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The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume II: C. 700-c. 900 ed. by Rosamond McKitterick (review)

The New Cambridge Medieval History,Volume II: C 700-c. 900. Edited by Rosamond McKitterick. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xxxi, 1082. $95.00.) Constituting the middle one of three volumes that will eventually replace Volumes II and III of the "old" CMH (published in 1913 and 1922), this massive work represents the efforts of twenty-seven currently active scholars with academic attachments in ten different countries (six from the United States). In her prefatory remarks Rosamond McKitterick, the editor of the volume, makes it clear that the work is intended to be "new" not only in chronological terms but also conceptually, methodologically, and substantively.This aspect of "newness" will result from the distinctive features of the work: an interdisciplinary approach, a pan-European rather than nationalist perspective, a reconfigured approach to the political dimension of the human enterprise, and an emphasis on social and cultural history. A proper review should assess how well these objectives are realized, but the space available here precludes such a pursuit. Only a brief description of the volume's organization and content is possible, intended to serve as an invitation to readers. Part I (14 chapters; 380 pages) is devoted to "Political Developments."After an opening chapter discussing the problems surrounding the sources and new approaches to their decoding, this segment of the book presents summaries of political activities in the major "states" of eighth- and ninth-century Europe: the British Isles (including separate sections on England, Ireland-Scotland-Wales, and England and the Continent); the Frankish kingdom (three chapters); Scandinavia; the Balkan Slavs and Bulgars; the Muslims in Sicily, south Italy, and Spain; Christian Spain and the Basques; Lombard and Carolingian Italy; and Byzantine Italy. Interspersed are chapters on the Vikings in Francia and England, on the Carolingian.fines imperil, and on Byzantium and the West. While the diversity of approaches to political affairs taken by the authors of these chapters may confuse the average reader seeking the "new" way of understanding the political order, these chapters provide a reliable, readable picture of what happened to all of Europe's political entities between 700 and 900. Offsetting this bounty is a troublesome lack of cohesion. Readers will find themselves asking whether there was a center around which political developments in the eighth and ninth centuries gravitated and, if so, where and/or what it was. Perhaps there was none, but that admission raises a question about treating the two centuries from 700 to 900 as a discrete historical era. Some traditionalists may insist that a more coherent picture of Europe's political development during this period would have emerged had the discussion been organized in a fashion that allowed readers to move outward from a Frankish "center" to the "peripheral" political entities whose histories are told so thoroughly. Perhaps such an approach could have been given new dimensions by bringing to bear on political history told this way the new conceptual and methodological approaches that illuminate the way power was utilized and how it affected people. One suspects that the main barrier to such an approach was a predetermination to avoid "the emphasis of the old history. . . on the creation and maintenance of imperial domination" (p. xviii).The avoidance of that "preoccupation with empire" (p. xviii) very likely also led to what this reviewer considers to be a serious flaw in the treatment of political developments: the decision to treat Frankish history after 814 in terms of developments in the kingdoms in the West on one hand and in the East and Middle kingdoms on the other. Not only does this organizational pattern relegate poor Louis the Pious to a position even less notable than the one from which he has only recently been rescued, but it also mutes, even distorts, a dynamic dimension of Frankish political development that played a crucial role in shaping political affairs throughout the ninth century, that is, the effort to sustain a "Frankish"political presence embodied in a unitary state ruled by a single dynasty. …