Summarizing the Third Century Crisis

[Jona Lendering]

Jona, you may want to try to get your hands on the 7th volume of the Impact of Empire conferences.

Wow -- that one had passed me by. (Pity it's unavailable in Glasgow. :x )

I just ordered it. And here we can again witness that great Dutch ancient history swindle: the book is published by Brill, which is a Dutch publisher. But the book is distributed from England. So I must pay 20 euro extra to have the book shipped to England first, and 20 euro extra to get it back to Holland. I made a call to Brill, asking if I could visit them in Leiden and save the money (one railway ticket Amsterdam-Leiden is 7.40 euro), but that's not possible.

The problem is not Brill's, which is just a normal commercial publisher, benefiting from he shortsightedness of Dutch ancient historians. They used to cooperate with small publishers called Gieben and Forsten, because they belonged to an old boys network; and the ridiculously high bills were forwarded to the university libraries - and to the tax payer. Now, the Dutch ancient historians allow Brill to steal from you and me.

Sometimes I think that if Mao had staged the Cultural Revolution in western Europe, I would personally have sent the ancient historians to the countryside to learn a thing or two about responsibility. I am not even sure whether this is a joke - I feel really angry.