3400	B.C.	Menes	28
2900	B.C.	Cheops	38
2300	B.C.	Chaldean Eclipse	46
1900	B.C.	Abraham Leaves Ur	49
1700	B.C.	Israelites go to Egypt	51
1300	B.C.	Exodus; Iron Age Begins	54
1200	B.C.	Trojan War	64
1100	B.C.	Samuel; Saul	70
1000	B.C.	Homer; Solomon; Hiram	68, 71, 76
900	B.C.	Lycurgus	79
776	B.C.	First Olympiad	87
753	B.C.	Founding of Rome	89
700	B.C.	Nineveh at Top	96
612	B.C.	Fall of Nineveh	98
		Draco; Solon	114-115
538	B.C.	Fall of Babylon	108
509	B.C.	End of Kings at Rome	119
500	B.C.	Brahmanism	111
		Buddhism	112
		Confucius	113
490	B.C.	Marathon	127
480	B.C.	Thermopylæ;	137
		Salamis	140
480	B.C.	Golden Age	143
430	B.C.	Peloponnesian War	151
336	B.C. }
323	B.C. }	Alexander the Great	159, 162
202	B.C.	Zama	175
100	B.C.	Birth of Julius Cæsar	184
55	B.C. }
54	B.C. }	Conquest of Britain	186
44	B.C.	Death of Julius Cæsar	190
27	B.C.	Augustus and the Empire	191
4	B.C.	Birth of Christ	197
		Nero	203
		Titus	206
79	A.D.	Pompeii destroyed	208
179	A.D.	Marcus Aurelius	210
323	A.D.	Constantine	215
476	A.D.	Downfall of Rome	227
622	A.D.	The Hegira	244
732	A.D.	Tours	249
800	A.D.	Charlemagne	257
900	A.D.	King Alfred the Great	264
1000	A.D.	First Discovery of America	269
1066	A.D.	William the Conqueror	286
1100	A.D.	The Crusades	292
1215	A.D.	King John; Magna Charta	311
1300	A.D.	Marco Polo	318
1338	A.D.	Beginning of One Hundred Years’ War; Crécy; Black Death; Joan of Arc	327
1440	A.D.	Invention of Printing	333
1453	A.D.	Fall of Constantinople	335
1492	A.D.	Columbus; Discovery of America	337
1497	A.D.	Vasco da Gama	348
1500	A.D.	The Renaissance	359
		The Reformation	365
		Charles V	367
		King Henry VIII	369
		Elizabeth	372
1588	A.D.	Spanish Armada	375
1600	A.D.	Shakspere	380
1640	A.D.	Charles I and Oliver Cromwell	390
		Cardinal Richelieu	395
		Louis XIV	397
1700	A.D.	Peter the Great	402
1750	A.D.	Frederick the Great	407
1776	A.D.	American Revolution	412
1789	A.D.	French Revolution	420
1800	A.D.	Napoleon	428
1861	A.D.	Civil War	447
1914	A.D. }
1918	A.D. }	The Great War	460

A CHILD’S HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

BEGINS HERE