Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe |
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Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
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by William Rosen
Sales Rank: 9292
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List Price: $27.95
$7.99
At Amazon
on 6-2-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 384 pages
Published by: Viking Adult May 3, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0670038555
ASIN: B00120VIXK
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
What might be called "microbial history"—the study of the impact of disease on human events—is a subject that has received great attention in recent years. Rosen's new book follows John Barry's The Great Influenza and John Kelly's The Great Mortality. An editor and publisher for more than a quarter century, Rosen absorbingly narrates the story of how the Byzantine Empire encountered the dangerous Y. pestis in A.D. 542 and suffered a bubonic plague pandemic foreshadowing its more famous successor eight centuries later. Killing 25 million people and depressing the birth rate and economic growth for many generations, this unfortunate collision of bacterium and man would mark the end of antiquity and help usher in the Dark Ages. Rosen is particularly illuminating and imaginative on the "macro" aftereffects of the plague. Thus, the "shock of the plague" would remake the political map north of the Alps by drawing power away from the Mediterranean and Byzantine worlds toward what would become France, Germany and England. Specialist historians may certainly dislike the inevitable reductionism such a broad-brush approach entails, but readers of Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond's grand narratives, will find this a welcome addendum. (May 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From AudioFile
Described as a chronicle of the collision of the worlds smallest organism with the worlds mightiest power, Rosens work promises a sweeping examination of the Golden Age of Constantinople. Rich in the detail so beloved by fans of historical narrative, the story is as compelling and dramatic as a novel. All of this makes Barrett Whiteners atonal narration that much more disappointing. Whitener has previously won Earphone Awards, leading one to anticipate a performance reflecting the passion, panache, and attitude heralded in the books reviews. But, although his voice is clear, his tone and performance are flat. Whiteners narration does not enhance the experience of listening to this unique historical work. M.O.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe (Hardcover)
Great men have changed the world. And so have microbes. And changes fifteen hundred years ago, among ancient societies that are irretrievably lost except to scholars, created contingencies that have made our world what it is, with no way possible to conceive all the "what ifs" that have thereby fallen out to give our current political, religious, and social situation. If you are like me, the history of the sixth century Mediterranean, especially Constantinople, is one vague gray area, but it doesn't have to stay that way. _Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe_ (Viking) is a strange book in many ways. It is not written by an academic with long publishing credentials behind him. William Rosen has publishing credentials, but they are in the business of publishing, where he has been a senior executive. This is his first book as author, and it shows all the enthusiasm of a hobbyist eager to let others know just how interesting is the subject of his particular fascination. It is crammed with religious, military, and political history, along with large doses of epidemiology and bacteriology (to help explain how bubonic plague works) as well as an addendum of entomology (to help explain the equally history-making silkworm). Not every hobbyist could make his obsession interesting, but Rosen's book swarms with so many facts that it is always surprising and never dull. The backbone of the book is a biography of the Emperor Justinian himself. He was born in a Balkan hill town in 482 CE, but an uncle, a general in the imperial guard, adopted him, took him to Constantinople, and got him an education. Justinian was a hard worker, productive to the point of robbing himself of sleep. He did not pay much attention to his appearance, and he tended to asceticism. He stuck around Constantinople to work, and had little interest in visiting his military conquests. He had a considerable ego, revealed in his own writings, and little respect for his predecessors or especially for anyone whom he considered an enemy of the church. Justinian was shrewd in his choice of advisors, and never chose better than his chief general Belisarius, who conquered Vandals in Africa and Ostrogoths in Italy, as well as a late glory in defending Constantinople against the Huns. For all his accomplishments, Justinian could not overcome the devastation caused by the rat, the flea, and the bacterium _Yersinia pseudotuberculosis_. Rosen explains how the bacterium was a relatively harmless type, perhaps causing a mild flu, but then it harnessed the flea as a means of transportation, and while evolving to turn off the defenses of the flea, it became deadly to humans. It was recorded in 540 in the Nile delta, and because this was the grain source for Constantinople, the germs in the fleas on the rats in the ships soon were causing a plague within the city. At least 25 million people were killed in the empire. Justinian himself was infected, but was one of the lucky ones whose immune system somehow fought off the illness; other residents of Constantinople were dying off at the rate of maybe 5,000 a day during the same time, overfilling the hospitals and then the cemeteries. The plague affected tax revenues, and handed new opportunities to the enemies of the Empire. It possibly prevented Justinian's armies from reforming the old Roman Empire entirely, and it enabled a subsequent Arabic expansion and the growth of Islam. It is safe to say that our world would be quite different if the Plague of Justinian had never happened. Rosen knows that looking at the complicated sixth century through the lens of one particular bacteriological eruption is an oversimplification, and that the plague cannot be the single cause of Rome's decline, the birth of European states, or the rise of Islam. The effects, however, were vast and often surprising; the plague had disproportionate effects, for instance, on those in monasteries due to the close living quarters, and also especially afflicted those upon ships so that there was a direct effect on naval campaigns. Looked at another way, the pandemic caused a labor shortage, which sparked an agricultural revolution, which caused increased population and power for European states. Rosen's book is valuable for the account of the history and epidemiology of a distant time, but also for contemplation of contingency on a world-wide scale.
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Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
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