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The Middle Kingdoms

A New History of Central Europe

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Central Europe is not just a space on a map but also a region of shared experience - of mutual borrowings, impositions and misapprehensions. From the Roman Empire onwards, it has been the target of invasion from the east. In the Middle Ages, Central Europeans cast their eastern foes as 'the dogmen'. They would later become the Turks, Swedes, Russians and Soviets, all of whom pulled the region apart and remade it according to their own vision.

Competition among Europe's Middle Kingdoms yielded repeated cultural effervescences. This was the first home of the High Renaissance outside Italy, the cradle of the Reformation, the starting point of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the symphony and modern nationalism. It was a permanent battleground too for religious and political ideas.

Most recent histories of Central Europe confine themselves to the lands in between Germany and Russia, homing in on Poland, Hungary, and what is now the Czech Republic. This new history embraces the whole of Central Europe, including the German lands as well as Ukraine and Switzerland. The story of Europe's Middle Kingdoms is a reminder of Central Europe's precariousness, of its creativity and turbulence, and of the common cultural trends that make these lands so distinctive.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Martyn Rady (P)2023 Penguin Audio Ancient Europe Russia Imperialism Royalty War Middle Ages Soviet Union Italy Socialism
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Much like the region it's covering, this book lacks a certain coherence - and seems to be dominated by the looming presence of Germany.

This makes sense, of course - but if a region is in the middle or central, the obvious question is the middle or centre of what, and what's surrounding it? Here, Rady seems to focus far more on contrasting central Europe to western Europe than to the east (Russia is the other obvious figure looming over the region's history, but features far less than Germany), the north, or the south.

For me, the focus on a more or less linear, more or less political history of the region made some sense - and individual chapters were great overviews - but given the fuzziness of the definition of the region and the lack of any long political continuity for most of the countries that exist there today - this makes it even harder to keep track. When there's no clear narrative, narrative history tends to struggle.

This is because - as Rady makes clear in the final couple of chapters - is that the concept of central Europe is so relatively recent.

The conclusion mentions something that shows how difficult the task the author set himself was - talking about nations without states, and states without nations, all with borders that have overlapped each other at various times. This is a perceptive and useful summary - but it makes the political history approach feel more than usually useless.

What may have been more helpful would have been a cultural history, or even a linguistic one. If this is a land of overlapping nations, how did these national identities emerge and persist given how frequently the political boundaries have shifted? That's the book I think I was hoping for, but it's not this one.

Still worth a listen, though - even if the narrator really struggles to pronounce some of the names, even some well known ones. (His take on Metternich I found particularly jarring...)

A narrative history without a clear narrative

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Loved the book but you can hear where they've spliced the audio recording and it does take you out of the flow

Excellent content but spliced recording

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The book brilliantly navigates the history of Central Europe. The book contains enough detail, yet it still lets you keep a general overview of the marvellous puzzle of people and political entities that “Mittel Europa” has been and still is.

The best book on the subject I have read/heard

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An excellent book on Central Europe, which, as a Central and Eastern European (it is not clear from the book if Romania is or not in Central Europe, although or its historical provinces are mentioned quite often.
It highlights a specific history and ethos, which is more poignant when one leaves out Germany from the equation, What impressed the most is how through and insightful it is, and I found myself marveling at the fact that the author got some aspects so well. There is, however, a bit of room for error and in the last chapter I found again the annoying traces of Western judgement and complex of superiority. Other than that, a book I am glad I spent my time with and I strongly recommend.

Thorough and (very little) flawd

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A long listen but covers huge ground over hundreds of years and it is read at fast enough pace to keep you engaged. This history gives plenty of detail about individuals, movements and significant events but doesn’t get bogged down in too much minutiae so you have the context and the broader picture in the history of Europe - something I couldn’t manage to grasp as an A level history student learning about individual countries or leaders.

Comprehensive and delivered at a pace to keep you engaged

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