The Outline of History

From Neolithic times (12,000–10,000 years ago, by Wells's estimation) "[t]he history of mankind . . . is a history of more or less blind endeavours to conceive a common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily, and to create and develop a common stock of knowledge which may serve and illuminate that purpose."[5]

Wells was uncertain whether to place "the beginnings of settled communities living in towns" in Mesopotamia or Egypt.[6] He was equally unsure whether to consider the development of civilisation as something that arose from "the widely diffused Heliolithic Neolithic culture" or something that arose separately.[7] Between the nomadic cultures that originated in the Neolithic Age and the settled civilisations to the south, he discerned that "for many thousands of years there has been an almost rhythmic recurrence of conquest of the civilizations by the nomads."[8] According to Wells, this dialectical antagonism reflected not only a struggle for power and resources, but a conflict of values: "Civilization, as this outline has shown, arose as a community of obedience, and was essentially a community of obedience. But . . . [t]here was a continual influx of masterful will from the forests, parklands, and steppes. The human spirit had at last rebelled altogether against the blind obedience of the common life; it was seeking . . . to achieve a new and better sort of civilization that should also be a community of will."[9] Wells regarded the democratic movements of modernity as an aspect of this movement.[10]

Wells saw in the bards who were, he believed, common to all the "Aryan-speaking peoples" an important "consequence of and a further factor in [the] development of spoken language which was the chief factor of all the human advances made in Neolithic times. . . . they mark a new step forward in the power and range of the human mind," extending the temporal horizons of the human imagination.[11] He saw in the ancient Greeks another definitive advance of these capacities, "the beginnings of what is becoming at last nowadays a dominant power in human affairs, the 'free intelligence of mankind'."[12] The first individual he distinguishes as embodying free intelligence is the Greek historian Herodotus.[13] The Hebrew prophets and the tradition they founded he calls "a parallel development of the free conscience of mankind."[14] Much later, he singles out Roger Bacon as a precursor of "a great movement in Europe . . . toward reality" that contributed to the development of "intelligence".[15] But "[i]t was only in the eighties of the nineteenth century that this body of inquiry began to yield results to impress the vulgar mind. Then suddenly came electric light and electric traction, and the transmutation of forces, the possibility of sending power . . . began to come through to the ideas of ordinary people."[16]

Although a few passages in The Outline of History reflect racialist thinking, Wells firmly rejected all theories of racial and civilizational superiority. On the subject of race, Wells writes that "Mankind from the point of view of a biologist is an animal species in a state of arrested differentiation and possible admixture . . . [A]ll races are more or less mixed.".[17] As for the claim that Western minds are superior, he states that upon examination "this generalization . . . dissolves into thin air."[18]

In the years leading up to the writing of The Outline of History Wells was increasingly preoccupied by history, as many works testify. (See, for example, The New Machiavelli, Marriage, An Englishman Looks at the World, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, etc.) During World War I, he tried to promote a world history to be sponsored by the League of Nations Union, of which he was a member. But no professional historian would commit to undertake it, and Wells, in a financially sound position thanks to the success of Mr. Britling Sees It Through and believing that his work would earn little, resolved to devote a year to the project. His wife Catherine (Jane) agreed to be his collaborator in typing, research, organisation, correspondence, and criticism. Wells relied heavily on the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), and standard secondary texts. He made use of the London Library, and enlisted as critical readers "a team of advisers for comment and correction, chief among them Ernest Barker, Harry Johnston, E. Ray Lankester, and Gilbert Murray. The sections were then rewritten and circulated for further discussion until Wells judged that they had reached a satisfactory standard."[19] The bulk of the work was written between October 1918 and November 1919.

In 1927 a Canadian, Florence Deeks, sued Wells for infringement of copyright and breach of trust. She claimed that he had stolen much of the content of The Outline of History from a work, The Web of the World's Romance, which she had submitted to the Canadian publisher Macmillan Canada, who held onto the manuscript for nearly nine months before rejecting it. The Ontario trial court found the evidence inadequate and dismissed the case.[20] An appeal to the Ontario Appellate Division was dismissed,[21] as was a final appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,[22] at that time the highest court of appeal for the British Empire.[23]

A book was produced in 2000 called The Spinster & the Prophet; Florence Deeks, H. G. Wells, and the Mystery of the Purloined Past, by A. B. McKillop, a professor of history at Carleton University. This book examines the case Deeks had against Wells, for misappropriating information from her manuscript "The Web of the World's Romance", which she had entrusted to MacMillan Canada. The records are unclear at points as to who handled it, and McKillop states that when she finally had the rejected manuscript back months later, she left it unopened for almost a year. In the meantime "Outline of History" came out, she bought a copy, and became suspicious that Wells had copied from her manuscript.

McKillop's story is mostly circumstantial, due to lack of hard facts in some areas, but the original material from MacMillan's records and Deeks were available for inspection and scrutiny. He paints a portrait of a woman pursuing her right for acknowledgement, and let down by a legal system that heavily favoured men at that time, both in Canada and in the UK. Deeks's three expert witnesses testified that there could be no doubt Wells had copied from her manuscript, which was returned to her well thumbed and worn with stains, as though someone had been perusing it for months.

Deeks's original premise had been to produce a history of important women in history and their accomplishments. Later she modified it to be more a world history but with heavy accent on what we would now describe as feminism. Wells appeared to her to have used much of her work, having stripped the feminism from it. Some mistakes Deeks made in her manuscript were also seen in Wells's book, and it was considered by her expert witnesses that in the time Wells wrote his "Outline", he could not have possibly done all the research, suggesting that a large part was copied from Deeks's work.

In 2004 Denis N. Magnusson, Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, published an article on Deeks v. Wells in the Queen's Law Journal. In it he re-examines the case in relation to McKillop's book (described as a "novel" in the editorial introduction). While having some sympathy for Deeks, he "challenges the outpouring of public support" for her. He argues that she had a weak case that was not well presented, and though she may have met with sexism from her lawyers, she did receive a fair trial. He goes on to say that the law applied is essentially the same law that would be applied to a similar case today (i.e. 2004).[24]