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Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, far longer than ancient Rome. Yet this formidable dominion never inspired the awe of its predecessor. Voltaire distilled the disdain of generations when he quipped it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Yet as Peter Wilson shows, the Holy Roman Empire tells a millennial story of Europe better than the histories of individual nation-states. And its legacy can be seen today in debates over the nature of the European Union.
Heart of Europe traces the Empire from its origins within Charlemagne’s kingdom in 800 to its demise in 1806. By the mid-tenth century its core rested in the German kingdom, and ultimately its territory stretched from France and Denmark to Italy and Poland. Yet the Empire remained stubbornly abstract, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture. The source of its continuity and legitimacy was the ideal of a unified Christian civilization, but this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope over supremacy―the nadir being the sack of Rome in 1527 that killed 147 Vatican soldiers.
Though the title of Holy Roman Emperor retained prestige, rising states such as Austria and Prussia wielded power in a way the Empire could not. While it gradually lost the flexibility to cope with political, economic, and social changes, the Empire was far from being in crisis until the onslaught of the French revolutionary wars, when a crushing defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz compelled Francis II to dissolve his realm.
Heart of Europe traces the Empire from its origins within Charlemagne’s kingdom in 800 to its demise in 1806. By the mid-tenth century its core rested in the German kingdom, and ultimately its territory stretched from France and Denmark to Italy and Poland. Yet the Empire remained stubbornly abstract, with no fixed capital and no common language or culture. The source of its continuity and legitimacy was the ideal of a unified Christian civilization, but this did not prevent emperors from clashing with the pope over supremacy―the nadir being the sack of Rome in 1527 that killed 147 Vatican soldiers.
Though the title of Holy Roman Emperor retained prestige, rising states such as Austria and Prussia wielded power in a way the Empire could not. While it gradually lost the flexibility to cope with political, economic, and social changes, the Empire was far from being in crisis until the onslaught of the French revolutionary wars, when a crushing defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz compelled Francis II to dissolve his realm.
1008 pages, Hardcover
First published February 23, 2016
About the author
Peter H. Wilson
28 books114 followersPeter Hamish Wilson is a British historian. Since 2015, he has held the Chichele Professor of the History of War chair at All Souls College, University of Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
December 10, 2018
The historian facing an unmanageably large topic has a few strategies open to her. She can knuckle down and simply plough through in chronological order – in the manner of, let's say, Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity (which is great). Another solution is to do what Simon Winder did in Danubia: throw up your hands and say, ‘Fuck it, this is impossible, so here's a few choice historical anecdotes and some postcards from my city-break to Vienna.’ This can work surprisingly well, too, if you can find a suitable prose style and if you don't mind surrendering any claim to writing an objective history.
Or you can do what Peter H. Wilson does here: abandon chronology altogether, and structure your book entirely thematically. It sounds logical but having read this, I don't think it really works. Arguably, the problem of trying to maintain a working timeline in your head is even worse than the problem of trying to maintain themes in your head when reading a chronological study. What happens here is that you leap centuries from one paragraph to the next in pursuit of details relating to (for instance) the empire's interaction with the papacy, but you never stay anywhere long enough to get a sense of the personalities or societies at play.
Frederick Barbarossa, the twelfth-century emperor, should have been a shoo-in for compelling hero: a dashingly handsome, multilingual polymath who rewrote law codes and led an army on the Third Crusade. Here, he's a nonentity who shuffles vaguely in and out at intervals of several hundred pages. Similarly, I've read a fair bit about Ferdinand II in books about the Thirty Years War, and was hoping to get a fuller picture of him: he remains a complete cipher. Social convulsions like the witchcraft craze or the Black Death might as well never have happened, and even such enormities as the Reformation only seem to feature when they intersect with one of Wilson's master-themes. I am told that the Nine Years War required the calling-up of 31,340 Kreistruppen – but when it comes to who they were fighting, or where, or why, I'm completely in the dark.
On page 490 of The Holy Roman Empire, Wilson pauses to note that Bishop Meinward of Paderborn ‘once had a woman dragged on her bottom across her garden until it was clear of weeds’. It's funny to see how this detail reappears in almost every printed review of the book – because it's the only thing even vaguely anecdotal in the whole one thousand pages. There is a huge lack of first-person sources – diaries, journals, letters, something to connect the history with real life. If you have a particular area of interest, and look it up in the index, then Wilson's book is sure to be very enlightening (I was interested in how Switzerland came about, and he's great on that subject). He's enlightening and thorough and admirable on loads of subjects. But the book's structure abandons any attempt at narrative history by definition – it leaves the whole thing working fairly well in an encyclopaedic way, but not as something to read through in sequence.
Perhaps the most interesting and important sections are Part Two, which discusses the geographical entities that made up the Empire (why he delays this for so long is beyond me), and the last section where Wilson looks at the empire's reputation in subsequent historiography. Through the blunt force of repetition, his central argument is at least pretty clear: that the empire, as a decentralised entity with multiple sites of power (Germany still doesn't have a single dominant metropolis), did not fit the emerging model of sovereign states – but that it worked rather well all the same, and might be a useful study for contemporary structures like the European Union.
This is a counterargument to the traditional view, which is that it was already an inefficient and moribund dinosaur when Napoleon put it out of its misery in 1806. Adolf Hitler often talked about the Holy Roman Empire for a rhetorical contrast to his own vision of a united Germany, and at one point sent an internal memo that people should stop referring to Germany as the ‘Third Reich’ because it would put people in mind of the hopelessness of the first empire. (Which is ironic, considering that one of the things that has interfered with reassessments of the Holy Roman Empire is the fact that the very word Reich, even in German, has become tainted by Nazism.)
I think overall this book feels like a necessary, but sometimes tedious, laying-out of the groundwork, presenting a lot of otherwise inaccessible German historiography to an English audience and bringing the conversation up to date. It does a really good job of that, but I am definitely looking forward to future writers who can build on this work to do something with a bit more narrative power – because it really is an interesting story, to have this huge and very unusual ‘state’ that was right in the middle of Europe for a thousand years, and then almost completely forgotten.
Nowadays, with Brexit hurtling towards us, the debate is split between people who are ‘pro-Europe’ and people who are ‘anti-Europe’ – but both sides, Wilson points out, are ‘bound by the same understanding of the state as a single, centralized monopoly of legitimate power over a recognized territory. This definition is a European invention, retrospectively backdated to the Peace of Westphalia…’. The Holy Roman Empire was qualitatively different, and including such differences might be a crucial necessity for modern politics. It's a fascinating idea, but in the end I don't think you really need to push through this whole thing to get the point.
Or you can do what Peter H. Wilson does here: abandon chronology altogether, and structure your book entirely thematically. It sounds logical but having read this, I don't think it really works. Arguably, the problem of trying to maintain a working timeline in your head is even worse than the problem of trying to maintain themes in your head when reading a chronological study. What happens here is that you leap centuries from one paragraph to the next in pursuit of details relating to (for instance) the empire's interaction with the papacy, but you never stay anywhere long enough to get a sense of the personalities or societies at play.
Frederick Barbarossa, the twelfth-century emperor, should have been a shoo-in for compelling hero: a dashingly handsome, multilingual polymath who rewrote law codes and led an army on the Third Crusade. Here, he's a nonentity who shuffles vaguely in and out at intervals of several hundred pages. Similarly, I've read a fair bit about Ferdinand II in books about the Thirty Years War, and was hoping to get a fuller picture of him: he remains a complete cipher. Social convulsions like the witchcraft craze or the Black Death might as well never have happened, and even such enormities as the Reformation only seem to feature when they intersect with one of Wilson's master-themes. I am told that the Nine Years War required the calling-up of 31,340 Kreistruppen – but when it comes to who they were fighting, or where, or why, I'm completely in the dark.
On page 490 of The Holy Roman Empire, Wilson pauses to note that Bishop Meinward of Paderborn ‘once had a woman dragged on her bottom across her garden until it was clear of weeds’. It's funny to see how this detail reappears in almost every printed review of the book – because it's the only thing even vaguely anecdotal in the whole one thousand pages. There is a huge lack of first-person sources – diaries, journals, letters, something to connect the history with real life. If you have a particular area of interest, and look it up in the index, then Wilson's book is sure to be very enlightening (I was interested in how Switzerland came about, and he's great on that subject). He's enlightening and thorough and admirable on loads of subjects. But the book's structure abandons any attempt at narrative history by definition – it leaves the whole thing working fairly well in an encyclopaedic way, but not as something to read through in sequence.
Perhaps the most interesting and important sections are Part Two, which discusses the geographical entities that made up the Empire (why he delays this for so long is beyond me), and the last section where Wilson looks at the empire's reputation in subsequent historiography. Through the blunt force of repetition, his central argument is at least pretty clear: that the empire, as a decentralised entity with multiple sites of power (Germany still doesn't have a single dominant metropolis), did not fit the emerging model of sovereign states – but that it worked rather well all the same, and might be a useful study for contemporary structures like the European Union.
This is a counterargument to the traditional view, which is that it was already an inefficient and moribund dinosaur when Napoleon put it out of its misery in 1806. Adolf Hitler often talked about the Holy Roman Empire for a rhetorical contrast to his own vision of a united Germany, and at one point sent an internal memo that people should stop referring to Germany as the ‘Third Reich’ because it would put people in mind of the hopelessness of the first empire. (Which is ironic, considering that one of the things that has interfered with reassessments of the Holy Roman Empire is the fact that the very word Reich, even in German, has become tainted by Nazism.)
I think overall this book feels like a necessary, but sometimes tedious, laying-out of the groundwork, presenting a lot of otherwise inaccessible German historiography to an English audience and bringing the conversation up to date. It does a really good job of that, but I am definitely looking forward to future writers who can build on this work to do something with a bit more narrative power – because it really is an interesting story, to have this huge and very unusual ‘state’ that was right in the middle of Europe for a thousand years, and then almost completely forgotten.
Nowadays, with Brexit hurtling towards us, the debate is split between people who are ‘pro-Europe’ and people who are ‘anti-Europe’ – but both sides, Wilson points out, are ‘bound by the same understanding of the state as a single, centralized monopoly of legitimate power over a recognized territory. This definition is a European invention, retrospectively backdated to the Peace of Westphalia…’. The Holy Roman Empire was qualitatively different, and including such differences might be a crucial necessity for modern politics. It's a fascinating idea, but in the end I don't think you really need to push through this whole thing to get the point.
July 19, 2016
A beautifully designed book that is almost entirely unreadable: less a monograph than an encyclopedia. There is, no doubt, very good reason to write the history of the HRE in this order (Sections: Ideal, Belonging, Governance, Society). Wilson gets to avoid the perils of Great Man History (i.e., it's totally fatuous), and the perils of Materialist History (i.e., it's totally fatuous). He gets to privilege the very hip no-really-ideas-matter-a-lot perspective of contemporary history.
The form doesn't really help in what seems to be the main goal of this book, which is to convince people that old historiography of the HRE is wrong to see it as a doddering mess always holding back the development of nation states. It is, you'll be surprised to learn, more complex than that. All well and good; do we need to be reminded in every section? In every chapter? Every part of every chapter? Yes, because that's the only thing holding this mass of small bits together. Otherwise it is a compendium of short essays on various topics, each one very worthwhile, but on the whole utterly unreadable. A better way to hold them together would have been some sense of narrative, but that would have required a more traditionally chronological book, which would have vitiated all that great avoiding the Great Men and avoiding the Materialists stuff.
Unless that stuff isn't really all that much of a worry, when the third option is a collection of very well-researched, cutting edge wikipedia entries on, e.g., the position of the Hohenzollerns in the Prussian governance systems between 1680 and 1700, particularly when Wilson has literally one sentence structure available to him: clause, but anti-clause, at the same time synthesis clause.
Two things to note: Wilson clearly knows a lot about his subject matter, and I'd love to take a class with him on it. And there's a chronology at the back of the book, f0r mere mortals like me who can't handle the constant flipping between time periods. It's 54 pages long, detailed, but focused. If only the book had more in common with that.
The form doesn't really help in what seems to be the main goal of this book, which is to convince people that old historiography of the HRE is wrong to see it as a doddering mess always holding back the development of nation states. It is, you'll be surprised to learn, more complex than that. All well and good; do we need to be reminded in every section? In every chapter? Every part of every chapter? Yes, because that's the only thing holding this mass of small bits together. Otherwise it is a compendium of short essays on various topics, each one very worthwhile, but on the whole utterly unreadable. A better way to hold them together would have been some sense of narrative, but that would have required a more traditionally chronological book, which would have vitiated all that great avoiding the Great Men and avoiding the Materialists stuff.
Unless that stuff isn't really all that much of a worry, when the third option is a collection of very well-researched, cutting edge wikipedia entries on, e.g., the position of the Hohenzollerns in the Prussian governance systems between 1680 and 1700, particularly when Wilson has literally one sentence structure available to him: clause, but anti-clause, at the same time synthesis clause.
Two things to note: Wilson clearly knows a lot about his subject matter, and I'd love to take a class with him on it. And there's a chronology at the back of the book, f0r mere mortals like me who can't handle the constant flipping between time periods. It's 54 pages long, detailed, but focused. If only the book had more in common with that.
December 31, 2023
A Life’s Labour of Love.
It is clear to me that Peter H. Wilson has spent decades studying the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), Germans and Central Europe as this book could not be written without it. His knowledge, research and studying has thus allowed me to gain an insight into this complex collection of states. The task to write about the HRE, is colossus and daunting and there is in fact no easy way to tell 1000 years of history through one book. I feel Wilson has managed this the best he can and as such this book is a great achievement. However, it is no a ‘masterpiece’ there are issues, but as with most critics I cannot provide a complete solution. Perhaps there is none.
The book follows a thematic approach and is not a narrative history, so if that is what you are searching for, this is not for you. Wilson dives into themes, starting classically with what the ‘Holy’, ‘Roman’ and ‘Empire’ parts meant. I actually think Voltaire’s quote ‘it was in no way Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire’ quite lazy and not witty. He tells us the importance of Charlemagne, who is actually more important than I realised and as such I will look to read more on him. He tells us how it worked, how the Emperors were elected, the state was decentralised, the relationship between the church and Pope, how dukes (initially military leaders) and counts (‘kings friend’) developed. It’s relationship with Italy and later the Habsburgs. Ultimately he shows how it ended in the Napoleonic Wars. He dispels the popular myth that no one cared as he argues there was widespread shock amongst its former subjects.
What was most interesting was Wilson’s analysis of how the HRE was seen afterwards, with nostalgia and also difficulty for nationalists. Then again as justification and a pre curser for the German Empire, Third Reich (a term Hitler actually banned from using) and then in the European Union. Ultimately the empire was a success having lasted so long and providing so many rights to its citizens. The early modern period is widely seen as a weak epoch, managing decline. Either way it’s legacy lives on in Europe today and has to be one of the most interesting factions in history.
I am grateful to this book as it has hugely helped my understanding of pre 1806 Central Europe. However, I would not read it cover to cover and would rather use it as a reference book. As I stated above there are issues with this. The thematic approach does work and I feel one walks away with understanding the bureaucracy, the structure and the management. But the history is less clear. How it began and developed is harder to take away. The book also jumps around in time periods to explain certain elements, which does work, it again can be hard to follow. Like I said to tell 1000 years of history is no easy task and a simple narrative would also not work. So ultimately Wilson has probably provided the best solution. I now can’t wait for his Blood and Iron book.
It is clear to me that Peter H. Wilson has spent decades studying the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), Germans and Central Europe as this book could not be written without it. His knowledge, research and studying has thus allowed me to gain an insight into this complex collection of states. The task to write about the HRE, is colossus and daunting and there is in fact no easy way to tell 1000 years of history through one book. I feel Wilson has managed this the best he can and as such this book is a great achievement. However, it is no a ‘masterpiece’ there are issues, but as with most critics I cannot provide a complete solution. Perhaps there is none.
The book follows a thematic approach and is not a narrative history, so if that is what you are searching for, this is not for you. Wilson dives into themes, starting classically with what the ‘Holy’, ‘Roman’ and ‘Empire’ parts meant. I actually think Voltaire’s quote ‘it was in no way Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire’ quite lazy and not witty. He tells us the importance of Charlemagne, who is actually more important than I realised and as such I will look to read more on him. He tells us how it worked, how the Emperors were elected, the state was decentralised, the relationship between the church and Pope, how dukes (initially military leaders) and counts (‘kings friend’) developed. It’s relationship with Italy and later the Habsburgs. Ultimately he shows how it ended in the Napoleonic Wars. He dispels the popular myth that no one cared as he argues there was widespread shock amongst its former subjects.
What was most interesting was Wilson’s analysis of how the HRE was seen afterwards, with nostalgia and also difficulty for nationalists. Then again as justification and a pre curser for the German Empire, Third Reich (a term Hitler actually banned from using) and then in the European Union. Ultimately the empire was a success having lasted so long and providing so many rights to its citizens. The early modern period is widely seen as a weak epoch, managing decline. Either way it’s legacy lives on in Europe today and has to be one of the most interesting factions in history.
I am grateful to this book as it has hugely helped my understanding of pre 1806 Central Europe. However, I would not read it cover to cover and would rather use it as a reference book. As I stated above there are issues with this. The thematic approach does work and I feel one walks away with understanding the bureaucracy, the structure and the management. But the history is less clear. How it began and developed is harder to take away. The book also jumps around in time periods to explain certain elements, which does work, it again can be hard to follow. Like I said to tell 1000 years of history is no easy task and a simple narrative would also not work. So ultimately Wilson has probably provided the best solution. I now can’t wait for his Blood and Iron book.
July 16, 2017
Heart of Europe is one of those books which can rightfully be called a tome: a sprawling history of the Holy Roman Empire from its beginnings with Charlemagne to its dismantling by Napoleon to the ways in which the Empire has been used and abused by modern historians and politicians. I'm giving it a four stars out of five largely out of sheer respect for the mastery of such a wide range of sources and scholarship that are needed to write such a work. Peter Wilson is clearly steeped in knowledge about central Europe, and I think his central argument—that the HRE shouldn't be dismissed as a ramshackle, inefficient failure because it doesn't look like a modern nation state, but rather assessed on its own terms as a decentralised system that embraced consensus, diverse identities, and local variation—is broadly persuasive.
However, Wilson's writing perhaps mimics the HRE a little too much. By eschewing the Grand Narrative/Big Man view of history (again, something I'm broadly sympathetic to), Wilson must fall back on exploring the HRE through the development of ideas and institutions. That could have worked, but Wilson's tendency to mention every name, date, battle, or other event that relates to the matter at hand means that it's sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees. I found it a bit of a slog at times, and I'm a historian; I'm pretty sure Heart of Europe would be very tedious for the general reader, particularly if they have no prior knowledge of the history of the HRE. Still, as an encyclopaedic guide to the HRE and its historiography, it's sure to become the standard reference work on the topic.
However, Wilson's writing perhaps mimics the HRE a little too much. By eschewing the Grand Narrative/Big Man view of history (again, something I'm broadly sympathetic to), Wilson must fall back on exploring the HRE through the development of ideas and institutions. That could have worked, but Wilson's tendency to mention every name, date, battle, or other event that relates to the matter at hand means that it's sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees. I found it a bit of a slog at times, and I'm a historian; I'm pretty sure Heart of Europe would be very tedious for the general reader, particularly if they have no prior knowledge of the history of the HRE. Still, as an encyclopaedic guide to the HRE and its historiography, it's sure to become the standard reference work on the topic.
October 8, 2018
If you like your history bone dry, this is the book for you! Clearly superior to a series of Wikipedia entries, so who can complain? The notes for the most part refer to secondary sources, but hey, there are an awful lot of them. Wilson has wisely included lists of the emperors and kings in the back of the book, without which most readers would be lost. Some will surely be lost anyway. There were times when I had that feeling – e.g. whenever he lumped several centuries together. Besides this tendency to generalize across the centuries, there is also that of simply piling fact upon fact, and to forego such things as narrative and chronology. The latter, Wilson writes, "would be unfeasibly long" – but is found, to a degree, in Part III (Governance) and also in the last couple of chapters of Part IV, as well as in the Appendix - but narrative only occasionally.
I am quite stubborn, which is proven by the fact that I actually did finish this book. There were times when I feared it might be my bane. It clearly has the potential at least. For in case you are not sufficiently awestruck by the Holy Roman Empire, not to worry. Wilson will do his best to try to reduce you to a dazed, trembling mess. One way he achieves this is by jumping around in time like a squirrel on amphetamine. At one point I only figured out from the footnote that he had moved a century ahead from where he was just a couple of sentences ago.
And at times he writes the strangest things:
"The Ludowinger family inherited (...) the castles of Neuburg on the Unstrut and the Wartburg, the latter made famous in 1817 as the venue for the gathering of German liberal-nationalist students." (p. 374) - Really? He’s just pulling your leg here – it most definitely was made famous around three centuries earlier – which is surely why they gathered there in the first place.
I also note that this has actually been changed in the Belknap-edition, messing it up all over again. There it reads: "...and the Wartburg, the latter made famous in 1517 when Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on its chapel door." – Wouldn’t it have been witty if Luther had ridden out to the Wartburg to invite the Burgherr to participate in the disputation? Sure! But sorry, no, he did no such thing. He arrived there only in 1521, exhausted, constipated, and most probably also rather anxious.
From this you can perhaps better see my point, when I state that in approaching "the material like an eagle flying over the Empire" (p. 5) – we often fly so high that details tend to disappear, and even emperors, princes and centuries get blurred together – and just as this reader was starting to wonder whether we would ever hear anything about the masses of people within the Empire below the ranks of, say, lesser nobility, we finally got there in Part IV. Our tour guide, Peter Wilson (a.k.a. ‘The Eagle’), here continues to be as bureaucratic in his approach as ever, and we get lots and lots of numbers. He displays his impeccable British humour only rarely, but you can sense that it is there when, to illustrate how change was also "stimulated by lordly pressures," an anecdote is offered about the bishop of Paderborn who had peasants beaten for laziness, and "once had one woman dragged on her bottom across her garden until it was clear of weeds." (p. 490) There are a couple more anecdotes in the book - but far too few. It's the same thing here as with the general lack of real narrative - there is simply very little that can help you keep all this information in your memory. The illustrations are good and helps a bit though. It seems Wilson’s mind works somewhat like a computer. Mine, alas, does not. I would happily have read twice the amount of pages if only more chronology and more good old-fashioned narrative had been offered.
Take the topic of Justice. This is treated in chapter 12 (which, by the way, offered surprisingly little about the reception of Roman Law within the Empire.) There had been ample opportunity to bring much of this up earlier, but no. Wilson is adamant. The problem is that it’s not always easy remember back and be able to connect it to those particular historical circumstances when you had a specific need for this information hundreds of pages ago. Perhaps I should have read the book backwards? - I have been moaning about this book since I first started reading it, and when I nevertheless give it a fairly good rating you may think that I have exaggerated a lot in what I’ve written. That would be a mistake. It is the most challenging book I have read in a long time.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
I am quite stubborn, which is proven by the fact that I actually did finish this book. There were times when I feared it might be my bane. It clearly has the potential at least. For in case you are not sufficiently awestruck by the Holy Roman Empire, not to worry. Wilson will do his best to try to reduce you to a dazed, trembling mess. One way he achieves this is by jumping around in time like a squirrel on amphetamine. At one point I only figured out from the footnote that he had moved a century ahead from where he was just a couple of sentences ago.
And at times he writes the strangest things:
"The Ludowinger family inherited (...) the castles of Neuburg on the Unstrut and the Wartburg, the latter made famous in 1817 as the venue for the gathering of German liberal-nationalist students." (p. 374) - Really? He’s just pulling your leg here – it most definitely was made famous around three centuries earlier – which is surely why they gathered there in the first place.
I also note that this has actually been changed in the Belknap-edition, messing it up all over again. There it reads: "...and the Wartburg, the latter made famous in 1517 when Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on its chapel door." – Wouldn’t it have been witty if Luther had ridden out to the Wartburg to invite the Burgherr to participate in the disputation? Sure! But sorry, no, he did no such thing. He arrived there only in 1521, exhausted, constipated, and most probably also rather anxious.
From this you can perhaps better see my point, when I state that in approaching "the material like an eagle flying over the Empire" (p. 5) – we often fly so high that details tend to disappear, and even emperors, princes and centuries get blurred together – and just as this reader was starting to wonder whether we would ever hear anything about the masses of people within the Empire below the ranks of, say, lesser nobility, we finally got there in Part IV. Our tour guide, Peter Wilson (a.k.a. ‘The Eagle’), here continues to be as bureaucratic in his approach as ever, and we get lots and lots of numbers. He displays his impeccable British humour only rarely, but you can sense that it is there when, to illustrate how change was also "stimulated by lordly pressures," an anecdote is offered about the bishop of Paderborn who had peasants beaten for laziness, and "once had one woman dragged on her bottom across her garden until it was clear of weeds." (p. 490) There are a couple more anecdotes in the book - but far too few. It's the same thing here as with the general lack of real narrative - there is simply very little that can help you keep all this information in your memory. The illustrations are good and helps a bit though. It seems Wilson’s mind works somewhat like a computer. Mine, alas, does not. I would happily have read twice the amount of pages if only more chronology and more good old-fashioned narrative had been offered.
Take the topic of Justice. This is treated in chapter 12 (which, by the way, offered surprisingly little about the reception of Roman Law within the Empire.) There had been ample opportunity to bring much of this up earlier, but no. Wilson is adamant. The problem is that it’s not always easy remember back and be able to connect it to those particular historical circumstances when you had a specific need for this information hundreds of pages ago. Perhaps I should have read the book backwards? - I have been moaning about this book since I first started reading it, and when I nevertheless give it a fairly good rating you may think that I have exaggerated a lot in what I’ve written. That would be a mistake. It is the most challenging book I have read in a long time.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
December 5, 2021
A slight disappointment. The Holy Roman Empire (2016) by historian Peter Wilson is arguably the best book on this subject in terms of comprehensiveness, completeness and accessibility. Yet the book is structured in such a way that it is hard to really get the full treatment on the Holy Roman Empire...
Wilson chooses to divide up the book in terms of themes instead of chronology. In the introduction he claims this structure reflects the structure of the 'real history' Holy Roman Empire: for a long time its history has been told by partisans who conducted their studies along nationalist-linear interpretations of the Empire. In reality, its history was fluid, non-linear and ambiguous, while its structure was multi-layered and complex.
So, instead of telling us how historical events unfolded themselves, Wilson applies a fourfold division: the Empire as an ideal, its constitution, its administration and its society. On all these themes, Wilson traces the developments in broad historical sketches while never really diving into any subject deep enough. An advantage of this approach is that the general historical developments that created, sustained and destroyed the Empire are told four times over, every time through a different paradigm. The downside of this approach is that one constantly loses the historical narrative and all its constituents (people, places, etc.).
Wilson's approach to this subject fits rather in an academic course on the Holy Roman Empire. In this sense, it is strange Penguin Publishers offers this book as a work for the general public. I'm not a historian, and although vaguely familiar with European history (being a European myself), I found it very hard to follow the historical lines. One needs a huge reservoir of background knowledge of French, German, Italian history in order to place all the subjects and themes Wilson explain in their proper context. It is here that Wilson's choice for thematic rather than chronological structure really hurts...
Anyway, the book spans the period between the 9th century and twentieth century, and is so wide in its scope, that it is simply impossible to offer a decent summary. The main takeaway for me is that the Holy Roman Empire was a very complex, multi-layered and dynamic institution, and that this ambiguity and complexity were actually its strengths rather than its weaknesses (as often portrayed). The Empire functioned, and was able to sustain itself for so long, due to its consensus-seeking character - its constitution was founded in the diversity of interests and perspectives of its constituents. And while most European kingdoms suffered all the flaws of centralization, the Empire was able to offer its inhabitants a relatively stable and safe existence. Most of the violent eruptions were forced on its from the outside (e.g. the Thirty Years War), although this started to change in the 18th century, with the intensifying rivalry between Habsburg Austria and Hohenzollern Prussia. This rivalry and its fundamental divisions led to the end of the Empire, although it took a foreign actor (Napoleonic France) to actually destroy it.
In the final paragraphs, Wilson uses the Empire as a lens through which we can understand the European Union. Proponents of the EU use the Empire to back up their claims of a transnational, European-wide historical trend, just like nationalists in the 19th century used the Empire to back up their claims of a traditionalist, Germanic superiority. Both views are rooted in the nationalist paradigm that the state is "single, centralized monopoly of legitimate power". Wilson's own take on it: he views the EU as a neo-medieval empire: the EU is not evolving into a federal superstate, but rather "a complex structure of fragmented sovereignty and 'plurilateral' governance."
On this model, there are three interesting things to note: (1) decentralized political systems are not "necessarily peaceful in their intentions", (2) the struggle to "reconcile formal equality with the considerable diversity in population" and imprecision regarding frontiers, and (3) its lack of "an organized uniform body of citizens." He concludes his analysis of the EU with the remark that for such systems to work, participants must accept that politics involve workable compromises and conflict resolution (instead of questions of right and wrong).
All in all, this book has been worth reading, yet I got less out of it than I hoped. Also, I can't really recommend it for its confusing structure. I think if one wants to learn more about the Holy Roman Empire (as a non-academic), other books might suit that purpose more...
Wilson chooses to divide up the book in terms of themes instead of chronology. In the introduction he claims this structure reflects the structure of the 'real history' Holy Roman Empire: for a long time its history has been told by partisans who conducted their studies along nationalist-linear interpretations of the Empire. In reality, its history was fluid, non-linear and ambiguous, while its structure was multi-layered and complex.
So, instead of telling us how historical events unfolded themselves, Wilson applies a fourfold division: the Empire as an ideal, its constitution, its administration and its society. On all these themes, Wilson traces the developments in broad historical sketches while never really diving into any subject deep enough. An advantage of this approach is that the general historical developments that created, sustained and destroyed the Empire are told four times over, every time through a different paradigm. The downside of this approach is that one constantly loses the historical narrative and all its constituents (people, places, etc.).
Wilson's approach to this subject fits rather in an academic course on the Holy Roman Empire. In this sense, it is strange Penguin Publishers offers this book as a work for the general public. I'm not a historian, and although vaguely familiar with European history (being a European myself), I found it very hard to follow the historical lines. One needs a huge reservoir of background knowledge of French, German, Italian history in order to place all the subjects and themes Wilson explain in their proper context. It is here that Wilson's choice for thematic rather than chronological structure really hurts...
Anyway, the book spans the period between the 9th century and twentieth century, and is so wide in its scope, that it is simply impossible to offer a decent summary. The main takeaway for me is that the Holy Roman Empire was a very complex, multi-layered and dynamic institution, and that this ambiguity and complexity were actually its strengths rather than its weaknesses (as often portrayed). The Empire functioned, and was able to sustain itself for so long, due to its consensus-seeking character - its constitution was founded in the diversity of interests and perspectives of its constituents. And while most European kingdoms suffered all the flaws of centralization, the Empire was able to offer its inhabitants a relatively stable and safe existence. Most of the violent eruptions were forced on its from the outside (e.g. the Thirty Years War), although this started to change in the 18th century, with the intensifying rivalry between Habsburg Austria and Hohenzollern Prussia. This rivalry and its fundamental divisions led to the end of the Empire, although it took a foreign actor (Napoleonic France) to actually destroy it.
In the final paragraphs, Wilson uses the Empire as a lens through which we can understand the European Union. Proponents of the EU use the Empire to back up their claims of a transnational, European-wide historical trend, just like nationalists in the 19th century used the Empire to back up their claims of a traditionalist, Germanic superiority. Both views are rooted in the nationalist paradigm that the state is "single, centralized monopoly of legitimate power". Wilson's own take on it: he views the EU as a neo-medieval empire: the EU is not evolving into a federal superstate, but rather "a complex structure of fragmented sovereignty and 'plurilateral' governance."
On this model, there are three interesting things to note: (1) decentralized political systems are not "necessarily peaceful in their intentions", (2) the struggle to "reconcile formal equality with the considerable diversity in population" and imprecision regarding frontiers, and (3) its lack of "an organized uniform body of citizens." He concludes his analysis of the EU with the remark that for such systems to work, participants must accept that politics involve workable compromises and conflict resolution (instead of questions of right and wrong).
All in all, this book has been worth reading, yet I got less out of it than I hoped. Also, I can't really recommend it for its confusing structure. I think if one wants to learn more about the Holy Roman Empire (as a non-academic), other books might suit that purpose more...
March 14, 2018
I do hate giving up on a book, but I’m giving up on this one, because it needs solid sustained attention which I’m not willing to give it - I’m reading for general interest and satisfaction in learning about wider European history, not taking a course.
His decision to tackle the complexities of the Empire in themes means that the chronology bounds all over the place, and periods don’t come together as a whole.
Not a book for the intermittent reader.
His decision to tackle the complexities of the Empire in themes means that the chronology bounds all over the place, and periods don’t come together as a whole.
Not a book for the intermittent reader.
February 1, 2018
Majesterial. I'd assume this will be the standard English-language history for some time. From a UK perspective, very depressing in its examination of other, less nationalostic ways of building legal and governmental systems.
A shame it was published just before the wretched brexit vote, and thus does not cover this in iys closing chapter on the Empire's legacy in the EU..
A shame it was published just before the wretched brexit vote, and thus does not cover this in iys closing chapter on the Empire's legacy in the EU..
May 16, 2016
heavy, requiring constant back-and-forth between chapters, but a highly recommended book that should adorn any collection of history books for the interested non-specialist as a fundamental reference to both the Empire, medieval and pre-modern Germany and Europe more generally
I would recommend first giving an overview of the book, than starting to read whichever topics one is interested in most and then just follow the arguments through the book, rather than trying a sequential read which will most likely bog down fast
I would recommend first giving an overview of the book, than starting to read whichever topics one is interested in most and then just follow the arguments through the book, rather than trying a sequential read which will most likely bog down fast
May 21, 2018
Peter Wilson has written a long and fairly thorough history of the Holy Roman Empire, which started with the coronation of Charlemagne and ended in 1806 (or thereabouts depending on who you read).
What can you say about a 1000 year old empire that died? Quite a lot it seems. After all, the history of the empire overlaps with much of European history up through the 19th century. The problem with this, of course, is that there is an unbelievable amount of complexity at work here and it is pointless to follow a main plot line. Avid readers of European history have no doubt run across the empire at numerous points. This book takes the empire as the unit of analysis - that is what makes it distinctive.
But what to say? Sure you can compare the HRE with Rome and Byzantium. But what about with other political units in Europe? Is it a state? No. Is it a kingdom? No really, and the distinctions between kings and emperors are clarified. What is the plot of this story to be?
Wilson frames his story in the search of an overarching meta structure ("federal" is frequently used) that provided some of the structure for medieval Europe, while the Church and various lesser states provided the rest of the order. This federal structure is at one level political - and the book is outstanding in discussing the evolution of the legal basis of the HRE. The structure is also cultural and religious, not really in the sense of the origins of nationhood, but in terms of the ideational bases for this long lasting order. It is really quite amazing that Europe became as ordered as it did, given the cast of political and military characters at the various helms. By the way, the HRE did get involved in traditions of nation building but that process was more of an after the fact reconstruction of history - sort of what politicians still like to do today.
Wilson even moves his arguments into more abstract ideas of centralization and decentralization in terms that would have some meaning for large multinational business entities today. It is really effective when he does this. One of the more interesting lines pursued this way is the discussion of national identity as distinct and fundamental (19th century) versus that idea that order comes from a people's place within a hierarchical order where the various levels are complementary rather than competitive. This line of thinking moves easily into more modern discussions of the future of various federal and transnational ideas today, from the USA to the European Union, to various supranational proposals for economic or political unions.
Wilson does not fully answer these questions or solve any problems. He does provide a comprehensive perspective on an actor that many readers know about but which is hard to evaluate in its totality, even though it lasted for over a thousand years and still seemed to many to be working when Napoleon came along. It is not at all clear that the national state that supplanted the empire had a very successful run, despite what rabid nationalists might say.
It is a long book and there are lots of names to remember (and even try to pronounce). To his credit, Wilson organizes much of the book around different large topics (although chronology is never far away. There are also lots of tables for those who wish to keep track while working through the book.
What can you say about a 1000 year old empire that died? Quite a lot it seems. After all, the history of the empire overlaps with much of European history up through the 19th century. The problem with this, of course, is that there is an unbelievable amount of complexity at work here and it is pointless to follow a main plot line. Avid readers of European history have no doubt run across the empire at numerous points. This book takes the empire as the unit of analysis - that is what makes it distinctive.
But what to say? Sure you can compare the HRE with Rome and Byzantium. But what about with other political units in Europe? Is it a state? No. Is it a kingdom? No really, and the distinctions between kings and emperors are clarified. What is the plot of this story to be?
Wilson frames his story in the search of an overarching meta structure ("federal" is frequently used) that provided some of the structure for medieval Europe, while the Church and various lesser states provided the rest of the order. This federal structure is at one level political - and the book is outstanding in discussing the evolution of the legal basis of the HRE. The structure is also cultural and religious, not really in the sense of the origins of nationhood, but in terms of the ideational bases for this long lasting order. It is really quite amazing that Europe became as ordered as it did, given the cast of political and military characters at the various helms. By the way, the HRE did get involved in traditions of nation building but that process was more of an after the fact reconstruction of history - sort of what politicians still like to do today.
Wilson even moves his arguments into more abstract ideas of centralization and decentralization in terms that would have some meaning for large multinational business entities today. It is really effective when he does this. One of the more interesting lines pursued this way is the discussion of national identity as distinct and fundamental (19th century) versus that idea that order comes from a people's place within a hierarchical order where the various levels are complementary rather than competitive. This line of thinking moves easily into more modern discussions of the future of various federal and transnational ideas today, from the USA to the European Union, to various supranational proposals for economic or political unions.
Wilson does not fully answer these questions or solve any problems. He does provide a comprehensive perspective on an actor that many readers know about but which is hard to evaluate in its totality, even though it lasted for over a thousand years and still seemed to many to be working when Napoleon came along. It is not at all clear that the national state that supplanted the empire had a very successful run, despite what rabid nationalists might say.
It is a long book and there are lots of names to remember (and even try to pronounce). To his credit, Wilson organizes much of the book around different large topics (although chronology is never far away. There are also lots of tables for those who wish to keep track while working through the book.
February 8, 2019
I could only get through the first quarter or so of this massive book. As others have said, this is not a chronology of events, but rather the ideas are organized by theme. But to cover such a huge amount of time by theme means that characters jump in and out of the narrative and huge time spans are covered in adjoining paragraphs. This allows for zero flow to the book, and I couldn't establish any understanding or connection with any particular time or people. As history I'm sure this is accurate and works for some, but certainly not for the layreader like me.
November 4, 2017
Hard to get through because it was too dense. It's probably not a bad history on the subject, but not a very rewarding read and in the end I don't really believe I've got to know the empire and its rulers better. If at all I've read an account about general European history, a rather dry and technical account. This is a book only for those really interested on the topic and with prior knowledge, or for the student who needs the information for his/her thesis.
September 21, 2019
In brief: An incredibly comprehensive macro history of the Holy Roman Empire, from its founding to dissolution, with the general thesis of “No, no, this actually existed, it was important, and it was not actually backwards. Historians who say otherwise are being ahistorical.”
Thoughts: How do you review what is pretty clearly the work of decades? When you’re not entirely sure you understood everything, because there was just so much to understand?
About how you write such a book, I think: by compartmentalizing.
First, some explanation, though, because the Holy Roman Empire isn’t that well-known of a historical entity. Basically, we’re talking about German-speaking Europe with some extra bits—northern Italy, bits of Poland, bits of France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary—between the late 700s to the early 1800s. (Napoleon ruins everything.) The HRE was a pretty big deal in a lot of ways too, like, part of the “Holy” and “Roman” was that many Emperors either chose the Pope or protected the Pope and the Church.
As you can maybe guess by that half-joke, this doesn’t have the structure I’d expected. Wilson starts at the beginning and ends at the end, yes, but he does this multiple times, running through the changes of dynasty and ideas of kingship, the wider political structures and wars, the social order, and the justice system so that the reader gets a good sense of how one state of affairs lead directly into another, but less sense of concurrent events. For instance, he’ll discuss an emperor’s ruling style in one section, the war he was fighting in another, and the peasant uprisings he was contending with in a third. Honestly, I’m kind of impressed how well Wilson manages to remind the reader of information, but it’s not perfect and when I need to reference this book in the future, I will be very grateful for the timeline of events, the genealogies, and the index.
I’m equally impressed by the amount of research and synthesis Wilson’s done. Even if he didn’t read through all the tax records and law codes and contemporary political writings himself, he has to have all the articles and books that discuss them, and to have read a whole lot of 19th and 20th century histories of the Empire to boot—and then somehow he’s managed to write a narrative in reasonably non-academic English. It’s still pretty dense and dry, but the book gives a good overview of the Empire in all its facets without getting bogged down in details (and yes, the names of kings, emperors, and popes are frequently details, that’s how macro this book gets).
Those two points alone are enough for me to call this a solidly good history book and to recommend this to people genuinely interested in the topic, but then we come to Wilson’s thesis, which honestly? I wasn’t expecting to get. I enjoyed seeing him pointing out the more than a little biased historical readings out there, the ones that, say, apply a 19th century idea of a nation state and political identities to the past and find the 1100s decidedly lacking, and seeing him point out, at the same time, that not only was the 1100s in the HRE about the same as the neighbouring countries, but that in many ways, the fluid, flexible, “works for us” structure of the Empire gave it more stability over time than other regions of Europe. Probably Wilson comes with his own biases—he certainly is passionate about his subject—but it’s also a bias that works for me.
So those are a few of the biggest things I took away from reading this: the overall history of the Holy Roman Empire and how it was structured and run; the Empire more or less in context of the rest of European history; and the ways history can be misdirected but also interrogated. I also learned a lot about historical political systems and social orders in general, and have a better idea of what Europe looked like in the past when it wasn’t being British or, occasionally, French. There were also a number of wars and uprisings that I’d only heard vaguely of or didn’t have the historical run-up to (like the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War) which I have a much better idea of now.
If you quizzed me on any particular aspect, though, a month from finishing this and nearly three from starting it, I’d be hard-pressed to give more than a vague answer. There’s too much scope in the book for that. I was a little disappointed too that Wilson assumes the reader has a decent general understanding of European history, and will mention the Pope fleeing to Avignon or a monarch outside of the Empire or a war without filing you in on context except for how it relates to the Empire. (And that he scraps a lot of social history in favour of politics.) Can’t say I really blame him, since this book is already 1000 pages long, but all the same. It’s something to go in aware of, I think.
In sum: this book was excellent. It does everything a history book of this scale should, does little if anything such a book shouldn’t do, contains more information than a human brain can retain in one go, and is, dare I say it only having read the one book on the topic, the definitive book on the Holy Roman Empire. If you’re interested in European history, medieval history, or anything else that the HRE touches on, especially if you’re working in an academic framework, this is an important book to have. I’ll definitely be rereading sections and working through the index when that one writing project comes up on the docket.
To bear in mind: This is a heavy book, in terms of both size and content. While the sentences are always readable, the paragraphs and sections often need time to sink in, and even if you’re an actual historian of the HRE or adjacent topics, I’d highly advise giving your brain a rest at least at the end of every section. Also, I spent most of my reading time with this either held in both hands or propped up on some object or other and I definitely strained my thumb at one point, so there’s also that.
Also, fair warning: there is reasonably frequent reference to historical Muslim peoples as a “threat” or “menace”, as in “the Ottomans are threatening our borders and political stability”, and also the occasional reference to or discussion of early medieval slavery, intra-European racism, poor treatment of women and peasants, war and famine, and similar things which I’m undoubtedly forgetting now but should probably be expected in a history book. Oh, and historians and political leaders using the HRE’s existence to support their own agendas.
9.5/10
Thoughts: How do you review what is pretty clearly the work of decades? When you’re not entirely sure you understood everything, because there was just so much to understand?
About how you write such a book, I think: by compartmentalizing.
First, some explanation, though, because the Holy Roman Empire isn’t that well-known of a historical entity. Basically, we’re talking about German-speaking Europe with some extra bits—northern Italy, bits of Poland, bits of France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary—between the late 700s to the early 1800s. (Napoleon ruins everything.) The HRE was a pretty big deal in a lot of ways too, like, part of the “Holy” and “Roman” was that many Emperors either chose the Pope or protected the Pope and the Church.
As you can maybe guess by that half-joke, this doesn’t have the structure I’d expected. Wilson starts at the beginning and ends at the end, yes, but he does this multiple times, running through the changes of dynasty and ideas of kingship, the wider political structures and wars, the social order, and the justice system so that the reader gets a good sense of how one state of affairs lead directly into another, but less sense of concurrent events. For instance, he’ll discuss an emperor’s ruling style in one section, the war he was fighting in another, and the peasant uprisings he was contending with in a third. Honestly, I’m kind of impressed how well Wilson manages to remind the reader of information, but it’s not perfect and when I need to reference this book in the future, I will be very grateful for the timeline of events, the genealogies, and the index.
I’m equally impressed by the amount of research and synthesis Wilson’s done. Even if he didn’t read through all the tax records and law codes and contemporary political writings himself, he has to have all the articles and books that discuss them, and to have read a whole lot of 19th and 20th century histories of the Empire to boot—and then somehow he’s managed to write a narrative in reasonably non-academic English. It’s still pretty dense and dry, but the book gives a good overview of the Empire in all its facets without getting bogged down in details (and yes, the names of kings, emperors, and popes are frequently details, that’s how macro this book gets).
Those two points alone are enough for me to call this a solidly good history book and to recommend this to people genuinely interested in the topic, but then we come to Wilson’s thesis, which honestly? I wasn’t expecting to get. I enjoyed seeing him pointing out the more than a little biased historical readings out there, the ones that, say, apply a 19th century idea of a nation state and political identities to the past and find the 1100s decidedly lacking, and seeing him point out, at the same time, that not only was the 1100s in the HRE about the same as the neighbouring countries, but that in many ways, the fluid, flexible, “works for us” structure of the Empire gave it more stability over time than other regions of Europe. Probably Wilson comes with his own biases—he certainly is passionate about his subject—but it’s also a bias that works for me.
So those are a few of the biggest things I took away from reading this: the overall history of the Holy Roman Empire and how it was structured and run; the Empire more or less in context of the rest of European history; and the ways history can be misdirected but also interrogated. I also learned a lot about historical political systems and social orders in general, and have a better idea of what Europe looked like in the past when it wasn’t being British or, occasionally, French. There were also a number of wars and uprisings that I’d only heard vaguely of or didn’t have the historical run-up to (like the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War) which I have a much better idea of now.
If you quizzed me on any particular aspect, though, a month from finishing this and nearly three from starting it, I’d be hard-pressed to give more than a vague answer. There’s too much scope in the book for that. I was a little disappointed too that Wilson assumes the reader has a decent general understanding of European history, and will mention the Pope fleeing to Avignon or a monarch outside of the Empire or a war without filing you in on context except for how it relates to the Empire. (And that he scraps a lot of social history in favour of politics.) Can’t say I really blame him, since this book is already 1000 pages long, but all the same. It’s something to go in aware of, I think.
In sum: this book was excellent. It does everything a history book of this scale should, does little if anything such a book shouldn’t do, contains more information than a human brain can retain in one go, and is, dare I say it only having read the one book on the topic, the definitive book on the Holy Roman Empire. If you’re interested in European history, medieval history, or anything else that the HRE touches on, especially if you’re working in an academic framework, this is an important book to have. I’ll definitely be rereading sections and working through the index when that one writing project comes up on the docket.
To bear in mind: This is a heavy book, in terms of both size and content. While the sentences are always readable, the paragraphs and sections often need time to sink in, and even if you’re an actual historian of the HRE or adjacent topics, I’d highly advise giving your brain a rest at least at the end of every section. Also, I spent most of my reading time with this either held in both hands or propped up on some object or other and I definitely strained my thumb at one point, so there’s also that.
Also, fair warning: there is reasonably frequent reference to historical Muslim peoples as a “threat” or “menace”, as in “the Ottomans are threatening our borders and political stability”, and also the occasional reference to or discussion of early medieval slavery, intra-European racism, poor treatment of women and peasants, war and famine, and similar things which I’m undoubtedly forgetting now but should probably be expected in a history book. Oh, and historians and political leaders using the HRE’s existence to support their own agendas.
9.5/10
August 23, 2023
Many people, if they know anything at all about the Holy Roman Empire, know the quip attributed to Voltaire that it is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Or they may know that upon its dissolution in 1806, Goethe observed in his diary that an argument between two coachmen in his courtyard attracted more of his attention.
It is strange that this institution, which lasted a thousand years - far longer than the Roman Empire - and which, at its height, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to Lithuania, and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, is now little remembered, discussed, or understood, but it is not surprising. As Wilson points out, it is precisely because of its vast scope and complexity that it is difficult to get a handle on. Especially since the nineteenth century, at which time a general consensus emerged, that nation-states, or governments wielding monopolistic control on authority within a fixed territory, are the “natural” unit of governance, and the logical endpoint of all political evolution.
And, since Otto Ranke first laid the foundation for modern historiography, European historians have overwhelmingly written histories from within states or nations that more or less conform to that conception. As such, a history of France, Belgium, Bavaria, or Austria will tend to project back its contemporary sociopolitical configuration and write of the Holy Roman Empire as a kind of murky pre-modern thing that sort of happened.
I daresay this is all evidently true, but when you lay it out like this, its anachronism and implausibility become immediately visible. Wilson’s account of the Holy Roman Empire is intended to synthesize and extend contemporary historical research which has done much to update this picture, and to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire to its rightful place as absolutely vital for anyone seeking to understand the history of Europe, and in particular, the history of Germany and Austria.
Wilson’s account seeks to navigate between the Scylla of regarding the Empire as a reactionary, nebulous, and inconsequential enterprise and the Charybdis of seeing it as an enlightened precursor to transnational organizations like the EU. Instead, he sees it as a dynamic and complex organization that, contrary to popular view, enjoyed extremely broad popular support by providing a flexible and pragmatic framework for negotiating competing rights and claims among various corporate groups. As he emphasizes throughout the work, the vast majority of its critics did not wish to do away with the Empire, because they regarded it as the essential guarantor of their own status and privileges, but instead advocated its reform in this way or that.
Although this book makes a persuasive argument and is extremely informative, it is unfortunately somewhat marred by Wilson's uncompromising organizational scheme. Rather than proceeding chronologically, Wilson divides the book into chapters and sections which take up particular themes, and he runs through the whole history of the empire in the light of the theme currently under analysis.
I initially went back and forth on this approach. It certainly added to the complexity of reading the book, but it also allowed him to treat many individual topics in a focused way - say, the Hanseatic League, or the evolution of the Kreis Assembly or Reichskammergericht. But after going through the long history of the Empire twelve or fifteen times, it started to feel increasingly burdensome and artificial. By the end, Wilson's total commitment to the framework began to border on self-caricature, such as when he goes through the entire thousand-year history of the Empire three times in a single chapter from three closely-related perspectives: city leagues, aristocratic leagues, and leagues of citizens.
The downsides of the approach are obvious - events like the Investiture Controversy and the Treaty of Westphalia are covered many, many times, and each individual treatment is necessarily only a fragment of the whole. The causes of the Thirty Years’ War are covered near the end of the book, though we’ve talked about the war many times. And anyone who doesn’t happen to be fluently conversant with a thousand years of European history will often feel lost.
About midway through the book I stopped and spent several hours constructing my own timeline of the whole period, based in part on Wilson’s dense 50+ page chronology, included as an appendix. I don’t think I could have read and understood the book without making that additional effort, and I found it frustrating that Wilson provides no general historical overview. I would have gladly seen him cut out a hundred pages dealing with the minutiae of the court systems or what have you to make room for that.
The situation is definitely not helped by the fact that the chapter titles are not descriptive - can a reader really be expected to understand what is covered in “Sovereignty” and what is covered in “Authority”? And the table of contents does not include the chapter section headings, which are essential to understanding to the book’s organization.
It's ironic, in the end of the book he emphasizes the importance of educating the general public on the real history of the Empire, but apparently he sees this as the task of other historians, as he makes no concessions to the general reader whatsoever.
Wilson’s interests and scope are also a bit narrow for my tastes - he focuses pretty much entirely forms of government and social organization, and on elite actors. The history of the Empire that he presents is the history of the evolution of its formal structures and the major events of dynastic succession and warfare, and sometimes the evolution of economic or judicial forms. For the most part, the only attention non-elites are given is when they organize to advocate collectively for their rights.
I can't help but wonder if Wilson's formal interests reflect political convictions that I don't share. He often seems overtly disinterested in what went on for the common people and, considering the Empire’s legacy on the book's last page, Wilson says “Democratic legitimacy derives from the openness of debate, not the practice of voting. Citizenship is about involvement in and access to discussion through civil society and a free media, not simply formal rights and institutions.” I find this a fairly extraordinary and contestable set of claims, and I can’t help but link it to his exclusive focus on elites and institutions.
So this book does require some heavy lifting of its reader, though it does also provide an enormous amount of vital historical information. Some of it struck me as a bit odd ideologically, but then I also found his central thesis absolutely persuasive and quite informative. I learned an enormous amount about the Holy Roman Empire, and I now regard that as crucial to my historical education. I just wish it had been written in a way that placed greater emphasis on the narrative and pedagogical functions of history.
It is strange that this institution, which lasted a thousand years - far longer than the Roman Empire - and which, at its height, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to Lithuania, and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, is now little remembered, discussed, or understood, but it is not surprising. As Wilson points out, it is precisely because of its vast scope and complexity that it is difficult to get a handle on. Especially since the nineteenth century, at which time a general consensus emerged, that nation-states, or governments wielding monopolistic control on authority within a fixed territory, are the “natural” unit of governance, and the logical endpoint of all political evolution.
And, since Otto Ranke first laid the foundation for modern historiography, European historians have overwhelmingly written histories from within states or nations that more or less conform to that conception. As such, a history of France, Belgium, Bavaria, or Austria will tend to project back its contemporary sociopolitical configuration and write of the Holy Roman Empire as a kind of murky pre-modern thing that sort of happened.
I daresay this is all evidently true, but when you lay it out like this, its anachronism and implausibility become immediately visible. Wilson’s account of the Holy Roman Empire is intended to synthesize and extend contemporary historical research which has done much to update this picture, and to rehabilitate the Holy Roman Empire to its rightful place as absolutely vital for anyone seeking to understand the history of Europe, and in particular, the history of Germany and Austria.
Wilson’s account seeks to navigate between the Scylla of regarding the Empire as a reactionary, nebulous, and inconsequential enterprise and the Charybdis of seeing it as an enlightened precursor to transnational organizations like the EU. Instead, he sees it as a dynamic and complex organization that, contrary to popular view, enjoyed extremely broad popular support by providing a flexible and pragmatic framework for negotiating competing rights and claims among various corporate groups. As he emphasizes throughout the work, the vast majority of its critics did not wish to do away with the Empire, because they regarded it as the essential guarantor of their own status and privileges, but instead advocated its reform in this way or that.
Although this book makes a persuasive argument and is extremely informative, it is unfortunately somewhat marred by Wilson's uncompromising organizational scheme. Rather than proceeding chronologically, Wilson divides the book into chapters and sections which take up particular themes, and he runs through the whole history of the empire in the light of the theme currently under analysis.
I initially went back and forth on this approach. It certainly added to the complexity of reading the book, but it also allowed him to treat many individual topics in a focused way - say, the Hanseatic League, or the evolution of the Kreis Assembly or Reichskammergericht. But after going through the long history of the Empire twelve or fifteen times, it started to feel increasingly burdensome and artificial. By the end, Wilson's total commitment to the framework began to border on self-caricature, such as when he goes through the entire thousand-year history of the Empire three times in a single chapter from three closely-related perspectives: city leagues, aristocratic leagues, and leagues of citizens.
The downsides of the approach are obvious - events like the Investiture Controversy and the Treaty of Westphalia are covered many, many times, and each individual treatment is necessarily only a fragment of the whole. The causes of the Thirty Years’ War are covered near the end of the book, though we’ve talked about the war many times. And anyone who doesn’t happen to be fluently conversant with a thousand years of European history will often feel lost.
About midway through the book I stopped and spent several hours constructing my own timeline of the whole period, based in part on Wilson’s dense 50+ page chronology, included as an appendix. I don’t think I could have read and understood the book without making that additional effort, and I found it frustrating that Wilson provides no general historical overview. I would have gladly seen him cut out a hundred pages dealing with the minutiae of the court systems or what have you to make room for that.
The situation is definitely not helped by the fact that the chapter titles are not descriptive - can a reader really be expected to understand what is covered in “Sovereignty” and what is covered in “Authority”? And the table of contents does not include the chapter section headings, which are essential to understanding to the book’s organization.
It's ironic, in the end of the book he emphasizes the importance of educating the general public on the real history of the Empire, but apparently he sees this as the task of other historians, as he makes no concessions to the general reader whatsoever.
Wilson’s interests and scope are also a bit narrow for my tastes - he focuses pretty much entirely forms of government and social organization, and on elite actors. The history of the Empire that he presents is the history of the evolution of its formal structures and the major events of dynastic succession and warfare, and sometimes the evolution of economic or judicial forms. For the most part, the only attention non-elites are given is when they organize to advocate collectively for their rights.
I can't help but wonder if Wilson's formal interests reflect political convictions that I don't share. He often seems overtly disinterested in what went on for the common people and, considering the Empire’s legacy on the book's last page, Wilson says “Democratic legitimacy derives from the openness of debate, not the practice of voting. Citizenship is about involvement in and access to discussion through civil society and a free media, not simply formal rights and institutions.” I find this a fairly extraordinary and contestable set of claims, and I can’t help but link it to his exclusive focus on elites and institutions.
So this book does require some heavy lifting of its reader, though it does also provide an enormous amount of vital historical information. Some of it struck me as a bit odd ideologically, but then I also found his central thesis absolutely persuasive and quite informative. I learned an enormous amount about the Holy Roman Empire, and I now regard that as crucial to my historical education. I just wish it had been written in a way that placed greater emphasis on the narrative and pedagogical functions of history.
November 19, 2019
Extremely detailed and good for history buffs with an interest in the holy Roman Empire.
The book is written thematically, not chronologically. This makes it often difficult to read and I'd advise it only if you have at least a very good basic knowledge on Holy Roman Emperors. I would not advise reading this book if you do not know who Otto I, Henry the Fowler or Frederick III are.
This makes it a read only for a selective audience.
The book is written thematically, not chronologically. This makes it often difficult to read and I'd advise it only if you have at least a very good basic knowledge on Holy Roman Emperors. I would not advise reading this book if you do not know who Otto I, Henry the Fowler or Frederick III are.
This makes it a read only for a selective audience.
Read
August 1, 2018Dry as a dinosaur’s bone, chaotic, boring... Much as I love the subject, this is clearly not the book I expected. I had to leave it before I went mad, or, worse still, started to hate History ;)
August 31, 2021
El Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico de Peter H. Wilson es un gran ensayo histórico que analiza de manera minuciosa los mil años de la vida del Imperio con un manejo de cirujano. Si alguien espera una cronología de hechos a través de los principales actores durante estos mil años de historia, es posible que se lleve una gran decepción, aunque tenga una sección dedicada a resumirlos y poder consultarlos. Los saltos cronológicos hacia delante o hacia detrás en cada uno de sus trece capítulos, pueden resultar mareantes, pero son necesarios según la estructura y la intención de la obra. Quizá por esto sería bueno algún conocimiento por parte del lector de los acontecimientos que se analizan, así cómo de la geografía de la vasta región que ocupó, so pena de estar consultando la multitud de mapas que acompañan a la obra (los que lo lean en papel tendrán ventaja a los que lo tengan en libro electrónico). Cabe destacar el capítulo final, que además de exponer las conclusiones, hace, primero, un análisis del impacto del siglo XIX y XX en la visión que tenemos del SIRG, para finalizar con una breve pero interesante comparativa con la Unión Europea actual, que da lugar a la reflexión.
February 11, 2018
Saya membeli buku ini dengan harapan untuk mengetahui secara asas tetapi teliti mengenai Holy Roman Empire (Empayar Rom Suci). Hal ini kerana saya mempunyai pengetahuan yang sangat nipis mengenai kerajaan pemerintahan yang sudah lama berkubur ini. Namun,harapan saya itu nampaknya tersasar kerana buku ini bukan ditulis untuk para pembaca seperti saya. Sebaliknya,buku ini khalayak pembacanya disasarkan kepada golongan pembaca yang sudah sedia maklum mengenai empayar di benua Eropah ini. Tidak melampau sekiranya saya katakan bahawa isi kandungan buku ini lebih advanced dan memberikan perhatian yang lebih teliti terhadap bagaimana Empayar Rom Suci berfungsi dari segi pentadbiran,legislatif,sistem kehakiman dan lain-lain aspek yang berkaitan.
Saya berazam untuk mengulang baca buku ini sekiranya saya sudah memahami secara asas dengan lebih baik terlebih terdahulu mengenai Empayar Rom Timur.
Saya berazam untuk mengulang baca buku ini sekiranya saya sudah memahami secara asas dengan lebih baik terlebih terdahulu mengenai Empayar Rom Timur.
January 30, 2022
A thematic history of the Holy Roman Empire, which covers a wide variety of topics including governance, society and diplomacy. There are fascinating chapters about the web of dynastic marriages that connecting the Holy Roman Empire to the rest of Europe, the geography and peoples of the empire, the origins of Switzerland as an independent entity, perceptions of the Holy Roman Empire after the 19th century age of nationalism and current views of the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire within the context of the European Union. The author assumes a general knowledge of European history and events such as the reformation and the Napoleonic wars are woven into a larger narrative rather than introduced on their own.
January 15, 2023
Magna historia del Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico. imprescindible para comprender su funcionamiento y evolución así como su impacto a lo largo de la historia y en la actualidad.
Sin embargo, y pese a considerarlo un libro extraordinario, es también un libro que me cuesta mucho recomendar por varias razones. La primera y más obvia es que requiere conocimientos previos sin los cuales su lectura se pude volver árida, fragmentaria y confusa. Por otra parte, la ausencia de un orden cronológico puede llevar a despiste a más de un lector. Y por último, es demasiado "técnico", es un libro en el que hay que saber dónde te metes, no es una historia popular o abierta al gran público.
Si asumimos eso, es un gran libro.
Sin embargo, y pese a considerarlo un libro extraordinario, es también un libro que me cuesta mucho recomendar por varias razones. La primera y más obvia es que requiere conocimientos previos sin los cuales su lectura se pude volver árida, fragmentaria y confusa. Por otra parte, la ausencia de un orden cronológico puede llevar a despiste a más de un lector. Y por último, es demasiado "técnico", es un libro en el que hay que saber dónde te metes, no es una historia popular o abierta al gran público.
Si asumimos eso, es un gran libro.
January 18, 2021
This beautifully executed and designed book is a real undertaking. I decided to go with an audiobook (funnily enough narrated by a guy called Napoleon) and I am glad of it because otherwise, I would be reading this until the next year. That said this is an excellently researched and presented study of the Holy Roman Empire, its justice system, its nationalities, its ambivalent relationship with the Catholic church and many other aspects. I imagine it would work best as a reference book. But just for the sheer amount of work that went into it I have to give it the highest rating.
June 7, 2023
A useful book, but not for the average reader. While it would be a good starting place for some burgeoning scholars of early modern Europe, it’s a throughly researched and exceedingly dry book about an extremely complex social and political landscape.
*dnf, 13% 😰
*dnf, 13% 😰
May 20, 2016
If people today consider the Holy Roman Empire at all, they do so merely to reflect on Voltaire's quip that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. For modern secular commentators, the Empire embodied all of the ugliest aspects of the medieval order, which, since the time of the French Revolution, we have so justly dispensed with: it was a hideous, formless, bloated, and bewildering array of overlapping political, legal, and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. It was weak, inefficient, corrupt, and disjointed; and its formless conception of divine-right rulership, by which the Empire was a sacred and intangible order that floated above the patchwork of actually-existing principalities, severely delayed the political development and modernization of central Europe, with consequences that reverberated through the centuries.
To a great extent, this narrative merely reflects our own historical biases. Since the Congress of Vienna, the European "story" has been taken to be that of the gradual development of the nation-state. The Napoleonic Wars abolished the last traces of the transcendent Christian order of the Middle Ages, erasing a religious phenomenology of political order that had been considered more-or-less axiomatic from the time of Constantine. When the last Emperor, Francis II, scuttled the Empire in 1806 to prevent Napoleon from usurping it, Europe was left without any transcendent religious or political vision, any unifying eschatology towards which the multifarious peoples of Europe could orient themselves. Instead, division and isolation became a transcendent horizon of its own.
Europe's new eschatology was one of separation--that of peoples and states--rather than one of reconciliation. Since Europe was now nothing more than a collection of national states and as-yet stateless peoples agitating for states, this was taken to be the ultimate end of European history. European history was now the process by which nation-states wrested their existence and solidity from the formlessness of medievalism. To that end, the Holy Roman Empire was preserved in the modern memory as something like the carcass of a fearsome prehistoric beast, whom the modern European states had slain and dismembered, each one cloaking itself in some fragment of its stolen power. The Empire was the foil against which the European states sustained their triumphalist histories of freedom and autonomy.
All of this, of course, has changed since the twentieth century. Two World Wars, driven by vulgar nationalisms, diminished the lustre of the nation-state and prompted the revival of international order. The rise of the European Union, though quite different in nature from the Holy Roman Empire, has nonetheless generated renewed historical interest in an Empire that posited some sense of transcendent unity behind the multiplicity of peoples and states. An Empire governed by divine mission and a rulership that was sacred and ritualistic rather than merely legal has suddenly become, in some quarters, rather endearing in a world in which everything sacred is under siege and every individual truth demands public recognition, if not celebration. The Empire cannot be revived, but by studying it and paying it the respect it deserves, rather than treating it with a typical post-enlightenment derision, we may be able to gain a better sense of what was lost.
To a great extent, this narrative merely reflects our own historical biases. Since the Congress of Vienna, the European "story" has been taken to be that of the gradual development of the nation-state. The Napoleonic Wars abolished the last traces of the transcendent Christian order of the Middle Ages, erasing a religious phenomenology of political order that had been considered more-or-less axiomatic from the time of Constantine. When the last Emperor, Francis II, scuttled the Empire in 1806 to prevent Napoleon from usurping it, Europe was left without any transcendent religious or political vision, any unifying eschatology towards which the multifarious peoples of Europe could orient themselves. Instead, division and isolation became a transcendent horizon of its own.
Europe's new eschatology was one of separation--that of peoples and states--rather than one of reconciliation. Since Europe was now nothing more than a collection of national states and as-yet stateless peoples agitating for states, this was taken to be the ultimate end of European history. European history was now the process by which nation-states wrested their existence and solidity from the formlessness of medievalism. To that end, the Holy Roman Empire was preserved in the modern memory as something like the carcass of a fearsome prehistoric beast, whom the modern European states had slain and dismembered, each one cloaking itself in some fragment of its stolen power. The Empire was the foil against which the European states sustained their triumphalist histories of freedom and autonomy.
All of this, of course, has changed since the twentieth century. Two World Wars, driven by vulgar nationalisms, diminished the lustre of the nation-state and prompted the revival of international order. The rise of the European Union, though quite different in nature from the Holy Roman Empire, has nonetheless generated renewed historical interest in an Empire that posited some sense of transcendent unity behind the multiplicity of peoples and states. An Empire governed by divine mission and a rulership that was sacred and ritualistic rather than merely legal has suddenly become, in some quarters, rather endearing in a world in which everything sacred is under siege and every individual truth demands public recognition, if not celebration. The Empire cannot be revived, but by studying it and paying it the respect it deserves, rather than treating it with a typical post-enlightenment derision, we may be able to gain a better sense of what was lost.
June 27, 2022
Three times I tried to read this book; resulting in three failures so I concede defeat. I'm sure Professor Wilson is a brilliant European historian so the fault is mine, born in the US and spending my early adult years in Scandinavia, and the subsequent decades until present in Asia, has left me obviously bereft of continental European history. I started at the beginning...and lasted about 30 pages. Then I read a Goodreads' reviewer's note that the second section was the most beneficial so tried again there. Lastly, I turned to a section that I felt I knew something about (church history) to discover that the overlap of my courses on theology and religion had only about a ten percent overlap with those covered in the history of the HRE.
My advice (if you are considering this tome), which has some excellent reviews, is to pick up the book in a bookstore and turn first to the end of the book, pages 699 following--the section entitled "Chronology". If you are familiar with the names and events in these short chronological summaries, you have a chance...but if like me, you have only a fleeting recognition of a handful, re-shelf the book and return when you are better prepared.
It was a brave premise to attack a history of the HRE by topic (Christianity, Sovereigns, Nation...) rather than geography or chronology and I honestly wish I had qualified to have been one of this book's admirers.
My advice (if you are considering this tome), which has some excellent reviews, is to pick up the book in a bookstore and turn first to the end of the book, pages 699 following--the section entitled "Chronology". If you are familiar with the names and events in these short chronological summaries, you have a chance...but if like me, you have only a fleeting recognition of a handful, re-shelf the book and return when you are better prepared.
It was a brave premise to attack a history of the HRE by topic (Christianity, Sovereigns, Nation...) rather than geography or chronology and I honestly wish I had qualified to have been one of this book's admirers.
February 18, 2021
It feels unbelievably harsh to rate this book so low. But I've been reading it since Summer 2020 and thought of giving up multiple time, so it's got to be like this. The reason it is not 1 star is because I can see the sheer mountain of work that went into it and there are chapters like Chapter 13 that are genuinely at the pace that I wanted.
Overall, this is a very dry version of what Roger Crowley does (well) in his books.
Wilson took the decision to not arrange this chronologically, arguing the HRE is too extensive for that, and put it by topics like "Justice", "Identities" or "Dynasty". It does not work.
The text becomes impossible to decipher, historical figures come in and out and suddenly you have no idea who Henry IV was again because the kings and dukes and counts and knights are mixing completely, both in accomplishments and historical periods.
Lastly, Wilson constantly wants you to know how most historians are completely wrong and biased about many topics. For example, about when exactly you can consider Switzerland became indepedent. He argues for a couple of pages about when it actually was and by the end I thought the other people's date was probably better suited.
It's as if Wilson were a teacher that, as soon as you got excited about a course topic, he immediately insists that you are here to learn, not to have fun. For 700+ pages.
Overall, this is a very dry version of what Roger Crowley does (well) in his books.
Wilson took the decision to not arrange this chronologically, arguing the HRE is too extensive for that, and put it by topics like "Justice", "Identities" or "Dynasty". It does not work.
The text becomes impossible to decipher, historical figures come in and out and suddenly you have no idea who Henry IV was again because the kings and dukes and counts and knights are mixing completely, both in accomplishments and historical periods.
Lastly, Wilson constantly wants you to know how most historians are completely wrong and biased about many topics. For example, about when exactly you can consider Switzerland became indepedent. He argues for a couple of pages about when it actually was and by the end I thought the other people's date was probably better suited.
It's as if Wilson were a teacher that, as soon as you got excited about a course topic, he immediately insists that you are here to learn, not to have fun. For 700+ pages.
May 21, 2018
This book was a chore to get through, but it was worth it. I was on the brink of laying it aside to read something else several times, but I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn't have managed to get back and finish it. As far as I know, this is the only modern, comprehensive work available in English about the Holy Roman Empire. The history of HRE is important for everyone with a wish to understand modern Europe and its roots. Peter H. Wilson does an admirable job of laying out the different aspects of the Empire through the millenium between Charlemagne and Napoleon, but it's often hard to see the wood for all the trees. Personally, I think I would have enjoyed a more narrative style.
March 26, 2016
The author seems to have sat down before the word processor and written down his admittedly broad knowledge without much care for chronology or theme but with an overuse of passive voice and excessive wordiness. You may fill in his gaps with your own knowledge or Wikipedia but really what's the point?
November 21, 2017
Interesting, but totally unreadable, jumps from one point to another, from one time to another.
April 7, 2019
The Holy Roman Empire is a fairly ghostly figure in the working-Joe's understanding of Western Civ, since it doesn't seem quite "like" any other entity on the historical stage, and because it -- well, try this: When and how did the Holy Roman Empire come to an end? Do you know? I sure didn't.
So, what we have here is a good-as-comprehensive analytic history of the HRE, weighing in at about one page per year of the Empire's existence. Don't expect each year to get its own page, of course, because as most reviews on GR point out this is not a chronicle. Many reviewers seem kind of offended that it isn't a chronological treatment, but I have to say going year by year through this material seems like it would be absolutely stultifying, whereas Wilson always has something interesting to say in his thematic approach.
Key Ideas, which Wilson tends to hammer on a bit because he's trying to correct some 19th and 20th century misconceptions of the HRE, include:
--> IT ISN'T JUST A DISORGANIZED VERSION OF GERMANY ALREADY
--> JUST BECAUSE IT WAS STRUCTURALLY WEIRD DOESN'T MAKE IT BAD
--> DON'T DISMISS IT AS A FAILURE! ~YOU~ TRY LASTING A THOUSAND YEARS!
You certainly come out of Heart of Europe reminded that the modern nation-state isn't the only, or necessarily a great, way to organize things. Plus you get exposed to some other unexpected ideas along the way. One standout is that the trend towards violent physical punishment in the late middle ages was thought of as a reform movement, the logic being that a fine hurts a peasant much worse than a lord, but public torture or execution is equally unpleasant for rich and poor alike. Ouch!
The audiobook version is read with terrific energy and enthusiasm, which is a big help with a historical treatment of this length and sophistication.
So, what we have here is a good-as-comprehensive analytic history of the HRE, weighing in at about one page per year of the Empire's existence. Don't expect each year to get its own page, of course, because as most reviews on GR point out this is not a chronicle. Many reviewers seem kind of offended that it isn't a chronological treatment, but I have to say going year by year through this material seems like it would be absolutely stultifying, whereas Wilson always has something interesting to say in his thematic approach.
Key Ideas, which Wilson tends to hammer on a bit because he's trying to correct some 19th and 20th century misconceptions of the HRE, include:
--> IT ISN'T JUST A DISORGANIZED VERSION OF GERMANY ALREADY
--> JUST BECAUSE IT WAS STRUCTURALLY WEIRD DOESN'T MAKE IT BAD
--> DON'T DISMISS IT AS A FAILURE! ~YOU~ TRY LASTING A THOUSAND YEARS!
You certainly come out of Heart of Europe reminded that the modern nation-state isn't the only, or necessarily a great, way to organize things. Plus you get exposed to some other unexpected ideas along the way. One standout is that the trend towards violent physical punishment in the late middle ages was thought of as a reform movement, the logic being that a fine hurts a peasant much worse than a lord, but public torture or execution is equally unpleasant for rich and poor alike. Ouch!
The audiobook version is read with terrific energy and enthusiasm, which is a big help with a historical treatment of this length and sophistication.
September 5, 2017
A comprehensive and authoritative retelling of the Empire that rejects the previous narrative that it was a failed German nation-state unable to keep up with the modern world. Rather, changes in Europe and in the 'heart of Europe' were what led to the specific features of modernity as we know it. Wilson's main contribution is in distilling several decades of German scholarship for an anglophone audience, and is essential reading if only for its detailed history on imperial government, politics, and justice.
Wilson contextualizes the history of the Empire and demonstrates the centrality of imperial politics to wider debates and change occurring across Europe. His discussion spends much time on the medieval Empire (rather than choosing to begin during the 15th c. Reichsreform) to show the evolution of the Empire from its original conception as leader of Christendom. In response to Pufendorf's assessment (the Empire was 'monstrous' in its irregularity), Wilson declares that the Empire oscillated between several ideal types of government through its history, always in response to circumstances. I think that a less teleological read would view the Empire as an idea, that emerges to become a corporate body (more successfully than given credit for, as Wilson and co. demonstrate), but that ultimately fails to offer an ideological alternative to the forces that sunder Christendom. It is a process in constant change and flux, with only historians looking back to give it shape and coherence.
Part of Wilson's main argument is that the Empire's overlapping authority and hierarchies offer a model for the current world. He is writing with the EU in mind, and makes that clear several times. Thus, this reassessment is appropriate for the current globalizing world, although I wonder what historians in the future will think.
Wilson contextualizes the history of the Empire and demonstrates the centrality of imperial politics to wider debates and change occurring across Europe. His discussion spends much time on the medieval Empire (rather than choosing to begin during the 15th c. Reichsreform) to show the evolution of the Empire from its original conception as leader of Christendom. In response to Pufendorf's assessment (the Empire was 'monstrous' in its irregularity), Wilson declares that the Empire oscillated between several ideal types of government through its history, always in response to circumstances. I think that a less teleological read would view the Empire as an idea, that emerges to become a corporate body (more successfully than given credit for, as Wilson and co. demonstrate), but that ultimately fails to offer an ideological alternative to the forces that sunder Christendom. It is a process in constant change and flux, with only historians looking back to give it shape and coherence.
Part of Wilson's main argument is that the Empire's overlapping authority and hierarchies offer a model for the current world. He is writing with the EU in mind, and makes that clear several times. Thus, this reassessment is appropriate for the current globalizing world, although I wonder what historians in the future will think.
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