The Inheritance Of Rome: Illuminating The Dark Ages 400-1000 By Chris Wickham

The period 400-1000 is a blank spot in the minds of most people, even for those who know a great deal about Rome and medieval Europe. What we do tend to know are a handful of decontextualized names (e.g. Charlemagne) and some stock images of bearded men in leather armor killing each other. Wickham, then, was faced with a formidable task: not just to introduce his readers to the Ostrogoths, the Merovingian kingdom, etc., but also to disabuse us of popularly held notions, like the precipitous fall of Rome in 476 or the discontinuities between Rome and its ‘barbarian’ successor states.

It’s for this reason that I strongly disagree with the reviews complaining that this book has too many details, and should not have been marketed to a general audience. The many details are not the intended “takeaway” of this book. Rather, Wickham presents us with such rich anecdotes so that long after the names and events vanish from memory, readers will be left with a deep (and accurate) feel for post-Roman culture, society, and government. Given how shallow (and inaccurate) my feel for post-Roman Europe was before reading Wickham’s book, I consider his book extremely effective.

On the dust jacket, a reviewer describes Wickham’s writing as “pointillist.” I think this description is apt. As with pointillist paintings, this work’s intent can only be comprehended after you take a step back from the anecdotes. Wickham’s prose is only difficult if you get too worried about remembering that Sidonius Apollinaris was so-and-so’s son-in-law, lived in Clermont in the 5th century, etc. General readers need not worry about the details – Just keep on reading, and be confident that you will finish the book with a different understanding of 400-1000 AD than when you started.

First of all, let’s start with the title. The Dark Ages are an outdated term for a period that was anything but dark. The title used in England of this book, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, is a better guide to what you will be getting in this book. Even then, that too is misleading since areas like North Africa and what is now Iraq get coverage. Chris Wickham details the history of both the lands that Rome held sway over and lands at the periphery of the Roman Empire. For anyone always annoyed by the incorrect factoid that the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, this will be good news.

Wickham does an excellent job of recounting the transformation of the Western Roman Empire, an area urbanized where the public sphere was important, into the subsequent kingdoms that were highly militarized, and where the public sphere had atrophied because cities were no longer possible to maintain in the first part of the period. Thus we get excellent histories of Vandal Africa, Visigothic Spain, Burgundy, Ostrogothic then Lombard Italy, Merovingian Francia, and later on of both the Carolignian Empire and the Caliphate that took over most of Iberia. Wickham details political and economic history extremely well, social history moderately well, and cultural history not as well. His analysis of the transformation of the area in late antiquity is extremely well done and a highlight of the book. In particular, the focus on the conquest of Africa by the Vandals in 439 is an interesting idea. This was the source of food for a huge swath of the Western Empire, and the conquest was a turning point in Roman history.

The second main focus for Wickham is the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire. Again, there is some good analysis, especially on the significance of the conquest of Egypt and what it entailed for Constantinople. As I love Byzantine history, I was happy to see this discussed at more length than usual, though not as well as some other authors have done. The period on Justinian really could have been done better. If you’re interested in Byzantine history, I really do recommend John Julius Norwich’s magisterial trilogy.

The third main focus is on the Muslim lands that were conquered in the 7th and 8th centuries. Strangely enough, Wickham does a better job for these areas than he does for the Byzantine Empire. The section on Baghdad was a particular high point.

Lastly, and sort of added as a ‘oh hey, I may as well add more to this book’ are discussions of the periphery – Anglo-Saxon England, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and some not great sections on the Slavic lands and other parts of what we now call East Europe,

If you’re interested in the latest developments in medieval history, this is a good book to start from. It’s not always the easiest to read, but it is rewarding. And the focus on non-Western Europe in addition to Western Europe is a welcome addition. There are insightful ideas all throughout the book – for instance, often histories claim these are the Dark Ages, but Wickham shows that even in the West at least the aristocratic members of society were still able to read as late as the end of the ninth century. Most importantly is the idea of looking at these areas on their own terms and not judging the period through lens of Renaissance revisionists.

Not easy to read, the book offers an excellent summary and updated analysis of some of the most o scure centuries of Europe’s history. Probably the best study on the period.