Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Up til, say, twenty years ago, if you'd heard of one historian, one history book, it would probably have been Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Written over 200 years ago, it's remained pertinent to the topic it covers, and while aspects are superseded by modern research, apparently (I can't vouch for this personally--I've read books on the book) it remains influential.  And nobody's managed to produce a newer work of comparable length and breadth.

The first thing is: this is not a book I have read from cover to cover.  Indeed, I haven't even read the abridged version from cover to cover--I imagine it would take about a year to get through the whole thing.  It's enormous!  One of those big, square books that you could quite happily use as a doorstop, or to make yourself look impressive.  It covers about 1,500 years of history, dancing about across the provinces, taking in primarily political/military history but encompassing high culture, manners, society, social structure, law, and any number of other things that Gibbon felt pertinent to his wide-ranging organising principle of how the Roman Empire came to an end.

Despite being rather outdated in years, and in some places in content, it's surprisingly readable.  If only I could have carried it around with me, and it didn't take a great effort to simply pick it up to read, I probably would have read significantly more.  There are these brilliant footnotes scattered about through the text which are cynical, witty, or just amusingly acerbic.  The text itself offers all the drama you might expect from court intrigues, military takeovers, and a memorable passage upon the girraffe (a gentle and useless animal, which has been described but not delineated), alongside occaisional steps back from the world of day to day happenings and a more detailed analysis of some aspect of society.

Despite its age then, this remains a classic historical work.  Actually, it's probably a classic because of its age--when it first came out it was a bestseller.  I'm going to horrify scholarly folk with my essay on it by comparing it to, say, Stephan Ambrose, or some other 'populist' historian.  Maybe Max Hastings is a better comparison...  Hmm.  Does anyone else love those books?

Anyway.  If you've a lot of time, it's worth reading this book.  If you've a little, somebody must surely have published a 'selected exciting bits of Edward Gibbon'. Surely.

The Pursuit of History (Third Edition)

I'd like to write that this was a load of tosh, purely because of the author's name, but in fairness to the book, I really can't.  It was wonderfully interesting, and I read much of it whilst on lunch breaks at M&S, which proved a wonderful antidote to the crippling lack of anything interesting or intellectually challenging that stacking shelves offers.

I'm actually quite getting into this whole historiography thing, really starting to enjoy looking at the practice of history and how it should be done and shouldn't be done and so forth.  I also feel like I'm starting to be in a position where I can start drawing my own conclusions.  Despite what I initially thought, it seems that the point of historiography isn't just to lambast those historians you happened to have a falling out with at high school.  In fact, Tosh doesn't have a go at anyone, and even points out the odd merit or two of psychohistory, which seems to be generally given short shrift (although he does go on to point out that it has its own unique set of weaknesses and runs huge risks of inferring waaaaay too much).

The section on oral history was interesting, postmodernism taken into account and explained without being resoundingly attacked as in Evans' book.  In fact, while I initially worried there might be issues in terms of him referring to 'modern' trends in history which were modern thirty odd years back when the book was first written, the last few chapters make it clear that it really has been updated.

I particularly, though, enjoyed one of the first chapters, which looked at social memory and how society perceives history as opposed to how historians say it really happened.  This theme was then picked up again in the section on oral history, making hte point that why people perceive things as having happened in a certain way when analysis suggests that they really didn't happen like that, is as interesting as the event in itself.  Why is the Battle of Britain in popular culture a David v Goliath contest, when the numbers of fighters were actually pretty similar and many recent historians have challenged whether it was even that close a thing as to whether we were gonna win?  Why does nobody remember instances of panic during the Blitz, instead subsuming it all into the wider Blitz spirit?  Tosh argues that social memory serves a specific function, legitimating current rulers and practices, as well as offering 'guidance'.  While no two instances in history are identical, he argues that history does offer suggestions of alternatives where we perceive no alternatives.

A very interesting book, not too theory-ridden, though it explains all the major theories well and assesses the impact and reasons for Marxist theories popularity amongst many historians.  I was also quite chuffed to feel that I knew the majority of the historians he referred to from my first term at Cambridge and other reading :)  Thoroughly enjoyed it, though it's not a book you can really read all in one go...  Needs spreading out, and the chapter divisions do this well enough.  One or two chapters at once is probably more than enough to digest at once.

The Whig Interpretation of History

This was one of those 'historiography' books that people say you should read when you're studying history so that you understand the subject.  For those of you who aren't historians, historiography is effectively the study of history--and the history of history.  It can be quite interesting, it can be rather dull.  Most books that I've read so far (actually, make that: the two books excluding this one) are in the rather dull and slightly incomprehensible category.  This one was in the 'actually, that was rather interesting and well written' category.

Apparently, this book was rather influential, although the 'whigish' method of history which was criticised was beginning to fall out of favour even before its publication.  At any rate, some of what's said seems like common sense to me now, based on what we've been told about doing history in lectures etc, but I am beginning to wonder whether seeing what I know about history in this book is like (hopefully!) seeing what a preacher talks about in the Bible.

At any rate, it's a nice short book (fall on the floor stunned!) and apart from a criticism of Lord Acton in the final chapter of the book does a remarkably good job of attacking ideas and principles rather than specific historians.  In short, unlike Evans' 'In Defence of History' and one or two other things I've looked at, it doesn't feel like the historian has a personal grudge they want to settle with a fellow historian they fell out with at high school.  (Although Evans' 'In Defence of History' is still a pretty decent book, and for those of you who happen to be studying history might have noticed, a rather standard authority in terms of historical practice, even if it does confuse the issues of postmodernism rather more than it helps clarify them).  Sorry.  That was a rather long digression from what was meant to be a review of 'The Whig Interpretation of History'.  Wait, I should be using italics, not quotes...  One of the many things I have discovered about footnoting while at Cambridge is that I can never seem to manage to follow all of the little rules at once.  And so I have apparently yet to submit an essay which has the footnotes done completely right.  But anyway.  That's even more of a digression.

The Whig Interpretation of History is remarkably well written, and constantly tied down to a specific historical period--for most of the book, the Reformation and Luther, though other bits receive mention.  The basic argument is that abridged history becomes, almost by default, very 'whiggish' in its tone and outlook, showing the great 'march of progress' and smoothing over historical complications by relegating everyone to either pro or anti progress.  So, for example, the Catholics were reactionaries trying to preserve a corrupt old order and Luther was a revolutionary thinker who brought about religious liberty and created the modern rights to freedom of worship.  But Butterfield makes the point succinctly that in fact, history is rather more complex than that.  Luther wanted, ideally, an equally dominating religious autocracy on slightly different lines to the Catholic set up.  What really created religious toleration was the clash of ideologies.  An interesting point, and certainly one that seems viable.

History, Butterfield argues, is complication.  And from what I've seen of it since starting A-levels it certainly seems to be.  People defy neat categorisation.  For example, how would a historian in fifty years time slot me into their equations?  I'm studying at Cambridge--therefore I'm of an academic turn of mind.  I'm a young female who happens to have a thing for aircraft and builds Airfix models--usually the stereotypical preserve of older men.  I'm a Christian, but not a member of the 'established' church--both churches that I go to (up here in Preston and down in Cambridge) are 'free' churches with an emphasis on salvation by grace.  Spirit fill churches, would probably be the best way of describing them.  Aren't people who are 'intelligent' meant to be atheists too?  Whenever the library does a display of 'books for men' and 'books for women', I find half the books on the men's stand are ones I've read, and I've rarely read any on the women's stand.  Oh, and I live in a 'nuclear' family--mum, dad (been married for nearly 30 years) and younger brother.  Aren't we supposed to be in a society where most people don't live in that sort of family?  At any rate, you could classify me in any one of several dozen methods, and the same is true of any person.  Societies have multiple layers of meaning and interaction, and it's impossible to completely unravel the complexities of our own time, let alone in the past when we have to start relying on sources that by their very appearance and survival tend to be atypical.

So, I think what I'm trying to say is that this is a very interesting book that also happens to be well written and isn't excessively long.  In short, a wonderful historiography book to take a look at.  And perfectly comprehensible.