SELECTED MONOGRAPH

Wolf, Eric R., Europe and the People Without History, University of
California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles (1982)
(1) identify the background of the author: where was he or she educated and trained? Was
he or she part of any identifiable historiographical movement? Does he or she have any
obvious political perspective or allegiances?
Austrian by birth, by the time Wolf was seventeen he had experienced life in diverse places
and situations. He left Vienna to live in Northern Bohemia and for a short period of time in
a detention camp in Northern England. In 1940 he moved to New York where he began his
studies at Queens College but before long he was again on the move serving in the US
Army.
Of Marxist orientation, Wolf had an innate interest in the interaction between people and
relationships, particularly when seen from the socio-economic perspective. This became
most evident when he chose to take part in the Puerto Rico research project in 1948 and
later when he chose to study the formation of states and national identity in Mexico.
The diverse experiences of his early life and the opportunity to pursue his studies on what
he found of most interest brought Wolf to a successful academic career as a Distinguished
Professor Emeritus of Herbert Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City
University of New York.
This also led him to write his most prominent work Europe and the People without History,
following a trend which had begun in the mid 1970s and which tended to look at history as
the outcome of interconnected dynamics rather than as a collection of histories of distinct
groups of people progressing on their own independent development path.
(2) identify three other historians who have also written a book or a journal article on the
same topic or general area. Ideally one should be an author from the nineteenth century,
one from the first half of the twentieth century, and one from the latter half of the twentieth
century. How do their approaches differ or compare to your chosen author, in general
terms?
In 1919 H.G. Wells wrote The Outline of History, a massive one million world account of
the history of the world, starting from the heavens and ending in modern times. So
comprehensive and wide in scope it was that it was kept up to date even postsmously, 50
years after the death of the author.
Although H.G. Wells work is much wider in scope, his and Wolfs work have in common
the attempt to abandon the self-centered approach that is so typical of Western historians.
They both aimed to build a comprehensive account of history by offering snapshots of the
history of other civilisations. Thus we have H.G. Wells giving equal consideration to the
Sassanid Empire in Persia or to accounts on the Mongol and the Gypsies or to the Crufixion
of Jesus of Nazareth.
Equally Wolf writes about the Slave trade and the movement of commodities in Pizarros
America to tell us that they were both instrumental facts in building the world as it is today.
A man of his time, H.G. Wells is not immune from some preconceptions which to our ears
could be defined verging on racism, whereas Wolfs account is more balanced and in tune
with the ethics of late 20th Century.

Ralph Lintons The Tree of Culture, published in 1955 is also an attempt to offer a
comprehensive account of history, this time from an anthropological and cultural
perspective. Dividing the world in six main areas, including Africa, the Mediterranean, The
Orient and the New World, Linton aims to show how all cultures share a common origin,
and how the present is inextricably linked to the past. Less inclined than Wolf to discuss the
economical factors that shaped the world, Linton focuses on social and cultural aspects,
giving an equally valuable contribution to the thought currents that three decades later have
undoubtely influenced Wolfs work.
Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel was published in 1998. Diamond is a scientist, and
one of the late 20th Century. His approach is most similar to Wolfs. He also aims at
explaining todays world by analysing not just the history of Europe, but rather the
dynamics that brought European culture and Capitalism to spread to the rest of the World.
Heuristically, Diamond uses Papua New Guinea as a model of the world in order to
illustrate how geography and biology have been instrumental in conditioning
communication and development around the globe. In his analysis, Diamond calculates the
speed at which peoples settlements progressively spread from the tip of Alaska to South
America, and explains with bio-geographical reasons why the diffusion of certain crops
and the spread of literacy were faster in the Old World than in the New World.
Diamond offers an account of science and history moulded together then, just like culture
and history are for Linton and economy and history are for Wolf.
(3) in your chosen book, what are the main sources, and where/in what form are they
archived?
Given the wide-ranging scope of his book, Wolf used an extensive body of sources. Wolf
himself states that [the intent] is not to cite all the works I have consulted, but rather to
indicate those that most significant []. ... the discussion of my sources is to some extent an
intellectual autobiography (p. 393).
In addition to the fourty-two pages, alphabetically ordered bibliography, there are thirty
pages of bibliographic notes, where chapter by chapter Wolf also indicates the main
sources used for the different parts of his work.
Among the hundreds of listed sources, I have singled out Rene Groussets Empire of the
Steppes (1970) for Asian nomadism, G.S. Hodsons Venture of Islam (1974) for the Islamic
World, and E.P. Thomsons The Making of the Working Class (1963).
(4) What does your author see or suggest as the primary cause of things, in the topic/area
discussed?
Wolfs strives to indicate a new and less Euro-centric way to look at the world. One in
which different cultures and events are analysed not as entities standing on their own on the
stage of history but as interconnected, interdependent and sharing a common origin.
In the light of this Wolf argues the history of non-European civilisations is no longer
denied or replaced by Western accounts, but is valued in equal terms with them.
Wolf also argues that the way society and cultures develop is highly dependent on the
different modes of production. Wolf points out three modes of production, the kin-ordered
mode, the tributary mode and the capitalist mode, claiming that each of these leads to a
different type of society with type-specific connections between its members.
In the kin-ordered mode individuals relate to their kin in more favourable ways than to

strangers, leading to difficulties for orphans and individuals who do not have a or a kingroup to relate to.
In the tributary mode the world is divided by those who pay tributes and those who collect
them.
The capitalist mode has the well known differentiation between those who offer
employment and those who offer their labour.
(5) Does the book contain any graphs or tables or statistics or other kind of quantative
analysis? If it does, are you able to identify the size and nature of the underlying data which
has been used? If it does not contain quantative analysis, can you see any elements which
might have been analysed or in this way?
Although Wolfs book does not contain graphs, charts or data tables, it nevertheless
provides extensive data regarding the movement of commodities, the slave trade, large scale
migrations and other related topics.
There are statistics on the number of slaves deported from Africa to the New World,
indicating how many of them survived the journey and also figures covering the impact that
this movement of people had on the populations at the points of origin and arrival.
Also, there are figures relative to the number of native Americans who died as a result of
diseases imported by the Europeans, as well as statistics regarding the number of migrants
from Europe to the United States in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Sources for all the above are duly reported in the Bibliographic Notes. Among them we note
Philip Curtins The Atlantic Slave Trade, A Census (1969), Maldwyn Joness American
Immigration (1960).

(6) Locate and read three reviews of the book. How do they see the book in
historiographical terms?
Walter L. Godfrank, Theory and Society, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 116-118
Godfrank put a strong emphasis on the near comprehensive ammassing of empirical
examples, which is where the greatest value of the work is according to Godfrank. He
judges the organisational structure of the book around modes of production as deriving from
the schools of Frank and Wallerstein. He considers the division of the world in mercantilism
and capitalism eras closer to classical Marxism.
Although rather critical of the work, particularly of the fact that a number of contemporary
debates are not discussed (ie between Emmanuel and Bettelheim on the nature and
importance of unequal exchange), Godfrank concludes stating that there is great value in
this books refreshing approach and that it can be a great way to discover our true origins
and to bypass the biases which are so pervasive in our culture today.
Jonathan Friedman, European Sociological Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (May, 1987), pp. 83-85
Friedman is highly appreciative of the wholistic approach proposed by Wolf. He considers it
innovative and refreshing, qualities not matched by the more traditional analysis based on
modes of production which Wolf uses to support his arguments.
Whilst lightly criticising Wolf for not giving sufficient emphasis to the importance that
culture and identity have in the formation of the world as it is today, Friedman

acknowledges that Europe and the People without History brings anthropology to a different
level by treating it on a global scale.
Katherine Verdery, Ethnohistory, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer, 1984), pp. 225-227
Katherine Verdery praises the wide-ranging scope of Europe and the People Without
History and the remarkable amount of empirical data which it puts forward.
Whilst she points out that neither the argument of European expansion acting as a
destructive and reorganisational element for all civilisations which came into contact with it,
nor the approach of analysing modes of production are anything new for historians and
anthropologists, it is the use of these two arguments in function of each other which makes
Wolfs work unique.
(7) Why does the book matter to the author; and to you, the reader?
Wolf wrote this book as he said in an interview with Jonathan Friedman in 1987 to
release himself and the readers from the chains of square thinking, from the limits imposed
by the use of prefabricated, ready-to-use concepts. His philosophy appears to be defying of
common known concept such as society, cultures, nations, people, and of disciplines such as
politics, economy, anthropology, sociology, and history.
He strived with success to write a coherent story spanning across the above-mentioned
disciplines and to treat societies, cultures and civilisations not as monolythic entities as it is
traditionally done but rather as interconnected expressions of the same phenomenon which
is history in its broadest sense.
The reader benefits from this refreshing approach, finding new perspectives from which to
look at himself and his origins. Even the most critical reader cannot but marvel at how the
different pieces of the puzzle are joined together in a relatively short book to offer an
anthropologically rich picture of history of great depth and wide ranging scope.