Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800

by Chris Wickham

Book Overview

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199212961
• ISBN13: 9780199212965
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 1024 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

History Buff

WOW, this is some book; one to study. It took me a while to read it, and I am going to do it again. What scholarship; I am amazed that some one can assimilate so much, and synthesize such a broad prospective. If you want to get a picture of what happened at the end of the Western Empire, this is the book for you. My only criticism is that Wickham is not a Hemingway. It is pretty slow going for us Americans. There are lots of parenthical expressions, in the middle of a sentence; and colons and semicolons to join related, but independent, thoughts. I am not a professional historian, and I do not understand some of his arguments. Large scale systems of exchange broke down, and in general the aristocrats became poorer, and less powerful. Apparently the peasants were not taxed as much, or contolled as much. Should'nt this result in a more flowering in an economy? He writes there was a decrease in population, but none, or little productive land was taken out of production. Did everybody work harder; producing the same amount as when the large scale systems of echange were operating, even though they had no place to sell it? Did they decide to spend more time with their kids, and only produce what they needed, even if they were not making efficient use of the land? I am sure there is a simple explanation. That is why this is a book for me to study.

Great Survey Which Shows Why Generalizations Don't Work for This Period

This is a tremendous piece of scholarship. I won't even try to summarize the content - in a work of over 800 pages of text, this is impossible. Wickham takes the geographic regions which were part of, or heavily influenced by, the Roman Empire and examines how they evolved and developed, in multiple aspects, from the beginning of the 5th to the end of the 8th century. The book is divided into 12 chapters, focusing on four major subject areas; States, Aristocratic power-structures, Peasantries, and Networks. For each topic he divides the Post-Roman world into 10 distinct geographic regions and examines each individually. These regions are; North Africa, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Byzantium, Spain, Central and Southern Gaul, Northern Gaul, Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. In some chapters he will examine regions together when development patterns are similar; most frequently combining Britain, Ireland and Denmark; however for the most part each of these 10 regions receives its own attention. I was pleasantly surprised to find it able to maintain my interest and more readable than I anticipated. Each topical chapter is 60-100 pages long, which would be tedious, however when 8-15 pages are devoted to a given geographic region for each topic, it's much easier to work through. There are several ways in which this book is truly outstanding. First is Wickham's use of sources. The book is heavily footnoted and he provides a great deal of evidence for most of his conclusions (I'll return to the exceptions in a moment). The sheer amount of referenced data is stunning and includes archaeology as well as written sources. He offers conjecture and hypothesis in some cases where there is not enough evidence to document a pattern of development. Most frequently this occurs for Britain, particularly in the chapter, "Peasants and Local Societies" where Wickham develops an entire hypothetical society based on how he believes it is most likely that British peasant society was structured. While this is an exception to Wickham's usually strict use of evidentiary sources, he is very careful - explicitly so - to state that this is a hypothesis based on his educated opinion, not something which can be proven through sources. He does this in several parts of the book and he is always careful to state where he's offering something which he believes is not provable. The second way in which this book excels is in its insistence on avoiding generalizations. Even when examining ten different geographic regions, he further discusses differences which occur within these regions. The overall impression is that in order to truly study medieval history, one must focus on smaller, regional areas and must, at all costs, avoid generalizing for all Post-Roman societies. As for the information itself, it is an eye-opener. In the broadest sense, Wickham argues that the relative success of Post-Roman societies is strongly tied to how that society was structured within the Empire. Region

Sure to set the standard on the Subject

This is a monumental review of the economic and social histories of the former provinces of the Roman Empire between the penetration of the empire by the barbarians and the imperial coronation of Charlemagne. Along with the Origins of the European Economy, this book is likely to be the standard social and economic survey of the dark ages for years to come. The author surveys each of the major territorial regions of the fomer Roman Empire region-by-region, and slowly develops his theses. These include: (1) a "soft-fall" view of the disintegration of the Western Empire, concluding that many of its structures were in place well into the seventh century and gradually were melded into the less sophisticated successor states of Western Europe; (2) a taxation-driven notion of the state, concluding that the major factor distinguishing Rome and Roman power from that of successor states is that Rome had an elaborate and relatively efficient tax system, and that the successor states did not; (3) a regionalist approach to conclusions, finding that things changed in different degrees in different ways throughout the territories of the Roman Empire -- slowly and relatively little in the East, massively in Britain, in odd ways in Spain and Gaul; (4) a picture of transformation from peasant-based society to feudal society, occurring rather later than many historians would allow; (5) a strong de-emphasis on barbarian wars and conquests as an explanation for these transformations; and (5) a peasant's eye view of the transformation from Roman Empire to the Middle Ages. It is in the latter that the only real problem with the book arises. The author is so pro-peasant in his view that he takes what could be called a "Xena" view of medieval class struggles. In Xena (and Conan, and Red Sonya, and 10,000 B.C., to name but a few sword-and-sorcery potboilers) there is a familiar scene where the peaceful peasants are going about their village business, talking to each other and carrying out their daily tasks, while a band of heavily-armed thugs is approaching the village on horseback, ready to destroy it with fire and sword. In this author's world, heavily-financed aristocrats are about to encroach on an idylic and egalitarian peasant world, forcing the formerly free peasantry to pay rent, work harder, and have more children. In what is perhaps his most radical claim, the author suggests that the serious decline in population from the late empire to about 700 A.D. was due, not to war, pestilence, famine and occupation but -- family planning! He admits that he cannot prove this, but it is clearly an idea which attracts him. I am dubious -- it is difficult to think of any other society between the birth of agriculture and the industrial revolution where the bulk of the population did not breed to its Malthusian limit, and the claim that early medieval Europe was an exception would require a good deal of proof. That said, this is a wonderful book. Even its bias s

Trend-setting

Late Antiquity is still quite controversial. Its application, time boundaries, and geographic limits still a matter of debate. As such, theories about its true nature and its application to historical study is still undetermined and is being revised everyday. This book, much like the book that landed 'Late Antiquity' as a free-standing period in English historical enquiry (Peter Brown's "The World of Late Antiquity") is a trend-setter. Wickham's excellent scholarship, plus the fact that he dares and explores new waters and concepts, is ground breaking and profound. This book is going to be the "Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World" of its generation and have many volumes written in "response" to it. A must have, no doubt about it, for anyone interested in the Late Antique and Early Medieval history, and a must read for anyone interested in pre-Industrial Revolution economic history, regardless of time and place!

Fantastic Survey!

Chris Wickham explores the world of the early Middle Ages in a systematic way. Using literary and archaeological evidence, Wickham describes the changes which took place in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa after the fall of Rome. He maintains that despite the great political upheavals of the time, local continuity was a hallmark of this period. Economic decline and regrowth were connected with changes in the power and wealth of the aristocracy, who also exercised lesser or greater control over the land and the people. While this massive piece of scholarship does not address cultural or intellectual history, it provides a very clear picture of the political and economic changes that transformed the former Roman Empire during the years 400-800 A.D. The writing is lively and easy to read, and the work is well organized. The full index and large bibliography as well as the broad range of topics covered make this book an indispensible reference tool for anyone studying Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.