Customer Reviews

Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa

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Marshall Sahlins uses two seemingly unrelated episodes in history to question the narrative form of historiography with which we all grew up. He compares the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Greece with the nineteenth century conflict between Rewa and Bau, two Fijian kingdoms. Both featured an expansive, sea-going empire versus a more insular, land-oriented opponent.

Sahlins makes a very good case for the conflicts being driven by geography and culture, more than great men. He uses the two wars to illustrate the differences between narrative history and the more modern cultural view. He even recounts the 1951 National League pennant race between the Dodgers and the Giants to illustrate his point.

Although I prefer narrative history, with its seeming movers and shakers, and its chronological descriptions of events. I have to admit that Sahlins makes very good points for "Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa" as he subtitled this book. My only real complaint, and this extends to most works of this genre, is its intensive use of sociological jargon. Some sentences are simply unintelligible to a sociologically untrained, but otherwise literate reader.

That said, this is a good read, and certainly expanded my horizons.

With a title like "Apologies to Thucydides," what I was expecting was a more anthropological view on Thucydides' material. What I got what Sahlin's shaky justification for his tenuous and, dare I say, boring thesis.

Within the first few pages I knew this book wasn't going to be what I was hoping for, but I stuck with it, only to be thoroughly confused at the random trains of thought expressed. It seems to me that Sahlins had a list of things to tie the Pelopennesian War to before he wrote the book, and just did whatever he could to connect them. The purpose behind this is dubious and isn't explained in a satisfying manner at all.

I just fail to see the value in this book. My recommendation: don't waste your time. The book I was looking for, as far as I'm concerned, hasn't come out yet.