History in Books

[Zorral]

6 minutes ago, A wilding said:

My first thought was "poor brainwashed idiot". But then my second thought was "she knows she is likely being watched and wants to avoid trouble for herself and to make sure this letter gets through".

That's an insightful reading.   It's so true, we often need to second-thought our first responses to what we're told, particularly when these are primary dox!

[Zorral]

Serendipitously, wrt the discussion of Big History -- and even what makes a work one that is categorized in historiography, in the 4th Quarter Reading thread, today, Ancient World military historian, Bret Devereaux, has put up this examination:

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-2021/

He even gets in mention of the Annales French historians, whose philosophy and works of Big History they call the longue durée, I refer to constantly, particularly the longue durée historian, Fernand Braudel and his massive 3 volume series of economically transitional 15th-18th Century Europe: Vol 1, The Structure of Everyday Life; Vol. II, The Wheels of Commerce; Vol. III, Civilization and Capitalism.

The focus of the first part of this essay concerns "'megahistory’ or ‘cliodynamics’ ", and the problems with Foundation's 'pschohistory' -- which operates on different models than le longue durée.

The essay seemingly was sparked by the new Foundation television series, as Devereaux often uses popular entertainments to make his points that contrast professional, scholarly historical work, and the incorrect ideas and beliefs that are transmitted through entertainment -- often even for millennia, are part of, non-professional ideas about same -- such as galley slaves on Roman war ships, and so on.  I recall one poster saying in response to Devereaux's advice that for historical fiction writers, they really do need to study primary documents of the time instead of other popular historical fiction-- he thanked Devereaux profusely: "I'd never thought about that before!"

 

[Clueless Northman]

On 10/15/2021 at 7:41 PM, Zorral said:

Devereaux's advice that for historical fiction writers, they really do need to study primary documents of the time instead of other popular historical fiction

So obvious, but good that he's stated it. Heck, there's so much primary documents / literature that I usually just can't be bothered with secondary literature; I need to have read all the original stuff before feeling I can afford to spend time dealing with modern assessment, research, interpretation and whatever.

About his latest blogpost, good to see he doesn't worship Pinker and his Angels book - which is unscientific fluff mostly. That said, he shouldn't diss Psychohistory like he does the cliodynamics; he actually mentions the Mule, and it's obvious his impact on the galactic Interregnum is as big as Temujin's one in our past (or like Paul Atreides in Dune universe, wrecking Bene Gesserit millennia of planning). His criticism of Foundation is valid for the very first book, but the next ones deconstruct the whole thing - Asimov loves to push his concepts to the limit, be they psychohistory or Laws of robotics -, the Mule shows that a "great man" can have an impact and that over such a long timeline unexpected events will mess with the plan, and the 3rd book shows that you can't rely merely on maths to foresee the future, you need an active way of checking the flow of events and to correct the path of history when it diverges from the Plan.

[SeanF]

On 10/15/2021 at 6:41 PM, Zorral said:

Serendipitously, wrt the discussion of Big History -- and even what makes a work one that is categorized in historiography, in the 4th Quarter Reading thread, today, Ancient World military historian, Bret Devereaux, has put up this examination:

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-2021/

He even gets in mention of the Annales French historians, whose philosophy and works of Big History they call the longue durée, I refer to constantly, particularly the longue durée historian, Fernand Braudel and his massive 3 volume series of economically transitional 15th-18th Century Europe: Vol 1, The Structure of Everyday Life; Vol. II, The Wheels of Commerce; Vol. III, Civilization and Capitalism.

The focus of the first part of this essay concerns "'megahistory’ or ‘cliodynamics’ ", and the problems with Foundation's 'pschohistory' -- which operates on different models than le longue durée.

The essay seemingly was sparked by the new Foundation television series, as Devereaux often uses popular entertainments to make his points that contrast professional, scholarly historical work, and the incorrect ideas and beliefs that are transmitted through entertainment -- often even for millennia, are part of, non-professional ideas about same -- such as galley slaves on Roman war ships, and so on.  I recall one poster saying in response to Devereaux's advice that for historical fiction writers, they really do need to study primary documents of the time instead of other popular historical fiction-- he thanked Devereaux profusely: "I'd never thought about that before!"

 

Most novelists would not have the time to study unpublished primary sources in the way that a professional historian does.  They can read published primary sources, but those are often filled with bias, even when they purport to be impartial, such as Procopius, or Napier’s history of the Peninsular War.

Mostly, the historical novelist is dependent on good secondary sources.  There’s no doubt that someone like Bernard Cornwall is well-versed in the historiography of the periods he sets his novels in, but sometimes the historiography is wrong.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

sometimes the historiography is wrong.

Which is why historians are compelled to re-examine continually -- even ethically mandated to do so, and to include findings from other disciplines as well. Which, really, for most historians is part of why we love the work.  Ya, really.    

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Which is why historians are compelled to re-examine continually -- even ethically mandated to do so, and to include findings from other disciplines as well. Which, really, for most historians is part of why we love the work.  Ya, really.    

For sure.  Doing my MA on the Peninsular War has made me realise how wrong some of the historiography is.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

For sure.  Doing my MA on the Peninsular War has made me realise how wrong some of the historiography is.

That sounds really interesting.  I for one would love to hear a bit of what you are learning to be inaccurate among the generally held ideologies held about how Wellington, the Spanish and Portuguese -- and the guerillas -- conducted themselves against Napoleon's forces.

[SeanF]

11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That sounds really interesting.  I for one would love to hear a bit of what you are learning to be inaccurate among the generally held ideologies held about how Wellington, the Spanish and Portuguese -- and the guerillas -- conducted themselves against Napoleon's forces.

The big inaccuracy is that the Spanish regular army was useless, and fell apart on contact with the French.  That’s thanks to historians like Napier and Southey, and really started with Wellington’s denunciations of them.  Wellington’s biographers tend to portray the Anglo-Portuguese field army as winning the war single-handed ( with aid from the partidas).

Bear in mind, Wellington complained about virtually everything, including the British officers, cavalry, and foot soldiers.

Most Spanish historians give little credit to their regular army, because they’re mostly left wing, and view the army through the prism of Franco’s government.

The partidas tend to be given more credit than they deserve, and overlooked is that the best partida units were regular soldiers fighting in irregular fashion, like the Boers, after 1900.  Spanish historians praise the partidas as a popular uprising.

In fact, the Spanish army’s performance, with two exceptions, was quite creditable.  It was heavily outnumbered, underfunded, many of its commanders were keen but incompetent, and at the outset of the war, in 1808, it entirely resembled the British Army of 1794/5.    Yet, by 1813-14, hardened by battle, funded by British money, it was pretty much on a par with the Anglo-Portuguese. 

Overall, about 55% of casualties suffered by the French were inflicted by the Spanish army, 33% by Anglo-Portuguese, 12% by Partidas.

The two big problems with the Spanish army were a terrible cavalry arm, and an awful commissariat, riddled with corruption.

[Zorral]

45 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The two big problems with the Spanish army were a terrible cavalry arm, and an awful commissariat, riddled with corruption.

Thank you for making the effort to share these matters.  That is interesting.  Ya, this "Wellington = God" business . . . .

That bolded seems to happens so often every time and everywhere. It funny that Grant, who would put up with this during his generalship, later, when he was president, and it was his friends and it involved the Native Americans, would pardon them, because they fought so loyally for him during the War of the Rebellion.

Working historically, you might find this conversation as to the present value of history of interest:

 

Edited October 17, 2021 by Zorral

[Zorral]

David Graeber's latest and last book -- Really Big! History!

" History Gets a Rewrite
A brilliant new account upends bedrock assumptions about 30,000 years of change."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/

 

Quote

...  no less ambitious a project than its subtitle claims. The Dawn of Everything is written against the conventional account of human social history as first developed by Hobbes and Rousseau; elaborated by subsequent thinkers; popularized today by the likes of Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari, and Steven Pinker; and accepted more or less universally. ...

There were to be three more books after this one, but Graeber died of pancreatic cancer 09/2020.

 

[Clueless Northman]

Reading Rousseau right now, it's clear his notions of prehistory, or "state of nature", are just bunk, but then he had no way to have any clue on what the original state of mankind was, he hadn't any idea of evolution even (an excuse the likes of Pinker or Hariria don't have). And to be fair he stated that he didn't know at all if what he thought about first men was correct. Though he still assumed what the "state of nature" was and built a sizable part of his ideas and worldview on that, which explains to an extent his shortfalls. That said, the whole point of the Social Contract is that, at some point, humans made a choice and decided to do some kind of covenant to work together - it was a deliberate decision, and this at least seems to fit with Graeber's book. Book I definitely should read at some time.

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Clueless Northman said:

Book I definitely should read at some time.

So should I ... side-eying the high rise that is the TBR pile.

 

[Zorral]

The Women of Troy (2021), by Pat Barker. Sequel to her Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) (2018). The first novel featured Briseis in her captivity before the walls of Troy.

This volume opens with a pov of frightened Pyrrhus/Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, within the Trojan Horse, waiting in the hot, stinking belly of the thing, as to whether or not they will be discovered, and then burned to death. In this volume too, Briseis is a featured POV, one plotting revenge.

 

[HoodedCrow]

Someone I know translated Rousseau into letting his kids go to bed at any time ( usually drop down from fatigue) or giving the kids ice cream early in the morning. It didn’t end well. Also, thanks to Zorral, for “Women of Troy”.

[Zorral]

Graeber (and Wengrow) address Rousseau too, and his belief that cities are inevitably, inherently class informed creations (formed before our access to tools of investigating an non-literate past history of archaeology, anthropology).

Edited November 5, 2021 by Zorral

[Clueless Northman]

I can't blame him, he just hadn't any way to know better, but it's quite frustrating and painful to read some parts of Rousseau about ancient societies and their development, knowing all that we can know now. The same way, I can't read most of Lucretius, whether about atomic system, animals and their evolution/appearance, various nature events, because even though it's less crackpot than any other ancient (natural) philosophy, I can't help but think every page "Dude, that's really not how it is".

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

I can't blame him, he just hadn't any way to know better, but it's quite frustrating and painful to read some parts of Rousseau about ancient societies and their development, knowing all that we can know now. The same way, I can't read most of Lucretius, whether about atomic system, animals and their evolution/appearance, various nature events, because even though it's less crackpot than any other ancient (natural) philosophy, I can't help but think every page "Dude, that's really not how it is".

It is painful.  It's also painful giving up what one was brought up with as The Thing.  Mary Renault and the Mycenaens etc., for instance. OTOH, it's really exciting to learn about what we've been learning -- particularly since that thing They called the Iron Curtain went away.  We've learned so much from sites in all those Central and northern Steppe locations.  Just like we've been learning so much about the whole history of the earth -- just as, of course, we destroy the shebang. 

Of course, if we still exist, we'll probably learn that some or a lot of the New Stuff we've learned gets superceded by even new stuff we learn from ever newer technologies and discoveries. Which still excites, you know?

Edited November 6, 2021 by Zorral

[Wall Flower]

14 hours ago, Zorral said:

The Women of Troy (2021), by Pat Barker. Sequel to her Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) (2018). The first novel featured Briseis in her captivity before the walls of Troy.

This volume opens with a pov of frightened Pyrrhus/Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, within the Trojan Horse, waiting in the hot, stinking belly of the thing, as to whether or not they will be discovered, and then burned to death. In this volume too, Briseis is a featured POV, one plotting revenge.

 

Very much looking forward to the Women of Troy. I thought Silence of the Girls was a great book.

[Zorral]

  I'm half through Women of Troy, and it feels in some ways even better. It's the voice(s) of these women, the few of whom whose names have come down through history, but about whom we know nothing, really, which are such an achievement in these books.  They are speaking to themselves, each other and those of us now, reading these books.  They are speaking of all that men who write of this war and its heroes on whichever side, never even considered, and yet is fundamental to all these events.  Only a few theatrical poets gave us Cassandra or Helen.  Helen must have been, in many ways, the most difficult character to imagine in depth, do you think?

Then, too, seeing these 'heroes' through the eyes of women -- not something historic literature has provided either.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Zorral

[Clueless Northman]

12 hours ago, Zorral said:

Just like we've been learning so much about the whole history of the earth -- just as, of course, we destroy the shebang. 

Yeah, the amount of info about past societies and past climatic events, and their consequences, that we've learned over the last 25 years, due to massive research into climate change, is just astounding.

Women of Troy: apart from Euripides, we don't have much from the ancient, indeed. Then, I don't think anyone can have a clue about what Helen would actually be as a real character, specially since the ancient Greeks had several versions of "what really happened", including some who absolve her of any wrongdoing since she didn't even flee with Paris to Troy. And I don't think any ancient writer really came to the point of admitting she was in a bad marriage with a massively dysfunctional in-law family (even more dysfunctional than her own or Troy's royal family).