The Islamic world stretched from Seville to Samarkand and from Mosul to Mali, enjoying a period of unrivaled prosperity in addition to artistic and scientific advancement. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantine Empire dazzled with splendor and sophistication. Traditional narratives cast this period as a dark age of backwardness and barbarism, before the “rebirth” of classical tradition during the European Renaissance. Metropolitan Museum of Art under public domain After the Roman Empire split in the late third century-the western half eventually splintering into independent kingdoms, the eastern half developing into the Byzantine Empire-some elements of classical culture were lost, some preserved and others transformed for a radical new world: the early Middle Ages.įragment of a sixth-century Byzantine floor mosaic featuring Ktisis, a figure personifying the act of generous donation or foundation The misunderstandings accumulate after that. Celebrating their mixed heritage, they would not have considered themselves to be white, and certainly not Western. Similarly, the Romans ruled an empire that spanned three continents and claimed they were descended from the Trojans of Asia. Indeed, the famous historian Herodotus derided the very concept of separate continents, arguing instead that they all belonged to the same connected world. ![]() Recent research shows that the ancient Greeks didn’t think of themselves as predominantly European. What would Western history look like if we abandoned the myth of “Western civilization” and dug deeper to uncover the historical realities beneath it? We could start at the supposed birthplace of the West, in the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. Yet the nuances of these cultural interactions have yet to be fully untangled, and traditional narratives about Western history remain stubbornly ubiquitous. Today, all serious historians and archaeologists acknowledge that the cross-fertilization of “Western” and “non‐Western” cultures happened throughout human history, and that the modern West owes much of its cultural DNA to a wide range of non‐European and non‐white forebears. This has become the standard version of Western history, both canonical and clichéd. This story imagines Western history as unfurling backward in time through the Enlightenment, the brightness of the Renaissance and the darkness of the Middle Ages, all the way to its origin in the classical worlds of Greece and Rome-“from Plato to NATO,” as a popular 1998 history book put it. Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western civilization”-the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times-is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. ![]() ![]() This caused great squalor for the inhabitants, hemmed in between the Roman walls and the River Thames.The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives The population of London went up 500% between the 12th and 14th centuriesīy the start of the 14th century, London had grown from 17,000 people to a bustling city of c.100,000. ![]() “…there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.” 6. On 13 April 1314 for instance, King Edward II issued a proclamation that banned football in London. Football was banned in England on multiple occasions The subsequent English victories at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt proved the law provided dividends. Edward III introduced a law which made archery practice compulsory every Sunday to ensure the king always had a steady supply of archers available. Archery practise was for a time compulsory for every able EnglishmanĮngland became a breeding ground for the best archers in the world. In Savigny, France, 1457, a sow was charged with murder, found guilty and hanged.
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