Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations Read Free Page A

is akin to the work of the ecologists and environmentalists who care for endangered species, and of those who, by studying the fate of the dodo and the dinosaur, build up a true picture both of our planet’s condition and of its prospects. The present exploration of a selection of extinct realms has been pursued with a similar sense of curiosity. The historian who sets out on the trail of The ‘Kingdom of the Rock’ or The ‘Republic of One Day’ shares the excitement of people who track down the lairs of the snow leopard or the Siberian tiger. ‘I saw pale kings,’ the poet recalls, ‘and princes too. / Pale warriors, death-pale were they all…’ 16
    The theme of mankind’s hubris, of course, is not new. It is older than the Greeks who invented the word, and who, in the period of their greatness, discovered the statues of the Egyptian pharaohs already half-buried in the desert sands.
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 17
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    From the day of this book’s conception I have concentrated on two priorities: to highlight the contrast between times present and times past, and to explore the workings of historical memory. These priorities suggested that each of the studies should have a three-part structure. Part I of every chapter therefore paints a sketch of some European location as it appears today. Part II then tells the narrative of a ‘vanished kingdom’ that once inhabited the same location. Part III examines the extent to which the vanished kingdom has either been remembered or forgotten; usually it is poorly remembered or half-forgotten, or completely derelict.
    I have also been at pains to present vanished kingdoms drawn from as many of the main periods and regions of European history as space would allow. Tolosa, for example, comes from Western Europe, Litva and Galicia from the East. Alt Clud and Éire are based in the British Isles, Borussia in the Baltic, Tsernagora in the Balkans, and Aragon in Iberia and the Mediterranean. The chapter covering the ‘Five, Six or Seven Kingdoms’ of Burgundia tells a medieval story that straddles modern France and Germany; Sabaudia deals mainly with the early modern period while linking France, Switzerland and Italy; and Rosenau and CCCP are confined to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
    It goes without saying that the subject of vanished kingdoms cannot be exhausted by the limited collection of examples presented here. The ‘history of half-forgotten Europe’ is far more extensive than any partial selection can cover. Many earlier candidates have had to be dropped, if only for reasons of space. One such study, ‘Kerno’, examines King Mark’s kingdom in post-Roman Cornwall, and is decorated by reflections on the theme of cultural genocide and excerpts from the work of the Cornish poet Norman Davies. Another study, ‘De Grote Appel: A Short-Lived Dutch Colony’, sets out the history of New Amsterdam before it was transformed into New York. A third, ‘Carnaro: The Regency of the First duce ’, tells the extraordinary story of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s takeover in Fiume in 1919 and concludes with his exquisite poem, ‘ La pioggia nel pineto’ , ‘Rain in the Pinewood’.
    In these endeavours, I have inevitably relied heavily on the work of others. No historian can have a thorough knowledge of all parts and periods of European history, and all good generalists feast heartily on the dishes served up by their specialist confrères. Anyone setting out into unfamiliar territory needs to be armed with maps and guides and the accounts of those who went before. In the early stages of research, I gained enormously from the advice of specialist colleagues such as the late Rees Davies on the Old North, David Abulafia on Aragon, or Michał Giedroyć on Lithuania, and almost every chapter has