HOW THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD

WELL, WHAT A FINE DISCORDIAN READ THIS ONE WAS!




This fine volume of COLLAPSE and DISORDER, followed by REBUILDING and REORDERING, followed by MORE COLLAPSE AND DISORDER, was published by Fair Winds Press in 2008, ISBN 978-1592333035.  The author is Thomas Craughwell and he clearly did a GREAT deal of reading to assemble all this information -- he cited 84 other books in his Bibliography, and for all I know HE MAY HAVE SKIPPED A FEW.




He listed the major barbarian invasions of Western and Eastern Europe in roughly chronological disorder, including the various sackings of Rome by the Huns, the Goths and the Vandals; the invasions of Britain, Ireland and Gaul; and the kicking of Eastern European keester by the Mongols.  Worked in at many points was the conversion to Christianity of Tom, Dick and Harry, not to mention Caesar, Vladimir and more than a few others. 


YOU HAVE TO LOVE the way an Egyptian cleric named Arius sowed ALL KINDS OF DISCORD by deciding that Jesus Christ was not a mere mortal but a sort of Superman figure, launching his own version of Christianity that pretty much horrified the Catholics, who were already entering a tense standoff with the Eastern Orthodox flavor Christians for choosing Greek over Latin as a liturgical language and for liking Byzantium better than Rome as a home base.  Of course, this was YONKS before the Protestant Reformation, a development that has sowed UNTOLD discord to this very day -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Craughwell's book is all about the Dark Ages, and THEIR definition of the word "Arian," not the Aryan ideals of the KKK or the Nazis...


What I like about this one is the way Craughwell makes clear that while we are often encouraged to think of the barbarians as CREATING DISORDER AND CHAOS,  they were just as busy CREATING ORDER and PROGRESS TOWARDS ORDER.  How?  BY CREATING CHAOS.


I MEAN, HOW DISCORDIAN CAN YOU GET, AM I RIGHT?


The guy doesn't even get into the horror and destruction spread by the Roman soldiers, in the years before anyone ever heard of the Vikings or the Huns.  I assume it was just beyond the scope of this book, but he seems to take it at face value that the Romans were and orderly and civilizing force.  It certainly never seemed to occur to those Latin-speaking DESTROYERS OF WORLDS that anything they ripped apart, burned to the ground or took as slaves might SORT OF RESENT THE INTRUSION.


(For more on that, let me encourage you to read TERRY JONES'S BARBARIANS, ANOTHER UPCOMING BLOCKBUSTER here at My Golden Apples.)


Ah, but you'll love Craughwell for the way he gets into the both the Chaos and the Order inherent in the barbarian invasions perpetrated by the Vikings, the Mongols and more than a few others of their ilk.  This is a book the great master Will Cuppy would really love.  Maybe even envy.  I hope he can read it himself, in a comfy wing chair by a crackling fire in the Great Wherever.