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Review
| A Concise History of Byzantium, by Warren Treadgold. New York, New York: Palgrave, 2001. 273 pp. $19.95, paper.
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| Warren Treadgold's Concise History of Byzantium is a remarkable feat of compression. In just under 250 pages Treadgold surveys the major events in Byzantine history from Diocletian's third-century partition of the Roman Empire to the fall of the last independent fragment of the Byzantine Empire in 1461. The book is based on, but not simply abridged from, his much longer History of the Byzantine State and Society (1997). Although Treadgold never explicitly says so, the book seems aimed at undergraduates who will use it as an introductory textbook in the growing number of courses being offered on Byzantium at American universities. |
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Treadgold's focus is political and military, and the bulk of each chapter is given over to a long chronological account of the Byzantine emperors and their wars. This political narrative is certainly the book's greatest strength. The information is clear and accurate, and although the crush of names and dates can make for slow reading, the political summary should provide a useful reference for students. Additional shorter segments at the end of each chapter on "society" and "culture" supplement the political narrative, and here the book is less successful. These sections include a wide variety of material, from additional discussions of the army, to more cursory treatment of the church, art, architecture, and literature. Some of these pieces can be quite strong, as in Treadgold's revealing observations on the Byzantine economy. Other topics are less convincing. His account of the spread of Christianity in late antiquity, in particular, is stridently old-fashioned and well out of step with any current scholarship on the topic. More serious than the strengths and weakness of the individual set pieces, however, is the overall effect of Treadgold's organizational scheme. Treadgold has clearly decided that political history is the most important part of the Byzantine story; hence topics in the subsections on "society" and "culture" appear oddly removed from the main political narrative, as if art and religion are somehow less integral than the imperial family and the army to what we should think of as Byzantine history. This kind of false separation between politics and culture is unfortunate, especially in a book aimed at a novice audience. |
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More problematic still for classroom use is the lack of any notes or indications in the text showing students which materials Treadgold has used to build his history; the primary sources of Byzantine history are for the most part invisible in the main political narrative. Students interested, for example, in Treadgold's vivid portrait of Justinian and Theodora will not know that the choicest details are all drawn directly from Procopius's wonderful Secret History. Similarly, Treadgold bases his account of the emperor Alexius's many troubles with Venetians, Turks and crusaders on Anna Comnena's biography of her father, yet we hear nothing about Anna Comnena or her Alexiad until the end of the chapter in a subsection on literature. Procopius, Anna Comnena, and an increasingly large number of Byzantine sources (only some of which appear in the bibliography) are widely available in English translation. There is no reason why students, even readers only of English, should not be encouraged to interact with the raw materials of Byzantine history right from the beginning of their studies. They will, however, need more help than this book offers to guide them back to this vibrant and accessible literary tradition. As a convenient and introductory reference to politics in Byzantium the book fills a real need and is without rival. Looking beyond politics, however, students and instructors should treat A Concise History of Byzantium with caution. |
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| University of California, Berkeley |
Sam Collins |
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