Customer Reviews

Italy in the Early Middle Ages: 476-1000 (Short Oxford History of Italy)

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In an effort to understand more of the historic development of Italy, I picked up this book from the local library. The book covers a wide range of time, from 476-1000, and each chapter is an essay covering a particular aspect of this period. The book is definitely not all inclusive, and it is not meant to be. The essays do give the reader a good sense of what is happening and how Italy is changing through the time period.

Overall, I found the essays to be well-written. Some of the essays are drier than others, making them more difficult to focus your attention upon. I like the idea of the subject specific essay though, allowing the reader to understand an aspect as a whole for a period before passing onto the next.

The book concentrates mostly on Northern and Central Italy. Southern Italy does not receive the same attention. From the text, I would gather that there is less material about the area available to study this period. Perhaps as more archaeological evidence is found and local histories are gathered, we can understand more about what happened in this area in this period (Note: the Byzantine Empire controlled the area for much of this period, as opposed to the Lombards, Goths and Carolingans farther to the north).

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about this period. It is important to understand the transitions that a culture makes if you are going to understand why a land is how it is (and if that makes sense to you, good).