“A Period in Its Own Right”

At Literary Review , Christopher Kelly reviews Chris Wickham’s latest book, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 :

In The Inheritance of Rome , Wickham adds political and cultural history, but still resolutely refuses to offer any grand explanatory narrative. His central tactic is to decouple the Middle Ages from both the Roman Empire and early modern Europe. It is to be treated as a period in its own right: not as a long and tedious intermission stretching between the high summer of the classical world and its supposed rediscovery in the Renaissance. Wickham’s aim is to write a history that is neither overshadowed by the break-up of the Roman Empire, nor driven by a concern to find the origins of European liberalism, democracy or the nation state.

In that sense, The Inheritance of Rome stands rather uncomfortably as the second volume in Penguin’s projected eight-volume (three already published) History of Europe. This seems precisely the kind of old-fashioned enterprise that Wickham’s approach is aimed at undercutting. Readers demanding a dynamic, forward-moving explanation of how the early Middle Ages helped in the making of Europe will be disappointed. Those who are willing to have their attention focused on the period itself—rather than worrying about the causes of imperial decline or seeking the early stirrings of modernity—will find instead a rewarding set of carefully constructed comparative studies spanning six centuries and a world that stretches from Córdoba to Cairo and from Offa’s Dyke in Britain to the great libraries of Baghdad.