THIS IS NOTHING LESS THAN A masterwork, a gloriously sweeping survey of the early history of Europe drawn by a scholar and archaeologist at the very peak of his powers.
The seeds of this magnificent book were sewn in Edinburgh in 2002. Invited to
give the Rhind Lectures at the Royal Scottish Museum, Professor Barry Cunliffe undertook a remarkable timetable. Over a single weekend, he gave six lectures to a packed and rapt audience. A bravura performance punctuated by eye-opening slides which turned conventional views, literally, on their heads, it was like watching the intricate development of a train of thought, a stream of ideas about how Europe changed. Now these have found concrete form in a beautifully illustrated and simply written book.
Cunliffe's thesis is disarmingly straightforward and elegant. In seeking to unpack the history behind the extraordinary expansion of European power and influence all over the world after 1500, he looks closely at how the peoples of the continent communicated and interacted in the 10,000 years before that. It is his central contention that geography was absolutely determinant, and that Europe's long and indented coastline – the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Baltic – encouraged constant mobility, the rapid exchange of ideas and a ceaseless flow of innovation. To illustrate, Cunliffe's approach is like that of a historical hot-air balloonist. Flying high over Europe, in the quiet, still air, he points out the immense generalities, how the littoral is a series of connected seas and bays navigable in short hops, how the great rivers washed ideas, raw materials and people down to the busy shoreline.
And then we descend to highly coloured detail; the 4th-century BC journey to Britain of Pytheas, a Greek traveller from Marseilles, or the gorgeous culture of the Etruscans of central Italy, or the discovery of a burial dating to 4,000BC in Bulgaria where 990 gold objects were uncovered. Soaring over the continent, he expertly draws all these fragments together in a coherent, fluent narrative.
Not only the master of detail, Cunliffe is also abreast of current research in many specialist areas. The huge volume of reading behind a book like this can be underestimated. For example, we are told that at the same time as all that gold was being buried in Bulgaria, the herdsmen of the steppes between the rivers Don and Dnepr were beginning to tame and ride horses. Russian archaeologists found that the teeth of a stallion showed a pattern of wear made by having a solid bit in its mouth, and the cheek pieces of a primitive bridle have been recognised. When horses were later trained to pull carts in place of plodding oxen, the speed of transport improved dramatically from 16 miles a day to between 31 and 37 – a radical change which altered the flow and reach of early economies.
Ships and smaller boats fascinate Cunliffe, but they are also a frustrating subject for study since so few have survived. Clearly they were important in long-distance trade such as that between the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Roman historians knew of the Svears, the tribe who gave their name to Sweden, but for many years they remained a shadowy people on the fringes of Europe. By the 6th century, their kings were being buried in their ships and covered by huge grave-mounds near Uppsala. In a brilliant sketch, Cunliffe uses the archaeological finds to weave these northern outposts into the fabric of European history.
There are hundreds of examples of great erudition and innovative thinking in this wonderful book, but its chief pleasure is the sheer sweep of the thing, its confidence – born of a lifetime of study, its brio and its crystal-clear thinking.
The full article contains 650 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
