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East central Europe in the middle ages, 1000–1500
Book Reviews
15 7
East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, Jean W. Sedlar (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994), A History of East Central Europe, Volume HI, xiii + 556 pp., n.p.g. This volume is part of the ten-volume series A History of East Central Europe, edited by Peter F. Sugar and the recently deceased Donald W. Treadgold. The first volume was published two decades ago. Sedlar's volume is the eighth to be published. The Middle Ages 'was in many respects the Golden Age for the nationalities of East Central Europe' (p. ix). Sedlar shows, moreover, that the medieval states of these nationalities belonged in an all-European context of historical development. Sedlar calls attention to '[t]he almost total neglect of medieval East Central Europe in histories of Western civilization' (p. ix). A second disadvantage for the possibility to locate East Central Europe within the framework of 'Western civilisation' is the negative evaluation of the Middle Ages in historiography. Sedlar's work thus fills a void. Her treatment of East Central Europe in the period 10001500 makes clear that there was a unified European civilization, although with important local variations, and that there was continuity with the classical period. In Sedlar's book, East Central Europe emerges as the meeting ground of Western and Eastern Christendom and of Germans and Western Slavs, with Hungarians and Romanians sandwiched in between and Moslem Turks intruding from the south. As Sedlar observes, crown and dynasty, not language or history, confered legitimacy and defined citizenship before the rise of nationalism. The problem of nationalist anachronism is solved by Sedlar's thematic approach. She deals with structures, institutions, social classes, norms and values, not with 'nations' per se. Sedlar has incorporated the main findings and conclusions of modem specialized historical analysis in her treatment of a number of crucial events and trends. The political weakness of the towns and the rise of the gentry in the Polish and Hungrian kingdoms receive due attention in Sedlar's explanation of the long term developments in the region and in her analysis of similarities and differences between East Central and Western Europe. The thematic disposition of Sedlar's book has the consequence that some details are repeated. This is not a drawback but serves to deepen the understanding of the historical process. When one and the same event is placed in different contexts, the multiple meaning of it becomes obvious to the reader. Sedlar's approach gives Germans and Jews their due place in the medieval history of East Central Europe. It is not any mechanistic history of 'influence' of Germans and Jews and 'reception' among Poles and Czechs but an analysis of the consequences of the fusion of different traditions. Sedlar demolishes many nationalist myths and stereotypes. The description of the Transylvanian question stresses how anachronistic are 20th century nationalist 'historical claims' to the region. She dismisses the Czech myth that Wenceslas I should have saved Europe by standing up againt the Mongols--it was the latter who failed to attackmand the Serb myth about Stephen Dusan---who merely took advantage of a temporal power vacuum in the central Balkans when he established Greater Serbia. An important aspect of East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, is the stress on the salience of the general European context. A thought-provoking instance is Sedlar's description of the evolution of the constitutional structure in Hungary in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In 1290, Andrew III was elected king of Hungary. He was raised in Venice and 'familiar with the republican and aristocratic traditions of his native city' (p. 287). Under his reign, the meetings of the Hungarian diet 'acquired a genuinely legislative character' (ibid.). However, constitutional developments in Hungary were interrupted under the next king
158
Book Reviews
(after an interregnum), Charles robert of Anjou, a native of Naples, i.e. of the Normandie kingdom in southern Italy. He and his son Louis chose to govern in an autocratic fashion, according to Sedlar because 'his French roots influenced them to copy Western models of royal absolutism' (ibid.). However, the royal absolutism of the Angevins was not the rule everywhere in Western Europe. It was typical of the Normandie kingdom in southern Italy. Sedlar has caught attention to a main issue in the discussion on the origins of the different political cultures in Europe during the last millennium. Andrew's Venice and Charles's Naples constitute opposite 'Western models'. Robert Putnam's path-breaking recent socio-historical analysis of Italy's regions underlines the importance of the respective traditions of Venice and Naples for the development of distinctly different political cultures, marked by civic society and authoritarianism, respectively, in northern and southern Italy? A juxtaposition of Putnam and Sedlar enhances understanding of East Central European history. Constitutional developments in late medieval Hungary can be described as a struggle between the Venetian and the Angevine 'models' in a socio-political environment which differed from both. The history of East Central Europe in the Middle Ages thus can be interpreted and evaluated with the help of generalizations and conceptualizations developed within research on Western Europe. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, is a remarkable book. Sedlar combines a lucid and fluent exposition with a very substantial content. The 'rehabilitation' of the Golden Age of the East Central European nations makes the book especially topical in the post-1989 process of state-building in the area. Its non-nationalist approach and its stress on common European traits make it a sobering antidote to the misuse of history by contemporary politicians in countries such as Romania and Serbia. It is to be hoped that Sedlar's book will be widely read not only in Western universities but also by people in East Central Europe. In any case, the volume is bound to become a standard work of reference for anyone interested in the history of East Central Europe and the Middle Ages in general. Kristian Gemer
Uppsala University, Sweden NOTES
1. Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1993).
The Human Difference: Animals, Computers, and the Necessity of Social Science, Alan
Wolfe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xxvi + 235 pp., $15.00 P.B. Classical sociology blends science and humanism. George Herbert Mead argued that evolution produced a species with a unique capacity for reflexivity. Mind and self arise in symbolic interaction and therefore are uniquely human. Durkheim advanced the concept of homo duplex: a human being is both an organism embedded in the natural world and also a member of a society infused with sacred symbols embodying moral meaning. Drawing upon these and related classic sociological ideas, Wolfe reiterates the classic argument that
15 7
East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, Jean W. Sedlar (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994), A History of East Central Europe, Volume HI, xiii + 556 pp., n.p.g. This volume is part of the ten-volume series A History of East Central Europe, edited by Peter F. Sugar and the recently deceased Donald W. Treadgold. The first volume was published two decades ago. Sedlar's volume is the eighth to be published. The Middle Ages 'was in many respects the Golden Age for the nationalities of East Central Europe' (p. ix). Sedlar shows, moreover, that the medieval states of these nationalities belonged in an all-European context of historical development. Sedlar calls attention to '[t]he almost total neglect of medieval East Central Europe in histories of Western civilization' (p. ix). A second disadvantage for the possibility to locate East Central Europe within the framework of 'Western civilisation' is the negative evaluation of the Middle Ages in historiography. Sedlar's work thus fills a void. Her treatment of East Central Europe in the period 10001500 makes clear that there was a unified European civilization, although with important local variations, and that there was continuity with the classical period. In Sedlar's book, East Central Europe emerges as the meeting ground of Western and Eastern Christendom and of Germans and Western Slavs, with Hungarians and Romanians sandwiched in between and Moslem Turks intruding from the south. As Sedlar observes, crown and dynasty, not language or history, confered legitimacy and defined citizenship before the rise of nationalism. The problem of nationalist anachronism is solved by Sedlar's thematic approach. She deals with structures, institutions, social classes, norms and values, not with 'nations' per se. Sedlar has incorporated the main findings and conclusions of modem specialized historical analysis in her treatment of a number of crucial events and trends. The political weakness of the towns and the rise of the gentry in the Polish and Hungrian kingdoms receive due attention in Sedlar's explanation of the long term developments in the region and in her analysis of similarities and differences between East Central and Western Europe. The thematic disposition of Sedlar's book has the consequence that some details are repeated. This is not a drawback but serves to deepen the understanding of the historical process. When one and the same event is placed in different contexts, the multiple meaning of it becomes obvious to the reader. Sedlar's approach gives Germans and Jews their due place in the medieval history of East Central Europe. It is not any mechanistic history of 'influence' of Germans and Jews and 'reception' among Poles and Czechs but an analysis of the consequences of the fusion of different traditions. Sedlar demolishes many nationalist myths and stereotypes. The description of the Transylvanian question stresses how anachronistic are 20th century nationalist 'historical claims' to the region. She dismisses the Czech myth that Wenceslas I should have saved Europe by standing up againt the Mongols--it was the latter who failed to attackmand the Serb myth about Stephen Dusan---who merely took advantage of a temporal power vacuum in the central Balkans when he established Greater Serbia. An important aspect of East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, is the stress on the salience of the general European context. A thought-provoking instance is Sedlar's description of the evolution of the constitutional structure in Hungary in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In 1290, Andrew III was elected king of Hungary. He was raised in Venice and 'familiar with the republican and aristocratic traditions of his native city' (p. 287). Under his reign, the meetings of the Hungarian diet 'acquired a genuinely legislative character' (ibid.). However, constitutional developments in Hungary were interrupted under the next king
158
Book Reviews
(after an interregnum), Charles robert of Anjou, a native of Naples, i.e. of the Normandie kingdom in southern Italy. He and his son Louis chose to govern in an autocratic fashion, according to Sedlar because 'his French roots influenced them to copy Western models of royal absolutism' (ibid.). However, the royal absolutism of the Angevins was not the rule everywhere in Western Europe. It was typical of the Normandie kingdom in southern Italy. Sedlar has caught attention to a main issue in the discussion on the origins of the different political cultures in Europe during the last millennium. Andrew's Venice and Charles's Naples constitute opposite 'Western models'. Robert Putnam's path-breaking recent socio-historical analysis of Italy's regions underlines the importance of the respective traditions of Venice and Naples for the development of distinctly different political cultures, marked by civic society and authoritarianism, respectively, in northern and southern Italy? A juxtaposition of Putnam and Sedlar enhances understanding of East Central European history. Constitutional developments in late medieval Hungary can be described as a struggle between the Venetian and the Angevine 'models' in a socio-political environment which differed from both. The history of East Central Europe in the Middle Ages thus can be interpreted and evaluated with the help of generalizations and conceptualizations developed within research on Western Europe. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, is a remarkable book. Sedlar combines a lucid and fluent exposition with a very substantial content. The 'rehabilitation' of the Golden Age of the East Central European nations makes the book especially topical in the post-1989 process of state-building in the area. Its non-nationalist approach and its stress on common European traits make it a sobering antidote to the misuse of history by contemporary politicians in countries such as Romania and Serbia. It is to be hoped that Sedlar's book will be widely read not only in Western universities but also by people in East Central Europe. In any case, the volume is bound to become a standard work of reference for anyone interested in the history of East Central Europe and the Middle Ages in general. Kristian Gemer
Uppsala University, Sweden NOTES
1. Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1993).
The Human Difference: Animals, Computers, and the Necessity of Social Science, Alan
Wolfe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), xxvi + 235 pp., $15.00 P.B. Classical sociology blends science and humanism. George Herbert Mead argued that evolution produced a species with a unique capacity for reflexivity. Mind and self arise in symbolic interaction and therefore are uniquely human. Durkheim advanced the concept of homo duplex: a human being is both an organism embedded in the natural world and also a member of a society infused with sacred symbols embodying moral meaning. Drawing upon these and related classic sociological ideas, Wolfe reiterates the classic argument that