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*The Inheritance of Rome*
What can I say? I have to count this tome as one of the best history books I have read, ever. The author is Chris Wickham and the subtitle is A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. The author states that this is a book written "without hindsight" so the focus is not on how early medieval times were a precursor of this, that, or the other. In addition to its all-around stunningness, it has the following:
1. Extensive use of Egyptian archives, which it turns out are extensive from this period. Egypt may have been the most advanced part of the world at that time.
2. Fluid integration of historical and archeological sources.
3. An emphasis on "localization" as the fundamental change following the fall of the Roman Empire, and numerous micro-studies of exactly how that localization occurred. Cities shrank, trade networks dried up, etc.
4. An illuminating discussion of how family control made it incentive-compatible to invest so much wealth in monasteries.
5. An interesting hypothesis as to why so many Islamic cities ended up with such narrow streets (I may blog this separately).
6. How the peasantry ended up so downtrodden in England.
7. How the fall of the Roman Empire really happened (more or less).
8. How the Carolingian, Byzantine, and Abbasid empires all drew upon their Roman heritage in varying ways.
And more. If a while ago I defined the category "a book after which you don't want to read any other book," I'll try a new designation: "a book which makes you want to spend a month or more reading follow-up works in the same area."
Here is one very good review. I got a kick out of one of the Amazon reviews:
This is a challenging book to read. There is so much information
crammed into every page that you have to read slowly or you'll miss
something. And there are 550 pages of this.
Content! Heaven forbid!
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 22, 2009 at 05:54 AM in Books, History | Permalink
Comments
Thanks for the review. I've noticed this at the library and was considering getting it out. I'll grab it Monday.
Posted by: Steve Reilly at Aug 22, 2009 6:47:04 AM
Apparently Wickham edited Marxist History Writing for the Twenty-First Century. Is The Inheritance of Rome notably Marxist?
Posted by: Isegoria at Aug 22, 2009 8:57:51 AM
Are there actual Marxists outside of sociology departments these days?
Posted by: liberalarts at Aug 22, 2009 9:50:10 AM
Of course the Egyptian archives are extensive. After all, the dry climate is much more conducive to preserving old documents and papyri. However, our perspective may be distorted if we somehow infer from this that their civilization was more advanced.
Toynbee himself noted this in A Study of History, comparing the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties. He stated the former was far more important historically and culturally, but because the latter left behind a far greater trove of documents and artifacts, historians and archaeologists inevitably tended to subconsciously attach greater significance to the region to which they found themselves devoting far more of their time and efforts.
Posted by: anonymous at Aug 22, 2009 10:07:40 AM
Recently I've tended to judge historians partly by the frequency with which they get important economic facts right, under the influence of Oliver Rackham's wonderful "History of the Countryside" in which he shows that many historians of Britain have copied from each other ludicrously inaccurate - and indeed implausible - errors about the countryside: stuff such as the forests being destroyed by shipbuilders, or by iron smelters, for example, or the landscape tumbling down to ruin after the Roman legions departed. If you're writing about an age when most of the population made its living from agriculture, you can't get the economics right unless you get the countryside right. Since Rackham has also written about the countryside of the Mediterranean area (http://www.longitudebooks.com/find/p/52878/mcms.html,I immediately wonder whether Wickham's writings are consistent with Rackham's. Does anyone here know?
Posted by: dearieme at Aug 22, 2009 10:20:20 AM
I would also recommend The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward Perkins.
I liked it and learned a lot.
Posted by: Dave Barnes at Aug 22, 2009 11:06:08 AM
Any recommendations for best book on Byzantium? I'm not so much interested in the political history as the cultural history. How did Christianity develop there? How did Roman technology advance and decline -- and how did it decline in a reasonably stable society? Why didn't Byzantium's existence keep knowledge of Roman technology alive in Europe? What was it like to live there?
Posted by: Scoop at Aug 22, 2009 11:37:50 AM
the ward perkins book is fairly useless.
@scoop; there was a general tendancy not to learn greek, either from a political plot (papacy), trade routes or difficulty. It is greek to me.
Posted by: charlie at Aug 22, 2009 12:04:15 PM
Tyler, if you liked the book so much you should reproduce this as a 5 star review on Amazon and help the author out.
Posted by: anon at Aug 22, 2009 12:28:02 PM
The review Tyler finds annoying was fairly thoughtful and gave the book four stars. It just said it was a dry read. An engaging read! Heaven forbid!
Posted by: D at Aug 22, 2009 12:51:59 PM
In response to Scoop above:
"A Short History of Byzantium" by John Julius Norwich is a wonderfully readable overview of the history of the Byzantine empire, from the end of the Western Roman empire to the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. It is the condensation of a longer trilogy by the same author if you want more information than can fit in a single volume. He covers the major events of military, political, religious, and cultural history for this fascinating epoch.
Posted by: An Onyx Mousse at Aug 22, 2009 12:53:29 PM
For a different slant, see The Victory of Reason by Stark. Christianity as the savior of Europe, emphasizing reason and progress (with or without the blessing of the Vatican).
Posted by: jorod at Aug 22, 2009 6:36:26 PM
re: norwich, from what i have heard you might as well just read wikipedia. i read that series back in the day, but A History of the Byzantine State and Society is much better. re: wickham, this sounds good, but i liked Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, though i only got halfway through before i had to go on a trip and never got back to it (it's 1,000 pages or so).
Posted by: razib at Aug 23, 2009 3:11:10 AM
Wickham is a very good writer, and I haven't read this new book yet, but his "Framing the Middle Ages" while a fascinating read was really too much into the line that Roman didn't fall, it "transitioned" Which is clearly bunk, and archaeologically established bunk at that. There was a huge decline is living conditions in Western Europe and in Italy and the Balkans at the end of the Empire. But Wickham is a pretty orthodox Marxist and thus has very little interest in history that can not be represented as huge impersonal historical "patterns." He is also one of the most proficient of selective readers of textual sources I have ever seen, and probably the gold standard in cherry picking of his areas of focus. If a major region, such as the area north of the Alps or Central Gaul don't back up his thesis he will just pretend they don't exist while giving one endless minutiae, all quite interesting, about a other places.
Posted by: Roy at Aug 23, 2009 7:12:38 AM
roy, i agree with the fall of rome bit, but it's easy to just ignore that interpretation. though thanks for warning about cherry-picking (though that seemed likely when i read his introduction where he made the case for leaving out certain regions, etc.)
Posted by: razib at Aug 23, 2009 5:58:34 PM
"too much into the line that Roman didn't fall, it "transitioned" Which is clearly bunk, and archaeologically established bunk at that."
Roy, he claims in the intro not to be in the "transition" "Roman didn't fall" camp.. and basically says, as you do, that it "is clearly bunk, and archaeologically established bunk at that." But perhaps he had this point rammed to him in feedback to "Framing the Middle Ages".
Posted by: Rob at Aug 23, 2009 7:49:29 PM
When I was in grad school at UCLA, I dreaded having to take an undoubtedly boring class on "the economic history of Europe," which would offer yet another view of the period from the industrial revolution to the 20th century. Fortunately Axel Leijonhufvud was teaching the course that semester and had similar feelings about the subject. His class covered a roughly similar period, from the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance. I'll have to grab a copy of this book to see how it compares with my notes from his class.
Posted by: Ken at Aug 23, 2009 9:00:52 PM
I always thought Islamic cities ended up with narrow and winding streets because of all the camel traffic.
Am I wrong?
Posted by: Evan at Aug 24, 2009 12:26:39 PM
My understanding is that recent books on the fall of the Roman Empire have tended to emphasize just how long it took, and also tended to exculpate the barbarians, who except for the Vandals tended to try to shore things up.
There was a decline of living standards and urbanization in the eastern half of the empire, where the government was successful in maintaining its authority. It appears the economic and demographic collapse happened before the political collapse.
Also, about half of Gibbon's book about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is actually about the Byzantine Empire, though Gibbon didn't like the Byzantines that much. It appears they were too religious for him.
Posted by: Ed at Aug 24, 2009 1:51:12 PM
About narrow streets in cities: Don't almost all old-world cities have narrow streets because things were built on a human scale, and to maximize use of space? European cities had pretty narrow streets (old parts of towns that weren't leveled and rebuilt after WWII). Japanese cities have narrow streets.
Posted by: KK slider at Aug 24, 2009 1:53:21 PM
The Amazon reviewer says that Wickham doesn't even mention the battle of Poitiers (aka Tours), which is pretty amazingly bad if true. Being a Marxist is one thing, writing dumb history is another.
Posted by: Anderson at Aug 26, 2009 11:56:13 AM
