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Review
| 1215: The Year of Magna Carta, by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham. New York: Touchstone, 2004. xxi+312 pages. $24.00, cloth.
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| Just a few generations ago every schoolboy [sic] would have known 1215 as the year when "bad" King John signed Magna Carta and thus set English-speaking peoples on the inevitable march to freedom and democracy in the Whig future. Times have changed. Sobered by the recognition of the various forms of imperialism and colonialism, historians outside of England have extended their pedagogical canon to include other diverse histories and interpretations. In North America, at least, we cannot take for granted an understanding of, or even an acquaintance with, Magna Carta and its mysteries, clauses, and professed historical importance to the nation. This little book reflects on Magna Carta, and reaffirms its "iconic status" both for America and Britain. It neatly bookends the document with a prose excursion to Runnymeade where The Great Charter was signed. Here there are two memorials: one, a piece of land given to the United States by Britain in memory of John F. Kennedy; the other, British land purchased by the American Bar Association as "a tribute to Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law." Yet, for American students, Magna Carta is no longer a commonly held symbol or icon and their understanding of the unique medieval English environment which forced the King's signature is sadly wanting. In short, most students do not have the background knowledge to make historical sense of Magna Carta. |
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Fortunately however, and despite the authors' protestations to the contrary, the book does not singularly focus on 1215 or even Magna Carta. Rather, it is an accessible introduction to medieval England as it examines the century from the mid-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth with style and clarity. The book's sixteen chapters humanize and explain the people separated by eight centuries from us who lived an ocean away. We learn about their games, their childhood, their foods and manners. Their jokes, their worries, their senses of self become our excursion into their world. Class, countryside, church, and town are painted in accurate broad strokes, preserving the feel of a world gone long ago. In the end, the authors have done what any historian hopes to do—to engage the present with the past and, in the process, to reveal that century as at work creating a world which would contribute to ours in entirely unforeseen ways. |
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Danny Danziger, a professional columnist for the London Sunday Times newspaper, and John Gillingham, a distinguished medieval historian, have partnered on this book to the reader's benefit. Unpretentious and fluid prose makes the work accessible to teenagers and adults. The synthesis of modern historical knowledge (and much about medieval England has been revised over the past thirty years) is impressive. Together, the authors have created both a good read and the means painlessly to acquire a familiarity with the medieval world. Doing so, however, is at some expense. 1215 reads at times like a collection of answers to a quiz-show game—Q: What did the "well-heeled knight" who was "technologically up to date" wear on his head? A: The Great Helm [p. 98]; Q: Who was John Holywood? A: An Englishman who wrote on the spherical shape of the Earth in the early 1200s [p. 223]. Yet because it lacks an interpretive historical thesis, the reader is left wondering just what is important and what is not. While the bibliography lists a good collection of additional reading, it also gives scant hint where or how to pursue an item of interest mentioned in the text. Most troubling for North American students, the book presumes an acquaintance with the names of English kings, English political government, and British geographical locations. However, Danziger and Gillingham do successfully contextualize and conceptualize Magna Carta in a twelfth/thirteenth century environment and they do so in an engaging way. Sadly, they miss the mark when they assert that Magna Carta is an important historical document for them and for us. Reading this book will not tell us why. |
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| Pomona College |
Robert L. Woods, Jr. |
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