ANTHONY KALDELLIS –

THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM (2023) 

The history of the eastern Roman Empire – from founding to fall of Constantinople, with more than a millennium of history in between them.

By the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 AD – on the threshold of the Spanish discovery of the Americas and marking the start of the early modern period – the empire was effectively reduced to the city itself with some spare change left behind in the couch in the Peloponnese.

It had come a long way – and fallen so far – from its glorious founding as new imperial capital from the former city of Byzantium by Constantine in 330 AD, reigning as sole emperor over the whole classical Roman empire. From that point the empire was almost inevitably destined to be divided (again) into western and eastern halves, with the latter ruled from Constantinople and almost inevitably destined to outlast the former.

The founding of Constantinople and its rule over the eastern empire that became the sole empire once its western counterpart fell prompts consideration of what to call that empire, which is addressed from the outset of the book – and in its title.

It was of course, as they considered themselves to be, the continuation of the Roman Empire, but it also had important distinctions from the former classical empire – distinctions that allowed it to endure as long as it did and not merely as a “pale facsimile of classical Rome” but “a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome’s features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world”.

Western history has borrowed from Constantinople’s former title Byzantium – as indeed does the book’s subtitle and its author as self-described Byzantist – to call it the Byzantine empire, often to the detriment of the empire’s continuity with the Roman Empire. I guess Constantinopolitan Empire doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

That is something which this book resists, advocating persuasively against that usage. While it is no doubt a term with an unfortunate history of usage, much like the general usage of Byzantine as a pejorative adjective, I think the title of Byzantine Empire may well be too ingrained in common usage to shake.

The common alternative has been to call it the Eastern Roman Empire – a usage similar to that of various Chinese dynasties to distinguish their geographical extent at different times, such as the Southern Song dynasty.

The book makes a persuasive case for a title as the New Roman Empire but then doesn’t really use that beyond the book’s title and introduction, instead preferring to use Romania – a usage that I don’t think will catch on for potential confusion with the modern nation of that name. Also come on – neo-Roman Empire was right there!

As for the book’s history of that thousand-year empire, it’s pretty much summed up by that earlier quote about it as a “vigorous state of its own” – one which endured through “innovative institutions and a bottomless strategic playbook”, the latter including what in modern parlance is called soft power and set out in one of the book’s many engaging points.

Another engaging point is that the book plays into my preference for thematic history, not simply chronicling what happened but asking how and why it did – above all, the question of how and why the empire “lasted so long lies at the heart of the book”.

That can be broken down into further questions, which the book engages. How and why did it survive when the western empire didn’t? How and why did it almost succumb to enemies after that, notably the Persians and Arabs when it came within a heartbeat of falling? How and why did it then rebound after those and other occasions of decline?

As to the book’s big question of how and why it lasted so long, a fundamental part of the answer is reflected in its preferred usage of Romania – that the empire transformed itself to resemble not so much subjects under imperial rule as participants in a Roman nation state.

A further engaging point is that the author doesn’t shrink on occasion from laying down some snide snark – such as when channelling his inner Procopius, he lets the occasional barb slip that he really doesn’t like Justinian. He quips that the Plague of Justinian was the only thing the emperor didn’t want to name after himself – ooo, sick imperial burn! Of course, in this house, Justinian is a hero – although even I have to admit he overextended the empire.

Less engaging for me is when he detours into the endless theological disputes in the broader history of Christianity within the empire. Yes, yes – I know the history of the empire is intimately caught up with the history of Christianity within it but my eyes mostly glazed over when the book went there.

Except for the dispute over icons – that kept my interest, although I suppose it helped it just involved the simply use (or prohibition from use) of images and not some mindbogglingly pedantic semantics. Also, there was the book’s insight that the iconoclasts were not as, well, iconoclastic as they were made out to be.

Even so, I preferred the book’s more straightforward political and military history of when the empire was kicking ass or having its ass kicked.

Romanticized statue of Herodotus in his hometown of Helicarnassus (modern Bodrum in Turkey) – image donated to the public domain and used by Wikipedia in their article “Herodotus”

TOP 10 HISTORY BOOKS (SPECIAL MENTION)

History is just one damned thing after another – and one top ten after another!

So I don’t just have a top ten history books, I have a plethora of special mentions. And by plethora, I mean my usual rule of twenty special mentions for each top ten, where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – although presently it’s a work in progress as I shuffle between all my book special mentions over time.

So here are my four special mention entries so far for books of history.

(1) PAUL JOHNSON –

MODERN TIMES: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S (1983)

“A latter day Mencken, Johnson is witty, gritty, and compulsively readable”.

Probably the most divisive entry in my special mentions, in part because Johnson is without a background as an academic historian. Instead, Johnson was a journalist and popular historian – although it makes you sit up and pay attention when you read that as a journalist he interviewed some of the historical figures in this book, as for example he states in a footnote he did with Kerensky (obviously in the latter’s exile as former leader of the Provisional Government of Russia overthrown by the Bolsheviks).

In part that explains the divisive nature of this entry – but perhaps mostly it’s the strength of his opinions and the prose style with which he expressed them, both of which (as well as that divisive nature) were reflected in this book.

.

Yes, yes – I know this book has been updated and reissued with various subtitles to reflect that (such as the one in my feature image) but I’m going with the original title.

It was the first book of history that I read from Johnson although afterwards I avidly read others by him as it was a huge influence on me in my youth. Not so much now as I’ve receded somewhat from him as I’ve perceived some of his more idiosyncratic opinions.

For example, I can agree with his assessment of Eisenhower as the twentieth century’s most successful president (although he also ranks Reagan highly, perhaps even higher in the later editions) but not so much some of the other presidents he ranked highly (or badly). Sorry, I will never see Nixon as anything but crooked, even if he demonstrated a certain amoral competence.

From the above one may divine his opinions to be conservative, of a distinctly Catholic and anti-communist kind – interestingly enough as he originally was left-wing before his ideological reversal on the road to Damascus, a metaphor I think he would have particularly liked given his beliefs and name.

Whatever one may think of his opinions, the virtuosity of his prose style was undeniable – perhaps the best of any of my special mentions, with a particular talent for turns of phrase and chapter titles, as illustrated by those for this book:

1 – A Relativistic World

2 – The First Despotic Utopias

3 – Waiting for Hitler

4 – Legitimacy in Decadence

5 – An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos

6 – The Last Arcadia

7 – Degringolade

8 – The Devils

9 – The High Noon of Aggression

10 – The End of Old Europe

11 – The Watershed Year

12 – Superpower and Genocide

13 – Peace by Terror

14 – The Bandung Generation

15 – Caliban’s Kingdoms

16 – Experimenting with Half Mankind

17 – The European Lazarus

18 – America’s Suicide Attempt

19 – The Collectivist Seventies

20 – The Recovery of Freedom (in later editions – formerly Palimpsests of Freedom)

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(2) GEOFFREY BLAINEY –

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD (2000)

“The most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia’s living historians” – that last epithet was for his commentary on public affairs, so naturally I like him.

Geoffrey Blainey is Australia’s leading historian – and the leading historian of Australia itself, coining the definitive phrase for that history in the famous title of his book The Tyranny of Distance.

Wide-ranging indeed – upon graduating, Blainey initially eschewed academia for the private sector as a freelance historian, studying and writing the history of a mining and railway company in Tasmania.

He subsequently ranged through Australian history, with a focus on thematic history “organized around the exploration of the impact of the single factor (distance, mining, pre-settlement Aboriginal society)”.

Of particular interest to me, his range extended to the “rhythms” of global history – “two centuries of conflict in The Causes of War (1973)”, “examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw”, the history of Christianity, and the “tempestuous” 20th century.

And of course this book – which with my interest in global history I tend to regard as his magnum opus, apologies to The Tyranny of Distance.

What distinguishes Blainey in my eyes, both generally and in his book, is his eye for theme – especially themes outside the usual political or military history to which history is slanted, particularly global history.

A single volume history of the world must necessarily be compact yet Blainey not only achieves this but also seamlessly works in chapters on themes that elude other such histories.

For example, a chapter on the historical impact of the night sky on humanity. Or a chapter on the conquest of night by artificial lighting. Or of time itself by mechanical clocks in western civilization.

Or such resonant images or phrases that stick in the mind like Venice as the Silicon Valley of Renaissance Italy – through its glass-making as the cutting edge of technological innovation such as lenses for telescopes or microscopes, which I’m tempted to add to the conquest of time and night as the conquest of light.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(3) J.M. ROBERTS –

THE TRIUMPH OF THE WEST: THE ORIGIN, RISE & LEGACY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION (1985)

Greatly expanded from the BBC TV series he presented of the same title, this book similarly looks at what is Western civilization and its titular ambigous triumph.

Roberts was a classic old school British historian – and by old school I mean Oxford, ultimately returning to his alma mater as Warden of Merton College, an academic title like many others that evoke those of a fantasy novel.

Apart from his academic distinctions, he had many published works for which he was hailed as “a master of the broad brush-stroke” – or in other words that thematic style of history which is my favorite.

That style is on display in what I regard to be the crowning achievement of any historian – a history of the world, particularly if it also spans all of history, as Roberts did with his History of the World published by Penguin (usually as the Penguin History of the World).

Given the scale, it’s obviously not light reading – but is demonstrative of Roberts’ style that pithy phrases from it still resonate in my mind many years after reading it. Roberts evoking most modern wars in the Middle East as the wars of Ottoman succession for example, or Romanticism as a secularized Protestantism.

Roberts’ style and mastery of broad brush strokes is even more on display in The Triumph of the West, perhaps not surprisingly given its origin in the television series he wrote and presented (for which prose style and mastery of broad brush strokes are effectively sine qua non for engaging an audience) as well as its shorter volume than his world history.

The chapters – corresponding to the episodes of the TV series – effectively showcase its presentation of “the origins and evolution of Western civilization, and the transformative challenges and influence it has exerted on the rest of the world”:

• 1 – One World (TV episode – Dangerous Gifts: the benefits and costs of Western influence)
• 2 – A Sense of Direction (TV episode – A New Direction: Influences from Ancient Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian Culture)
• 3 – Birth of the West (TV episode – The Heart of the West: The Middle Ages and Orbis Christiani)
• 4 – The World’s Debate (TV episode – The World’s Debate: Islam and Christianity)
• 5 – Defining a World (TV episode – East of Europe: Byzantium and Russia)
• 6 – An Exploring Civilization (TV episode – The Age of Exploration)
• 7 – New Worlds (TV episode – same)
• 8 – A New Age (TV episode – Age of Light)
• 9 – History Speeds Up (TV episode – Monuments to Progress: The Long Nineteenth Century)
• 10 – The Confident Aggressors (TV episode – India: The Ironies of Empire)
• 11 – Responses and Repercussions (TV episode – The East is Red: China in the Twentieth Century)
• 12 – A Sense of Decline (TV episode – The Decline of the West :Two World Wars and The Great Depression)
• 13 – A Post-Western World? (TV episode – Capitulations: Third World countries learn the price of dependency on the West)

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Cover 2002 Free Press edition

(4) FELIPPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO –

CIVILIZATIONS: CULTURE, AMBITION & THE TRANSFORMATION OF NATURE (2000)

A book on the suject of human civilization – or rather, civilizations, arranged by environment, consistent with the definition of civilization in the subtitle as the transformation of nature.

The book essentially treats all human societies as civilization, or at least a civilization – eschewing attempts at ‘checklist’ of criteria that define a civilization, given the problems of previous attempts to do so for any that are universally agreed, instead looking at human societies in classic Toynbee terms of challenge and response to their natural environments, at least in origin.

While such an approach may have flaws in its lack of distinction between a ‘civilization’ and other human societies, the book does have much to offer from its thematic history of human civilization from a geographic and environmental perspective.

Firstly, it vividly impresses on you the extent to which human history and societies have been shaped by nature, at least in origin – including the most basic or stark features which one might otherwise overlook from a different thematic perspective.

This is most striking when it looks at those environments it groups together as the wasteland, worlds of ice or sand deserts, which can only support the most minimalist societies – minimalist that is, beyond surviving in them, prompting to mind the lines from the poem “Australia” by A.D. Hope, about men whose boast is not “we live” but “we survive”.

Perhaps its most insightful feature – which it states in its introduction – was its comparative history of civilizations, “arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period or society by society”, thus yielding comparisons across time and space that might not otherwise occur to the reader.

The evocative part and chapter headings (or subheadings) illustrate those environmental classifications:

• Part 1: The Wasteland – Ice Worlds & Tundra, Deserts of Sand
• Part 2: Leave of Grass – Prairie & Grassy Savannah, the Eurasian Steppe (the Highway of Civilization)
• Part 3: Under the Rain – Postglacial & Temperate Woodland, Tropical Lowlands
• Part 4: The Shining Fields of Mud (alluvial or river floodplains in the ancient Near East, China and India)
• Part 5: The Mirrors of Sky – the Highland Civilizations of the New World and the Old
• Part 6: The Water Margins (Civilizations Shaped by the Sea) – Small Island Civilizations and Seaboard Civilizations such as the Seaboard Civilizations of Maritime Asia or the Greek and Roman Seaboards
• Part 7: Breaking the Waves (the Domestication of the Oceans) – the Rise of Oceanic Civilizations, the Making of Atlantic Civilization, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific – from the Pacific to the World

I was particularly fascinated by its comparison of grassland societies – prompting to mind, as such things tend to do, whether other grasslands might have produced the horse blitzkriegs that the Eurasian steppes did in other circumstances.

Or its subject of the oceans – how maritime navigation has been shaped by the distinctive currents and wind patterns of each ocean, with the Indian Ocean proving the most ”precocious’ for long distance navigation (indeed from the dawn of human history), the Atlantic being somewhat more tricky, and the Pacific trickier still (Polynesian island-hopping aside).

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)