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In just a few hundred years, a modest peninsula off the northwest corner of Asia has seen the rise and fall of several empires; served as the crucible for scientific dynamism, cultural innovation, and economic revolution; and witnessed cataclysms and bloodshed that have almost destroyed it several times over. This is Europe: a continent whose identity emerged not so much by virtue of geographic or ethnic continuity, but by a long and storied struggle for power. Studded with infamous figures--from Caesar to Charlemagne and Machiavelli to Marx--Simon Jenkins's history of Europe travels briskly from the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, and the Reformation through the French Revolution, the World Wars, and the fall of the USSR. What emerges in this thrilling and expansive telling is a continent as defined by its continually clashing cultural identities and violent crises as it is by its tireless drive for a society based on the consent of the governed--which holds true right up to the present day. --… (more)
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All in all, this is a great read for anyone interested in gaining an overview of how today’s Europe came to be - and how much of what it is today still mimics what it has always been through the centuries.
I presume the author is English, but in general he does well at keeping the appropriate focus on what has been deemed the "most relevant" stories of the development of Europe over time: quick prehistory primer, Greece, Rome, first migration period,
In general the narrative seems consistent with what I have seen in other textbooks, although I found one glaringly bad explanation: the author seems to have no understanding of the Christological controversies of the 5th century. Granted, anyone who claims to have complete understanding of those controversies is delusional; nevertheless, it cannot be said, as the author does, that it was all about the "Nestorians" vs. the "Orthodox," and the latter won. The lack of nuance actually hurts his arguments anyway: in truth, the whole thing was more smoke than fire, more political than anything else, with two groups going to extremes ("Nestorians" and "Monophysites"), and the "orthodox" trying to maintain some Biblical balance at Chalcedon (which, ironically, sounded more "Nestorian" than it did "Monophysite"). It wasn't just the Church of the East that broke away - so did the Syrian Orthodox and the Egyptian Orthodox (or Coptics); the latter groups were more than happy to welcome the Muslim invaders, since they ended up living under greater tolerance from them than the "orthodox" Byzantine emperor. In the book it's a minor point, and no one can be expected to have a full understanding of everything, but the way the Christological controversy was explained is a distortion of the historical accounts.
All such explorations are done with motivations, and the author's seems to involve the push and pull about what it means to be "European." He seems eager to understand the current politics surrounding the European Union in terms of historic parallels: British vacillation about being "in" or "out" of Europe, northern vs. southern Europe, the lingering effects of Lotharingia, etc. There's certainly some evidence for all of this, and it's interesting, but it leads the author right into the "history of the moment," which is always a dangerous thing to explain, since it's hard to know what the controlling narrative might be. That controlling narrative looked one way in 2003; quite another in 2010; even more so in 2015; and blown up ever since.
The author unapologetically tells the story according to the "great man" theory, so it's all about kings and wars and national boundary changes with a little bit of the arts, philosophy, etc. as it relates to historical developments. Caveat emptor.
A decent introduction to European history.
**--galley received as part of early review program
As the story works its way to the present we are left with the question where to from here? Based on where we have come from the summation is when and where will the next conflict begin. Hopefully this is a wrong assessment, but following the adage history repeats itself that seems to be the answer.
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