Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000 by Roger Collins

Loved it. As an amateur, it’s a good introduction. English is not even my language and it was easy to comprehend.

I don’t like writing reviews. This product was fine.

I’d read several more or less thematic histories of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, and while my knowledge of the basic narrative for the West up to about 500 was good (the usual political and military history, the historiography, and the other evidence), I was a bit unclear on 500-1000. To prep for some interesting thematic histories of that period, I needed the basics of “what happened.” So, I decided to read Collins.

It’s a good, basic history, but I certainly wouldn’t want to rely on it as the only secondary work on the periods and places that interest me most. At its heart, its really an old fashioned narrative history. Collins relies a great deal on historiography, gives sometimes too lengthy accounts of their reliability and reconcilability, and lays out the politics and hack and slash of Early Medieval Europe quite competently. There are, happily, sections of culture and wider historical movements. There are also, unhappily, a few methodological diatribes and excesses with respect to the minute details of military campaigns and ephemeral rulers or would-be rulers. As to the latter, the play by play of the wars of various Frankish rulers and much of the account of the kingdoms of Northern Spain are prime examples. It’s too easy to lose site of the forest for the trees in such sections, and a 700-year wide forest requires some focus to apprehend.

The detail with which he treats the nature of his historiographical sources really only makes sense, if one assumes the reader will eventually venture more deeply in certain areas. So, I think Collins himself saw the work as a basic handbook and introduction to this wide world. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 mostly for the forest-amnesia noted above, as well as his somewhat outdated focus on historiography.

This book concentrates on the political aspects of the early Middle Ages at a scholarly level. What I was really looking for was a book on the early Middle Ages that discusses broader aspects of ‘every day life’ during that epoch at a more ‘general reader’ level.

Do not buy this book unless you are seriously interested in the history of medieval Europe. That said, if you are this is quite a good book. I’ll summarize my thoughts into pros and cons, since there are several of each.

PROS: The best thing about this book is its inspired structure. It is not organized in a narrative way. Instead it is organized geographically/politically. Each region of Europe is examined separately, and bite-size chunks of the history of how that region evolved from the later Roman Empire into feudal Europe. The treatment of the various areas are handled so that material learned from study of a previous area, is germane to this process in another region. Another plus is that non-European areas are discussed, as their divergent interests led to conflict with a European entity. For example, the constant struggle between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid dynasty of Persia is discussed a number of times, and in detail at least once.

Another pro is the careful attention our historian pays to analyzing our sources, and especially the biases of their authors, without hesitating to indicate his personal opinion about their reliability. Sources and evidence are everything to a historian, and those who do not consider the motives behind the recording of a version of history, are simply not doing their job. The skill and objectivity Roger Collins brings to this task is impressive, and convincing. When he is unsure, which is often, given the tenuous evidence we have about this difficult period, he does not hesitate to say so, and he explains why he is unsure.

Finally, this book refutes the general view of this period, that it was the “Dark Ages.” An ongoing thesis Collins discusses is how the collapse of the Western Empire’s borders led to a diffusion of Roman knowledge and literature to a much farther extent than previously. Indeed, all our extant Latin manuscripts come down to us through the Franks, in large part courtesy of the Church. This helps dispel the myth that much of what we know about ancient Mediterranean society comes to us from Arabic preservation of ancient manuscripts. This is true of Greek manuscripts, but not of Latin ones, which were preserved by the Merovingians and the Carolingians.

CONS: First, the font is tiny; there are 45 lines of print per page. Second, Collins, while a wonderful historian is not mellifluous. Here is a sentence chosen from a page picked at random: “The region they targeted was Frisia, the flat, marshy land between the Rhine and the North sea, whose inhabitants were noted for their maritime and trading activities and who had contributed a distinctive element to the Germanic settlement in the post-Roman period, but who had so far resisted both Frankish political overlordship and conversion to Christianity.”

There is a lot to unpack from this sentence, and it required more than one attempt to unpack it. Thus, this 434 page history is more nearly the equivalent of a 600 page less challenging text.

None-the-less, this is a small price to pay for the insights and understanding set forth in this amazing book.