Title:

Four Points of the Compass

Author:

Jerry Brotton

Category:

Non-fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

May 5, 2025

t is never a good sign when I find myself skimming the material, but by the end of this short book - just 181 pages in the hardcover edition - I had lost interest and just wanted to finish. Four Points of the Compass is well researched, but the material was not that interesting. Brotton's big point is that direction is relative. If you keep heading east for an eternity, you will circle the globe endlessly, but you will never be "west". The earth spins on its axis, but we arbitrarily decided which hemisphere was north and which was south. The subtitle for this book is The Unexpected History of Direction.

Depending on where you are from, directional adjectives have different meanings. In England, northerners are though to be poor, unsophisticated blue-collar laborers. In Italy, a northerner is industrious, prosperous and hard working, while southern Italians are lazy crooks. However, whenever an English or Italian citizen travels to another part of the world, they are considered a Westerner.

Because of its industrialization, democracy and capitalistic economy, Japan is considered part of the global West, even though it just east of China, which is the epitome of "the East". Australia is also considered part of the West, though clearly it is in the south.

When previous societies drew maps, they often did so with East appearing at the top, because East was the most important direction - it is the direction of the rising sun, symbolizing birth and renewal. Christians believed that the Garden of Eden lay somewhere in the East, and the Jesus would appear in the second coming by walking out of the East. The mysterious kingdom of Prester John lay in the east. The direction west, the direction of the setting sun, symbolized death, mortality, the impermanence of our human lives, thus almost no cultures drew maps with west at the top.

The terms Near East, Middle East and Far East are all relative to Europe, these names were coined by the European explorers during the age of Exploration.

When in the far north, Polaris is almost directly overhead and thus useless for identifying direction. Societies that live in the far north, like the Inuit, attach no particular status to the "Star that does not move". Due to the wobble of the Earth's axis, in ten thousand years Polaris will no longer align with true north.

The magnetic pole and true north due not align. Even as long ago as Columbus, sailors were aware of this discrepancy and had to make corrections to their navigation. The magnetic pole can move by as much as 40 Km per year.

Magnets are attracted to the opposite pole. Thus the north end of two magnets will repel each other, while the north and south end of magnets are drawn to each other. All compasses that point north are thus actually pointing to the South Magnetic Pole.