history

three five things make a linkpost

Published on August 8, 2011

The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization (DARMC) makes freely available on the internet the best available materials for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds. DARMC allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of all aspects of the civilizations of western Eurasia in the first 1500 years of our era, as well as the generation of original maps illustrating differing aspects of ancient and medieval civilization. A work in progress with no claim to definitiveness, it has been built in less than three years by a dedicated team of Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, research scholars and one professor, with some valuable contributions from younger and more senior scholars at other institutions. For more details on who we are, please see the People page.

DARMC’s coverage begins under the Roman empire and extends nearly a thousand years toward the present by encompassing the medieval world. Although the initial post-Roman focus has been on medieval Europe, Byzantium and the Crusades have not been neglected, and we have begun to include the essential third leg of the tripod of medieval civilization, the Islamic world.

““If you’re going to do a piece of work in three days, you have to have everything properly prepared.” Michael Moorcock on how to write a novel in three days. Patrick Nielsen Hayden comments that a lot of aspiring writers could learn from this, to just get going and write rather than fiddle until everything’s perfect.

Way to make me feel old Amanda — Nirvana’s Nevermind twenty years old this year. This wasn’t the life changing record to me that it was for other people, but if there’s any album that marks the spot where the nineties begun and the eighties ended, this was it.

The Justice League goes to Hogwarts and a duller idea I cannot imagine. If this ever happened it would be the perfect spiritual heir to those stupid X-Men/Star Trek crossovers Marvel put out in the nineties.

Speaking of rather pointless Marvel titles, the latest installment of Nobody’s Favorites is another one. I actually have this series, bought out of back issue bins on the “this looks interesting and different and is only fifty cents” theory. Never read it.

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.