Vanished Kingdoms

October 24, 2011
European history as an academic subject concerns itself with England, France, and Germany, or Athens, Rome, and Moscow. But the real map of Europe has always been more complicated, with countless peoples and cultures struggling for self-determination, then disappearing. Historian Davies, professor emeritus at London University (Europe: A History), sets out to rescue the voices of these lost nations, presenting brief portraits of 15 European countries that have ceased to exist, from Tolosa, the ancient kingdom of the Visigoths, to the U.S.S.R., including two, Montenegro and Ireland, which have at least partially re-emerged from the dark. Even residents of present-day Britain or France are unlikely to have heard of Alt Clud, the Welsh kingdom now in Scotland, or of the various kingdoms of Burgundia, which regularly vanished and reappeared around the map of west-central Europe. Though the prose is dry at times and reliable sources for some countries are thin on the ground, readers will find this a useful corrective to the common misperception that history’s losers represent “a squabbling mix of obscure ethnic groups; a mass of near-unpronounceable names in unfamiliar languages; a brew of ‘fanatical nationalisms’; and a tragi-comic outcome for which the alone need be blamed.” Illus., maps.

November 1, 2011
Distinguished British historian Davies (No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945, etc.) delves into 15 once-great, now-fallen states, from the ancient Visigoths to the Soviet Union. The author again displays an enormous breadth of knowledge in this selective yet comprehensive historical study of thriving kingdoms that eventually gave way to internal or external forces such as implosion or conquest. Davies is inspired by the epic movement of peoples, starting with the writhing of barbarian hordes that invaded the rotting Roman Empire, namely the Visigoths, who established the Kingdom of Tolosa (modern-day Toulouse) in 418 CE. They lasted for 89 years and spread (into Iberia) a unique Gothic speech, political culture and architecture. These were only one of many interrelated linguistic sub-groups that moved into pockets of Europe, such as the Ostrogoths, Lombards and Burgundians, all now vanished, but leaving in their wake a rich "contaminating" of language, culture and gene pool. Davies delights in recounting the "Kingdom of the Rock," aka the Old North (Scotland), which was once inhabited by the Ancient Britons (as opposed to the Celts or the Anglo-Saxons), giving forth such legendary notables as St. Patrick, King Arthur and St. Mungo, before being eclipsed by myriad tribes and the Vikings. The author also examines the obscure state of Belarus and its capital Minsk, locus of a dizzying collision of migrating tribes, but he seems overwhelmed by the task of summarizing the complex civilization of Byzantion. Davies dwells instead on Borussia, where the early Prusai, the "People of the Lagoon," mingled with their invited guests, the Knights of the Teutonic Order, creating a potent socio-military machine of conquest. Other recondite searches wander into Italy, Germany and her rivaling Saxon duchies, ancestral Éire and, finally, Estonia as emblematic of the Soviet Union's pernicious cultural manipulation. A fine concluding chapter, "How States Die," offers a robust roundup for the diligent reader. As usual with Davies, an exceedingly accomplished and dauntingly thorough study.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2011
A dozen-plus examples from European history constitute this ruminative disquisition on the impermanence of polities. Struck by popular amnesia about the existence of his selections, some of which endured for centuries (although one, the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine, lived but one day), Davies, from a traveler's viewpoint, describes the contemporary appearance of each former state's territory or principal city, then applies engrossing clarity to the history of its origin, ascent, and decline. Two states en route to expiration, Prussia and Savoy, left traces in contemporary Germany and Italy, but the rest are gone, submerged by dynastic politics, as were the duchy of Burgundy and the kingdom of Aragon, or hacked away and conquered by aggressive neighbors, as was the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Despite the subject of extinction, pessimism does not pervade Davies' accounts, which detect a persistence of popular memory about each vanished state, encouraging advocates for its revival, as occurred in the cases of Poland and Lithuania. Having current relevance especially to the UK and Montenegro, Davies' fascinating work harbors insights and discoveries for avid history readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)