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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