I have been going through a phase of reading old, out-of-copyright books – partly because I find it fascinating to see how various literary forms evolved over time, partly because if you go back far enough the books read like science-fiction – alien concepts and strange customs abound, partly because it allows me to affect an air of being well read, but mostly because you can download them for free from Project Gutenberg and I am a cheap bastard.

A Voyage to the South Sea by William Bligh

A while ago I read The Bounty by Caroline Alexander, a modern account of Captain Bligh’s famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons expedition to Tahiti aboard The Bounty. It focused mainly on what happened after everyone got home again. This book is the tale told by the man himself, compiled by Bligh from his logs kept during the voyage and it is a fascinating read. Even if there wasn’t a (spoiler alert!) mutiny, it would make for a cracking story as Bligh has an eye for both nautical detail during the voyage and a keen interest in how Tahitian society (very different to the English system) worked after The Bounty arrives.

And breadfruit, the dude was obsessed with breadfruit.

Once the mutiny occurs, the story turns into an epic struggle of survival as Bligh and his few remaining crew find that people treat you differently when you turn up on their island without a fully armed three-masted collier anchored just outside their reef.

It is a real pleasure to drop into the world of a competent person doing an interesting job. Since it is taken directly from his meticulous logs there is a charming matter-of-fact style as things unfold without foreshadowing or subplots. The one problem for a modern reader is that it is almost impossible to avoid hearing the text being read in James T. Kirk’s Captain’s Log voice; the style is exactly the same.

A Journey of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

This early novel in the form of a diary purports to be a day-to-day account of the life of a young London man during the 1665 outbreak of the black plague as people were dying in their thousands. Defoe did actually live through the plague but he was only 5 at the time, so the story is fictionalized but obviously carefully researched. Defoe uses the experiences of the narrator to highlight how various aspects of society (the rich, the poor, etc) reacted to the plague, maintaining a detached tone while horrible things are occurring on all sides. The thing that struck me the most was the general atmosphere of resigned bewilderment that permeates the book – nobody in pre-germ theory London really understands what is going on but society continues on as best as it can while people are dropping dead and whole streets worth of houses are empty or contain only corpses.

After reading lots of disaster fiction (The Day of the Triffids, Dawn of the Dead, etc) I was heartened to see that people do not automatically devolve into angry, paranoid mobs during a real life events that kill a large percentage of the population, although plenty of isolated complete bastardry apparently will occur.

The Battle of the Safes, or, British Invincibles Versus Yankee Ironclads by George Augustus Sala

And now for something completely different. During the Paris Exhibition of 1867 a public relations spat broke out between a British firm of safe makers and an upstart American firm as to who made the safest safes. This was apparently a big deal in an age when people kept large amounts of cash on hand.

The American firm challenged the British to a public demonstration where each firm nominated a crack team to break into the other’s safe in the shortest possible time. Everything should be simple but the Americans (boo-hiss) keep changing the rules in their favour. Eventually the contest comes to an unsatisfying conclusion but everyone can see that the British (yeay!) have scored a great moral victory.

This is a short, enjoyable, one-sided account of an inconsequential event, filled with all kinds of intrigue and skullduggery. Nothing really gets resolved but it doesn’t matter unless you are really into safes (and the illustrations are great.)

Born into the leading family of Rome in 10 BC, Claudius seemed ill-favoured right from the start. Afflicted by disabilities and a bad stutter, he was an embarrassment to most of his family and kept out of the public eye for most of his life, weathering several personal tragedies and busying himself with his writings. Being discounted as an idiot by his relatives in power allowed him to survive several deadly purges and eventually rise to the position of emperor by default, everyone else being dead.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves is an historical novel that proports to be the secret autobiography of Claudius from his childhood up until his surprising assumption of power. Grave’s Claudius states up front that he is writing a true history for the ages that will not be found for hundreds of years so he can include information that is damaging to either his family or the political body of the empire. Claudius was apparently a keen student of history, and this is reflected in the clear, dispassionate narrative that Claudius/Grave weaves around what must have been stressful times for the protagonist.

This book is a treat for fans of irony. Claudius himself harbours republican sentiments, but ends up being made emperor and dictator-for-life pretty much against his will when all he really wanted was a quiet life away from the limelight with his writings. As a fan of history, Claudius recounts a conversation as a young man with two famous historians about the merits of writing entertaining histories that contain inaccuracies, or dull and/or unpleasant histories that contain only the truth. Claudius states he sides with the truth but the whole passage is an invention of Graves, who was of course writing an entertaining novel.

Grave’s matter-of-fact style makes for a slightly dry read, but the story is well-told and the characters that swirl around Claudius are so larger-than-life that it is hard to put the book down. Highly recommended.

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg – How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History
By Giles Milton

The island of Run is pretty much forgotten, now just a small speck in the larger Indonesian archipelago. But during the 1600′s, Run was the name on every European trader’s lips, for it had been identified as the richest source of nutmeg. And the nutmeg trade was very lucrative indeed, with a markup of 60000 percent selling a small sack of the spice could buy a very nice house.

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is the story of how Run came to be discovered, and the extraordinary events that occurred as various kings and companies tried to lay claim to its harvest of riches. The English were trailing in the world domination stakes, the Dutch and the Portuguese pretty much had the area carved up, but the world was a lot bigger then and any policy of exclusion was tenuous at best. Both officially sanctioned and freelance expeditions from various nations sailed the perilous journey to the other side of the world, engaging in trading, piracy and conquest in roughly that order of priority. Due to various misunderstandings about where the continents lie, America was colonised almost by mistake along the way.

This is the sort of history book that can be read repeatedly. Milton mentions the important political and economic events in passing, and quickly gets to the meat of the story – tales of action and adventure on the high seas. These were the days when the line between loyal trader, privateer, and outright pirate were blurred, and diplomacy between nations was often carried out with cannon shot. The pivotal event in the plot – a four year siege of the tiny English-held (yeah!) Run Island by the hated Dutch (boo-hiss), is a particularly gripping read.

Great stuff, highly recommended.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond

Jared M. Diamond; there’s a super-hero alter-ego name if ever I have heard one. By day, Jared lives the buttoned down life of a professor of geography, by night he becomes a maverick author. His secret power is being able to write worthy books on the development of human societies that become best sellers.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an attempt to explain why the different human societies have ended up in the places they inhabit today, by looking at the different environments that various societies lived in as humans migrated around the planet in pre-history. Diamond has spent much of his life in Papua New Guinea, and the book often makes the comparison between the technology and lifestyles of native New Guinean population and the foreigners living there. Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that these differences are not due to any inherit inferiority in the natives, but that the European society had developed in a natural environment that fostered the easy development of technological advancement.

For instance, Europe has a large land-mass in a roughly east-west orientation. As plants and animals were domesticated, they could easily spread from one end of Europe to the other since the climate is similar at similar latitudes. Europe also had the advantage of having many species of wild plants suitable for easy domestication. Although the Americas also have a large land mass, the north-south orientation of the continent meant that a plant domesticated in the north could not be spread widely. Europe’s more numerous food sources led to surpluses, which lead to higher populations, which led to new systems of government, which led to more man-power available, which led to inventions that eventually led to European powers conquering the Americas.

All of this is quite straight forward to anyone who has played a few games of Civilization, but Diamond backs it all up with tables listing wild grains and animals suitable for human domestication, figures of population growth and tool use, and many anecdotes from history. I found Diamond’s arguments very plausible, and he takes pains to preempt some of the more obvious criticisms of his ideas.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a very entertaining read – highly recommended.