The Baltic Story: A Thousand-Year History of Its Lands, Sea and Peoples

A fantastic read. It is a hard task to condense a millenia of history for a whole region to a mere few hundred pages whilst still making sense and paying fair attention to so many events of note.

I waited for months for this book to come out in paperback form, as at one stage the price was about £70 for a hardback copy. I chose this one to fill a gap in my understanding of an area of the world I had known little about and the other titles about the Baltic seem to focus on specific sections of the area rather than the whole as this purports to. Also the title 'The Baltic Story - a thousand year history of it's lands, sea and people' made it sound like I would be reading a broad ranging text, which is just what I wanted.However, the title is very misleading. There is nothing about the land, very little about the sea (apart from it getting very rough and freezing over in parts) and nothing at all about the people, unless you define 'the people' as rich merchants, dynastic royalty and nobility.The first chapter isn't too bad, as it's about the rise and demise of the Hanseatic League and shows how they developed trading posts around the Baltic and beyond, showing a map of where they were and even an old drawing of a cog (a sailing vessel used at the time). This was enlightening to some extent, but even here the text is very descriptive and the focus is on the the great merchant men, their dealings with the rulers of various places, battles, artistic pieces and the 'beautiful' buildings and churches the league had built and even informing us of the remnants of these that we can still see. There is some analysis present at times, but the bulk is overly descriptive. From there it just goes downhill.From chapter 2 to the last couple of pages there is nothing but a description of the various dynasties ruling the areas surrounding the Baltic, their wars and disputes about succession. Much of this reads like a list going at breakneck speed with no pause to put it all into context and only the odd sentence relating to the autocrat's style of governing, while their personalities and marital interactions are prominent along with their 'work' on new palaces and so on. It reads a bit like Lucy Worsley's royal documentaries on steroids.I should have realised what was to come as in the intro the author states that as most of the people were engaged in the struggle to live, 'they left few artefacts or documents to detail their lives', whereas 'the rich, the famous and the powerful who moulded so much of history did'. This, therefore, is an excuse not to even try to see a broader picture outside of elite history. As such there there is nothing on the economy, apart from the opening chapter on trade, so we are given no idea of the lie of the land, the extent of agriculture and cottage industries and so on, which paid for the elite lifestyles of the selfish megalomaniacs the author is so infatuated with. Apart from the odd sentence there is very little on the political relationships between the bottom, middle and top of society or even an overview of the relationships between the developing Baltic states.So, if you want a better understanding of the development of the area, it's economic, political and social history, along with something on the nature of the land, it's topography and geography, as I did, the this book is worthless apart from the opening chapter (which is of a low standard anyway). If you want an extremely detailed account of who married who and the children they begat, the wars they had and the shenanigans involved in each of the Baltic states from Poland to Russia, that is you enjoy reading lists, then you might like it. I think it's a waste of paper.

Excellent overview of history of the Baltic countries