Review of Lynn White's "Medieval Technology and Social Change"

[The above is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure, as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

At the heart of some of the best works on medieval history rests the claim that the middle ages were not the dark, backward theocracies of popular lore, but dynamic societies full of art, culture, music, and science. And with the advent of Lynn White’s 1962 book “Medieval Technology and Social Change,” we can add technology to the list of subjects that have been sadly left off the list of subjects usually associated with this time period. 

White looks at the advent of what he considers to be three seminal technological innovations: the stirrup, the agricultural revolution of the early middle ages, and the rise of mechanical power in the late middle ages. Furthermore, White claims that he has two other intentions, to “show the kinds of sources and the means which must be used if the unlettered portions of the past (which involve far more than technological history) are to be explored” and to demonstrate “long before Vasco de Gama, the cultures of the eastern hemisphere were far more osmotic than most of us have believed. To understand the sources and ramifications of developments in medieval Europe one must search Benin, Ethiopia and Timor, Japan and the Altai” (v). At least according to the title, he also wants to outline the kinds of social impacts this had on the people who were dealing with the technologies in question. For a book of a mere 134 pages, this is a really ambitious project.

I always try to rate and comment on a book for what it claims to be and for what it is instead of what I want it to be, but there is much more of a focus on the “medieval technology” here than there is on the “social change,” by a large margin. The first essay provided a seamless integration of many of the areas listed above, including how the stirrup was related to the rise of a professional cavalry in the Frankish military, and how in turn that was related to the development of feudalism. The second and third case studies, however, rather quickly veer into the minutiae of agriculture and mechanical design, respectively. The transition from two-field to three-field crop rotation and a somewhat detailed account of the contents of Konrad Kyeser’s “Bellifortis” are details I could have lived without. And even though White explicitly mentions that he wants to trace the historical origins of these innovations, many essay subsections feel overly listy and superficial instead of honing in on the European focus that he seems to be most interested in here. A thorough history of these developments would have been interesting – for someone else, not for me – but it would have needed a much, much longer book. 

I didn’t come to this because of interest, but because it was cross-referenced in another book I’m currently reading about the ideas of Ernest Gellner, and specifically his “Plough, Sword, and Book.” I thought I recognized White’s name, and after looking on my bookshelf found that I owned it and decided to read it. There are, I am sure, people who will find this endlessly fascinating. Bless their souls. It may even still even be highly relevant in its field; I now know about as much about medieval technology as I did before I read it, i.e., next to nothing, though that wasn’t the book’s fault. For what it’s worth, you can still find this book on many graduate-level course syllabi covering the middle ages, the history of science, and even politics. But unless you are interested in the arcana of the technology in question, and especially tracking said technology from continent to continent, and from one medieval treatise to the next, I recommend another book on the subject.