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A subject bibliography of the First World War
865
Book Reviews government governments
context. The latter may well be more a threat to democracy in parliamentary systems.
than minority
Steven M. DeIue
Miami University
A Subject Bibliography of The First World War (2nd Edition) English (Aldershot, Gower, 1990), xi +411 pp., 545.00.
A.G.S. Enser, ed., Books in
Bibliographies are a special challenge to reviewers. They force us to renounce our usual focus on structure, logic of argument, marshalling of evidence and felicity of language in favor of categorical organisation, completeness and accuracy. Yet, as recent trends in scholarship have brought home to us, objectivity is elusive and even works which seek to operate as value-free tools require assumptions. Thus bibliographies can and should be judged at once as tools and blueprints. Enser, active in English local government and compiler of a bibliography on World War II, has provided scholars of World War I with an admirably extensive and reliable reference work. Updating the 1979 edition, it includes approximately 6800 entries listed alphabetically and indexed by author or title under 350 subject headings in alphabetical order and cross referenced to other relevant categories. What it is and is not should be emphasised: it includes books (not articles) in English (not other languages) on the war itself (not causes, conclusion or consequences) and is necessarily selective (‘no claim is made for the entries to be exhaustive’, p. viii). The subject headings are straight-forward and extensive, with an expectable emphasis on major military elements (battles, units, commanders, etc.) and political leaders but also minor military questions (e.g., military decorations). It includes border issues, such as conscription, conscientious objectors and pacifism, as well as civil questions, such as women, education and children, entertainment, taxation and economics, and religion. The present historiographical questions of social history are more spottily represented. Class and family are absent, as are health (medical is in), and memory, culture, fiction, literature (though art, films and drama appear), public opinion, nationalism (propaganda and psychology are in), militarism and civil-military relations. Clearly the number of possible categories is virtually infinite and a selection must be made and a rough survey suggests that the subjects employed by Enser are extensive, logical but traditional. The choice of works is likewise revealing but its basis is unfortunately not stipulated. A survey of dates of publication reveals that earlier works are heavily weighted: approximately 50% were published 1914-18,30% 1919-29, and only 20% (roughly spread by decades) 1930-87. If this reflects the actual publication rate, it suggests a radical drop after the 1920’s in interest for the war; if it reflects a selective system (presumably contemporaneous and/or first-hand over subsequent and/or secondary), the user should be informed. At the risk of committing the reviewer’s original sin-asking the author to write a different book-1 would like to offer some suggestions for subsequent editions. It would have been informative for Enser, one of the most knowledgeable bibliographers on both World Wars, to reflect on the organisation, quantity, quality and trends of scholarship on World War I; sadly hedied in 1988, so the task will fall to his successor. Such questions are in fact implied in his too-short (150 word) prefatory note. Understandable in someone who dedicated so much time to the war, he repeats the conventional wisdom that it was a ‘truly shattering event. Its consequences were global, and affected social and political life
866
Book Reviews
as never before.. . . Since 1914 life has never been the same’ (p. vii). Inclusion of more recent works might foster a more subtle and modulated conclusion. He comments that books on the war ‘continue to be published and interest has been revived and widened considerably’ (ibid.). The survey cited above suggests neither that books on the war continue to be published in significant numbers nor that interest has recently revived; in any case, if interest has revived, then it had presumably fallen off and it would be useful to know when and why. Even broader historiographical issues are implied. The greater interwar interest in the World War I was due to its devastation and postwar political implications, implications which unavoidably rendered historiography of the war a political tool; it would be informative for the user to know how and to what extent this element informs works on the war. It would also be interesting to have the editor’s opinion on whether this mountain of scholarship has produced chaos, a consensus or definable schools of interpretation. Since we have as much information on the World War as virtually any historical event and more than most, it suggests a more profound and awkward question: does more information lead us to greater or lesser consensus? Enser’s emphasis of first hand and/or contemporary works presumes a historiographical decision. It assumes that the history of the World War (or any event) is basically fixed by contemporaries rather than re-written or indeed even re-invented as memory by subsequent generations, as some late twentieth century historians assert. In short, even seemingly objective works such as bibliographies have their subjective dimension. L.L. Farrar,
Jr
Chestnut Hill. Mass., U.S.A.
Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire 900-1200, Alan Harvey Cambridge University Press, 1990) xix + 298, pp. $49.50, f30.00.
(Cambridge:
This book, an expanded version of a doctoral dissertation, is an ambitious, if at times awkward, attempt at reinterpretation of Byzantine economic history. The principal antagonist is Georg Ostrogorsky, though the views of other noted Byzantinists, such as Speros Vryonis, are also called into question. The author has used the recent research of Russian and East European scholars and the results of archeological investigations to supplement written evidence, official enactments, chronicles, and saints’ lives. Although the author seeks to draw comparisons between Western Europe and Byzantium in the central Middle Ages, particularly in a discussion of feudal development, his efforts fall far short of the mark because there is no substantive treatment of feudal definitions, to say nothing of the questionable usefulness of feudal concepts overall. This is a book written for specialists of Byzantine history; an uninviting and unnecessarily abstruse approach leads to a confusing mixture of data about monasteries and individual landowners of various stations. Interspersed is a tendency to state the obvious: ‘In fertile and wellsituated localities peasants with a sufficiently large landholding would have had a reasonably healthy diet, probably more healthy than that of the poorer sections of the capital’s population, who were largely dependent on the cheaper range of imported foods. Peasants in less fertile localities had to subsist on less nourishing fare.’ (p. 165). Some chapters are better than others. While the sections on demographic growth and social relations, taxation, and agricultural production are difficult to follow, chapters on the pattern of demand and of town/country relations are somewhat more inspired. Yet even at his best, the author produces a confusing text due to the diverse source materials invoked. This eclectic work would profit enormously from a bibliographic introduction,
Book Reviews government governments
context. The latter may well be more a threat to democracy in parliamentary systems.
than minority
Steven M. DeIue
Miami University
A Subject Bibliography of The First World War (2nd Edition) English (Aldershot, Gower, 1990), xi +411 pp., 545.00.
A.G.S. Enser, ed., Books in
Bibliographies are a special challenge to reviewers. They force us to renounce our usual focus on structure, logic of argument, marshalling of evidence and felicity of language in favor of categorical organisation, completeness and accuracy. Yet, as recent trends in scholarship have brought home to us, objectivity is elusive and even works which seek to operate as value-free tools require assumptions. Thus bibliographies can and should be judged at once as tools and blueprints. Enser, active in English local government and compiler of a bibliography on World War II, has provided scholars of World War I with an admirably extensive and reliable reference work. Updating the 1979 edition, it includes approximately 6800 entries listed alphabetically and indexed by author or title under 350 subject headings in alphabetical order and cross referenced to other relevant categories. What it is and is not should be emphasised: it includes books (not articles) in English (not other languages) on the war itself (not causes, conclusion or consequences) and is necessarily selective (‘no claim is made for the entries to be exhaustive’, p. viii). The subject headings are straight-forward and extensive, with an expectable emphasis on major military elements (battles, units, commanders, etc.) and political leaders but also minor military questions (e.g., military decorations). It includes border issues, such as conscription, conscientious objectors and pacifism, as well as civil questions, such as women, education and children, entertainment, taxation and economics, and religion. The present historiographical questions of social history are more spottily represented. Class and family are absent, as are health (medical is in), and memory, culture, fiction, literature (though art, films and drama appear), public opinion, nationalism (propaganda and psychology are in), militarism and civil-military relations. Clearly the number of possible categories is virtually infinite and a selection must be made and a rough survey suggests that the subjects employed by Enser are extensive, logical but traditional. The choice of works is likewise revealing but its basis is unfortunately not stipulated. A survey of dates of publication reveals that earlier works are heavily weighted: approximately 50% were published 1914-18,30% 1919-29, and only 20% (roughly spread by decades) 1930-87. If this reflects the actual publication rate, it suggests a radical drop after the 1920’s in interest for the war; if it reflects a selective system (presumably contemporaneous and/or first-hand over subsequent and/or secondary), the user should be informed. At the risk of committing the reviewer’s original sin-asking the author to write a different book-1 would like to offer some suggestions for subsequent editions. It would have been informative for Enser, one of the most knowledgeable bibliographers on both World Wars, to reflect on the organisation, quantity, quality and trends of scholarship on World War I; sadly hedied in 1988, so the task will fall to his successor. Such questions are in fact implied in his too-short (150 word) prefatory note. Understandable in someone who dedicated so much time to the war, he repeats the conventional wisdom that it was a ‘truly shattering event. Its consequences were global, and affected social and political life
866
Book Reviews
as never before.. . . Since 1914 life has never been the same’ (p. vii). Inclusion of more recent works might foster a more subtle and modulated conclusion. He comments that books on the war ‘continue to be published and interest has been revived and widened considerably’ (ibid.). The survey cited above suggests neither that books on the war continue to be published in significant numbers nor that interest has recently revived; in any case, if interest has revived, then it had presumably fallen off and it would be useful to know when and why. Even broader historiographical issues are implied. The greater interwar interest in the World War I was due to its devastation and postwar political implications, implications which unavoidably rendered historiography of the war a political tool; it would be informative for the user to know how and to what extent this element informs works on the war. It would also be interesting to have the editor’s opinion on whether this mountain of scholarship has produced chaos, a consensus or definable schools of interpretation. Since we have as much information on the World War as virtually any historical event and more than most, it suggests a more profound and awkward question: does more information lead us to greater or lesser consensus? Enser’s emphasis of first hand and/or contemporary works presumes a historiographical decision. It assumes that the history of the World War (or any event) is basically fixed by contemporaries rather than re-written or indeed even re-invented as memory by subsequent generations, as some late twentieth century historians assert. In short, even seemingly objective works such as bibliographies have their subjective dimension. L.L. Farrar,
Jr
Chestnut Hill. Mass., U.S.A.
Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire 900-1200, Alan Harvey Cambridge University Press, 1990) xix + 298, pp. $49.50, f30.00.
(Cambridge:
This book, an expanded version of a doctoral dissertation, is an ambitious, if at times awkward, attempt at reinterpretation of Byzantine economic history. The principal antagonist is Georg Ostrogorsky, though the views of other noted Byzantinists, such as Speros Vryonis, are also called into question. The author has used the recent research of Russian and East European scholars and the results of archeological investigations to supplement written evidence, official enactments, chronicles, and saints’ lives. Although the author seeks to draw comparisons between Western Europe and Byzantium in the central Middle Ages, particularly in a discussion of feudal development, his efforts fall far short of the mark because there is no substantive treatment of feudal definitions, to say nothing of the questionable usefulness of feudal concepts overall. This is a book written for specialists of Byzantine history; an uninviting and unnecessarily abstruse approach leads to a confusing mixture of data about monasteries and individual landowners of various stations. Interspersed is a tendency to state the obvious: ‘In fertile and wellsituated localities peasants with a sufficiently large landholding would have had a reasonably healthy diet, probably more healthy than that of the poorer sections of the capital’s population, who were largely dependent on the cheaper range of imported foods. Peasants in less fertile localities had to subsist on less nourishing fare.’ (p. 165). Some chapters are better than others. While the sections on demographic growth and social relations, taxation, and agricultural production are difficult to follow, chapters on the pattern of demand and of town/country relations are somewhat more inspired. Yet even at his best, the author produces a confusing text due to the diverse source materials invoked. This eclectic work would profit enormously from a bibliographic introduction,