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AbstractJairus Banaji's collection of essays is a stimulating and provocative assessment of recent Marxist history-writing on issues of social theory and historical development in both ancient as well as modern societies. It challenges the overly simplistic application of Marx's categories of analysis, arguing for both complexity and a clearer theorisation of fundamental terminology and analytical tropes, including labour-process and mode of production. This review article suggests that, while the basic arguments represent a welcome corrective to some Marxist historical work, and at the same time address in an accessible way non-Marxist historians, there remain some problematic issues, in particular in respect of the criteria for differentiating between different types of mode of production, the level at which this concept has heuristic application, and the distinction between the political/institutional and the modal instances of theorisations of social-economic relations. Some of these issues are exemplified by reference to particular historical cases.

AbstractChris Wickham's important intervention in debates about the transformation of the Roman world from the fifth century onwards presents a vast array of evidence about the nature of social relations, the economy and the late-Roman and early-medieval state across the Mediterranean and Western-European world. Wickham is successful in taking into account both the high level of regional variation and differentiation across the Roman world and, at the same time, the various key unifying elements which bound these regions together. But, in arguing that the nature of the fiscal apparatus and structures of extraction, redistribution and consumption of surpluses of the late-Roman state were formative in the structure and appearance of the late-Roman élites in East and West as well as in the evolution of their early-medieval successors, a number of structural tensions in the model become apparent. This discussion highlights some of the issues at stake, while, at the same time, affirming the critical importance of the book, more especially its emphasis on the structural force of late-Roman institutions and social relations for the successor-states of the early-medieval West.

A review essay on a book by Igor M. Diakonoff, The Paths of History (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1999). Adapted from the source document.

A history of the wars between Byzantium and its numerous foes - the Goths, Arabs, Slavs, Crusaders and Ottoman Turks. By the middle of the sixth century the Byzantine emperor rules a mighty empire that straddled Europe, Asia and North Africa. Within 100 years, this powerful empire had been cut in half. Two centuries later the Byzantine empire was once again a power to be reckoned with, and soon recovered its position as the paramount East Mediterranean and Balkan power, whose fabulour wealth attracted Viking mercenaries and central Asian nomad warriors to its armies, whose very appearance

Towards a social history of Byzantium / John Haldon -- Men, women, Eunchs: gender, sex, and power / Liz James -- Family structure and the transmission of property / Angeliki E. Laiou -- The social function of the law / Bernard Stolte -- Social relations and the land: the Early Period / Peter Sarris -- Land and power in the Middle and Later Period / Peter Frankopan -- The producing population / Michel Kaplan -- Social elites, wealth, and power / John Haldon -- Court society and aristocracy / Paul Magdalino -- Church and society: iconoclasm and after / Michael Angold -- A monastic world / Alice-Mary Talbot.