History is the sum of what historians and power have included in it. The well-known historian Niall Ferguson calls it the “tyranny of the archives.” And as a result of his previews books, Ferguson’s central thesis in The Square and the Tower is that “social networks have always been much more important in history than most historians, fixated as they have been on hierarchical organizations such as states, have allowed.”

Without deepening very much in the explanation of his theory, this historian offers a reinterpretation of the structures that have decided history the most: the point of view of more horizontal networks instead of the perspective of hierarchical institutions (kingdoms, empires, states, armies…), that are more common in historiography.