Book Review - The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

 The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992              ISBN 019285271X

(The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland)

If I check out my DNA profile on Ancestry, it tells me that I'm more than fifty percent Irish. My father's family is almost completely Irish (with a little Danish), while my mother is Scottish, English and Welsh. Because I grew up in my mother's home town rather than my father's, it is the Scottish connections that I absorbed growing up, so I know more history of Scotland than I do of Ireland. In fact the only Irish history I've absorbed is the internecine battles between Catholic and Protestant in Ulster which have been in the news, and the Dublin of James Joyce which has been in my books.

I mean to set out to correct that, and I have started (as you would) with the Oxford history. It's a relatively short book into which to pack a few thousand years of history, and so it's fair to say that parts of the book can seem like a list of "kings" rather than a true history. In fact in many ways, despite attempts by the authors to move away from an "old fashioned" history that focusses on political and military machinations, that's mostly what the reader gets, sometimes to their confusion as the roll-call of petty rulers adds up as one turns the pages.

History is what happens from day-to-day, and it's the job of the historian to try and knock events into shape to tell us a story - particularly in a book like this; a narrative of the creation of a people and a state. The authors in this book question the hackneyed themes of Irish history - the perfidy of the English and the iron control of the Catholic Church over the faithful, and the inevitability of sectarian conflict.

Rather than iron control from over the Irish Sea, this book portrays an England that, while seeking profit for sure, rarely had a coherent strategy for dealing with the land and the people that it had taken centuries to control. It was the internecine warfare between rival chieftains (probably a more appropriate term than kings) that led to the intervention in Irish affairs by the English, who arrived initially with thought of plunder and ongoing riches.

Once the English realised that Ireland was not as rich as was thought, it rapidly became an afterthought in English affairs, only brought to the forefront when rebellion threatened. The Irish began the long process of trying to accommodate themselves to English norms, if they lived East of the Shannon. The more unproductive lands of the West were, generally speaking, left to themselves, which created a wealth and status divide that existed well into the modern era.

It was really only after the Act of Union in 1800 that Irish nationalism began to grow, and that sectarianism became an issue. The Catholics looked for equality, and when moves were made in that direction the Protestants began to fear for their privileged place in society, and the downward spiral of English rule began, culminating in the creation of a "two-state solution" in the twentieth century, which left many of the festering issues unresolved.

This book is clear, but very dry and formal in style, which for me as a neophyte had too much detail without enough explicatory material to make full sense of it. That said, I now feel that I have an overall structure in my mind of Irish history with which to continue my journey.

 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Jerusalem: the Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

 Jerusalem: the Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore

London: Phoenix, 2012 (first published 2011)      ISBN 9781780220253

One of the blurbs on my edition of this book calls it "a tour de force", and there is no doubt that Jerusalem lives up to that particular piece of praise as well as all the others that it has gained since publication. It is the story of Jerusalem for sure, but along the way the reader learns much of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, of the Arabs, Romans, Ottomans, Russians and British, of Crusader Kingdoms and Sultanates, and of modern geopolitics.

Like all great works of non-fiction, Montefiore has woven much more into his story than the bare bones. The reader comes away from this work with a much broader knowledge of Western and Middle Eastern history than they would have a right to, given the books ostensible subject matter. The reader does of course gain an intimate knowledge of the development and trials of Jerusalem itself, as well as wonderful little titbits of other information such as the origin of the phrase "Bob's your uncle", the fact that Rudolf Hoess, Franz von Papen and Rudolf Hess were all in Jerusalem at the same time, and that the future King George V got tattooed when there, in the same place as his father.

These little nuggets of information are the cherries on top of the wonderfully rich dessert of history that Sebag Montefiore serves up. Thankfully his style, and the easily digestible short chapters make it both easy to read, and easy to absorb the information.

Sebag Montefiore writes in the last pages of the book that "for 1,000 years, Jerusalem was exclusively Jewish; for about 400 years Christian; for 1,300 years, Islamic, and not one of the three faiths ever gained Jerusalem without the sword, the mangonel or the howitzer."

The history of this city is a history of rapine, destruction, and war. It is also a history of worship, ecstasy and wonder. It is a story of immigration, emigration, and cosmopolitanism. It is the story of a city that on many occasions threatened to die, but is in many ways the most important city on Earth. The origins of Jerusalem are obscure and biblical, although recent archaeology has proven that King David did in fact exist.

Until the arrival of the Romans, and sometimes even after, Jerusalem was a backwater. Holy to the Jews, it was of small interest to others apart from being an attractive place to loot, owing to the gold that was held in the Temple.

Rome and Herod brought some stability to Jerusalem, although religious fever often led to riots, and there was also a continuous underground of Jewish rebellion against Roman rule. This was mainly driven by Jewish fundamentalism; a belief that gentiles could not rule God's chosen people. Jesus was part of this milieu.

The disaster of AD70 when the Romans sacked the city and destroyed the Temple after yet another Jewish rebellion, signalled the end of any Jewish control of the city for nearly 1,900 years. Jews were expelled, and Jerusalem once again became a backwater.

After an interval of Byzantine rule, the Arabs took the city in AD630. Soon after came the building of the Dome of the Rock, which raised Jerusalem to a holy site for its third religion (and which has led to many of the trials and tribulations the city has suffered down the years). Montefiore explains that this move was partially political, as the ruler of Jerusalem, Abd Al-Malik did not control Mecca and so needed a counterweight to the shrine there.

While the Muslims tolerated both Christians and Jews, life was not easy for them under Islamic rule. The Crusaders however were worse. The Crusader Kings, who were essentially freebooters looking for land, were often dangerous to each other, but not as much as they were to both Jews and Muslims.

Saladin's relatively enlightened rule was but a short interlude between the Christian crusaders and the Mamluks and Ottomans, who ruled Jerusalem for 400 years. For most of that time the city was again a backwater - Jews were forbidden the Temple Mount, and Christian worship was heavily circumscribed (although the Christians seemed to rank ahead of the Jews in the eyes of the Pashas and Sultan).

As the Ottoman Empire sank into sloth and corruption, Western countries began to influence what happened at the centre of Christendom. Kings, Czars and Emperors vied with each other to endow churches, fund pilgrimages and gain the upper hand in the machinations to do with the operation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The rise of millenarian ideas in the USA and Britain led to a push to allow Jews back to Jerusalem so that biblical prophecies of the Armageddon could be fulfilled. Montefiore clearly explains how these ideas led to massive changes on the ground in Jerusalem (one of Montefiore's ancestors funded Jewish settlement there) and on policy. The Balfour Declaration was a ground-breaking change in geopolitical thinking, even though one of the major reasons it was made was to mobilise Jewish support for Britain's fight in World War One.

Montefiore brings the history up to the present with descriptions of the internecine terrorism performed by both Jews and Arabs during the British Mandate and beyond, and explains how so many chances to find a workable peace have been missed: when one side felt politically strong enough to offer terms, the other side was too weak to accept them.

The uneasy state of peace that currently entails in Jerusalem has come at the cost of almost total segregation of Jews, Muslims and Christians from each other, and the destruction of what was a unique culture. It seems that we humans have not learnt a thing from the history of this holy and benighted place.

There is so much more in this book than I have noted here - it is an accessible wonder, and well worth reading. You will learn a lot.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware

 The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia)

London: Penguin Books, 1991 (first published 1963)   ISBN 0140135294

This book is a useful (if slightly dated) introduction to the structure, beliefs and history of the Orthodox faith. Those of us brought up in a Western Christian tradition (Anglican in my case) may see the Orthodox Church as remote and exotic: I well remember that when a Greek Orthodox church opened in the city I grew up in being amazed at the chanting, icons and incense that accompanied their services and festivals - very different to my experience of Church.

Of course what I didn't know then, but this book explains, is that Orthodox services are in fact a link back to the earliest forms of Christian worship. Orthodox theology is based around the Bible and the decisions of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church, believing that this is enough for true worship, "neither adding anything, nor taking anything away."

What does this mean in practice? It means an acceptance by those that are Orthodox that the great mysteries of the Christian faith are not to be interpreted or re-interpreted, but are to be accepted and lived. That there is no separation between belief, prayer and worship, that they all form part of being an Orthodox Christian: you can't claim to be one if you don't attend to those three things. That the clergy and the laity together guard the Tradition of the Church: there is no Pope, as the Church runs in a collegiate fashion, with the Holy Spirit determining the path forward through discussion and consensus.

Mysticism plays a much greater role in Orthodox life that Western Rites, as does the body. The belief that both the body and soul are made in the image of God means that actions and physical rituals are as important a part of Orthodox belief as thoughts and prayers. So while outwardly similar to Roman Catholicism, Orthodox have different emphases to living a life in Christ.

There are also of course deeper divisions, Filioque being a major one. What might seem a minor difference in words in the Creed actually is a major theological difference. Orthodox belief places the Father as the unique source of Godhead, with the Son and the Holy Spirit as part of the essence of the Father ("the divine is indivisible in its divisions"). If one states (as the Western Tradition does) that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then there is no longer a unique source of Godhead. This seemingly technical issue is one of the two major divisions between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church.

The second division centres around the figure of the Pope, and specifically the power he has drawn to himself. The Orthodox Church has always had a hierarchy of the Patriarchy, and the first in that hierarchy has always been the Bishop of Rome. However, the Orthodox Church is a deeply ecumenical church - no one person, Bishop or Patriarch can decide Church dogma. Rome may be first among equals, but the idea that any one person can be infallible, or that they could command others in their beliefs, is anathema to the Orthodox.

Ware writes about modern ecumenical possibilities - while he writes in a hopeful tone, fundamentally the Orthodox stand firm in their belief that they are guardians of the true Tradition, so if other Churches don't move to them, it's unlikely that there will be a communion of Orthodox with Roman Catholic or Anglican. Since the publication of this book, it has been interesting to see particularly within the Anglican community a move to explore more deeply what the Orthodox Church has to offer, from actions such as installing icons in churches, to a move of people and priests to convert to Orthodoxy.

The other (first) half of this book deals with the history of the Orthodox Church. The division of the Church into Orthodox and Roman Catholic came about around the Millennium. Ware explains how the geo-political arena both widened the divisions (once most of the Orthodox lands came under Islamic domination their ability to engage with Western Christianity was limited), and created the unique structure of Orthodoxy as we know it today (Islamic domination made the Church not only the centre of religious identity, but also of national identity).

The national nature of many Orthodox churches is both a blessing and a curse: unlike Rome, Orthodox churches were keen to translate liturgy into local languages, so that believers could be fully involved in worship, but the temptation to support national leaders to the detriment of humanity in general has been a temptation to which church leaders have often succumbed. Ware uses the Communist domination of Eastern Europe to demonstrate both the willingness of people to be martyrs for the Church, as well as be fellow travellers for secular governments who wish to control and even crush religion.

Overall this is an excellent book for those who wish to understand an important part of the Christian Church. It's well-written, informative and learned. I feel it might be the start of a longer journey for me (thankfully the book comes with a useful bibliography and index for those of us who wish to go further).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

 A History of the Jewish People by James Parkes

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964

This is a handy little crib on the history of the Jewish people, rather than the Jewish faith. Of course, it can be difficult to separate the two; as Parkes writes in his introduction, "[t]he history of the Jews is the story of a people inextricably interwoven with that of a religion. Neither can be told apart from the other. It is obvious that there would be no story of Judaism if there were no Jews; but it is just as true that Jews would not have survived the long centuries of their total dispersion had there not been the cement of a religion moulded to their need either to transform or to tolerate the conditions of their corporate and individual lives."

Parkes' history shows a long tradition of a people trying as much as they can to accommodate themselves to the situation in which they existed at any one time. From the earliest days there were geographically diverse groups of people practicing the religion of Judaism, with more or less oppression from the powers of the time. There have only been very short periods of time when Jewish people have had the capacity to control their own polity - very early and very late in their history.

The story of the Jews after Classical times is one of interaction with both Christendom and Islam, and the changing fortunes of those relationships. Christendom very quickly began oppressing the Jews, as they saw them as a threat to the growth of their own religion. The Jews were, in Christian eyes, apostates, Christ-killers, and subverters of fellow Christians. Islam initially treated Jews much better than did Christians, but as the Muslim world shrunk in the face of Western Christian dominance of Europe and Africa, and Islam withdrew into itself, that relationship too became poisoned and died. During the secular age, rather than religious scares, the route of anti-Semitism runs along the lines of finance and conspiracy - the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi rantings about Jewish control of finance took the place of older tropes of Blood Libel and miscegenation.

Parkes explains how the Jews developed their faith and ideas in separation from each other - the Sephardic Spanish versus the Ashkenazi Central Europeans. While non-Jews were the people's biggest enemy, they were not averse to internecine conflict either. The destruction of the Temple and exclusion from Jerusalem meant that the old ways of Jewish worship had to change, through a "democratic" system of congregationalism, through to a "professional" structure of paid Rabbis. This is not gone into in great detail, but is fascinating to a non-Jewish reader such as myself.

The final section of the book deals with the horrors and hopes of the twentieth century - the Holocaust, and the creation of Israel. Parkes focusses on the British Mandate in Palestine, how something that began with such high hopes ended in disaster, with the British washing their hands (a la Pilate) of the problems they had created with a poorly thought-out plan to let Jews come back home. Written in 1964, this book doesn't cover much of the ongoing disaster that has come out of this recent history.

If you are a person who doesn't know much about Jewish history this book, although dated,  isn't the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Backfire: a History of Friendly Fire from Ancient Warfare to the Present Day by Geoffrey Regan

 Backfire: a History of Friendly Fire from Ancient Warfare to the Present Day by Geoffrey Regan

London: Robson Books, 2002 (First published 1995)               ISBN 1861055013

This is a somewhat disappointing book about a fascinating subject. Many years ago (before the internet) I was doing some family research on my Great-Grandfather and his brothers, all of whom served in World War One. My Great-Grandfather was killed in action on 20 September 1917, during the Battle of Menin Road. Trying to find out more, I headed naturally to C.E.W. Bean's Official History where it is mentioned that during the course of forming up for the battle the Australians suffered considerable losses due to the artillery barrage falling short. I hadn't considered the concept of "friendly fire" before that time, but since then have found it peeping through the curtains of many a memoir or history of wartime events.

So, when I found this book, I took it up with some interest. Regan has skimmed the surface of the concept of friendly fire, and expanded the concept beyond what I think most people would think it to mean. He skips between generalizations and "how it must have been" to specific details of other incidents. One gets the feeling that he was trying to write this book with limited time to research and think about the project.   

It seems to me from the Introduction that Regan was moved to write this book after the friendly fire incident that killed six British soldiers during the first Gulf War, but he begins the book proper with a description of Ancient Greek warfare, and a discussion of how there must have been much "friendly fire" in the phalanx, purely through the way the formation was structured. He continues the theme into Medieval warfare, noting along the way that the lack of uniforms caused much confusion as well. The problem with this section of the book is that Regan provides little actual evidence for the theories that he puts forward.

Moving to the early modern period, Regan begins to draw more on written accounts of friendly fire incidents during the Napoleonic Wars, and start to elaborate on the main cause of friendly fire - confusion. The development of tightly drilled infantry (squares etc.) was an effort to try and reduce confusion, but of course war is confusion, so much of the drill went out the window after a couple of volleys, or if officers were early casualties of the action. Confusion was often the cause of incidents in the armies opposing the French - allies often engaged other allies owing to lack of knowledge of their whereabouts, or even what their uniforms looked like.

These observations set the scene for the major part of Regan's book, concerning World War One and Two, and later conflicts. It's these sections of the book that I found most disappointing. In all probability, and as Regan suggests, mis-directed artillery fire was the cause of most friendly-fire casualties during World War One. Regan in my opinion skates over the reasons why such fire might be mis-directed, and focuses instead on the outcomes of the few incidents which he writes about.

There are two reasons for this, in my opinion. Firstly, Regan has chosen to write a journalistic style of book rather than a more academically focused one. And the second, which comes from the first, Regan has used mostly secondary sources for his information (and to be fair he admits this).

In World War Two it was aircraft that were at the centre of the main friendly fire incidents that he discusses. Aircraft dealt out a lot of friendly fire (Operation Cobra), and also received a lot (Invasion of Sicily). Regan, in describing both World Wars, uses mostly material about the Entente and Allied forces - I assume because he was tied to English language material. The result is that we know a lot about the inadequacies of the USAF in particular, but not so much about the Axis forces (although he does mention Operation Bodenplatte).

I remember reading or hearing the following phrase, about bombing in World War Two "When the Luftwaffe flies over the battlefield, the Allies take cover, when the RAF flies over, the Germans take cover, when the USAF flies over everybody takes cover!" Regan doesn't use that quote, but he does imply in his book that is was the US that seemed to be the worst offender...even bombing Switzerland several times.

Again, sometimes, confusion and lack of information led to tragedy. Often vehicles on the ground were showing appropriate identification symbols, but the fliers were not told about them. Often, aircraft were flying fixed routes at fixed heights at fixed times, but the Flak gunners were not notified. As Regan points out, often these problems could have been and should have been fixed.

My main problem with this work is the patchy nature of it - the lack of detail on the why, the intense focus on a few events, the lack of an overview. However, there are another few annoyances.....the chapter on execution of troops for various offences gets quite a few pages in this book, but I really don't think this issue comes under most commonly thought of definitions of friendly fire: there are other books that cover this much better. There is an interesting chapter on "fragging", but again, not enough detail, evidence or statistical information to be more than frustrating for the reader.

The final bone I have to pick is with language, specifically Regan's use of the term "amicide" as a synonym for friendly fire. While friendly fire is in itself an ungainly term for what is being described, amicide, to me, is completely misleading. Genocide, suicide all imply the deliberate taking of life, whereas ("fragging" aside), friendly fire incidents are not deliberate - they are tragic errors. This book is the first time I have come across the term - I hope it is the last, although with the way the English language is increasingly mauled as the years go on, I fear it won't be.

So, for me, not a lot to recommend here.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple

 From the Holy Mountain: a Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium by William Dalrymple

London: Flamingo, 1998 (First published 1997 by HarperCollins)  ISBN 0006547745

This book is a diary of a journey undertaken by William Dalrymple in 1994, from Mount Athos to the Great Oasis in Egypt, visiting Christian communities, churches and monasteries on the way. He uses as his "guidebook" The Spiritual Meadow, a book written in about 610AD by John Moschus, a monk and ascetic who travelled throughout the Levant and Middle East. Dalrymple, as did Moschus, travels with a view to discerning the current state of Christianity in its early heartland. Moschus travelled at a time when the hold of Christianity over much of this region was great, but beginning to show cracks: Dalrymple travels at the end of days for many of the communities and establishments that he visits, and  ventures over the intervening millennium-and-a-half of history to show why the time of Christianity in the Middle East is over.

He began his trip with the idea in his head that the upswell of fundamentalist Islam was the main reason that Christianity was losing its foothold in its birthplace, but his journey uncovers a much more complex, multi-layered, and nuanced story. In Turkey, the Christians are the forgotten people - not seen as Turks or Kurds, the don't fit into any national story that either of those ethnicities want to tell. The Turks want to deny any Christian history of their country, both to hide the realities of the massacre of the Armenians and to engender a patriotism based around Islam and Turkishness. The Kurds, in their struggle for an independence denied to them by history, created a war zone in the remaining Christian areas, which destroyed Christian as well as Kurd villages, and meant that the government was suspicious of any Christians as possible fellow-travellers with the Kurds.

The story in Syria at the time of writing was a better one for the Christian community. Assad needed the Christians to bolster his Alawite government against the more mainstream Muslims who didn't like his rule, and so they had less issues with repression than Dalrymple expected (the situation is different now of course - many of the cities he visited, such as Aleppo and Homs have been destroyed in the civil war). In Lebanon, the Christians were their own worst enemy, precipitating the civil war there, which did not turn out well. Israeli Christians are seen as Arab, and potential enemies - their land is sequestered, their ancient sites neglected, and their ability to worship curtailed. In many ways being a Christian in Israel is harder than in Muslim majority countries, where there is (was) at least some respect for Christianity as a religion. Only in Egypt can Dalrymple find true evidence of Islamic fundamentalism threatening the ongoing status of Christianity. Of course, much has changed in all these countries since 1994, and many of the issues that dogged Christian communities in these areas have become much worse since then.

What Dalrymple constantly notes in this book, and has happened at an increased rate since, is the emigration of members of Christian communities to the West (USA, Canada and Australia in particular). So while stories of churches being destroyed and people being killed make the headlines, the facts are that Christians are leaving for many different reasons, with persecution being only one. This mass migration not only impoverishes the religious life of the countries they leave, but also is economically damaging, as many of the Christians were dis-proportionally represented in the ranks of professionals and business.

The broader social and political story is only one aspect of Dalrymple's book. It is a book of a journey, and he writes of the people he meets along the way: those that have suffered dislocation and war, those that still cling to what little hope there is ("we trust in God"), and those with a religious vocation who follow it whatever the cost. Some monasteries in 1994 are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, with only two monks left, surrounded by ruined Christian churches (in Tur Abdin), while St. Anthony's in Egypt is still thriving despite harassment by local Islamists and the Government. Dalrymple walks through Byzantine towns in Syria that are almost completely preserved, tries to find churches in Turkey that have been converted into mosques, and ruins in Alexandria that are almost hidden by later building. He walks through parks in Israel that elide the Christian history of the ruins they are "preserving", and talks to many Christians who are too fearful to speak out against their persecution in case they bring more upon themselves.

One perhaps surprising thing revealed in From the Holy Mountain is the intermingling of Christian and Muslim beliefs, especially around holy places and shrines. On more than one occasion Dalrymple finds himself at a monastery or tomb and sees Muslims worshipping alongside Christians. This is perhaps not as surprising as it might first seem. As Dalrymple points out, at the time of Moschus, Islam was seen by some as a Christian sect rather than a separate religion, and many of the beliefs of the Christians in the Middle East transferred across into Muslim practice. In fact, as Dalrymple points out, the bowing and prostration that forms part of Muslim prayer has its origins in early Christian practice, practice that Dalrymple witnesses himself in the Syriac monasteries.

Along the road, we see the journey through John Moschus' eyes as well. Dalrymple, a Roman Catholic, is the product of the Twentieth Century, unable to see events through a lens anything other than rational and modern. Many of the monks Dalrymple meets on his journey would understand Moschus better, with their belief in visions of Saints and fighting off demons. Moschus was quick to point out immorality amongst the faithful, as well as collecting stories of those holy men who left a mark by their sayings or activities. While the towns and cities Moschus visited have either changed completely or disappeared, many of the monasteries and some of the churches were not only still standing, but are still operational.

However, they were becoming fewer and fewer, and in the twenty-five years since Dalrymple undertook his journey they have become even fewer. From the Holy Mountain is a fascinating journey through space, time and religions, and a wonderful historical document in itself. It is well written, learned and urbane.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Economic and social history of Medieval Europe by Henri Pirenne

Economic and social history of Medieval Europe by Henri Pirenne

London : Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1936 (ninth impression 1972)  ISBN 071007462X

Ah, those great French intellectuals of the 20th Century, so clear, so concise, so to the point... what?? I hear you say -  no, I'm not here to discuss the Sartres, Foucaults, Derridas and Kristevas of the World, but the other great intellectual gift to us from France - the French historians of the 20th Century - Bloch, Le Roy Ladurie, and the author discussed here, Pirenne (although Pirenne was actually Belgian).

These three men between them changed the way we think about Medieval History, by thinking about the underlying causes for the change in society from the end of the Roman Empire to 15th century. In some ways they pre-figured the postmodern approach to the study of history, being quite interdisciplinary - Le Roy Ladurie in particular looking at the effects of climate and other natural phenomena on the course of history.

The book under review is a translation of part of a bigger (uncompleted) work, which Pirenne wrote while imprisoned by the Germans during World War I. The main part of the work looks into the development of commerce and cities from the Dark Ages. Pirenne explains that geo-political changes drove the expansion of trade - the re-opening of the Mediterranean owing to the waning of Islamic control of the coasts of Africa, Spain and the Middle East which allowed more sea traffic, and the decline of the Byzantine remnant of Rome freed the cities of Italy such as Venice and Genoa to develop as trading centres.

This combined with changes in the North of Europe - the Scandanavians were moving from a raiding to a trading culture across the northern seas, and a population explosion was straining the historical manorial base of society to breaking point. Too many people meant that peasants could not stay on their historical plots - leading some to move to other parts, farming reclaimed land not as serfs, but as free tenant farmers, while others took to trade as a way to make a living. These freemen were the base of the rapid expansion of trade in the early centuries of the new Millennium.

Pirenne's thesis shows that the growth of towns and trade was not begotten by the Nobility, but by the people themselves. His theory that traders started as small co-operatives and built wealth on their own terms makes sense - the Nobles gained without having to get their hands dirty, as they gathered rents from townsmen, and sold their surplus agricultural produce to the same people.

He goes on to describe in some detail how the increase in trade moved in conjunction with developments in credit, as the ability to circumvent the ban on usury by the Church was key to the continuing growth of the Mercantile class. This class also worked hard to limit their own numbers by creating Guilds and other trade organisations, as well as limiting competition by developing tariffs and other official forms of control over trade.

Pirenne closes his account of these developments by showing how, just as geo-political matters began the rise of cities and trade, they also led to it's decline. The combination of Plague and the Hundred Years War led to a reduced population, reduced mobility by the Merchant Class, and a lack of capital.

These theories are backed with much evidence, succinctly and clearly laid out. This bare-bones translation gives little insight into Pirenne's style, and is a little dry, but is serviceable. Much historiography of Medieval times is based on Pirenne's insights - his foundations now have some quite imposing structures placed upon them. However, for a clear introduction to the issues, this book is a great place to start.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell