Book Reviews

369

One of the major strengths of The World from 1400 to 1750 is its
elegant narrative style. Wills tells a number of fascinating stories from
the point of view of contemporaries, including witnesses at the siege of
Constantinople, Muslim pilgrims on the Hajj, and the philosophical
wanderings of the Chinese intellectual Wang Yangming. The vivid literary quality of the work, combined with its brevity (154 pages), do not
allow readers to get bogged down in tedious details or academic interpretations. While Willss analysis follows recent trends in world history scholarship, his interpretive framework does not intrude upon the
narrative. Keeping a broad audience engaged occasionally leads Wills
to give attention to more colorful events at the expense of weightier
ones. For example, the machinations of Henry VIII of England garners
more than two pages, but the Hapsburg drive to establish a European
empire gets no mention at all. The book begins with the Ottoman
conquest of Constantinople, which makes sense because of its wide
impact across Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is not clear, however, why
Wills ends his synthesis in 1700, though the back cover identifies the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 as the terminal point. While the revolution was certainly an important event in English and Atlantic history,
its global significance seems quite limited. Nonetheless, it seems likely
that a companion volume will pick up the story and carry it into the
modern period.
These minor criticisms notwithstanding, The World from 1400 to
1750 is a skillfully crafted work by an accomplished historian that renders the early modern world accessible to a large audience.
charles h. parker
Saint Louis University

A Global History of Modern Historiography. By georg g. iggers

and q. edward wang with contributions from supriya
mukherjee. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2008.
448 pp. $48.00 (paper).
This book deals with the transformations of historical writing in
the world from the late eighteenth century until about 2007. Its main
argument is that the history of historiography should no longer be studied with a focus on the West and on different nation-states but from a
global and comparative perspective. This takes into account the transcultural exchange across different areas of the world over the last two
and a half centuries, which was driven by processes of globalization,

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Westernization, and modernization. The book analyzes interactions of

historical thinking and writing between the West and other regions of
the world, most notably East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.
Especially, but not exclusively, it thereby focuses on the dissemination,
adoption, and adaptation of methods and approaches developed in
Western countries in non-Western areas of the world.
Although lacking a proper conclusion summarizing the books main
findings, the book argues for a globalization of historical studies since
the late eighteenth century. Until then, relatively separate traditions
of historiography existed in the West, the Middle East, India, and East
and Southeast Asia. Later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
academic and nationalist historiographies developed in many countries
of the world, first mainly in the West and later, to a certain extent
following Western models, in the Middle East and Asia in particular.
Subsequently in the twentieth century, nationalist and political history writing became challenged by new currents, such as varieties of
social and Marxist historiography, cultural history, feminist and gender
history, postcolonial studies, postmodernism, and transnational Islamic
historiography. To a number of them, such as postcolonial studies,
scholars of non-Western background but often at Western institutions
contributed significantly and strongly influenced academic debates.
Finally, the volume discusses the developments in the study of world
history and global history beyond national schools since the end of the
Cold War.
One of the greatest strengths of the book is its scope: Despite the
importance of Western influences on historiography worldwide, which
is emphasized and discussed by the authors, it succeeds in overcoming
a Eurocentric perspective, giving lengthy accounts of developments
in China, Japan, India, Egypt, and Turkey. Less attention and space
is given to developments in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and
Southeast Asia. In addition, the book discusses transnational schools,
such as Marxist historiography, feminist and gender history, and postcolonialism. Despite their volumes relative conciseness, the authors
succeed in discussing or at least sketching most major developments in
academic historiography over the last two centuries worldwide.
A second important strength is the high level of exactitude of the
information provided. Georg G. Iggers is a leading expert on Western and especially German historiography, while Q. Edward Wang has
published extensively on Chinese historiography. Their expertise is
supplemented by Supriya Mukherjee, who has worked on Indian historiography. Drawing on their knowledge of different world regions,

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especially the West, China and Japan, and South Asia, they provide
much detailed and accurate information about wider debates and intellectual developments, the lives of individual historians, their works,
the establishment of historical journals, and so forth. This is supplemented by notes and a valuable bibliography for further reading at the
end of the book.
However, as the book mainly focuses on different schools of historical thought and authors, it only loosely refers to the various
institutional backgrounds of historiography at different points in the
narrative. Comparative analyses of social and economic contexts of
scholarships across different countries are mostly lacking. For instance,
in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, the authors only briefly mention
that the oil boom in the 1970s made possible the expansion of universities, history departments, and research funding. This was followed
by economic decline in the 1980s, which resulted in scarce funding
for researchers, publications, and libraries (p. 300). Iggers et al. do not
lay out that the global rise in oil prices in the 1970s and its fall in the
1980s affected not only Nigeria greatly but also economies and scholarships in many oil-exporting countries beyond Africa, such as Saudi
Arabia.
As a second shortcoming, the book largely neglects local histories written by authors without a professional historical education as
it focuses on academic historiography. The writing of such local histories has been a growing phenomenon in particular since the 1970s
and is discussed, for example, in Axel Harneit-Sieverss edited volume
A Place in the World: New Local Historiographies from Africa and South
Asia (Brill, 2002). Globalization and urbanization and the resulting
encounter of people from diverse backgrounds, among other factors,
led to a process of reflection on identity and origins especially in many
developing countries. As members of certain lower castes in India or
previously nomadic tribes in the Middle East, for example, gained
access to modern education, wealth, and possibilities of publication,
numerous authors started to write local histories. In these histories,
they often emphasized the importance and role of their communities
and thereby challenged prevailing national historical narratives created by academics and bureaucrats.
However, despite these shortcomings, A Global History of Modern
Historiography is very comprehensive and innovative in its conception,
and despite the appearance of many different names of authors and
titles of works, easily readable for people not specialized in some areas
of the world covered. Hence, I highly recommend the book as a text-

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book for students as well as a reference work for researchers studying

historiography, the history of ideas, and intellectual history, including
those working on national and subnational case studies.
matthias determann
University of London

Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent. By john reader.

New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. 336 pp.
$28.00 (cloth).
In the last two decades, a new crop of books from the field of food
studies have explored the historical significance of a variety of edibles.
Among the more intriguing examples of this genre have been Betty
Fussells The Story of Corn (University of New Mexico Press, 2005
reprint of 1992 edition), Mark Kurlanskys Cod: A Biography of the Fish
That Changed the World (Walker, 1997), Kurlanskys Salt: A World History (Walker, 2002), and Andrew Dalbys Dangerous Tastes: The Story of
Spices (University of California, 2000). John Readers Potato: A History
of the Propitious Esculent is a worthy addition to the growing body of
works exploring the ways in which foodstuffs have shaped world history. Readers account is both more and less than the title might suggest. More because the author offers much historical background that
initially seems peripheral to the potatos history but ultimately provides
essential context; less because he offers a selection of vignettes rather
than a connected narrative history. Yet this book works well both as a
history of the worlds favorite tuber and as an examination of the benefits and the perils created by the introduction of a alternative staple
into the food supply of selected societies. Within this relatively slender
volume is much food for thought on human management and mismanagement of food resources, seen from a potato eyes perspective.
Reader chooses a geographical structure for his narrative, dividing
the text into three main sections each composed of a series of short
chapters. He begins with the South American homeland of the potato,
then turns his attention to its spread throughout Europe, and concludes
with a look at the morphing of the potato into a world staple. His first
section begins with a brief excursion into the potatos potential to feed
future astronauts before turning to the Andean highlands to explore
Incan and Spanish rule over a potato-dependent peasant labor force.
The author then delves into the potatos nutritional value, its domestication, and its origins in alpine South America before returning to the