East-West exchanges
J. CAMPBELL
Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages edited by Geoffrey Barraclough (Thames and Hudson 35s) A Czech, a Pole, two Germans and an Englishman wrote the five essays in this book. Their attention is concentrated on the rel. ationships between east and west in medi. aeval Poland, Bohemia and Germany and is only incidentally directed to other parts of Europe. The editor points out that miscon- ceptions of the mediaeval history of the am have been important to the racist ideologists, both German and Slav, and so are partly responsible for Modern conflicts. He makes it clear that he intends to do good by dispel. ling such misconceptions and by leading the ' reader to 'concentrate on what the peoples of Europe have in common'. The contrib. utors exchange salvoes of goodwill across the Oder-Neisse line. A German directs attention to 'the inherent statesmanlike qual. ities of the west Slays'. The Pole emphasises that Poland and Bohemia became 'multi. national political societies' to whose culture Germans were integral. Ours is the first gen. eration in which such exchanges could have taken place. The may be called hopeful. The book is useful as well as worthy.There has previously been little of its introductory and alluring kind written in English about the west Slays. It provides an interesting outline of the development of Poland and Bohemia and of the sadder and more complicated fate of the pagan tribes in the north. The part pliyed by western ideas and devices in en. abling elites of shadowy origin to create states is brought out well. So too is the use made by Slav rulers of the Germans who irl the twelfth and thirteenth centuries poured into the lands of opportunity in the east. There is a splendid essay by Professor Gieysztor on the connections between cul ture and power. The illustrations are good. That which depicts Wenceslaus Iv of Bohemia lurking in his initial, and attend'
what are described as 'bath maidens' is particularly to be recommended. • Nevertheless, much of what we have here is history written in a cause. That it is Ilerr Brandt's good cause and not Kaiser WO'
helm's bad cause does not alter the fact that the price of 'relevance' is distortion. In this case the elements of bloodshed and bitter- ness in German-Slav relations are minimised by the well-tried device of stating that they should not be minimised but then saying only a minimum about them. The book tends to convince the reader of the truth of some of the views which it is its avowed purpose to combat: namely that eastern and western Europe were very different and that the west was in some senses superior. It is shown that all important movements,whether of mission- aries or of settlers, of styles of art or of systems of government, went from west to east. By no means so much came back the other way. In a lively account of economic relations Professor Postan, with devilish in- genuity, puts the argument that the export trade in grain from east to west in the later Middle Ages was essentially 'colonial'. He suggests that it created conditions in the east favouring the gross depression of peas- ants and the secure entrenchment of aristo- crats. Thus the east appears as the victim of a kind of western economic imperialism which 'created along the river Elbe one of Europe's sharpest lines of social and econ- omic demarcation'. It does not appear that this is the kind of message which Professor Barraclough intended this book to convey. A similar set of essays taking a more inward- looking view of Poland and Bohemia wduld do more to show how important eastern Europe was in its own right.
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