Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones – A New History of the Middle Ages (Head of Zeus), £25.00.
“I have to rescue Dick Whittington from the pantomime circuit – him and that cat!” This is one of the minor mission statements by Dan Jones for his outstanding, fast, and funny, history of the Middle Ages Powers and Thrones. I have never read such a huge and encompassing description of a vast historical and geographic landscape.
A handsome volume of 710 pages, it is a joy to read and seems to be over in a trice. It is witty, thoughtful and original in its approach, analysis and storytelling – a book for every reader, written by a man with no mean amount of scholarship in his quiver. It is both a brilliant introduction to the art of history telling and something for the experts to ponder. To read it is a breeze – no other word will do. I must say I found it sharper and pacier than Val McDermid’s latest offering in Tartan Noir, 1979 – which I happened to be reading at the same time.
But back to Richard Whittington – sans chat (which must be le mot juste) – for he is one of the many outstanding portraits in this extraordinary story. One of the book’s central themes is the role of the merchant and the traveller for commerce and curiosity, religious faith and intellectual curiosity, rather than conquest and war.
Whittington was a merchant traveller, a tough-minded counsellor who all but saved the finances of Richard II. He is the epitome of the great commerce of 14th century England – the trade in wool and finished cloth, part of the mighty continental trade system. He was a mercer, and largely because of his prestige, the mercers were to form the leading guild and livery company of the City of London.
Whittington is complemented in legend and fact by Marco Polo, son of a wealthy Venetian merchant family – who set out for central Asia and Cathay with his uncle in 1271. He reaches the court of the great Kublai Khan, who seems to have taken an immediate shine to the young Italian – giving him missions to travel his huge empire, and for years.
On return, it is only the accident of being taken prisoner by the Genoese in the battle of Korcula that gives us the stories of The Travels – still available from any good bookstore. In prison in Genoa, he spills all to his simpatico cellmate, one Rustichello of Pisa, surely one of the greatest ghostwriters of history, who bungs it all down and gets a publisher.
The Travels have never been out of print,” says Jones, “and though the tales are tall in places, so much seems to be brilliant, accurate reporting.” Like Whittington, Marco Polo is a merchant hero whose reportage took on a life of its own. “The Travels was not just the medieval equivalent of gap year blogging,” he writes with characteristic verve. “It was a tract full of valuable commercial insight …. Marco made careful note of the wider conditions under which traders could operate.” He had observations about the export market in hoses in Persia for sale in India, travelling on safe roads, trading with the Mongols and the Chinese using paper money.
Marco Polo and his fellow travellers were introduced to the Mongols and the steppe, and the steady rhythm of the pressure of invading armies and peoples on Europe from the East, the so-called barbarians helping to bring closure on Ancient Rome, the Vikings and Rus from the North on Constantinople and Byzantium, followed by the Ottomans.
He puts the sack of two great cities as waypoints in the story – the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, and the trashing of Rome by Imperial troops in 1527, at the point where Europe was to dissolve into religious conflict for two centuries and the networks of commerce were embracing the new worlds of the Americas and the trade to the Indies in the East. Europe then would be part of a global economy, and whatever we mean by the Middle Ages were done for.
Framing such a huge canvas in time and space must have been a task beyond monumental. Jones describes himself as a “journalist – historian”, and is a talented analyst and editor, with an acute eye for a great story, or even greater back story. With substantial works on the Crusades, Plantagenets, the Templars in his catalogue – this is his tenth book – he set out his campaign plan.
“I had a corkboard on which I set out five major topics – climate change, pandemic, migration, the hidden innovations of technology, and global networks. I must say that I started working on pandemic before Covid-19 had hit us.” All the main topics had been tackled in previous histories – think of Fernand Braudel’s description of Europe and Asia’s great landscapes and climates, his evocation of the role of the Bactrian camel in the vast trade networks from China to the Mediterranean. But few have given climate, demography, migration the emphasis they deserve – they are the great connectors showing why such histories reach to the future through the past and present.
The onset of the great plague, the Black Death, which hit Europe from 1347 to 51, is one of the most powerful narrative drivers of the central part of the book. The zoonotic leap to humans of the bacillus Yersinia pestis happened in the steppe of Central Asia from rodents, such as rats and marmots through flea bites. Within a decade, the pestilence had wiped out over a third of the southern European population and would be repeated through centuries to come.
It led to disruption and revolt – the jacqueries of central France following dire harvests and the defeat and capture of the king at Poitiers in 1356. The popular risings include the so-called Peasants Revolt of Wat Tyler and co of 1381. The range of revolt is handled with colourful ingenuity – suggesting that the so-called Rebellion of the Ciompi (literally the “comb-makers”, meaning the day-labouring proletariat, or popolo minuto) of Florence in 1378 to 1382 was possibly the first industrial strike – albeit with arms – in European history.
The strong element of religious dissent became more obvious in the wake of the Black Death and the insurrections, the jacqueries, which gained a powerful tool with the arrival, and the rapid dissemination, of printing. Jones is in his element when discussing the great writers, especially the polemicists and propagandists. He shows his colours as a journalist born and not made. He gets to the backstories immediately, especially how Martin Luther became the most successful protester of his and almost any other age. “He wrote a hundred books – he just couldn’t stop,” Jones tells me; “Imagine if he had lived in the age of Google.”
Jones said he learnt a lot from life as a journalist, especially his time on the Evening Standard. “I used to do sports commentaries. And if you can make a midwinter evening draw 0-0 between West Ham and Watford sing, I guess you can make anything work.” He certainly makes his version of writers and artists like Petrarch, Rogier Van Der Weyden and Leonardo sing. Petrarch, he rightly points out, had a much greater influence in new literary forms such as the sonnet than Dante, for example.
But I must confess I disagree with him about the enduring importance of the likes of Machiavelli and Dante himself. The problem with Dante is that in politics and life he was a loser, but his poetry is magnificent, unique, and in the end (in the Paradiso especially), a huge mystery. And his mysterious messages and images continued to have huge resonance, not least in the extreme propaganda of the Nazis and apocalyptic Marxists. Machiavelli hardly gets a look in with Jones – but Niccolò certainly understood the enduring ambiguities of power and politics, truer than ever today. Sadly, Machiavelli’s talented correspondent Philippe de Commynes – “the Spider”, counsellor extraordinary to the Court of Burgundy, doesn’t even get a footnote.
But it always was a problem what to leave and what to include in such an incredible and breathtaking white knuckle ride. Jones confessed that he only got Leonardo, Man of the Renaissance, in on the last curtain call. (Could he really have been left out?) He is disarming about the choices: “most of the writing at the time was by white, educated men after all. Women don’t get too much space.” Nonetheless, those that do are among the most vibrant vignettes. Among the most vivid are Heloise, ill-fated lover of Peter Abelard, the greatest brain in France of his day, and the glorious Theodora, consort of the Emperor Justinian, former circus showgirl, and a lot more besides.
Theodora’s circus antics were graphically described by Procopius of Caesarea in his Anecdota, or Secret History. It is an almost suicidal piece of kiss-and-tell journalism. Procopius was the official historian of the wars and triumphs of Justinian – but quietly was grassing up his imperial boss and heroes of the day like Belisarius for the ridicule of posterity in his private memoir. He knew that if he were caught, he would be tortured and probably executed. Why did he do it? Jones gave me a fantastic character reference: “He was a compulsive scribbler, a real hack. He just couldn’t stop himself – he was fantastic, a sort of Piers Morgan of his day. Relentlessly backstabbing, he just kept on, full of himself, loving the sound of his own voice.”
Dan Jones is generous about colleagues and teachers who sent him on his way in writing of history and journalism – full of what Italians call disinvoltura, calculated, slightly p-taking nonchalance. One of his teachers was David Starkey, an accomplished historian and writer now mired in controversy. “I am very grateful to him for showing me how to write history – equally to the wonderful and sympathetic Helen Castor (author of Blood and Roses and other best-sellers).” These and others showed him not only good writing but how history informs our view of the world.
Jones’s book is a whole new adventure for me because it introduces so many new writers as well as interesting new angles on the past. I was inspired by brilliant teachers and communicators such as KB McFarlane, AJP Taylor, Karl Leyser and great Italians like Franco Venturi. What they said still lodges in the mind. They taught real history, for life and not just exams.
In the middle of fratricidal feuds in Bosnia or Basra, the tangled webs of the Mafia and the Red Brigades or the changing climate conditions on tribal villages in Afghanistan, I have often thought of their urge to always look for the back story, the underlying element so easily missed. I remember being admonished by the formidable Bruce McFarlane, supervisor of one Alan Bennett at that time, for suggesting that Humphry Duke of Gloucester, Henry V’s brother, might have died of natural pneumonia following his arrest in 1447. “Robert,” he boomed no nob (or “magnate” as Bruce would have called him) died of natural causes in a medieval goal.” That one stuck.
The book lists and notes are an education in themselves – full of the latest work on historical human geography, climate, weather and diet. The Black Death struck so hard, apparently, because most of mid 14th century Europe was half-starving. But I wish some of the majesties of glorious works by Marc Bloch, Braudel, Febvre, and le Roy Ladurie, the biggest single source of inspiration in my journalism, had received at least a mention in despatches.
Jones himself is full of praise for his fellow writers, communicators and “fellow journalists of the past”, now introducing history and the value of history to a widening audience. “Dan Snow is doing extraordinary work with his projects reaching into new audiences, getting into schools, with great generosity. I particularly like the broad approach taken by Peter Frankopan his multi-volume history of the Silk Road.”
The shrinking place of history in schools and universities is a real concern. He cites a university in Scotland that has just dumped history and the broader humanities to concentrate entirely on sciences and vocational studies. “I am not arguing for “small school histories” – they can look after themselves,” he admits. He is more concerned for the broader appreciation of history and its infinite and enlightening curiosity as a tool of civilisation.
This makes Powers and Thrones so very special. I would want any school or university student, or anyone else with an ounce of public spirit and curiosity, to get hold of this glorious book. As Dan Jones said, concluding our recent conversation. “It’s just not OK to say goodbye to history now, as part of a slow intellectual suicide.”