There is a huge lack of first-person sources – diaries, journals, letters, something to connect the history with real life. It's funny to see how this detail reappears in almost every printed review of the book – because it's the only thing even vaguely anecdotal in the whole one thousand pages. On page 490 of The Holy Roman Empire, Wilson pauses to note that Bishop Meinward of Paderborn ‘once had a woman dragged on her bottom across her garden until it was clear of weeds’. I am told that the Nine Years War required the calling-up of 31,340 Kreistruppen – but when it comes to who they were fighting, or where, or why, I'm completely in the dark. Social convulsions like the witchcraft craze or the Black Death might as well never have happened, and even such enormities as the Reformation only seem to feature when they intersect with one of Wilson's master-themes. Similarly, I've read a fair bit about Ferdinand II in books about the Thirty Years War, and was hoping to get a fuller picture of him: he remains a complete cipher. Here, he's a nonentity who shuffles vaguely in and out at intervals of several hundred pages. What happens here is that you leap centuries from one paragraph to the next in pursuit of details relating to (for instance) the empire's interaction with the papacy, but you never stay anywhere long enough to get a sense of the personalities or societies at play.įrederick Barbarossa, the twelfth-century emperor, should have been a shoo-in for compelling hero: a dashingly handsome, multilingual polymath who rewrote law codes and led an army on the Third Crusade. Arguably, the problem of trying to maintain a working timeline in your head is even worse than the problem of trying to maintain themes in your head when reading a chronological study. It sounds logical but having read this, I don't think it really works. Wilson does here: abandon chronology altogether, and structure your book entirely thematically. Another solution is to do what Simon Winder did in Danubia: throw up your hands and say, ‘Fuck it, this is impossible, so here's a few choice historical anecdotes and some postcards from my city-break to Vienna.’ This can work surprisingly well, too, if you can find a suitable prose style and if you don't mind surrendering any claim to writing an objective history. She can knuckle down and simply plough through in chronological order – in the manner of, let's say, Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity (which is great). Another solution is to do what Simon Winder did in Danubia: throw up your hands and say, ‘Fuck it, this is impossible, so here's a few choice historical anecdotes and some postcards from my city-break to Vienna.’ This can work surprisingly well, too, i The historian facing an unmanageably large topic has a few strategies open to her. The historian facing an unmanageably large topic has a few strategies open to her. The result is a tour de force - a book that raises countless questions about the nature of political and military power, about diplomacy and the nature of European civilization and about the legacy of the Empire, which has continued to haunt its offspring, from Imperial and Nazi Germany to the European Union.more It is not a chronological history, but an attempt to convey to readers why it was so important and how it changed over its existence. In this strikingly ambitious book, Peter H. It was a great engine for inventions and ideas, it was the origin of many modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, its relations with Italy, France and Poland dictated the course of countless wars - indeed European history as a whole makes no sense without it. It was a great engine for inventions and ideas, it was the origin of many modern European states, from Germany to the Czech Republic, its relations with Italy, France and Poland dictated the co A great, sprawling, ancient and unique entity, the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later, formed the heart of Europe. A great, sprawling, ancient and unique entity, the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding by Charlemagne to its destruction by Napoleon a millennium later, formed the heart of Europe.
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