Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A most enjoyable survey, 14 Jan 2008
This splendid book gives us the flavour of Western historians from the Ancient Greeks to the Twentieth Century. Burrow does not neglect the Philosophy of History, but that is not his main concern: rather does he bring out the personality of the historians through their writings and how their books have been shaped by their own times and their own experiences. Plentiful quotations from their works illustrate the book; they are beautifully chosen, and a pleasure to read in themselves.
Burrow is very good on tracing the influence of the historians of Greece and Rome on the historians of much later centuries - of Tacitus on Gibbon, to give just one example. About a third of the book is rightly devoted to Antiquity. We are reminded how deservedly Antiquity is regarded, in this field also, as one of the cradles of European thought, and how extraordinarily relevant the experiences of the Ancient World are to our own. This was known among the educated classes in the days when Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus were a staple of education: they found these classics an inexhaustible fund of enlightenment and understanding of political processes, providing models as well as warnings
Certainly there is a sad falling off after the classical period. The early Christian historians abandoned the aim of being impartial, relentlessly promoted orthodox Christianity and implacably blackened the unorthodox. Where historians like Eusebius and Bede did have a philosophy to guide them, they traced what they saw as God's plan in history; but a lesser man, like the 6th century Bishop Gregory of Tours, to whom Burrow devotes an amusing chapter (he calls him `Trollope with bloodshed'), seems to show, in his mistitled History of the Franks, nothing at all of what we could recognize as philosophical reflections - though with or without such reflections, we can of course learn much about the ways of life and preoccupations that he depicts.
The same is broadly true of the medieval annals and chronicles to which Burrow devotes a solid chunk of his book. In Froissart's Chronicles we learn much about the code of chivalry between knights (though the code does not apply to the treatment of commoners). Burrow extracts some vivid or entertaining material from them, and he is often a witty and entertaining commentator himself. He remarks that we should not expect narrative or thematic connections in annals: `we should think instead of a newspaper whose time scale is the year, not the day. We are ourselves unperturbed by the most diverse news stories appearing in juxtaposition, ...' The scurrilous 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris reminds Burrow `of a modern tabloid editor: disrespectful, populist, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual', and an attempt to bowdlerize him would be `like trying to de-vein Gorgonzola'.
However, Renaissance historians, like Bruni, Machiavelli and Guiccardini, modelled themselves once again on the histories of ancient Rome and Greece. Like them, they were fine stylists and sometimes invented speeches; looked for lessons that history could teach; saw patterns of order degenerating into disorder until order was reestablished; lamented the decline of the republican virtues and the decline of freedom; were cynical (realistic?) about how rulers maintain themselves in power; and were interested in the intricate relationships between neighbouring and competing states.
During the Renaissance also we first find an interest in Antiquarianism, research not only into the sources of Roman Law, but also into the Customary Law of the `barbarians' which Roman Law replaced or absorbed. The discovery of these more ancient sources and of the `immemorial rights' of subjects will play a part in the struggle against absolutism in the 16th century France and 17th century England, and, in the hands of William Stubbs in the 19th century, in the progression of English liberties down to his own time.
As the book moves into the discussions of historians in the 17th and 18th century, it becomes slightly heavier going and is not lit up as often by shafts of Burrow's wit, though one of these historians, Edward Gibbon, compensates for this with his own, thankfully mined by Burrow.
For the 19th century we have two superlative sections contrasting Macaulay and Carlyle - all they have in common is that they both `stand at the apex of a long movement, before austere professionalism spoiled the game, to render history for the reader in its full sensuous and emotional immediacy and circumstantiality'.
These sections are followed by one brilliantly contrasting 19th century French historians, notably Michelet and Taine, showing how the French Revolution continued to be subject to different and passionate interpretations.
Another section also deals beautifully with contrasts, this time between the sober way in which Bernal Diaz describes the conquest of Mexico in which he had himself taken part and the more Gibbonesque version of the subject by W.H.Prescott in the mid-19th century. Another American historian whom Burrow describes with infectious sympathy is Francis Parkman, the evocative 19th century chronicler of the American Indians' 17th century encounters with the French (who sometimes went native) and the British (whose victory over the French was a disaster for the Indians).
Burrow's last two chapters deal with the professionalization of history: its introduction into the universities as independent faculties; its consequent bureaucratization; its aim in the late 19th century, under German influence, to be like a science; and, in the 20th century, in its conscious obedience to rival philosophies of history and the influence that other disciplines exert on it. It became more technical and more specialized. Analysis of structure became more fashionable than narrative. There was an explosion in the number of historians and in the areas of life that are of interest to them. These chapters are worthy rather than inspiring - possibly Burrow himself is less inspired by that kind of history: he treats no individual work of history with the expansiveness which he had bestowed on earlier works.
I hope the success of this book will lead to a reprint of the author's book on Victorian historians.
|
|
|
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent., 19 May 2008
I was going to write more than just "excellent" but the previous review seems to cover all the points I wanted to make (and more!).
Just to say that as a person reading history for pleasure I found the book excellent and it has already led me to re-read some of the works mentioned.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not a history book, but a history of many histories, 22 Sep 2009
This is not in itself a history book, but a book about history (or histories as the author prefers to call them). Burrow's is a retired academic, and it is said that he has ventured a bit outside his usual domain to write a history about how people wrote about history over the past 2,500 years.
I am not a particular fan of histories about precise periods or so-called famous people, but I do like books that try to paint a big picture - and this book truly tries to do just that.
The author has limited himself to Western historians (Europe and North America), and to those who wrote in English (or available in translation). I've seen a comment suggesting that ignoring Confucius or belittling Montesquieu weakens the overall objective of the book - possibly, but every book has to set limits to its coverage, and this book certainly covers an enormous amount of ground.
The first third of the book is dedicated to historians from ancient Greece and Rome (Herodotus and Thucydides), and clearly Burrow's is in his element. He claims that they set the standard against which historians must be measured (a focus on big political issues of public consequence, great deeds often in war, lessons of statecraft, and aiming at truth through first person experience). His text is lucid, easy to read, and dare I say it, for a history book positively interesting.
The second part of the book focuses on the humanist antiquarian (often living in considerable comfort) and their focus on the evolution of society through solid well documented research and the study of archaeological remains. Again this makes for an enjoyable read, but perhaps lacks the witty comments found in the early chapters.
The later part of the book runs rather rapidly (some would say hurried) through the Enlightenment and emergence of the modern professional historian, with his reliance on proof through trusted documentation, and his interest in the social and economic history of civil society.
Some reviewers have more or less aggressively claimed that the author has ignored one or other masterpiece or great writer. I don't think that it is possible to be really comprehensive in writing a book intended for the non-specialist reader. The author did not hide his anglo-focus, I accepted it on face value, and it leaves space for others to try to better his work.
No matter how you look at this book the result makes for an interesting and enjoyable read (even if at times the style is a little bit academic and possibly old fashioned - but for a history book this simply lends more charm to the text). You feel that the author has really read every last one of the many, many texts referenced in his book, and has re-drafted and re-drafted his proses to make it just right. As I said above, I found the latter part of the book a bit rushed, but this certainly did not detract significantly from my pleasure, and I turned the last page convinced that I will search out more regularly similar texts on the history of history.
|
|
|
|
by Judith Herrin
by Richard Reeves
by Tim Blanning
