The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages by Ian Wood (review)

Responding to the attacks of British politicians and administrators, who defined medieval history as an irrelevant topic of research, and defending public funding in the humanities, Ian Wood has examined the relevance of scholarship on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages for the better understanding of the modern world. According to Wood, "to write about early medieval history is not just to solve a series of problems relating to the distant past: it is to engage in a complex (and often unrecognized) dialogue between past and present, in which the past is called upon as a validation and critique of the here and now, in which the present is, therefore, as much the subject of consideration as the past" (p. x).

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages examines how historians interpreted the period between the late Roman Empire and the first part of the early Middle Ages (roughly 300–700 CE). The book begins with the analysis of Etat de la France of Henri, Comte de Boulainvilliers (†1722), published posthumously in 1727–28, and the response to it by Abbot Jean-Baptiste du Bos, Histoire critique de l'établissment de la monarchie française dans les Gaules (1742), but it does not end with a scholarly work or a study. The last chapter of the book, "Presenting a New Europe," is instead dedicated to the last thirty years of the twentieth century. In it, Wood presents a summary of the principal historiographical debates of this period and how the distant past has been presented in archaeological exhibitions organized in Europe.

The work of de Boulainvilliers and the reply of du Bos present a perfect beginning for this type of book, because in the Etat de la France, the author emphasizes that the French monarchy was born with Clovis, who had united the various Frankish tribes and had converted to Catholicism. Like the king of the Franks, the king of the modern French also had to be considered a primus inter pares (first among equals) and therefore the power of the king was limited by the rights of the French aristocracy (to which Boulainvilliers belonged), the direct descendants of free Frankish warriors. According to du Bos, however, this interpretation of the past placed too much emphasis on the weakness of the Romans and the power of the Franks. The French abbot believed that Clovis and his successors had governed by relying on the imperial office that the Byzantine emperor had granted to Clovis and by using Roman institutions. In de Bos's view, the definitive break with the Roman past came when Hugh Capet became king in 987. The different positions of these two scholars developed into an important debate between "Germanists" and "Romanists" in the following 250 years. The Romanists stressed the continuity of the Roman world into the early Middle Ages, while the Germanists perceived the early Middle Ages as presenting a break from the Roman era. The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, however, does not only examine these debates, but also analyzes how intellectual and political currents, and sometimes religion, influenced the writing of those scholars.

In many cases, Wood does not limit himself to offering a summary, but makes a detailed analysis of the sources these scholars used and of the periods in which they lived. Particularly incisive is his examination of the works of the German historian, Felix Dahn (1834–1912), who, in addition to having been a prolific scholar, wrote a historical novel, Ein Kampf um Rom (1876), which was a huge success and which remained popular for many years. Novelizing the last period of the Ostrogoths' rule in Italy during the sixth century, Dahn wrote "an ideologically motivated prehistory of the German Reich. . . . Dahn's historical novel is a further building block for the construction of a national past and with it a national identity" (p. 193).

In other cases, Wood concentrates too much on the period in...