The Middle Ages, 300–1500

Abstract

WE owe to an American professor what is probably the best extant account of the Middle Ages as a whole, in English and in moderate compass. Prof. Westfall Thompson was a pupil of Luchaire in Paris, and no doubt it is partly due to this fact that he maintains throughout the European aspect of the medieval period, which is so essential and at the same time so rare in popular general books written on it in English. One gains quite a new and a truer point of view about almost every part of the subject—feudalism, the rise of the towns, the Hundred Years' War, Flanders and the woollen trade—if one looks at it from the centre and not from the circumference. At the same time, it must not be thought for a moment that the author is anti-English. On the contrary, he is specially strong on the part played by English—and Irish—missionaries in spreading education and civilising the West. Where one feels a lack—and it is the same in Mr. H. G. Wells's “Outline”—is on the side of the superior English political development. It is well to know that in the earliest stage all the rising European monarchies had their ‘curia regis’ and the germs of a national assembly. But it is important also to realise how it came about that in England the nobles identified themselves with the national cause, whereas abroad it was left for the monarch to speak for the State. No doubt Prof. Thompson is well aware of this, and he probably omits it because it is so well known to English readers. But, all the same, it is a serious lacuna.

The Middle Ages, 300–1500.

By Prof. James Westfall Thompson. Vol. 1. Pp. xxx + 618. Vol. 2. Pp. vii + 619-1069 + xlvi. 42s. net. Abridged edition. Pp. xii + 466. 21s. net. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., 1931.)