history – Page 10 – Wis[s]e Words

The Early Middle Ages — Rosamond McKitterick

Published on July 8, 2011

cover of The Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages
Rosamond McKitterick
308 pages including index
published in 2001

I spotted this book at the local library and got it out because it contained a contribution by Chris Wickham, whose Framing the Early Middle Ages and The Inheritance of Rome impressed me quite a lot when I read them earlier this year. The Early Middle Ages is one of the entries in The Short Oxford History of Europe and intended as an introduction to this particular period, what the editor Rosamond McKitterick called “the Boeing 767 view of early medieval Europe”, quite a different sort of book from the two Wickham books. I therefore didn’t expect to learn much news from this, but rather wanted to read it as an introduction to the other historians involved, none of whom I’d read before.

The Early Middle Ages attempts to give a broad overview of the evolution of Medieval Europe between 400 CE and 1000 CE and tries to evaluate this period on its own terms, rather than as a transition period between the Roman Empire and the “real” Middle Ages. Doing this in less than 250 pages, or some 80,000 words is a real challenge and of course means that a lot of history is elided. Ironically, if you are already familiar with the period, it helps a lot to understand some of the developments that are sketched out here, at least to put them into a chronological context. I’m not sure how much I would’ve understood of some the chapters had I come to this book as a complete novice. This feeling was the strongest in Chris Wickham’s chapter, which felt as an extract of his two books mentioned above…

The Second Anglo-Dutch War — Gijs Rommelse

Published on June 25, 2011

The Second Anglo-Dutch War

The Second Anglo-Dutch War
Gijs Rommelse
230 pages including index
published in 2006

I’m not sure if in these enlightened times they still do it, but if you ever come across a Dutch naval ship with a broom in the top of her mast and you want to know what’s that all about, read up about the Second Anglo-Dutch War and especially the Dutch raid on Medway, when the English fleet was “swept” from the sea. Yes, though these days the Dutch have been reduced to the butt of cheap racist jokes about dope smoking and homosexuality in the English consciousness, there once was a time when Holland was Britain’s greatest enemy and competitor, despite the common ground between the two countries. In fact, it was exactly this common ground that was the problem. England and Holland both were dependent on trade for their prosperity, both tried to monopolise the lucrative trade in e.g. spices and it was inevitable that they would fight for supremacy — it took four wars in total for England to get the upper hand. Of the four wars, the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) was the one with the clearest Dutch victory.

Apart from that very general outline however, I knew little about this war, so I’m glad Gijs Rommelse decided to turn his thesis into a proper book. The Second Anglo-Dutch War‘s main interest lies in determining the causes of the war, how commercial, as well as both foreign and domestic political considerations on both sides drove the countries to war. In process Rommelse also delivers an overview of the war itself, giving short and to the point accounts of all aspects of the war, including the struggle in the Americans and the privatering both the English and the Dutch engaged in. This was after all as much as anything a war about trade.

Seventy years ago today

Published on June 22, 2011

Hitler made the biggest yet inevitable mistake of the war and started Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR. Though incredibly succesful at first, it turned out to be far from the cakewalk the Germans had expected. The tenacity and fighting power of the average Soviet fighting man (and woman) was far greater than anybody, including Stalin, had accounted for and the Russian defence might have been in disarray in the first few weeks, it never broke. The Germans needed to deliver a knocout blow and once they failed to do it, the outcome was inevitable.

Three short years later and the Russians launched Operation Bagration, swept the Germans out of their country and inflicted the worst German defeat in the entire war: it was this, rather than the Normandy Landings, that meant the end was near. In the west we have a tendency to airbrush the Soviet contributions to the defeat of Germany out of our history, but without them, we’d all be speaking German stilll..

The version of The Internationale above is sung by SWP activist and folk singer Alistair Hulett (best known for being in Roaring Jack) with backing by Jimmy Gregory. Sadly Alistair Hulett died early last year due to liver cancer.

Early Medieval Settlements — Helena Hamerow

Published on May 8, 2011

Cover of Early Medieval Settlements

Early Medieval Settlements
Helena Hamerow
225 pages including index
published in 2002

I wasn’t quite sure whether I should get this book — complete title: Early Medieval Settlements – The Archaeology of Rural Communities in North-West Europe 400-900 from the library. It looked as if much of what it covered I had already read about in Chris Wickham’s books Framing the Early Middle Ages and The Inheritance of Rome, only concentrating on the archaeological side of things rather than the history, which I’m more interested in. I also worried about whether it wouldn’t be too dry or technical, something I had problems with occasionally in the Wickham books. On the other hand, it was short, a quick scan didn’t make it look too boring and reading the introduction showed me it was meant as a general introduction to this subject, rather than an indepth analysis, all of which persuaded me into getting this.

The fact that I finished it means I made the right choice. Helena Hamerow writes well, knows her subject and also knows when to go into detail and when not to, making good use of footnotes. The end result is a good overview of the archaeology of everyday rural life around the North Sea coasts of the modern Netherlands, Germany and Denmark during the transition from Late Antiquity into the early Middle Ages and its relationship to the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England in the same period. Hamerow, as she explains in the first chapter, meant this book both as a general introduction to this period and area and as a pointer for her (monolingual) UK colleagues working on Anglo-Saxon England to the work done on the continent in the same period. Each chapter therefore ends with a quick overview of the relevant English archaeology.

The saddest page on Wikipedia

Published on May 6, 20111 Comment

Michel Vuijlsteke linked to this sad, moving article at The Awl about the last two surviving veterans of World War I:

There are two veterans of the First World War left in the world. Of all the parts of the world that move on without you, of all the borders beyond the horizon, of all the varying speeds and trajectories and characters and stories colluding together in giant waves of “now,” “yet-to-come,” “once was,” and then it boils down to two. It’s not even the whole hand.

Nine years ago, there were 700 left alive.

With the recent deaths of Frank Buckles, John Babcock and Harry Patch, we are left with Claude Choules and Florence Green. (Upon learning this, Claude remarked: “Everything comes to those who wait and wait.”) Nearly 10,000,000 men were killed in the conflict, 65 million participated, and now we are left with two. Think about that. Think about those numbers. What are you supposed to do when an era is inches away from disappearing?

Two days after this article appeared, Claude Choules died, leaving Florence Green as the last surviving veteran of World War I and Józef Kowalski, who fought in the Polish-Russian War as the last surviving WWI era veteran, but there are no more surviving witnesses of the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. When Harry Patch died two years ago we lost the last survivor of the trench warfare at the Western Front; nobody’s left to tell us if Blackadder goes Forth got it right. Before that, when Henry Allingham died, just a week before Patch’s dead, we lost the last surviving founding member of the RAF, the last surviving RNAS veteran and the last eyewitness to the Battle of Jutland. Thus history passes out of living memory.

And hence the List of surviving veterans of World War I is the saddest page on Wikipedia, slowly shrinking in size, now with only two names left and no idea what to do with it if these last two die as well. Should the page then be deleted, its history gone as well, or kept in some way as a monument to this history? There’s still no consensus and time is ticking…