“By Roman or indeed any standards, Justinian was an autocratic bastard of the worst kind…He was certainly, however, the last ruler of Constantinople to use the resources of his Eastern heartlands to attempt to recreate a Roman Empire in the western Mediterranean and beyond.”

We’re still on a history kick, I’m afraid; we’ll be back to book reviews soon, honest!

Almost immediately after Theoderic died in the West, Justinian would take over as emperor of Eastern Rome. Historians are divided as to his abilities and motivations: some see him as a visionary who would attempt to rebuild the empire and Roman law, but it’s hard to know how true that is. Regardless, immediately after succession he faced the challenge any new leader faces: how to build legitimacy and popular support.

To do so, he embarked on two projects, picking a fight with the neighbouring Persians and attempting to codify the last 1400 years of Roman law. We’ll discuss the law later, but in brief the Persians defeated him, leading to huge riots in Constantinople, which he would put down by killing approximately 5% of the total population.

This, perhaps understandably, did not endear him to his subjects, so he looked for another way to build popular support: he would turn to Western Europe, conquering first North Africa, then Sicily and Italy. As he did so, however, the Persians invaded and utterly destroyed the second largest city in the Eastern Roman empire, Antioch. It would take him 27 years to stop the Persians and pacify Italy.

Within two generations, however, most of what he conquered would be lost, and most of the Eastern Roman Empire as well; historians are divided as to whether he is to blame for overextending, or if the new Islamic state that would take so much of its territory was inevitable.

It is for his reform of law, however, that Justinian is perhaps best known. Assembling all legal documents from the last 1400 years of Roman rulings, he would build a single legal system, suppressing entire law schools when they disagreed with him. That system would shape most of Western Europe’s legal system, and courses in it were mandatory at Oxford, for example, until the 1990s.

In any case, reuniting the West having failed from both West and East, attempts at reunification would falter for several centuries, until we get to perhaps the best known of our three wannabe unifiers: Charlemagne.

Rather than review Peter Heather’s The Restoration of Rome directly, I’m doing to try something a little different; I’m going to summarize the lives of three major leaders, Theoderic, Justinian, and Charlemagne, who attempted to recreate the Western Roman Empire. Roman history is good for the soul! For those interested in the book as a whole, I’m not wild about Peter Heather as an author (he’s a little too certain of his opinions for me), but the book is one of his better efforts, except for the final section on the Catholic Church as a new Roman Empire, which I found neither convincing nor particularly insightful.

Anyway, on to Theoderic. Born in 454 AD, he spent 10 years of his youth in Constantinople (modern Istanbul, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire) as a hostage for the good behaviour of his father, a Goth leader, in return for which his father was sent 300 pounds of gold each year. Durin this time, the Western Roman Empire would fall, breaking apart into independent regions controlled by various Germanic, Goth, or Vandal groups. The Eastern Roman Empire would continue, but the loss of the West was painful.

After Theoderic’s father’s death, he would take his troops towards Constantinople, exploiting his insider knowledge, and wander around demanding bribes and payments. Constantinople, in the meantime, would attempt to get him to fight another large group of Goths in the same area, hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

All the political manoeuvering came to nought, however, by one of the coincidences that makes history interesting. The other leader of the Goths (also named Theoderic; it meant King of the People in Gothic, so it was a popular name) attempting to mount his horse, fell onto a spear and died. Lacking a clear heir, the other Goths joined up with our Theoderic, and suddenly he was a force to be reckoned with, to Constantinople’s dismay.

After some quick thinking by Constantinople, the two sides agreed that Theoderic would go to capture Italy, thereby getting rid of him. He promptly did so, defeating the leader of Italy, agreeing to share power with him, and then ten days later at a feast running at him with a sword and killing him. Mission accomplished. Once he was in power, however, Theoderic didn’t stop. For the next 33 years, he would conquer and ally with various states until he controlled Italy, Spain, Southern France, the Dalmatian Coast, and indirectly North Africa. He was seen as a wise ruler and the spiritual heir to the Roman Empire, and the Roman nobility in Italy hailed him as such. It may seem strange to modern eyes that Italian Romans would so quickly accept a Goth leader as emperor, but at the time it seemed natural: many Roman emperors had come from distant parts of the Empire, and the promise of restoration to their former glory was a powerful incentive.

After his death, though, it all fell apart. Without him, Goth unity could not be maintained and so their control of other lands also disappeared. Only a few years later, therefore, another attempt would be made to restore Western Rome, this time by the new Eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian. We’ll discuss him next!

“It is the argument of this book that the international political system has indeed entered a period of dangerous instability and profound change.” – Rachman

Gideon Rachman, a journalist with the FT who spent 15 years at The Economist, has considerable experience talking about politics and international relations. His book focuses on the last 30 years, and divides it into three distinct eras: an Age of Transformation, an Age of Optimism, and an Age of Anxiety. Most of this post will be a summary of that structure; I found it a nice way to think about recent political history.

From 1978 to 1990, under Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, Thatcher, and Reagan, Rachman argues that in an effort to revive economies world leaders transformed the structure of international trade, loosening controls (to varying degrees) and encouraging globalization. China would begin to join the world economy; the USSR would disintegrate; and free markets would reign in the UK and US.

1990 to 2008 Rachman labels as the Age of Optimism. Trade and globalization flourish, with Clinton as a classic case. American power, whether military, economic, financial, technological, or intellectual, reigned supreme, and with the collapse of the USSR the world looked forward to peace and prosperity. No longer was competition between nations relevant: the success of any nation helped everyone, and the real threat to international security was not rivalries between powers, but failed states. International relations were win-win.

By 2008, however, the limits of American military power had been made painfully clear, and the financial crisis would do the same to American economic power. Global political problems, like terrorism and climate change would emerge, but the world seemed incapable of coordinating global political solutions. Authoritarian countries like Russia and China would gain power and confidence, and though no broad challenge to democracy would emerge, the rise of authoritarian powers spread like a rot through the system. No longer were disputes win-win; instead, they were zero-sum, with one country losing if the other won.

Such is Rachman’s story, and if somewhat politics and developed-world centric, it is compelling. Today’s discussion tends to be left vs. right, but for much of history it was authoritarian vs. democracy, and that’s the axis Rachman wants to focus on. He argues that in the long run authoritarian powers will struggle due to an inability to project power globally and a lack of a convincing alternative vision of how the world should be run, but in the short run, they can pose a significant problem.

I had a good time reading the book: each chapter is devoted to key events in recent history, and though I had a passing knowledge of most of them, having them detailed in a clear, structured manner was useful, and Rachman’s occasional dry observation didn’t hurt. No particularly revolutionary new ideas, perhaps, but it’s well explained and nicely expressed. A light but interesting read.