Beware the backwaters

When I sat finals, my modest hopes for the seventeenth century were dashed when my banker question, on the Thirty Years War, the great conflagration primarily fought between the Habsburgs, Dutch, French and Swedish, turned out to be about Bavaria. I didn't know very much about Seventeenth century Bavaria. I still don't know very much about seventeenth century Bavaria (though I do think someone should write a parallel biography of Maximilian II and Prince Eugene of Savoy). I'm still not convinced it was a legitimate question. Bavaria was a unit of real weight, as it is now, but it was a backwater. Nothing important happened in Bavaria in this period - they were just a useful source of senior catholic marriages - almost Kings of Spain, but only almost. 

Backwaters occasionally become important. I read last month Bulgakov's novel, the White Guard, set in the aftermath of the Great War in Ukraine. I know even less about this than I do about Bavaria. It turns out the Ukrainian theatre was important in the Russian civil war of the early twentieth century. I note also that any resolution then was only temporary. I feel we're watching a later act play out out right now. If we all knew more about Ukrainian history, we'd be able to speak more intelligently about the crisis.

I revel in these byways. Under no circumstances can the later Byzantine Empire be described as central to the flow of history. The depth and texture of history relies on specialists getting to grips with alien, obscure periods and people and the temptation of these oddities and alien places is vast. Norman Davies wrote a lovely book about them (NB. Not all of these are actually backwaters). Any half decent library will show the deviations it owner has taken. For example, I have more books on the county of Foix and the Languedoc than I do on the USA (a low bar), while my 'Germany' section is almost entirely books on the Habsburgs (including, because of my technical definition of 'Germany,' Hungary). It is easy to build up a historical view that is entirely covered with beautiful, fascinating, vignettes, often of obscure, sleepy or forgotten places (I did buy a book about Liechtenstein the other day).

It would be easy, enchanting. And wrong. These are all still backwaters, wonderful backwaters, but but backwaters nonetheless. We forget the main trunk roads of history at our peril. This is exactly the trap that curricula fall into when they lose sense of chronology (hence the thrust of Michael Gove's somewhat imperfect reforms to ours). They are the ornaments, not the branches. Now, I think everyone should read about both, but if you only read one, read about the important thing. Then read about the obscure, possibly for longer, but never first.