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Title: Kingship and Unity: Scotland, 1000-1306 (New History of Scotland Series) by G.W.S. Barrow ISBN: 0-85224-643-9 Publisher: Edinburgh University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Making History Fresh
Comment: This book is part of a series called a "New History of Scotland", and Barrow is clearly at his best when he cleaves to the "New History" concept. This is when traditional political narrative is set aside in favor of a careful reconstruction of time and place and process. It's obvious that Barrow loves this approach: he draws on the mountains of documentary minutiae, and the statistical analyses they've spawned, on the odd foreign sources, on the archaeology, to present a sort of SimScotland in all its dynamic detail. When he feels forced to recount the political history, he is less comfortable, and the book drags terribly. It would have been nicer if he had been able to more clearly connect the story of power at the highest levels to the context he so exuberantly brings alive. His prose when describing "life at the ground level" is almost poetic; his style when relating the wars and intrigues of kings and earls is like the worst PowerPoint presentation you've ever had to sit through. At one point, it is completely incomprehensible. Fortunately, he has the good sense to keep those tedious passages to a minimum, and to focus on the "new look". There is more than just reconstruction to this "new history": its ultimate aim, I think, is to reveal historical processes, resolved in the finest detail available, from multiple perspectives. This engenders insight: for instance, it struck me, in the section on towns and burgesses, that these newly chartered towns (and also the new contemporaneous monastic communities) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries can be seen as precursors to European colonialism--a sort of internal economic colonization. They were usually stocked with foreigners that had specialized skills and international trade contacts, and were created with the explicit goal of creating wealth for kings who were tired of the customary local tribute (how many cheese wheels, sacks of oats, and chickens does a king need?). I believe these were the initial steps toward the full-blown colonial mercantilism that emerged in western Europe four centuries later. The other effect of this "new" history is to reduce the distance between you and twelfth century Scotland--what you once thought of as olde and medieval is reworked so that one almost feels the issues and resources of the very living people of the time, and one can appreciate the dilemmas and choices they faced.