Past and Present
Roger Collins’ Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000 is a fine narrative history of the transition from late antiquity to the medieval. I enjoyed the intelligent scepticism about the available written sources and the way Collins analysed historical actors in terms of the problems actually facing them (rather than some teleological notion of how they “should” have acted or be seen to have acted). Found the lack of consideration of the underlying structures of (changing) societies a bit frustrating, though I realise there are major evidence difficulties. Still, there seemed to be an underlying story just out of reach.
Collins sees the central drama of the period, what he calls the “Fall” of the Western Roman Empire, as mainly consisting in the disappearance of the first the Western Roman Army and then the capping Imperial authority as result of various choices made by said authority under mounting military pressure with most of the underlying structures remaining. There is much to be said for this characterisation. However, the evidence of a long-term demographic and economic decline extending from about 300AD to about 750AD suggests that these processes were themselves the results of deeper underlying causes (which they may, of course, have then aggravated). Similarly, Collins seems a little over-impressed by the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire (p.98). Yes, that state did survive for another 1000 years, but it also lost half its own territory in the period 650-710AD.
Which is not to say it is other than a useful and informative book. The political and military struggles of the period are laid out in a clear narrative, particularly the rise and decline of the Carolingian empire, and there is plenty of information to assist in building a better sense of the period.
The Right Nation: Why America is Different by two journalists from The Economist is all about underlying structures. It is also the best book I have read on conservatism in the US. The authors don’t sneer, they don’t condescend, they can think and write about right-of-centre politics in terms other than as moral and intellectual pathology. If one genuinely wants to understand contemporary American politics, and why the US is different, this is the book to read.
The authors start with the history, showing how the rise of contemporary conservatism grew out of the triumph of American liberalism. This is a point many miss; that (US) liberalism was in a profoundly dominant position which it lost partly because its policies were too often seen to fail and partly because it got too detached from the concerns and perspectives of too many Americans. They then turn to various streams that fed into contemporary conservatism, try to tease out the direction things are heading and examine Ameican exceptionalism, finishing with a chapter about living with the Right Nation.
The authors consider how conservatism could overreach, a normal problem of any successful political movement. Indeed, I suspect they underrate the capacity for US liberalism and the Democrats to regenerate in a new form. The scandal thread that runs from Watergate to the current torture controversies show conservatives succumbing to narcissistic worship of their own noble intentions. It is unlikely US conservatives are immune to their beliefs blocking understanding of awkward bits of reality.
The authors are comfortable with the idea that the US has a particular history that lead to the rise of particular politics - which extends across the political spectrum. Too often, progressivist commentators see their own politics as “real” politics and anything else as aberration (hence all the nonsense about there being “no Left” in the US, or US politics being somehow “Mickey Mouse” and a parody of the real thing). The authors avoid another form of wishful thinking - that US power will wane and do so quickly. The authors point out that the US is 30% of world GDP, 40% of world R&D spending and the only major developed nation with a young and growing population (pp390-1).
If one wants one’s prejudices confirmed about evil the US, US politics and particularly US conservative politics are, this is not the book to read. If one wants to be informed and understand, it certainly is.
Janet Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 provides a welcome, highly scholarly, adjustment to views that overstate Europe’s precocity and importance before 1500. Europe was a peripheral backwater prior to its export of the Eurasian disease pool to the Americas (and even for some time after). She examines each major area of the Eurasian trading network in term, bringing out how much events in one area were affected by changes elsewhere (in particular, how much Europeans were responding to such changes).
I also found Abu-Lughod’s scepticism about grand conceptual schemas and strong preference for considering the complex texture of reality engaging. She sets out a highly informative history of the creation of an interacting Eurasian economy under the period of Mongol domination and how changes among the various participating powers (particularly China) resulted in the interactions falling back to a lower level. She also argues a power vacuum was set up in the Indian Ocean that the Europeans (first the Portugese, then the Dutch and finally the British) were able to fill. That there was a "Fall of the East" prior to there being a "Rise of the West". She does a nice job of debunking “cultural” and “Confucian-isolationism” explanations for China’s shift, placing the public policy considerations the Ming court was dealing with in a more plausible context.
My first quibble is with the title. This is about the Eurasian system, not a global one, a point the author herself concedes (p.37). It is a “world” system only in terms of the Old World/New World usage and, to be fair, she is responding to Wallerstein’s coinage of the term. The second is she suffers from the modern academic fetish for shudder quotes, though at least she is often prepared to explain in more detail why concepts are problematic, rather than simply engaging in the tedious knowing-virtue wink. The worst bit of the book, as so often is the way, is when she attempts to look forward. The talking down of the stability of the current world-system, and the situation of the US in particular, reads rather poorly for a book published in 1989 with clearly no sense whatsoever of the impending collapse of the Soviet empire.
But the book is highly readable and extremely informative, the personality of the author engaging. An excellent way of coming to grips with how global history works.
ADDENDA Abu-Lughod includes some fashionably ambiguous nonsense in her introduction about science being “socially constructed” (if she means that science occurs within a social context, obviously true: if she means that whether E=mc2 is true depends on the social context, that is nonsense) which fortunately does not seem to be other than fashionable hand-waving. (Anyone who claims to believe the second claim is other than nonsense is invited to allow me to belt them in the jaw to see whether it is “socially constructed” how many times I have to hit them to break their jaw. Nobody really believes this nonsense, because no-one walks out in front of trucks to see if it is “socially constructed” whether the truck will (a) hit them and (b) kill them.)
Collins sees the central drama of the period, what he calls the “Fall” of the Western Roman Empire, as mainly consisting in the disappearance of the first the Western Roman Army and then the capping Imperial authority as result of various choices made by said authority under mounting military pressure with most of the underlying structures remaining. There is much to be said for this characterisation. However, the evidence of a long-term demographic and economic decline extending from about 300AD to about 750AD suggests that these processes were themselves the results of deeper underlying causes (which they may, of course, have then aggravated). Similarly, Collins seems a little over-impressed by the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire (p.98). Yes, that state did survive for another 1000 years, but it also lost half its own territory in the period 650-710AD.
Which is not to say it is other than a useful and informative book. The political and military struggles of the period are laid out in a clear narrative, particularly the rise and decline of the Carolingian empire, and there is plenty of information to assist in building a better sense of the period.
The Right Nation: Why America is Different by two journalists from The Economist is all about underlying structures. It is also the best book I have read on conservatism in the US. The authors don’t sneer, they don’t condescend, they can think and write about right-of-centre politics in terms other than as moral and intellectual pathology. If one genuinely wants to understand contemporary American politics, and why the US is different, this is the book to read.
The authors start with the history, showing how the rise of contemporary conservatism grew out of the triumph of American liberalism. This is a point many miss; that (US) liberalism was in a profoundly dominant position which it lost partly because its policies were too often seen to fail and partly because it got too detached from the concerns and perspectives of too many Americans. They then turn to various streams that fed into contemporary conservatism, try to tease out the direction things are heading and examine Ameican exceptionalism, finishing with a chapter about living with the Right Nation.
The authors consider how conservatism could overreach, a normal problem of any successful political movement. Indeed, I suspect they underrate the capacity for US liberalism and the Democrats to regenerate in a new form. The scandal thread that runs from Watergate to the current torture controversies show conservatives succumbing to narcissistic worship of their own noble intentions. It is unlikely US conservatives are immune to their beliefs blocking understanding of awkward bits of reality.
The authors are comfortable with the idea that the US has a particular history that lead to the rise of particular politics - which extends across the political spectrum. Too often, progressivist commentators see their own politics as “real” politics and anything else as aberration (hence all the nonsense about there being “no Left” in the US, or US politics being somehow “Mickey Mouse” and a parody of the real thing). The authors avoid another form of wishful thinking - that US power will wane and do so quickly. The authors point out that the US is 30% of world GDP, 40% of world R&D spending and the only major developed nation with a young and growing population (pp390-1).
If one wants one’s prejudices confirmed about evil the US, US politics and particularly US conservative politics are, this is not the book to read. If one wants to be informed and understand, it certainly is.
Janet Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 provides a welcome, highly scholarly, adjustment to views that overstate Europe’s precocity and importance before 1500. Europe was a peripheral backwater prior to its export of the Eurasian disease pool to the Americas (and even for some time after). She examines each major area of the Eurasian trading network in term, bringing out how much events in one area were affected by changes elsewhere (in particular, how much Europeans were responding to such changes).
I also found Abu-Lughod’s scepticism about grand conceptual schemas and strong preference for considering the complex texture of reality engaging. She sets out a highly informative history of the creation of an interacting Eurasian economy under the period of Mongol domination and how changes among the various participating powers (particularly China) resulted in the interactions falling back to a lower level. She also argues a power vacuum was set up in the Indian Ocean that the Europeans (first the Portugese, then the Dutch and finally the British) were able to fill. That there was a "Fall of the East" prior to there being a "Rise of the West". She does a nice job of debunking “cultural” and “Confucian-isolationism” explanations for China’s shift, placing the public policy considerations the Ming court was dealing with in a more plausible context.
My first quibble is with the title. This is about the Eurasian system, not a global one, a point the author herself concedes (p.37). It is a “world” system only in terms of the Old World/New World usage and, to be fair, she is responding to Wallerstein’s coinage of the term. The second is she suffers from the modern academic fetish for shudder quotes, though at least she is often prepared to explain in more detail why concepts are problematic, rather than simply engaging in the tedious knowing-virtue wink. The worst bit of the book, as so often is the way, is when she attempts to look forward. The talking down of the stability of the current world-system, and the situation of the US in particular, reads rather poorly for a book published in 1989 with clearly no sense whatsoever of the impending collapse of the Soviet empire.
But the book is highly readable and extremely informative, the personality of the author engaging. An excellent way of coming to grips with how global history works.
ADDENDA Abu-Lughod includes some fashionably ambiguous nonsense in her introduction about science being “socially constructed” (if she means that science occurs within a social context, obviously true: if she means that whether E=mc2 is true depends on the social context, that is nonsense) which fortunately does not seem to be other than fashionable hand-waving. (Anyone who claims to believe the second claim is other than nonsense is invited to allow me to belt them in the jaw to see whether it is “socially constructed” how many times I have to hit them to break their jaw. Nobody really believes this nonsense, because no-one walks out in front of trucks to see if it is “socially constructed” whether the truck will (a) hit them and (b) kill them.)