immanuel wallerstein - c/d

is this a good way to get an overview of European history or is this kind of laughable

My (limited) sense is neither -- they're books that folks take seriously (I assume you mean the world systems volumes) but present non-standard stuff in a non-standard way compared to how one would typically approach the material as a historian. Its not history -- its an argument about how certain features of politics and economics developed over time, and also an argument about how we should think about how certain types of things develop over time, and an argument about the span of time we should be thinking about when we ask about how those sorts of things develop.

If you want actual history I'd start somewhere else.

what do you mean by "actual history"? wallerstein is crafting an historical narrative, albeit one on a much grander scale than most contemporary historians are used to. wallerstein was trained as an historian, and i believe his early work are more conventional studies of colonial economic history.

he's pretty fascinating, both for his more ambitious book projects and his commentary on current economic and political affairs. i'm not going to endorse everything he says and does, but his books are more than worth reading.

but yeah i guess to answer t.h.'s question, no this is not the place to get a good "survey" of euro history. it is distinctly idiosyncratic and thesis-driven.

i assume we're talking about the "modern world-system" books.

haha i thought you were talkin abt albrecht von wallenstein and i was all NO SPOILERS

i KIND OF WAS

yes i'm talkin about world-systems, vol 1 of which i've just begun. i like it a lot.

He's part of the Annales School isn't he, the longue duree and all that. I couldn't get on with Braudel when I tried to read some of that, it seems the general always trumped the particular, to the extent that nothing seemed to happen. I'm probably grossly caricaturing his arguments though.