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Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature , by Donald E. Brown (Arizona University Press, 1988).

Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature, by Donald E. Brown (Arizona University Press, 1988). Donald Brown states the theme of his book in his opening sentence: "Among some literate peoples, historians have flourished; among others they have not. Why should this be so?" He tells us that the question came to him during the course of his anthropological study of Brunei in the mid-1960s. Although wielding considerable influence in the region over five centuries, this Malay sultanate had recorded little of its past. From some initial attempts to explain this lack in terms of Brunei society and culture, he looked comparatively at other southeast Asian states and then embarked on an ambitious survey of European and Asian historiography. Brown's conclusion is that "ahistoricity is typical of literate caste-organized societies." Correspondingly, "a relatively sound and extensive production of written historical materials is commonly associated with open patterns of social stratification." In support of this argument, the book examines a series of cases, including China and South Asia, Brunei and Maccassar, the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, medieval Europe and Byzantium, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and yet others. To review what these societies have written about the past and to assess the degree of social mobility or closure, both over long periods, is a daunting— not to say thankless—task. It is always hard for the comparativist to satisfy the specialist; at the same time it is difficult to summarize vast literatures and be both faithful to the sources and accessible to the reader. This reviewer, who read most of the chapters as a nonspecialist, found them uneven, though doubtless some sources were more amenable to the author's task than others. The studies of the Near East and Byzantium seemed lively and vivid, those on medieval Europe and Southeast Asia rather dry. In the case of Venice we do not have to infer the reasons why history did not develop: The state stifled it in the knowledge of what historians were able to write in nearby Florence. At one point Venice devised an ingenious compromise whereby historians might write about other states but not their own. What is memorable about this book, however, is its exploration of comparative historiography and its attempt to locate history-making in a particular type of social and political milieu. Brown sees the practice as part of a larger pattern including the recognition of individuality, a uniform conception of human nature—for the subjects of the history if not humanity at large— realistic portraiture, a humanistic secular orientation, and some more. These indicate a conception of history as being about the deeds and fallibility of human beings rather than about them as gods and depersonalized paragons. In other words, history is opposed to myth and hagiography. (One may note in