The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000

Chris Wickham’s The Inheritance of Rome surveys Europe and the Mediterranean from 400 to 1000, a period stretching from the transformation of the Roman world to the emergence of new political and cultural orders. Moving across regions from Ireland and the Baltic to Byzantium and the Mediterranean, Wickham considers Goths, Franks, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings within a connected history rather than treating the early Middle Ages as a simple age of decline.

Political change is set alongside social structures, economic life and cultural continuity, showing how Roman institutions were adapted, abandoned or reinvented in very different societies. Broad in geographical scope but attentive to regional differences, this is a substantial introduction to Late Antiquity and the early medieval world for readers who want to understand what followed Rome and how medieval Europe took shape.