Can you say longue durée? If so (or if not), here’s the new book by Barry Cunliffe, with the subtitle 9000 B.C.-AD 1000 indicating a coverage of murky yet critical millennia.
It’s a history of Europe which blends economic geography and economic archaeology. The underlying question is how Europe became so innovative and the answer has much to do with trade and migration. Imagine a more balanced and grounded Braudel. The explanation of the "Neolithic package" and its spread across Europe is stunning. I loved it when the author broke away from a passage about Phoenician trade routes to explain some odd lines in Homer. If you are wondering, Cunliffe is a moderate neo-migrationist. The photography and the color plates of the art are lovely. You can learn how to view the Roman Empire as an "interlude" and as a break from the major story and how to understand 800-1000 A.D. as a period of rebalancing. And you get passages like this:
…the actual return in calorific value for the effort expended in collecting [shellfish] is comparatively small. A single red deer would be worth fifty thousand oysters! That said, the value of shellfish is that they are always available and can be substituted when other food sources run short.
If you enjoy early economic history, this is a must, noting that it does not have the titillating feel of a popular science book. It is my pick for best non-fiction book of the year so far.
Here is the book’s home page. Here is one short review. Here is a Times review. You can buy an excellent long review (LRB) here.
Buy the book here (at $26 the per page price is low) to learn why economic archaeology should win a Nobel Prize someday.
I think that you mean “murky yet critical millennia.”
“…the actual return in calorific value for the effort expended in collecting [shellfish] is comparatively small”: it’s better if you don’t expend energy in opening a shell, but just toss it on the ashes of a fire. I hope he explained this?
This looks very interesting, the synopsis and review remind me a bit of Mann’s “1491″ However, I will be curious to see if he gives as much short shrift to having a great inland sea like the Mediterranean, for surely if Europe benefited from a narrow peninsula and good rivers, the Med provided similar benefits.
Looks interesting – I’ll whack that onto my xmas list, thanks Tyler.
Interested to hear it’s $26 in the US – the UK list price is £30 (about $47) from the times article. Makes me think I”d be relatively better off getting an ipod nano!
I saw this in the library and figured it was either great or terrible — will have to add it to my (sigh) list.
My wife wants you to know that she bought me this book for my birthday and, three months later, it lies unopened.
Intriguing. But I’d like to see Mr Smartypants book writer try to make clam chowder out of a red deer, though. Just not the same…
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