Why did Europe, originally a small backward corner of the Eurasian land-mass, spring to world dominance in a few centuries roughly beginning in 1450 and ending in the 1700's?
The short answers usually tell a story commencing from the Black Plague, then outlining the birth and rise of the Renaissance, and often also mention things such as Gutenberg's printing press, the myriad improvements of unknown artisans to the construction and rigging of sailing ships, or similar improvements in the technology of war. Longer answers trace the development of centralised states that made it possible to focus the resources of people more effectively to whatever purposes the princes of state desired, or the development of more efficient trade methods invented by the ingenious Italian merchant houses.
Robert Bartlett's The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change does not tell either of these stories. Instead it makes an attempt to answer the questions looming behind them: Why was Europe capable to launching these transformations? Why here, why not elsewhere?
The story Bartlett tells is a colourful account of a transformation equally fundamental and deep as Renaissance, the transformation of Latin Christendom that took place over the four centuries before the Black Plague. During those centuries what became Europe expanded from its core areas - Northern France, Rhine valley, England - to more than double in size; it developed a joint identity of Christendom; it started to see itself equal in comparison to the neighbouring Moslem world; all in all, it planted the seeds that would start to flourish later.
I am not a historian, merely an interested reader who is fascinated by history and wants to understand it. Thus I cannot comment on the scientific merit of Bartlett's work. Nevertheless, I believe that professional historians are not the primary audience Bartlett has aimed his work to. This became clear in comparison with another book on medieval history I read in parallel with this one, Malcolm Barber's The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320 that clearly is intended for (aspiring) professionals.
If so, I think Bartlett has reached his goal admirably. This is a nice book to read, with a good balance of detail and general outline. The individual stories of enterprising and mobile French nobility; the spread of new cities (and their legal systems) in all parts of Europe; the commercialisation of Europe's economy; the adoption of Christian names by people whose grandparents were pagan; or many others are each fascinating in their own right, and together they paint a rich and compelling total picture.
Of course, my own home country enters this story at the latest stage, and just barely. Nevertheless, in Finland as well, once the "winning formula" was introduced, the transformation was rapid and total, even if the implementation was shaped by the local conditions just like Bartlett explains in other cases.
In sum, this is a nice book that I recommend to anyone interested in the roots of things.
