Top Ten Day: My favorite empires

As a history major, I'm a big proponent of the "great man" theory of history - important people having a big impact on history. I mean, let's face it - peasants are pretty much the same throughout history, so although studying them can tell us a lot about how life was like in 13th-century Italy or 20th-century Russia, it can't tell us what the hell was going on, because the peasants were just doing their thing, trying to survive. My kind of history has fallen out of favor as historians focus on the common man more, but to me, it's kind of like the Paris Hilton theory of history - she's famous pretty much because she's alive, not because of any accomplishments. The same holds true for peasants - they are of historical interest simply because they lived, and not because they actually did anything.

Empires are big in "great man" theory of history. Social historians don't care as much about empires, because they contend that it doesn't really matter who's in charge - things will go on as before, and the peasants will suffer. That's kind of my point, but that's not where I'm going with this. I just want to celebrate my favorite empires in history - "favorite" meaning the ones I'm interested in, not necessarily the ones that did the most for human progress. Of course, most rulers of empires aren't interested in human progress. What's an empire? Like irony, I'll know it when I see it. Some call the United States an empire. Sorry, but it doesn't count. But that's just me.

So let's check out some keen empires!

1. The Ottoman Empire, circa 1300-1922. The Ottomans don't get a lot of respect these days, because they were Turks, and everyone knows how horrible the Turks are, right? Ottoman Turkey, however, ruled much of the Middle East for 500 years or so, and the Ottomans contributed quite a bit in terms of military organization and governance. They had some beautiful art, too - a few years ago we went to the Portland Art Museum and saw an exhibit of Ottoman art, which of course drew the ire of the Armenian community in town. The Ottomans brought stability to the Balkans and the Levant, and one of their sultans, Suleiman the Magnificent, might have been the greatest emperor of all time. They almost overran Eastern Europe more than once, which would have completely changed the way history played out and remains a great "what-if" of the world. Yes, the empire became corrupt and frail and was often held together by the European Powers in the nineteenth century because they had their own agendas, but we shouldn't ignore the greatness that was the Ottoman Empire.

The map is from here.

2. The Byzantine Empire, circa 337-1453. This is the Eastern Roman Empire, if you want to be technical, because when Diocletian revamped Rome in the late third century, he split what had become somewhat unwieldy as a single political entity. Then Constantine built Constantinople at what is probably the best place to build a city in the history of mankind (New York might be second-best), and after the West fell, the East became the only Roman Empire, and turned more and more to Greece for their culture and language, hence "Byzantine" after the original Greek settlement on the shores of the Bosporus. The Byzantines are fascinating to me, because their city became the embodiment of empire: as long as Constantinople stood, the empire existed, even at the end, when that's all that was left. I find the emperors wonderful to read about: Justinian and his prostitute-turned-empress wife, Theodora; Heraclius, who finally defeated the Persians only to see his life's work destroyed by a new enemy, the Arabs; Irene, who ruled in 800 when Charlemagne was crowned in the West and may have spurred that decision, because everyone knew a woman couldn't rule an empire; Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, who wrote a political treatise that gives us lots of information about the tenth century; Basil II, who has one of the best nicknames in history - "Bulgar-Slayer"; and Alexius, John, and Manuel Comnenus, who fought off the Crusaders and helped bring Byzantium its final glory days. Their relations with the West fascinate me, too, as does the Fourth Crusade, when the knights of Europe dared sack the city, earning the enmity of most right-thinking Christians. The final conflict against the Ottomans is interesting, too, as the Byzantines tried to mend fences with Rome against the wishes of their own populace. In a thousand-year history, there's very little that's boring about the Byzantines.

I found the map here, which shows the boundaries of the empire at different times in its history.

3. The Carolingian Empire, 800-843. Yes, it's a short-lived empire, and I suppose I could stretch it out, but the empire was established in 800 and was pretty much destroyed by the Treaty of Verdun in 843. I've written quite a bit about Charlemagne and his empire, so I'll just point out how neat the Carolingian Renaissance is and what a shockingly dynamic ruler Charlemagne really was.

Here is where I found the map.

4. The Roman Empire, 27 B. C.-A. D. 476. The granddaddy of them all! Okay, not really, but the oldest on this list. Rome set the stage for Europe, and as I dig European history, it's not surprising I like this empire so much. Rome is endlessly fascinating, from the early Julio-Claudians and the dominance of the Mediterranean (not to mention their involvement in that Jesus fiasco) to the second-century emperors like Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius to the third-century disasters to the renaissance under Diocletian and Constantine the Great. It's fun to read about the crazy emperors, but part of the interest in Rome is reading about how the fringe cultures and warriors reacted to Rome, from Zenobia in Palmyra to Boudicca in England to the later invasions of Goths and Vandals and whatnot. You could start studying Rome today and do so for the rest of your life and never run out of things to discover. It's quite keen.


5. The Umayyad/Abbasid Empires, 632-750; 758-1258. The early years of Islam are marked by astonishing expansion into northern Africa and east into Persia. This took place under the Umayyads, who were overthrown by the Abbasids in 750. I put the two together because the change in the caliphate was fairly smooth (accompanied by civil war and mass slaughter, to be sure, but once the Abbasids became ascendant, they simply took over). The Umayyads moved to Spain and set up a separate caliphate there, which led to a great flowering of culture on the peninsula. This time is Islam is fascinating, as the Muslims weren't sure what to do with all the possessions they suddenly found themselves with, and toward the end of the period, those tacky Crusaders showed up and upset the china in the Middle East, which unified a somewhat fractured religion against them. The greatest Abbasid caliph was Harun al-Rashid, the contemporary of Charlemagne and the template for the Arabian Nights saga. In 1258 the Mongols obliterated Baghdad and ended the Arab dominance of Islam, setting the stage for the Ottomans to take over the caliphate. It's very interesting to consider that despite Arabic being the official language of Islam and the thing that unites practitioners, there are deep nationalistic rivalries inside the religion, stretching back centuries. Studying Islam from this period helps illuminate what's going on now.

I stole the map from this site.

6. The Angevin Empire, 1154-1216. This ephemeral empire was formed mainly because Henry II of England married well. In 1152, Henry, the duke of Anjou, married Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine. Eleanor had, two months earlier, divorced Louis VII of France because he was too effete for a man-lovin' woman like Eleanor (okay, who knows why they divorced - my reason is fun!). In 1154, to end England's civil war between King Stephen and Matilda, the daughter of King Henry I, Stephen agreed to name Henry (Matilda's son) as heir. When Stephen died, Henry became king of England. As he held the title of dozens of counties and duchies and whatnot in France and, through Eleanor, more vast land, he became the most powerful ruler in Europe. Hey, that was handy. Henry was the first Platagenet ruler, and with his wife, he had quite the blast, if the history books are to be believed. Of course, he had his best friend killed, but what are you going to do? He also pissed off Eleanor more than once, to the point where she helped her sons rebel against their father, and when Peter O'Toole - I mean, Henry - finally died, Richard and then John ruled after him. Richard, of course, is famous for going on crusade and making nice with Robin Hood in that Disney movie, while John is famous for being a lousy king and losing most of the "empire" that his father had created. It was never an "empire" in the sense of being one administrative state, as each of Henry's possessions had their own culture and governments, but it fun while it lasted!

From here is where I got the map.

7. The Holy Roman/Austrian/Austro-Hungarian Empire, 962-1918. The weirdest empire on this list, the Holy Roman Empire was technically founded by Otto the Great in 962, although ol' Otto tried to link his empire to Charlemagne's as a lot of people did back then. The empire was kept alive through several weak rulers, with only a few rising up to make any impression (Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick II) until the Habsburgs took over in the middle of the 15th century. Under Charles V (1519-1555) the empire reached the height of its power, but from then it declined. After Napoleon put it out of its misery in 1806, it transformed into a Habsburg-run Austrian empire, which became a joint monarchy with Hungary in 1867. It's an interesting empire to study, because it was such a lousy one. The emperor was rarely invested with any power, and unless he had a strong personality, he was helpless against the princes who elected him. Later, after Austria-Hungary became the center of the the empire, it became a baroque monstrosity, the most conservative state in turbulent times. Of course, it was the assassination of the heir to the throne of the empire that sparked the First World War. I have read more than one book that suggests the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary was the worst thing that could have happened for the Balkan nationalities. I don't know if I agree with that theory, but it's certainly something to chew on!


I found the second map here.

8. The German Empire, 1871-1918. I've always been keen on the German Empire, or "second Reich," as a certain Austrian dictator liked to call it. I read a biography of Otto von Bismarck years ago, and it was one of the better history books I've ever read. Plus, Napoleon III's wild ambitions and ruination in 1870-71 (see below) have also fascinated me (as has the Commune, but that's a whole different thing). When I was growing up, I used to read hardcover comics from England that had all kinds of neat stories in them (I lived in Germany, remember). One was about the Commune and how the French tried to get out of Paris during the siege. I guess it hooked me. Bismarck is an intriguing politician, and his relationship with both Wilhelm I and II is very interesting. Germany's escalation of the arms race in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is one of the great tragedies of modern times. It wasn't all Germany's fault, of course, but Wilhelm II was such an odd popinjay that it makes World War I look inevitable. It's a much more interesting state than it gets credit for.

I need to point out that the map came from here.

9. The Second French Empire, 1852-1870. Speaking of the Germans, the emperor that the Germans defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III, ran this empire. He created it and then ran it into the ground. Napoleon, who was the first emperor's nephew, became the president after the 1848 revolution, and then decided to declare himself emperor. Under Napoleon III, France aggressively pursued more colonies in Africa, and Napoleon also tried to establish a client state in Mexico. This, of course, led to the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Napoleon got in over his head when he declared war on Prussia, leading to utter defeat and his abdication. Napoleon, interestingly enough, was the first president and last monarch of France. The Second Empire is more interesting than the First, because the latter Napoleon was so much more of a schmuck than the original. The fact that he ruled France for 20 years is rather odd.

10. The Japanese Empire. Japan has always been an empire, but I'm keen on the Meiji Restoration era (from 1868) until the war. Japan adopted Western ways, expanded into the Pacific, and beat the snot out of everyone who got in their way. The Japanese did horrible things, especially in China, but the fact that they adapted so quickly to the modern world is very interesting. They wiped out the Russians in 1904, and in the Thirties took over the Pacific. What's most interesting is the way the West attempted to get around their natural racism to explain the rise of Japan. The Japanese war effort is also fascinating, because they could have easily won "their" war without involving the Americans. I like older Japanese history, too, but not as much as this period.

So those are my favorite empires. Empires are awfully swell. Does anyone out there have any favorite empires?

Top Ten Day: My favorite wars

As a historian, I enjoy reading about conflict. Of course, actual wars are kind of shitty (unless you're Robert Duvall), but they are interesting to read about. And, naturally, I enjoy reading about some more than others. So here are my favorites, in chronological order:

1. The Hundred Years' War, 1337-1453. Hey, that's not 100 years! And hey, there were several times throughout these years when England and France weren't actually fighting! But who cares - this is still a great conflict to study. Edward III decided he wanted to be king of France as well as England, hearkening back to the good old days of Henry II's Angevin Empire of the twelfth century, so he went across the Channel to bitch-slap the actual French king, Philip VI. This war, which was fought in stages, was momentous in the development of Western history. It led to the first expressions of French and English nationalism and the creation of standing armies. At the battle of Crécy in 1346, the English longbowmen annihilated the French knights in one of the most stunning "upsets" in history; the age of the knights ended that day, as long-range weaponry forced generals to come up with new tactics (something the French didn't learn, as in 1356 Edward's son the Black Prince used the same tactics at Poitiers and captured the French king, John II). Years later, of course, Henry V won the day at Agincourt, inspiring one of Shakespeare's great speeches. Henry couldn't press his advantage, and with the inspirational leadership of Joan of Arc in the late 1420s, France finally gained the advantage. The war officially ended in 1453, although the English held Calais for another 100 years. By then it was clear the Henry VI, Kenneth Branagh's son, was not a terribly good leader, and England was about to be riven by another of my favorite wars!

2. The Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485. The first "civil war" of England came about because, well, nobody liked the king. Henry VI was a crappy king, and since the family of York, led by Richard, the city's duke, was descended from Edward III just like Henry was, they decided they should rule. It didn't help that Henry was often off his rocker and that his French wife was wildly unpopular. The war was also fought in fits and spurts, like many medieval wars, with years of peace and short bursts of violence. Henry was replaced for a while by Edward IV (r. 1461-1470), came back for a while, then died. Edward returned, but his wife was as unpopular as Henry's had been (for different reasons; she wasn't royal, so the marriage brought no advantages internationally to England), and after Edward died, his brother Richard took over instead of allowing her family to dominate Edward's two young sons. Those kids conveniently disappeared into the Tower of London (where Richard had then killed) and Richard took over. However, some mangy Welsh claimant defeated Richard at Bosworth in 1485, killed him, and married Edward's daughter to unite the houses. Richard, however, provided Ian McKellen with a great role 500 years later, so that's something!

3. The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648. Like all long wars, this was a series of armed conflicts that all centered around Germany, but lurched back and forth over three decades. This is probably the most horrific of the religious wars that wracked Europe for a century or so, as Protestants and Catholics killed each other in the name of that peaceful Jesus dude you may have heard of. This is another interesting war to read about, because of the way it was fought. It's occasionally considered the first "total war" in that civilians were often slaughtered along with soldiers. Civilians had suffered in wars before, but usually as collateral damage, not because the soldiers went out of their way to kill them. This is also the war in which Sweden (yes, Sweden!) was a major player, as the country reached the height of its power under Gustavus Adolphus, who died on the battlefield in 1632. It can also be seen as the first full-scale European war, a tradition which led to the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and those two in the 20th century you may have heard about. As usual with wars, this inspired a great piece of fiction, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. It's a brilliant play, and if you get a chance to see it, check it out!

4. The First and Second Opium War, 1839-1842; 1856-1860. I know only a little about the two Opium Wars, but these were early attempts by the West to impose their economic will on China, and led to some really horrible things, such as the Taiping Rebellion, which almost destroyed the country. I just love how the British (and, in the second one, joined by the French), forced the Chinese to allow opium imports, after the Chinese tried to make it illegal. Remember when countries wanted to traffic in drugs? Ah, the good old days!

5. The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871. I'm a fan of Otto von Bismarck, and this was his crowning achievement. After wars with Denmark and Austria, Bismarck was ready to unite Germany under Prussia and he needed a big-time war to do it. So he whipped up some antagonism between the Germans and the Second Empire (under one of the lamer rulers of the 19th century, Napoleon III), and managed to get France to declare war on Prussia. The Prussians, who were far superior to the French in every regard, beat the crap out of Napoleon for six weeks before capturing him at Sedan, and then beat the French armies under the Third Republic for another few months before capturing Paris in early 1871. In the aftermath of the war, Paris became a Socialist stronghold for a few months, which led to lots of bloodshed. Bismarck, meanwhile, wrangled a new crown for his king, Wilhelm I - that of the German Empire, which was declared in May 1871 at Versailles. This upset the balance of power in Europe that had been established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and led somewhat directly to the great world wars of the 20th century. Bismarck stayed in power until 1890, when Wilhelm II, the second emperor, fired him. That might have not been a mistake, but Wilhelm's thirst for overseas glory, which Bismarck warned against, certainly was.

6. The War of the Cricket Match, 1896. I have mentioned this war before on the blog, but I'll do it again! It's the shortest war in history, after all, clocking in at 37 minutes 23 seconds. The Sultan of Zanzibar was peeved because the English admiral, Sir Henry Rawson, brought all his warships close to shore so his men could disembark and watch a cricket match. The Sultan declared war and sent his only battleship into action. The British sank that and bombarded the Sultan's palace. He escaped into German territory, and the war ended. Good times!

7. The Boer War, 1899-1902. This is technically the Second Boer War, but it's the one every remembers. I read a book about this years ago, and it's really a fascinating war, because it might be considered the first modern war, in that correspondents were "embedded" with the British troops (Winston Churchill was one of them!), it turned quickly into a guerrilla war, which allowed the Boers to fight the British for two years after the South African government capitulated, and the British set up concentration camps! Yay, concentration camps! This war reminds us that the Dutch had set up two independent republics in South Africa back in the day, which is kind of weird to think about today. South Africa became a part of the British Empire after this war, and Churchill got a taste for blood that wasn't sated even after World War I!

8. The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905. I've always been interested in Japan and China, even though my first love is European history. The Meiji Restoration of the 19th century, in which the Emperor regained power from the shoguns, is a fascinating time in history, and the speed with which Japan embraced Western technology is one of the shocks of the past 200 years. They showed off their new prowess by absolutely destroying the Russian navy at Port Arthur in 1904 and bringing the czar's army to its knees, leading indirectly to the 1905 Revolution that was a precursor to the Bolshevik takeover 12 years later. Teddy Roosevelt got a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the two sides together, Japan earned the respect of the West by showing they could kill vast numbers of people as easily as white people, and it embarked on a path that led to Pearl Harbor.

9. The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913. Another region that fascinates me is the Balkans, and although I need to read more about this particular war, anything about the area and the Ottomans' dominance of it is keen. These wars also crack me up a bit, because in the first one, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro allied with each other to fight the Turks, even though they fought pretty much separately because they didn't like each other that much. After defeating the Turks (ending the "first" war), they pretty much immediately turned on each other, especially the Greeks and Bulgarians. Their fighting allowed Romania and Turkey to enter the second war, and the Ottomans regained a great deal of territory that they had lost a few months earlier in the first war! I like this war because it shows how difficult it is for an outside power, like the United States and the United Nations in the 1990s, to go into the region and try to talk peace. The people hate each other there with a centuries-old passion, and as the Turks learned, the only thing they hate more than each other are Great Powers coming in and telling them not to kill each other!

10. The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. I know very little about the Spanish Civil War (I have a couple of books on the subject, but of course I'm far behind, so I haven't read them yet), but I find it fascinating, because of the somewhat confused sides, the involvement of several different nationalities, the fact that the Nazis viewed it as a "preseason" war in which they could field-test new weapons, and the involvement of the Basques, which threw a weird spanner in the works. It was a horrific war by all accounts, too, and probably should have alerted the world to what was coming. That it didn't remains a tragedy of history. Of course, it did give us a terrific mural, so I guess all the deaths were worth it.

There are, of course, plenty of other wars that I'm interested in. I didn't count crusades, which I love to study, or even general military actions from medieval times, when "wars" didn't really exist. I mean, Charlemagne was always campaigning against someone, but that's just what he did. So although I like medieval history the best, it's hard to define a "war" for a lot of that time. That's why these more modern conflicts are my favorites. Of course, I think we can all agree that war pretty much sucks. Can't we all just get along?

What I've been reading: Giant-Sized Bonanza!

I have three books to review today, because of two reasons: I read them all pretty quickly and didn't get a chance to post about the first before I was almost done the second one, and then I realized that the next one I was going to read (I read books in alphabetical order by author, remember, and only rarely break from that) was thematically similar to the first two. So I decided to wait. These three books all deal with the Byzantines in one way or another, so let's check them out! Is there anything more interesting than the Byzantines????

The Dark Angel by Mika Waltari (translated by Naomi Walford). 374 pages, 1953, G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The first of the three books is The Dark Angel, which I got in February 2005 at the annual book sale in Phoenix. Yes, it takes me that long to read some of my books. Remember: I have close to 300 that I haven't read yet, so it's going to take me somewhere around 30 years to read them, and that's if I don't buy any more (not bloody likely). So: what's the deal with this?

It's a novel about the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The hero, John Angelos, arrives in the city in December 1452 (the Turks entered the city on 29 May) and this book is his journal of the events up until the fall of the city. Constantinople (not Istanbul!), as many of you know, was the eastern capital of the Roman Empire from 330, when it was founded, and after 476 the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which became known as the Byzantine Empire because it was far more Greek than Roman. As long as Constantinople remained in the hands of the Greeks, there was a Byzantine Empire, even though for the last 150 years of its existence or so the territory it controlled barely reached beyond the city walls. By the 14th and 15th centuries, the Emperor was a much more symbolic figure, but that symbolism was still important - he was the Eastern bulwark against Islam, a link to Rome's glorious past, and the embodiment of a time when Emperor and Pope, theoretically, worked in harmony. Of course, by the middle of the 11th century the Pope and Patriarch of Constantinople had excommunicated each other and the Orthodox Church was on its own, but we're talking about symbolism, not reality.

I've already gotten off-topic! John comes to Constantinople from the camp of the Ottoman Sultan, Mohammed, and throughout the book, most people in the city think he's a spy for the Turks. He tries to convince people that he's not, but rarely succeeds. Constantinople in its death throes is a cauldron of intrigue. The Emperor, Constantine XI, and the Patriarch, Gregorios, have concluded a treaty with Rome that unifies the churches in exchange for help from the West against the Turks. This move is wildly unpopular with the people, who believe that the Turks will simply take over the governance of the city and let the Christians worship as they please. This opposition is led by a monk, Gennadios, whom John knew in the West. Meanwhile, the defense of the city is led by Giovanni Giustiniani, a Genoese who has been promised lands the Emperor no longer holds as payment (something that deters Giustiniani not at all when he learns of it late in the book). The Genoese and Venetians are constantly at odds, which leads to more disasters for the city. John writes of his history in southern France and Italy, his capture at the Battle of Varna in 1444, and his years with Murad II, who tried to take Constantinople but was thwarted, leaving the job to his son (usually spelled Mehmet but spelled Mohammed in the book). John has a secret that's rather fascinating, so I won't spoil it, but he is trying to reconcile his Latin (Western) heritage with his Greek heritage. He tries to see both sides even as his faith pulls him one way. He is convinced that he will defend the city to the death. How he continues to write a diary when he's actively courting death is interesting, but he does survive the Turks' sacking of the city. His fate is ironic and somewhat just.

The main story of the book, beyond all the political intrigue, is John's love for a young woman, Anna Notaras. Anna is the daughter of a Byzantine grand duke, Lukas Notaras, but John doesn't know this for quite some time. He falls instantly in love with Anna and can't understand why she resists him, even though she obviously loves him. Their relationship, while melodramatic, is very well written, and is heightened by the knowledge that the city is going to fall. Anna tries to understand why John won't commit to her, and John tries to make Anna realize why he has to die on the walls without giving away his secret. Lukas Notaras was conspicuous by his belief that the Turks would be better masters than the Emperor, and although there's no evidence either in history or in the book that he was actively conniving against Constantine, Waltari makes it clear that he wasn't going out of his way to make a glorious last stand (most of the people in the book are actual historical figures, by the way). So that aspect of their relationship is there, too. Waltari does a very good job writing their passion but also their intelligent debates about fate and the destruction of the empire. It's a neat trick, and it makes the siege feel more real, because these people are real to us. What's interesting is that Waltari never makes it clear whether John and Anna would love each other without the tension of the siege. Are they so passionate because they know it can't last? It's neat that we're allowed to speculate about it.

This is a very good read. The narrative flies along, and even though we know how the grand story will end, we don't know how the story of John and Anna will end. Not well, of course, because it's the fall of Constantinople, but the way in which it ends is poignant and ironic. It's an old book, but it's probably around in libraries somewhere. You could do a lot worse if you're looking for a nicely-done romance with an adventurous backdrop. And who doesn't love something like that?

The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins. 239 pages, 2005, Oxford University Press.

In this fascinating book, Ward-Perkins makes the bold assertion that the Germanic invaders actually destroyed the Roman Empire! Why, say you, is this a bold assertion? Isn't that common knowledge? Well, back in the day it was, but in the past 30-40 years, historiography has gotten much more focused on using words like "accommodation" to describe the fifth-century arrival of Germanic tribes, as several historians have claimed that Rome never "fell," but was simply "transformed" into the Western Europe we all know and love. Ward-Perkins is going old-school on us by saying, "Hah!" He claims the Romans wouldn't have viewed it as "transformation," they would have seen it for what it was: a disaster.

Ward-Perkins makes a good case, first by going back over the written records that caused people to believe in a Fall of Rome in the first place. He points out the Battle of Adrianople in 378, at which the Goths destroyed the eastern Roman army and killed the Emperor, Valens. He mentions the sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric the Goth, an event so traumatizing St. Augustine wrote a billion-page book about it. (Okay, City of God isn't a billion pages long. It just feels that way.) He brings up the deposition of the last Emperor, Romanus Augustulus, in 476, paving the way for the Ostrogothic domination of Italy. All of these events are well known. So why have historians argued for years that Gibbon was wrong and we shouldn't speak of a "fall" of the Roman Empire?

Ward-Perkins claims it's for a few different reasons. First, many historians of "Late Antiquity" - meaning the period, roughly, between Constantine (AD 300) and Charlemagne (AD 800) - are English, German, and French, or American, which means English. Therefore, they want to portray their "tribes" - the Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, and other Germanic groups - as positively as possible. Second, the stench of political correctness permeates historiography - how dare it! It's no longer fashionable to speak of "civilized" versus "uncivilized" people, so all groups become equally civilized. Anyone watching an English football match knows that's bogus, but that's the way it is! Ward-Perkins points out that it's only because we have allowed the term "uncivilized" to become pejorative that people object to it, but the fact is, some groups are civilized and others not. That doesn't make the civilized groups better. The Germanic tribes were uncivilized, but nobody wants to make that argument anymore. Third, the focus of historiography when Rome broke up shifts abruptly from political history to religious history. No one, not even Ward-Perkins, can argue that the Fall of Rome coincided nicely with the Rise of the Church. Historians can therefore argue that the destruction of Roman infrastructure mattered little because the Roman Catholic Church stepped into the breach. Yes, he admits, the Church did ease the transition slightly, but the Church was such an elite organization that it didn't do much for the common people. St. Augustine might not have suffered too much materially from Rome's sack, and he could afford to write billion-page laments about how everyone should now focus on the Heavenly City. As always tends to happen in disasters, the elite come off relatively unscathed. And as they write the history, it's easy to take a less extreme view of the Germanic invasions. Hey, they all eventually converted to Catholicism, right? Everything must have been groovy!

For the first part of the book, Ward-Perkins focuses on the actual events, but then he shifts to the archaeological record, which is where his case is probably strongest. Past writers have relied mostly on written records, which are of course biased. Ward-Perkins looks at the production of goods, the way houses were built, and the minting of coins, all decent ways to measure a society's prosperity. In the fifth century and afterward, all these indicators declined significantly, and Ward-Perkins uses this to help prove his thesis. Rome was a specialized society, much like the modern world, and he traces the complex web of manufacturing that tied the empire together that fell apart when the political structure disintegrated. When the specialists and their markets disappeared, it affected the common people much more than the political problems. Ward-Perkins also shows that the East, which has been commonly assumed to have managed to escape the ravages of the invasions, also went through a "dark age" in the late sixth and early seventh century, something most historians have ignored. The collapse was empire-wide, not simply confined to the West. Ward-Perkins also looks at settlement patterns and postulates that not only were the houses less elaborate, but the population went down as well. He admits its only speculation, but he makes a strong argument.

Ward-Perkins also does something we rarely see, and that's look at literacy in the Roman and post-Roman periods. It's another thing he admits is very difficult to measure, but he looks at casual graffiti in the Roman world, from places such as Pompeii, and the lack of it after the invaders arrived. He also uses the written evidence, as various religious writers have pointed out the lack of literacy among the rulers of the new countries, a situation that would have been unthinkable in the Roman period, when even middle-class people could read and write.

Ward-Perkins does look at both the pluses and minuses of the invasions, and he does acknowledge that historians who claim that Rome brought in Germanic tribes and incorporated them into their society aren't all wrong. In the end, he softens his thesis a bit by pointing out that the invaders did help revitalize a sagging empire somewhat. It's only a small concession, as he sticks to his main point for the most part. His evidence remains fairly persuasive, even when he can't make as strong an argument as he wants.

The fall of Rome will probably remain a contentious issue, based on the bias of the historian. Ward-Perkins makes a fine case for returning to the "classic" view of the destruction of the empire, but I have no doubt that historians have already challenged it.

Sailing From Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World by Colin Wells. 335 pages, 2006, Delacorte Press/Bantam Dell/Random House.

The last book of this trifecta is Sailing From Byzantium, in which Colin Wells makes the case that the Byzantines were instrumental in creating Europe's Renaissance, influencing the Arabs, and midwifing the birth of Eastern Christianity. Wells breaks the book up into those three sections, so that he begins chronologically almost at the end of the Empire, in the fourteenth century, when scholars from Florence and Venice began to yearn for the knowledge that the Greeks had in their libraries. He then goes back in time to the seventh and eighth centuries, before Muslim culture ossified and the Arabs were willing to learn from the older culture, and then he finally turns his attention to the Balkans and Russia, which is where Byzantium probably had its biggest influence. It's a nice, quick, readable book, and Wells doesn't come up with anything terribly controversial, but he does a good job putting each sphere in its context and showing how they shaded into each other. He has written the book to rehabilitate the Byzantine Empire for an audience that might not know much about it or even care. Shame on you people who don't care about the Byzantines!

Wells begins with the Renaissance, and he tracks how a new fourteenth-century philosophy in Constantinople, the Hesychast movement, led not only to Byzantine humanists seeking new students in the West, but also solidified the Orthodox Church's status in the East with the Slavs. Wells goes over the Hesychast controversy quite well, but essentially it boils down to a conflict between the rationalism of the Byzantine humanists, many of whom were monks themselves, and the mysticism of many other monks. The Hesychasts believed in meditation to create a spiritual union with God, and they were angrily opposed to the humanists' use of pagan philosophy to inform their Christian thought. There was a political element, too, as the humanists saw no problem with compromising the Orthodox Church's independence in exchange for military help from the West, while the Hesychasts believed it would be better to be ruled by the Turks rather than give in to the Pope. So the humanists turned increasingly to the Florentines and Venetians, who had been a presence in Constantinople as traders for centuries. As the Byzantines lost more and more territory to the Turks, humanists began making diplomatic missions to the West to gain support from the Pope and Catholic rulers, and they mixed with writers and thinkers in Italy such as Boccaccio and Petrarch. In the fifteenth century, the high point of the Italian Renaissance, several more Byzantine scholars taught Greek to the Westerners so that they could read the works of the classical writers. Again, there's nothing controversial about Wells' theory, and it's just interesting to see how many connections there were between the dying empire and the reborn West.

The relationship between Byzantium and Islam is a bit more complex, because the Muslims were bent on destroying the empire. Early on, however, the Arabs modeled their architecture and their literature after the Byzantines. The early caliphs admired the way the Byzantines had created their culture, and for a people who came out of the desert, the splendor of Constantinople was impressive. The Arabs quickly conquered several people who had Christian roots - notably Nestorians in Syria, who began translating Greek works into Syriac and Arabic. The Arabs sought out Greek texts on medicine and mathematics, which became the foundation for Muslim science and the so-called "Arabic Enlightenment," typified by philosophers like Avicenna. It couldn't last, of course, and the Abbasid Caliphs began to react against the Greek rational influence seeping into Islam. Just like the Hesychasts, Muslim zealots attacked the scientific schools because they were distracting people from the religious schools. In the thirteenth century the Mongols shattered the Muslim world and Arabic Islam went into decline. Despite a brief flourishing of culture under the Ottomans, the torch had been passed to the West.

Wells' last section deals with the Byzantine missionaries and their work in the Balkans with the Slavs and later with the Russians. The Slavs came into the Balkans in the sixth century, and by the ninth century Bulgaria, under their khan Krum, was a major threat. By the middle of the century, both the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople realized their was a huge group of people just ripe for the Christianizing. The Patriarch, Photius, was a deeply religious man and a well-learned scholar of ancient Greek literature, and he chose two monks who would become legends: Cyril and Methodius. Cyril is best known for creating a language for the Slavs, Old Church Slavonic (ironically, the "Cyrillic" alphabet which is named for him has little to do with him). He and Methodius failed in their mission, for the most part, but the foundation they laid helped future monks bring the Slavs into the Orthodox fold. Interestingly enough, the Bulgars and later Slavs like the Serbs were able to retain their independence from the Patriarch of Constantinople even as they adopted the Eastern form of Christianity. This led to the creation of the Byzantine Commonwealth, perhaps the enduring legacy of the Empire. In the tenth century, the Byzantines were able to convert the Russians, first in Kiev and then later in Moscow, and the Hesychast controversy, which damaged Byzantium's relationship with the West, appealed to the Russians and helped that bond. Later, Moscow took the lead as the spiritual head of the Orthodox Church and claimed the title of the "Third Rome." The Greek literary tradition would live on in the new church.

As I've mentioned, Wells doesn't write anything terribly controversial. He doesn't make any bold claims about the influence of the Byzantines, just condenses it into one source, as most books will discuss one of the three but not all three areas. It's interesting because of the links he makes between the eras, which is why this is better than just a survey. Byzantium's relationship with the West influences its dealings with the Slavs, just as its problems with the Bulgarians in the ninth and tenth centuries influences its relationship with the Muslims. Wells does a good job making the connections between all three arenas without confusing us.

So those are three books I've read recently, all connected a bit. If you're interested in this period of history, these books are all very worthwhile. Of course, it's been a while since I've finished them, so I'm almost done another book! Look for that soon!