M. Publishing House "Higher School". 1976. 248 p. The print run is 15,000. Price 59 kopecks.

The book by V. V. Samarkin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of History of the Middle Ages at Moscow State University, who died prematurely, goes beyond the scope of the textbook and is a generalizing study containing new arguments and aspects of the typology of European feudalism. The development of the historical geography of Western Europe as a special discipline was initiated (back in the mid-60s) by V. V. Samarkin, first in the framework of a university special course, partially published 1 . In the reviewed book, the subjects of geography of the Western European Middle Ages received not only an independent sound, but also a justification and the most complete disclosure.

The work covers the most important subjects of both geography and history; it examines the natural conditions of development of society, population and its dynamics, economic, social, political, administrative, cultural, educational and ideological aspects of public life. At the same time, the material is grouped not according to the chronological and country-specific principle, but according to the system-chronological principle, which is most convenient for solving problems of typological generalization. Such an organization of the material allowed the author to show the Western Europe of that time in a convex way in a general historical context, as a single area of feudal development, united - within the epoch-by common laws. This commonality is consistently traced by the author along various lines: from the formation of a single (intra - continental) market to the placement of church institutions and from university programs to the folding of leading European states and their transformation - at the last stage of feudalism-into colonial powers.

The structure of the work also serves the same historical and typological tasks. It focuses on large regions; and although the specifics of individual countries are highlighted in the course of the presentation, V. V. Samarkin does not try to characterize all the sub-regions and regions, all the "parts" of Western Europe (of which experts number up to 700 or more). At the same time, thanks to the attention to specific facts and phenomena of living history, which allow us to understand how the general laws of feudalism were realized in certain countries and regions of Western Europe, the author managed to avoid (most successfully in part I, devoted to the era of early and mature feudalism) a schematic or straightforward representation of social development. The book's material highlights the uneven historical development of different countries and regions under feudalism, the ups and downs in the evolution of all important aspects and institutions of social life, and finally, the change in the regional typological division of Western Europe itself as the main stages of this socio - economic formation change. At the same time, territorial differences in the social structure, forms and degree of exploitation of the dependent population, in the organization of the patrimony and community, in the role of the city, the scope and features of the class struggle, and in the degree of state centralization are shown. All this once again emphasizes the complexity of the path of historical patterns, which manifest themselves in the form of a general trend and within the entire formation regime, and with a different approach, they seem to dissolve in the features of specific stories, and the more fractional this concretization is.

The content of the book, the range of its problems, tasks and solutions make clear the author's attitude to his subject, his definition of the genre of historical geography, its place in a number of other disciplines. V. V. Samarkin rejected the one - sided view of historical geography as a science about the political and administrative division or topography of the past, or about economic zoning. For him, historical geography is an auxiliary historical discipline, the main task of which is to study and reveal the territorial and spatial features of the historical process, in this case, the feudal formation. The author is right, of course, because all aspects of the social past belong to history.

1 See V. V. Samarkin and A.V. Murav'ev. Historical geography of the feudal era (Western Europe and Russia of the BV-XVII centuries). Moscow, 1973.

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historical geography can also be considered a "butt" auxiliary discipline: after all, it stands on the verge of history and geography, and not only them, but also economic history, ethnography, historical topography, climatology, geology, soil science, demography and all other sciences that consider-specifically or in passing-various spatial conditions of society's development. Accordingly, the historian will approach this auxiliary discipline as the geography of history; he will consider the spatial "unfolding", "placement" of a diverse historical process. For the geographer, this auxiliary discipline allows him to analyze the history of the most natural environment of society. An economist, demographer, or natural scientist (for example, a forest specialist) can also use this discipline to solve their problems.

It is clear that the geographical environment occupies an important place in the construction of the book. It is interpreted by V. V. Samarkin as a real or potential productive force and a living condition for human collectives. The active creative activity of man gradually changed not only the natural environment itself, but also its role in the historical process. However, the author rightly does not absolutize these points, on the contrary, he emphasizes that in the Middle Ages the importance of natural factors remained the strongest, in a number of positions - dominant, determining the main features of economic specialization and the direction of commodity flows, causing the closure of naturally bordered territories.

V. V. Samarkin's methodological position is based on a social approach. With all its content, the book refutes biological and geographical concepts and convinces that in the course of social development, the ratio of factors in the spatial development of the historical process gradually changes in favor of social laws proper, the impact of which begins to affect the natural area itself. The same trend can be traced, in particular, on the ethnic map of Western Europe. The Middle Ages marked it with rapid assimilation, which preceded the formation of European nations, ethnic diversity within state borders, when the latter did not coincide with the boundaries between ethnic communities (as well as landscape boundaries); finally, the class-ethnic division of individual peoples, when the working strata became the bearer of the main ethnic characteristic, and the ruling classes and strata had an alien or cosmopolitan ethnic characteristics. Another example is the formation of state borders themselves, which no longer tended to merge with natural borders, but increasingly followed such factors as economic zoning, the formation of the internal market, and common economic interests.

The ominous "triad of disasters" of the Middle Ages-epidemics, famines, and wars-which determined the high mortality rate, low survival rate, and short life expectancy of people of that era, also (contrary to F. P. Blavatsky). According to J. Ratzel, T. R. Malthus, and the Neo-Malthusians, it was increasingly subject to the laws of feudal relations. A direct link is found between the well - being of different segments of the population and life expectancy, while the reverse link is found between the well-being and mortality from pandemics and hunger, and the migration of large masses of people. With the development of feudal relations, such causes of population decline as landless peasants, bloody laws against vagabonds, religious persecution, celibacy of monks have appeared, but at the same time, such stimulators of population growth as the expansion of acreage, the development of fishing, the trade in food products, and the promotion of fertility by the church are also increasing. The sections on population in the book are among the most interesting, and they contain significant information on this subject, which is still very insufficiently developed in our historiography (in relation to the era under consideration).

In general, historical geography, as a joint, auxiliary discipline, does not have its own methodology and a clearly defined circle of "its" arguments. But on the other hand, it provides an opportunity to apply methods, materials and observations of any of the sciences at the junction of which it is located. V. V. Samarkin skillfully uses these opportunities: the collection of information systematized by him is huge, they are collected, sometimes bit by bit, from a considerable number of very special works. But the book is not a "depot of facts". The clear social approach of the author, the selection and grouping of the material used by him, made it possible, as it were, to re-see and realize a number of essential aspects of Western European life at that time.

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Numerous maps, as well as charts and graphs, play an important role in this process. Their selection clearly demonstrates the formation of early feudal states (p. 62: the formation of the domain, capital, strongholds of the court of Charlemagne), thickening communications and trade routes (based on the material of the trade routes of the Venetian galley fleet and the road network in England of the XIV century - p.156, 168) and many others. The material on ecclesiastical geography, appropriately introduced by the author in the book (territorial and chronological distribution of Christianity, location of monasteries and abbeys, etc.), is also well illustrated by maps (for the VII - XIII centuries - pp. 108, 110). The map of the distribution of medieval universities with the designation of faculties is impressive (p. 113); the comparative abundance of higher schools in medieval Western Europe and their theological orientation are also obvious. This map organically complements another new section for this discipline, introduced by V. V. Samarkin: geography of medieval culture, where the placement of educational centers, printing, geography of various calendar styles is given. The author used an ingenious map of the density of market towns in the English county of Derbyshire (ca. 1300-p. 151), which shows a very significant density of the urban network, the everyday nature of the market.

There are also some shortcomings in the book. Thus, when describing the differences between the northern and southern trade regions, differences in the ratio of broad and narrow consumption goods are not emphasized. It is controversial that the Middle Ages "wiped out ancient knowledge" (p. 170), and that west of the Elbe, not counting England, in the XVI-XVII centuries "the main categories of peasants generally remained the same" (p.190). It is not entirely true that in Scandinavia the genesis of feudalism took place "in the complete absence of the Roman element" (p. 74). The time of the breakup of the union of the three Scandinavian states is not precisely determined (p. 187).

Individual shortcomings of the book, however, do not change its overall high assessment as a successful, informative and useful work.

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