Customer Reviews

Medieval Technology and Social Change

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
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This is one of the classic works of medieval studies to emerge out of the past half century, and its importance far outstrips whether or not White's famous stirrup thesis is correct or not. The overwhelming consensus is that it is incorrect. But only someone who has not read the book could imagine that that thesis was the bulk of the book, or the only idea in it. In fact, there is an unstated, larger thesis that underlies White's book, and which indicates why it is important: White implies that we can only understand the medieval period if we also understand its technology. White virtually ushered in the age of the study of medieval technology and seeing it as intimately connected and underlying the social and even political history.

This is a short book, shorter than it initially seems upon holding it because of the vast number of foot and endnotes. But the number of ideas and insights are completely out of proportion with the book's apparent brevity. It is absolutely stuffed to overflowing with content. Miraculously, that doesn't effect its readability. Even a relative neophyte to historical studies will have little difficulty following White's ideas and arguments, although, obviously, the more one knows, the better the background one will have for understanding his theses.

Although his stirrup thesis has largely been rejected, this remains an essential book on any short list of the great works of medieval history. More than that, it is fun, too. I strongly recommend it to anyone with the slightest degree of interest in medieval history.

Although this book has been around for awhile, it represents a truly amazing source of information on the role which technology played in Medieval society. I thought that the first two parts of the book, dealing with changes in technologies of war and agriculture and their effect on Medieval society were by far the strongest part of the work. At times, I found the meticulous description of the archaelogy and etymology of various objects and words a bit much, but I was fascinated by the way in which White linked technological progress to the emergence of numerous aspects of Medieval life. I didn't enjoy the final section, on machinery, as much because it seemed to loose its focus on the social changes caused by the technology, although it did mention the new ethos that mechanical development fostered. I have done some more reading on the subject, and some critics have argued that White overstates the importance of the stirrup, but regardless about where the various historical controversies are today, this book provides a superb introduction to the field and would be a great resource to anyone doing research.

Medieval Technology and Social Change was published in 1962. It is the production of a professor and it bears many of the characteristics of such works: huge numbers of footnotes, further Notes at the end (comprising about a third of the total book), and an extremely scholarly tone. Fortunately Professor White writes much better than many academics, and the book contains a number of interesting speculations about the effect of Europe of the technological changes which took place in the Middle Ages.

The book concentrates almost completely on Europe, so that you will have to look elsewhere for technological changes in the rest of the world, but what is here is fascinating. There is speculation on the role of the stirrup in revolutionizing warfare and feudalism, an examination of the effects of the three field system on the health of the medieval Europeans, and some intriquing hypotheses on the development of various power sources and machine designs. Worthwhile, particularly in combination with a broader work such as Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey.

This book was part of the PhD curriculim at a top-tier university for Public Policy. The course was Science & Technology Policy I (a massive literature review before getting into our own research).

Whether or not the chain of events and relationships occurred precisely as White postulates is irrelevant.

The POINT is that small, technological change can have GIANT impacts upon life and social organization. This has been proven repeatedly by the researchers/students of complexity science (see Mitchell Waldrop, Murray Gell-Mann, Roger Lewin, John Holland, etc.)

By connecting medieval technological change (eg agrarian practices, stirrup, clock) to societal change (eg feudal system, settlement/town patterns), this book provides readers with a conceptual starting point to begin thinking about the impact of modern and future technologies.

In short, its a quick, VERY stimulating and interesting read. With the price at only 2 dollars, you can't go wrong!

I have gone back to this book a couple of times a year since I was in graduate school back in the 1960s. What Lynn White brings home is that a little technological innovation like the invention and use of the stirrup (combined with some better horse breeding) was an instrumental element in the creation of an entire feudal society in northern Europe. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that those small changes have an impact that far exceeds their immediate effect. This is a very basic and easy to read book (despite some untranslated Latin and French), and to anyone interested in the long run effect of technology it is the place to begin.

Lynn White's study is a fascinating read and should be part of any study of medieval history. It is very difficult to study technology without good narrative sources, and White does have some trouble assigning dates to different advances. Yet this book is most valuable for the attention that it pays to aspects of medieval history that too often go ignored, exploring the effects of basic inventions like the stirrup or the heavy plough on military strategy, daily life, and medieval culture. White's best work covers the period from the 6th to the 9th centuries, and this book would serve as a very good companion to Pirenne's _Economic and Social History_, which focuses on later periods.

If I, with hindsight, was to start studying this subject, this would be the first book I would read. In 1962 this book brought the historical concept of a culturally bereft yet technologically vigorous age to the public attention. Effectively illuminating the percieved "dark ages". White's views on mounted warfare/feudal society are the first major revision of Brunner's "Charles Martel" interpretations of the 19th century and were accepted wisdom until the 90's. Much the same can be said for the sections on agriculture and power technology. Beware however, reading this book alone could give a greatly slanted view of this subject, White makes sweeping connections between technology and it's effects on society, many of which are no longer held in favour by today's achedemic elite, this however makes for better reading. Aside from this, the book is lightly enough written for the layman and gives a firm founding in the primary issues involved in the subject, if one wishs to know more the notes are very extensive (roughly half the text.) This is an easy way into a generally dry and technical subject, which also happens to be a classic in its field.

I had to read this book for a class titled, "The Historian's Craft." Although Lynn White Jr's book contained many foreign languages (all translated in footnotes and endnotes), and refered to many historical events (events that could easily be looked up in a history book), I thought it was put together quite well. I had to give a fifteen minute presentation on Lynn White Jr. and this book, which I stretched into thirty minutes because there was so much to talk about. Great book!

Halsall gets it wrong. The great controversy is still going on about feudalism as a system arising from a technological innovation, the stirrup.

White's details about the stirrup and change of warfare are partly insufficient and conclusions partly dubious. - But this is exactly, why we read history. The causes of events tend to be very complicated. Luckily there is Trivial Pursuit and other parlour games for people, who prefer "facts".

This book is seminal.

Well, the title is certainly not misleading. The book talks about various innovations during the Middle Ages (e.g., in agriculture, commerce, the military) and discusses their effect on the societies and economies of medieval Europe.

The material is fascinating, but it's also densely written and slow-going. Sometimes more than half of the page is taken up by footnotes.

This book is not exactly geared for the teeming masses. On the other hand, it's too broad-based and brief to be much of a scholarly work.

In fact, I'm not sure who this was written for. Its brevity suggests it was written for a popular audience, but all the footnotes suggest it was written for scholarly consumption. The problem as I see it is that scholars are going to require a good deal more depth, while the teeming masses aren't anywhere close to caring about such obtrusive notations as: 4. Cf. J. Baltrusaitis, Le Moyen Age fantasqiue: antiquites et exotismes dans l'art gothique (Paris, 1955), 247 and 7. MS. B 33r, ed. C. Ravaisson-Mollien (Paris, 1883); cf. Reti, op.cit, 779-83. fig. 14.

And as for the text itself, here's a taste of what you're in store for:

"The earliest evidence of compound crank and connecting-rod in Italy is found in a manuscript of Mariano di Jacopo Taccola which is not earlier than 1441 nor later than 1458, but the sketch (Fig. 7) shows a defective understanding of the motion involved. However, a drawing in the Louvre by Pisanello, who died c. 1456 and who never travelled outside Italy, depicts lucidly a piston-pump powered by a water-wheel and operated by two simple cranks and two connecting-rods." (p. 113)