Ian Wood (1)

Ian Wood takes as his focus here how historians' understandings of the early medieval period changed between the eighteenth century and the present day, and how the social and political circumstances within which these historians worked shaped their interpretations of the past. Wood covers an impressively broad array of sources from across Western Europe to make his case—from Henri, comte de Boulainvilliers' Etat de la France in the 1720s, to the French Revolution, to British imperialists and German fascists, right through to Peter Brown and his students in the twenty-first century—and does so in some analytical detail.

He is, however, less strong on the historiographies of early medieval Ireland and England, or Visigothic Spain. Wood is largely concerned with the historiography of the Romanist-Germanist debate, and so justifies the exclusion of these "fringe" regions on the grounds that the fall of Rome wasn't particularly significant in those areas. Hrm. That said, an author does have to draw a line somewhere, and this is already 400 very dense pages. What is clear from The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages is that such work could and should be done on these other national historiographies.

This book would be profitably read by any postgraduate student of history, and should be required reading for aspiring medievalists.… (mer)