I will happily shoehorn a Monty Python reference into any conversation, but in this case historian Walter Scheidel beat me to it. What did the Roman Empire ever do for us? It fell and never returned—and with it, it paved the way for modernity. That, in one sentence, is the bold idea Scheidel puts forth here. And rather than ask why Rome fell, he has far more interesting questions for you. Why did nothing like it arise ever again in Europe? Why did it arise in the first place? And how did this influence the way Europe came to dominate the world much later? Escape from Rome is a brilliantly subversive book that offers a refreshingly novel look at how Europe got to where it is now.
Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, written by Walter Scheidel, published by Princeton University Press in October 2019 (hardback, 670 pages)
Now, I have to start with a disclaimer. As the name of this blog implies, I am not a trained historian—I am just a biologist with way too many interests, history being one of them. That, and I have reviewed and enjoyed two of Scheidel’s previous books. It is therefore all the more to his credit that I had no trouble reading this book: Escape from Rome is very well written and structured—do not let the heft of this 670-page tome intimidate you.
Methodologically, Scheidel relies on two approaches to make his argument: historical comparisons and counterfactuals. The former involves looking for bigger patterns outside of your narrow speciality. Here this means looking at what happened in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, but also at empire building in other parts of the world. In Scheidel’s words: “Comparison […] helps us transcend peculiarities of evidence for a particular case or the dominant academic tradition thereon” (p. 22). Counterfactuals, the “what would have happened if…” stories, are perhaps more controversial and he is at pains to point why they are needed and how to properly use them. Scheidel again: “The key question must be this: How little change would have been enough for history to have taken an alternative path […] this question calls for adherence to what has been called the “minimal-rewrite rule”: the least amount of tweaking of actual history and avoidance of arbitrary intervention.” (p. 24).
Taking the above questions and methods as a starting point, Scheidel’s argument runs roughly something like this. (And I apologise in advance if I skip over subtleties as I attempt to cram 500 pages worth of material into four paragraphs.) When it comes to empire building over the last two millennia, Europe is an exception compared to East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East & North Africa (other areas are briefly considered but do not add much). While the latter three all show varying degrees of repeated empire formation with short breaks in between, Europe had a one-shot empire followed by enduring “polycentrism”. Polycentrism is a core term in this book and refers to competitive fragmentation. Rather than a monopoly on power, a polycentric system has multiple centres of power competing with each other for control. Something that, Scheidel hopes to show here, spurs innovation.
“When it comes to empire building over the last two millennia, Europe is an exception compared to East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East & North Africa”
To explore this contrast further, Scheidel first charts how the Roman empire rose to power and if there was ever any time where its formation might have been prevented. He sees only one counterfactual as likely: the Macedonians under the leadership of Alexander the Great could have prevented Roman hegemony towards the end of the 4th century. But when they did not, Roman expansion became almost impossible to halt, and the counterfactuals required become increasingly unlikely. Next up is the question of why nothing like Rome ever rose again in Europe. Scheidel discusses eight examples where Europe came close to a new empire but, for various reasons explained here, did not. This includes, amongst others, the surviving East Roman empire, Arab expansion in the 7th and 8th centuries, Mongol invasion in the mid-13th century, the 16th-century Habsburg empire, and the Ottomans in 16th and 17th centuries.
Having explored the dimension of time, Scheidel then turns his comparative approach to space. What about empire building outside of Europe? The focus is specifically on ancient China where the imperial tradition was so resilient as to be almost the polar opposite of what happened in Europe (plus, Scheidel has explored this comparison before). After considering, for example, differences in tax regimes, geographical and ecological conditions, religious belief systems, and other cultural factors, he concludes that conditions in East Asia were very conducive to repeated empire-building, while South Asia and the Middle East & North Africa fall somewhere between the two.
Finally, Scheidel considers the rise of the West, which is an incredibly popular topic. From Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules – for Now and Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth, to Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence or Philip T. Hoffman’s Why Did Europe Conquer the World? (to name just a few)—there is a veritable cottage industry of scholars probing this question. Scheidel discusses these and many other books here, considering a wide range of factors: political institutions, the exploitation of external resources through colonialism and mercantilism, scientific and technological advances, and many others besides. What these have in common, argues Scheidel, is that their contribution to the rise of the West relies on polycentrism, on there not being a Roman-scale empire to suppress competition and invention.
“Finally, Scheidel considers the rise of the West […] there is a veritable cottage industry of scholars probing this question […] Scheidel [argues that] the rise of the West [relied] on polycentrism, on there not being a Roman-scale empire to suppress competition and invention.”
That, in a nutshell, is the scope of the material covered here. Despite its length, the book’s excellent structure meant I never got lost (even if the history of fiscal systems in chapter 7 made my eyes glaze over ever so slightly). And though the tone is academic, the jargon is never impenetrable: Scheidel manages to walk the fine line between precisely articulating himself while not coming off pedantic. Rather, I found his arguments insightful and convincing. The text is meticulously annotated and the notes frequently offer welcome commentary on which references, in particular, give a good overview of certain ideas or historical periods. Furthermore, the included graphs and maps have been properly designed for grayscale printing.
At a time where decolonisation of academic disciplines has become a hot-button topic, it is only appropriate that in closing Scheidel is careful to ward off accusations of Eurocentrism: “Had comparable conditions surfaced in some other parts of the world, they might very well have produced similar results” (p. 501–502). And similarly, China not conquering the world despite its powerful empire is not be interpreted as inferiority on their part: “the Chinese experience was merely a particularly intense manifestation of a much broader pattern. Other large empires faced similar constraints.” (p. 446).
Scheidel’s take on this topic is highly original and the questions he poses delighted me on multiple occasions. On page 26, he predicts that the variation in content and perspective are bound to irritate both historians and social scientists, but he hopes that they will nevertheless engage with his work. I cannot see how they could not: this is a monumental work that will be impossible to ignore. But beyond fellow scholars, the book’s excellent writing and structure will please any serious history buff.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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What is the price of humanity’s progress? The cover of this book, featuring a dusty landscape of tree stumps, leaves little to the imagination. In the eyes of French journalist and historian Laurent Testot it has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Originally published in French in 2017, The University of Chicago Press published the English translation at the tail-end of 2020.
Early on, Testot makes clear that environmental history as a discipline can take several forms: studying both the impact of humans on the environment, and of the environment on human affairs, as well as putting nature in a historical context. Testot does all of this in this ambitious book as he charts the exploits of Monkey—his metaphor for humanity—through seven revolutions and three million years.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity, written by Laurent Testot, published by The University of Chicago Press in November 2020 (hardback, 452 pages)
To be frank, Testot deals with the first 2,988,000 years in the first two chapters. Understandably, as the pace of progress was initially slow, and comparatively little information is available to us from the palaeontological and archaeological records. Thus, he starts his history proper with the agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.
Some examples include the near-simultaneous rise of agriculture in several places, with geography playing an important role in which plants and animals were available to domesticate, or the fall of the Late-Bronze Age civilizations in the 12th century BCE. The myth of virgin rainforests and the long history of agriculture practised in the jungle. The microbiological onslaught that accompanied the Columbian exchange when Christopher Columbus and other explorers brought new epidemics to the Americas, or the scourge of mosquito-borne diseases that later decimated European colonialists overseas. The medieval Little Ice Age and the global crises it precipitated, or the worldwide impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption. The Great Acceleration in the 20th century and the recognition of the Anthropocene. All of these have been chronicled at length in books and other publications.
“Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.”
Testot also mentions episodes that I was barely familiar with; partially, I suspect, because he can draw on the French history literature. For example the eruption of the Samalas volcano that seems to have served as a transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Or the 15th-century mining for silver in the Andes and the immense pollution that caused. Or the environmental roots of the expression “mad as a hatter” (it involves the 17th-century beaver trade). Cataclysms sometimes seems to forget it is an environmental history book. Thus, the environment takes a backseat when he describes the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 300 BCE that saw the birth of universal religions and philosophies in both Asia and Europe that are still with us today. Similarly, the chapter charting the rise of money, empires, and trade in Europe and Asia before the Common Era only at the very end examines the environmental impact of it all.
The book’s style might divide opinions. Testot throws all his eggs in the proverbial narrative basket. The book is clearly deeply researched, but the notes section at the end encompasses a mere 16 pages. Testot must have decided that supporting every claim and fact with a footnote would have distracted from the story he tells. Although the references contain many interesting books and publications, those wishing to check up on certain claims will have to do their own research. Furthermore, the book is strikingly devoid of photos, maps, graphs, and tables, bar a single chart of the human world population through time in the appendix. As such, I felt Cataclysms did not deliver on the dustjacket’s promise of providing “the full tally” the way e.g. Vaclav Smil did in Harvesting the Biosphere. Those wanting a more data-driven overview will probably want to check out Cataclysms‘s big contender for 2020, Daniel R. Headrick’s Humans versus Nature. I had the chance to rifle through a copy, though not yet read it in full. At 604 pages with a 100-page notes section (and some illustrations), it promises to be a denser read.
“[The book] will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope […] but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.”
Testot’s outlook for the future is bleak, though his concluding chapter wanders somewhat aimlessly. Rather than offering an overview of which planetary boundaries we have breached and how far in overshoot we are, Testot focuses on what he calls the upcoming Evolutive Revolution before turning to some likely consequences of climate change. This final revolution could either pan out as the pipe-dream of transhumanism where nano-, bio-, and information technologies converge into the singularity that would make humans immortal / obsolete as Artificial Intelligence takes over (something Testot is critical of), or we may end up as mutants in the chemical cesspit that we are making of our planet. Throw in a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition that both reiterate main points from the book, and it starts to feel a little bit like Tolkien’s struggle to let the reader go in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.
Environmental history has become a rather crowded subject and opinions will probably be divided on whether Cataclysms stands out from the crowd sufficiently. It will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope—Testot knows how to spin a fine yarn and provides an entry point to many fascinating chapters in world history that readers will want to explore further. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Ours is the latest generation to be engaged in a blood-soaked conflict that has lasted millennia. The quote “we have met the enemy, and he is us” might come to mind, but no. Rather, as E.O. Wilson once wrote: “It is the little things that run the world“. Historian Timothy C. Winegard here offers a sweeping history of major turning points in human history observed through the compound lens of the mosquito. With an estimated compound death toll of 52 billion an insect that is truly worthy of the title “destroyer of worlds”.
The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, written by Timothy C. Winegard, published in the US by Dutton Books in September 2019 (hardback, 480 pages)
Though readers might be suspicious of single-cause explanations for historical events, the general thrust of environmental history books such as these rings true: our historical narratives are particularly enamoured with pivotal wars, politics, religion, and economics, while side-lining the influence of environmental factors. As Winegard shows, though, those stories are no less fascinating.
After a short overview of the mosquito, the diseases it can harbour, and the genetic defences humans have evolved against malaria in particular, Winegard takes the birth of agriculture as the starting point of our shared history. Or, as he so poignantly puts it: “cultivation was shackled to a corpse“. Land clearance, irrigation, and the keeping of livestock all brought us a lot closer to mosquitoes and created the perfect feeding and breeding grounds for them. Out of agriculture rose city-states, commerce, and conflict, all of which encouraged the spread of disease.
The role of trade was highlighted in Mark Harrison’s book Contagion. Winegard focuses more on conflict, which is not entirely surprising given his background as an officer and his previous books on military history. In colourful prose, often steeped in military metaphors, he takes the reader on a riveting tour of duty through prominent theatres of war.
“[…] “cultivation was shackled to a corpse“. Land clearance, irrigation, and the keeping of livestock all brought us a lot closer to mosquitoes […]”
Winegard covers ancient history with Ancient Greece and the military campaigns of Alexander the Great, Ancient Rome (with a nod to Harper’s magnificent The Fate of Rome), the Crusades, and the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan and subsequent barbaric invasions. More modern history follows with the period from the “discovery” of the Americas, the Columbian Exchange, and African slavery, all the way to the First and especially Second World War. Given my limited knowledge of these periods, I was particularly interested reading about the colonial war games between Spain, France, Britain over Caribbean colonies, and the conflicts and revolutions giving rise to the modern United States, followed by the American Civil War.
This tour of duty takes up the lion’s share of the book and is neatly divided over a series of absorbing and very readable chapters. Winegard convincingly shows how, at every turn, General Anopheles stalked the battlefields, attacking people indiscriminately. The death toll from malaria, yellow fever, dengue and other diseases is mind-numbing, virtually always overshadowing combat casualties, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
Insidiously, as Winegard shows, it did not take military commanders long to cotton on to that. The causes of these diseases may have long escaped us*, but the correlations did not. Starting very early on, a preferred battlefield strategy was to use local terrain to one’s advantage. By forcing, luring, or manoeuvring enemy troops into swampy areas, mosquitoes could take a heavy toll, after which the weakened and decimated survivors could easily be mopped up.
“The death toll from malaria, yellow fever, dengue and other diseases is mind-numbing, virtually always overshadowing combat casualties, sometimes by an order of magnitude.”
Despite Winegard’s initial assertion that historians often neglect the role of disease, this is far from the first popular book that tries to take in the fast sweep of history. Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, McNeill’s Plagues and People, and Shah’s The Fever are but three examples. Indeed, Winegard’s notes are a treasure trove of references for further reading, showing the amount of work he has ploughed through in the writing of The Mosquito. The books mentioned here so far are but a sample.
What I particularly liked about Winegard’s writing was that he does not shy away from unpleasant observations and some healthy historical correctives. There is his amusing takedown of the fabricated narrative around Pocahontas: “In Disney’s vision, Pocahontas and Smith run barefoot through the utopian natural splendor of the New World, frolicking in its idyllic waterfalls. In truth, the situation in Jamestown was a cannibalistic, mosquito-ravaged mess“. Others are more serious, such as his observation that the African slave trade flourished in part because some African tribes willingly captured and sold enemy tribe members to Europeans. Some are ruthlessly pragmatic: “a sick soldier is just as useless to the war effort as a wounded soldier, and twice the burden of a dead soldier“. Others downright chilling: during the Second World War the US was scrambling to find a cure for malaria, using inmates as voluntary test subjects in experimentation that “mirrored the Nazi procedures being carried out on Jewish prisoners at Dachau“.
“Winegard’s writing […] does not shy away from unpleasant observations […] Some are ruthlessly pragmatic: “a sick soldier is just as useless to the war effort as a wounded soldier, and twice the burden of a dead soldier“.”
The final few chapters chronicle how the mosquito was finally unmasked in 1897 as the agent of disease transmission, and the temporary success story of pharmaceuticals and the insecticide DDT in combating malaria during and after the Second World War. A premature feeling of victory, indiscriminate use of these cures, and the profit-motive of pharmaceutical companies all have led to insufficient research on new cures, quickly resulting in resistant mosquitoes threatening humanity once more (a pattern that is seen more widely). Winegard briefly discusses CRISPR as the latest weapon in our arsenal and seems hopeful this could go a long way in fighting back.
If you are fond of big history books, The Mosquito is easy to recommend. Winegard has written a captivating and absorbing narrative history book that serves as a powerful reminder just how much disease has plagued us in the past and just how large a share of this is courtesy of a certain diminutive flying insect with a stinging proboscis.
*The word malaria, for example, comes from the mediaeval Italian “mala aria”, meaning “bad air”, pointing to the long-held miasma theory that blamed noxious fumes associated with marshy and swampy areas for the disease.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age Transformed the West and Shaped the Present“, written by Philipp Blom, published in Europe by Picador in March 2019 (hardback, 332 pages)
Depending on who you ask, the Little Ice Age lasted from about the 13th to the 19th century. McMichael gave a brief overview of this whole period in his book Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations, while noted archaeologist Brian Fagan wrote a book about it (see The Little Ice Age). The worst of the cold periods, however, were concentrated between roughly 1570-1680, and this is the period Blom focuses on. Here, too, he is not the first to do so, with Geoffrey Parker’s 800+-page tome Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century providing a general overview for this particular period on civilizations around the world. For Nature’s Mutiny, Blom has decided to furthermore limit his focus on Europe. As he frankly explains in his prologue, he feels he lacks the expertise and language skills to delve into the relevant Asiatic and Aztec histories, plus Europe had an outsized influence on the world during this time. Luckily, Sam White’s A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America partially fills this gap.
Blom is particularly interested in the consequences of the Little Ice Age, rather than the causes, which remain contested to this day. He therefore barely goes into the palaeoclimatological proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, pollen residues, etc. that have been used in climate reconstructions. He has divided his book into three parts, first describing the immediate response by people (what they wrote and thought, and how they explained it), while the second and third part look at more ultimate consequences for society, science, culture, war, and the economy.
The first part of Nature’s Mutiny is therefore really environmental history as you might expect it. Blom explores eyewitness testimony in diaries and letters, and the rise of a new genre in painting: the winter landscape (Bruegel’s The Hunters in the Snow being a well-known example). Another unexpected source is account ledgers. The fluctuating weather destroyed entire grain harvest, but it was the more expensive commodity of wine (and therefore the grape harvest) for which dates and prices are well documented. The initial responses were as you would expect for a mediaeval society: witch hunts, religious processions, and supernatural explanations were widespread. But God did not seem to be at home and new intellectual currents started taking shape.
“The initial responses [to the Little Ice Age] were as you would expect for a mediaeval society: witch hunts, religious processions, and supernatural explanations.”
For the remainder of the book, the Little Ice Age takes a back seat as Blom explores the more ultimate consequences. One major transformation was the shift from a feudal system with peasants working the land for a lord to a market economy. As grain harvests failed, a way of life almost a millennium old rapidly disintegrated. Land was privatised, including commons normally used by peasants to feed livestock, and large numbers of peasants were displaced into growing cities.
The Netherlands, in particular, played a pivotal role in this period. As they build a maritime empire, the country entered a golden age of trade (see also The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720), which further affected grain prices and land use patterns. Simultaneously, this period of overseas exploration and colonialism led to the exchange of ideas, goods, plants, and diseases (see The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492). It may seem odd to us now, but potatoes were once a novelty to farmers who eyed them suspiciously.
A further consequence Blom highlights is that in a world increasingly shaped by bureaucracies, tax systems, and long-distance trade, there was a need for educated people. Formal education to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic became more commonplace. With literacy came the written word in the form of printed books and especially pamphlets. Warfare changed as technological developments led to new kinds of weaponry, requiring different strategies on the battlefield.
“As grain harvests failed, a way of life almost a millennium old rapidly disintegrated.”
In the third part, Blom focuses particularly on important philosophical figureheads such as Pierre Bayle, Spinoza, and John Locke. With them, religious explanations started to give way to empirical observations, atheist arguments, and humanist thinking. The Enlightenment took off and with it science as we now recognise it was starting to take shape. But this was not a straight, simple path and there was plenty of hypocrisy at play here. Voltaire is given as an example of someone who argued for humanist values such as freedom of speech and tolerance, while at the same being a racist and slaveholder, and lending money to other aristocrats who behaved the same.
Blom’s epilogue is particularly interesting, as he sees our 21st century as a continuation of developments that started in the 17th century, rather than a parallel. We may have become intellectually more enlightened, but capitalism still rules supreme and our economic success continues to depend on the exploitation of cheap labour and (especially) our natural environment. As before, it is defended by uneasy and contradictory reasoning. We decry climate change, but will hardly let it compromise our bottom line, trying to weasel our way out of it with contrived mechanisms such as sustainable development and carbon credits, or token efforts such as green consumerism and recycling. As Blom points out, Voltaire would have understood.
Throughout the latter two-thirds of the book, I regularly found myself thinking “what does this have to do with the Little Ice Age?” I have seen some other reviewers grumble that Blom tries to use this period of climatic change as an explanatory factor for everything. I don’t think that is entirely justified. Yes, he takes the Little Ice Age as his starting point. But rather than saying explicitly that, for example, the Enlightenment was a direct product of it, he sees it as an indirect phenomenon arising from a chain of causes and knock-on effects. In my opinion, the book fairly quickly transitions from environmental history to a more conventional history book, with the climate forming a backdrop. Depending on your expectations, I can see how this might disappoint some. But that doesn’t take away that Blom’s survey is interesting, well-executed, and eye-opening. I admit not having read most other books I mentioned, so it’s hard for me to judge here how it compares. But it has whetted my appetite to read deeper into this topic.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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