Chris Wickham's Inheritance of Rome

A slightly bad-tempered review of Chris Wickham's Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 by Ian Mortimer in the Guardian:

Wickham's careful, measured approach to the evidence results in such an ambiguous interpretation of the past that the reader inevitably ends up doubting the historian's authority. At one point he states: "The previous two paragraphs use the words 'seem to have', 'may have', 'likely' and 'probably' in nearly every sentence: this faithfully reflects the surviving documentation. Everything is guesswork." This goes for a great deal of the book. Of course, academics often stress that one should err on the side of caution; but they forget that this is still to err. Most readers are looking for a complete and coherent portrait of the age, not an abstract set of possible textual readings. We want our leading thinkers, including historians, to go out on a limb, to take risks; but sometimes one feels that this book is more concerned with safeguarding the author from accusations of misinterpreting the evidence than with people in the first millennium.

He finishes with a complaint that Wickham does not have a "grand narrative". It strikes me as a little unfair. One of the difficulties of writing about the end of the Roman empire is that too many historians are too definite about too little evidence. A more cautious approach is what is needed. Full review here.

Comments

[David]

I had a similar reaction when I read that this morning. I'm currently researching a seminar paper focused on certain aspects of 5th C. Gaul. Though I knew about the fragmentary nature of the sources in an abstract sense, it was not until I purposefully engaged those sources that I began to understand just how much guesswork and speculation is necessary.

That said, I'm no purist. If you're reading, Mr. Mortimer, I'll gladly write the book you claim to want if you'll promise to write a review telling people to read it...

[adrianmurdoch]

Very nicely put. And if David is busy, I'll do it.

[IHahn]

An incentive to purchase it? ;-)

[Ian Mortimer (Dr)]

You think my review was bad-tempered? Interesting. I had hoped it would be seen as a criticism of the tendency of academics to forget that academic skills are not in themselves a study of the past, or even that interesting to the general public. They have importance within academe but have little value outside it. My own forthcoming book on the 17th century medical revolution is practically a methodological essay from beginning to end, but I would never be so arrogant as to expect the Guardian-reading public to enjoy such technical sophistication. Prof Wickham could have told me many more interesting things about life 400-1000, but he failed to. I suspect this reaction - disappointment and some boredom - will be common among non-specialists. So please, please do write a more creative, human, sympathetic and engaging book about this period.

[adrianmurdoch]

Apologies for the delay in posting/replying. I take your point absolutely about the tendency of academics to forget that academic skills are not in themselves a study of the past, but I suppose that I am coming at this from the opposite direction. What I mean by that is that the reason that Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire is not as successful a book as Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome is that it is incredibly difficult to sit in the populist camp and make repeated definitive statements about what is such an opaque period without automatically devaluing what you have to say and losing credibility in the eyes of your readers. It is also unlikely - and I say this as someone who has written two populist books on the end of the empire - that the book will be picked up by the generalist. The most likely buyers will be students/former students upwards, rather than the reader on the Clapham Omnibus. They will bring an experience of the source material with them. And with the best will in the world a GBP35 price tag puts off general readers.

[Bild]

A fascinating exchange. I found this page via Google, after reading the Telegraph review of the new Wickham. Earlier, I had read Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages.

My reaction to the earlier book was exactly that of Dr. Mortimer to the newer book. Impressed but disappointed, if I may summarize it that way.

The works of Peter Brown, and the volume by T. C. Blanning in the same Penguin series, show that an author need not give up a vivid, lively, subjective perspective, for the sake of seriousness and credibility.

But it may be too simple to frame the issue as "academics vs. non-academics." There is a third important category: academics who are not specialists in one's own subfield. A non-medievalist academic who wants to become familiar with the period will have the same interest as a generalist, that is, to receive a clear and intelligible orientation to the field.