The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain (Oxford Illustrated Histories) [ペーパーバック]

This is a good book for a reader who is little like me. I have no training in British history and little in Western. I read quite a bit of history and don't mind a challenging work, though, which lets me get through most histories without too much frustration. This book often lacked the context with which self-teaching historians can teach themselves, even with frequent map- and index-checking.

The chapters of this book are all written by different authors, each one clearly an expert on the subject of his individual chapter. The authors do not agree on their audience. For instance, Gillingham's chapter on the early middle ages was clearly written, had several maps and followed a timeline before ending with a thematic look at the economy and political structure of the period. The very next chapter, Griffiths' chapter on the late middle ages, skips around by dozens of years within a single paragraph, mentions towns in France without maps and assumes foreknowledge of the battles of the Hundred Year war. Unfortunately, this book contains more chapters like the latter than the former.

I suspect that a European or an American with a basic familiarity of British history would find this a very useful intermediate level book with which to learn or re-discover an overview of Britain. The handiness of one volume written by many experts providing an overview of such a long history is what is right with this book. To those with some background in the subject, this book will be extremely convenient and useful. For someone without European geographic knowledge or a recognition of the figures in British history, even a patient and attentive reading will lead to frustrating hunts for the background of many important figures mentioned once within the narrative and to pointless searches through inadequate maps.

I'm a half-educated American, with the vaguest notions of British history. I bought this book hoping to be able to understand the story of the British Isles, in a more or less clear outline. That didn't happen: after 200 pages, I tossed the book, wondering just who it was written for. Here's why I tossed it:

(1) It doesn't have an author. Instead, it has a bunch of authors, each apparently assigned a certain portion of British history to cover. The problem is that none of the authors seem to have consulted each other, nor did the editor seem to edit. On every other page, you see a fact or definition repeated (by a previous author), or a topic referenced (but uncovered by a previous author). History is a messy thing, but it has to be organized to be learned, and any hope of presenting material in terms of themes or movements is lost, because styles and approaches switch radically from author to author, from clear and sparse, to confusing and overly-detailed.

(2) It should have an author. This sounds like point (1), but hear me out: the editor, Mr. Morgan, claims that writing grand history, spanning the length of the British past, just can't be written anymore. It is better, rather, to have specialists write about their specialities. Sounds good in theory, but is just abominable when placed next to comprehensive histories written by single authors. Toynbee and Trevleyan wrote such history earlier. And J. Roberts writes such history now, particularly his History of Europe, and History of the World, two models of lucid historical writing that make this disjointed compilation look like an ill-considered mishmash.

(3) It should have an audience. Or at least a different audience: the average intelligent reader wants a clean, interesting exposition of the important events and currents of the past. While some chapters achieve that, the most seem to be written not to the Average Reader, but to the Rival Colleague. And so we see a few facts casually presented, and then a sudden digression into some piece of scholarly minutae that leaves the reader (me, that is) pexplexed.

(4) It should teach historical knowledge, not assume it. This is one of those histories that assumes from the onset that you know all the relevant history. That might be OK for a narrow scholarly article, but it's an awful presumption for a comprehensive history. I read dozens of pages discussing the 'Domesday Book,' its importance, and its effects. The authors never thought to enlighten the ignorant, and explain what this Domesday Book was (an very old tax survey). Things like this litter every page.

From previous reading, I've learned that good history can be written. From reading this, I've learned that very bad history can be written, too.

Few of us would deny that, among countless other things, Britain, that small and infinite island, has given us some of the world's greatest historians: Gibbon, Macaulay, Trevelyan... All of them writers who possessed impressive conviction, a masterful prose style, an all-embracive mind, a sharp wit, and an idiosyncratic genius. Certainly, Britain's history is not less fascinating that its historians: its course has greatly influenced (and, sometimes, dictated) the rest of the world's affairs. Like any other part of our past, it also offers a clue to understand our present - maybe even our very essence. Unfortunately, this just makes Oxford's failure to produce a decent one-volume History of Britain all the more frustrating.

Kenneth O. Morgan, the editor, asserts in his foreword that only a multi-author approach can cope with such an extensive subject, since relying purely on one writer would be "neither practicable nor desirable, now that Renaissance men have vanished from the earth." The fact that this book's most glaring deficiencies are due to the very method Morgan so heartily endorses, however, somewhat undermines his assertions. For while it may be true that a vast undertaking like the 15-volume Oxford's History of Britain, for example, would hardly be possible without the collaboration of a selected group of specialists, that same modus operandi is at odds with this book. The main strengths of a one-volume history should not be painstaking detail, but clearness, concision and consistency -something Morgan has sadly neglected. This kind of book should be enlightening and accessible to laymen and undergraduates alike; it is neither.

First of all, each chapter appears to have been written in isolation, as if each author had been blind to the work of the rest: there is frequent overlapping of information, constant change in approach, and, what is worse, scarcely any unifying interpretation of history. This disjointed, choppy method grows wearisome very fast. A single writer would have probably treated every chapter as a part of a whole, and would have therefore arranged and interpreted every event accordingly; there is no such frame or criteria here. The writers fall over themselves jumping back and forth in time to include tidbits of information, destroying the flow of the book, sparing the reader no figure, statistic, or date.

This hints at another huge defect: the astounding incapability throughout to sort the relevant information from the trivial or downright confusing. Crucial events are shrugged off in order to expand on some trifling detail; the big picture is always taken for granted or just forgotten. The Hundred Years' War, for example, is thrown into the background, as if it were pure circumstance, something that happened to affect England by some nebulous reason. When you have only a few hundred pages to explain how and why Britain's history unfolded like it did, cutting it off from the rest of the world does not like a good idea, but that solipsism prevails here. While, for example, six pages are spent explaining, with painstaking detail (various graphs included), England's population growth in the Tudor Age and how it affected market prices, no room is given to the fundamental causes behind both World Wars. They almost materialize into existence, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it fashion.

If one were to take each chapter individually, these defects would not look so obtrusive; however, this book is definitely less than the sum of its parts. Morgan took quantity over quality, specialized knowledge over lucidity, ten authors (including himself) over a "Renaissance man." In my opinion, genius is not restricted to a bygone era; nor can it be replaced by a ensemble of academicians. Until a more ambitious historian takes up the delightful challenge of relating Britain's past in a approachable, perhaps even memorable way, we will have to go back to Hume, to Macaulay, to Travelyan. It may be that sometimes they were not afraid of subtly changing history to make it fit their viewpoint - but then again, Britain itself has never been afraid of making history either.