History in Books

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I picked up Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price this weekend.  It is facinating so far.

[Zorral]

22 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price

This was one of my Christmas gifties from Partner the year it came out!

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This was one of my Christmas gifties from Partner the year it came out!

I love the deep dive into Norse mythology as a deep and abiding part of Norse culture.  I think the story behind the title is what hooked me.

(My wife found it in a Brevard Bookstore and brought it over).

 

[Jaxom 1974]

On 6/21/2023 at 1:57 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I picked up Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price this weekend.  It is facinating so far.

Sold! This sounds like something I should be reading...

[Zorral]

The workout-audio book at the moment is Burleigh, Nina (2007) Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveling of Egypt.

I am hoping @SeanF can illuminate this!

Kirkus called the book superficial. I don't know enough to know whether or not it is.

The author's narration with regard to the cohort of Napoleon's savants, who included artists as well as engineers and linguists, whom he took with him, deliberately, on his Egyptian campaign, other than he took them, and the results of doing so, including their discovery of the Rosetta Stone, is new to me.

I appreciate the author providing us with bios and details of her selected 10 figures from the cohort, of their lives before, during and after the Egyptian campaign.  They accomplished so much, despite it being enabled by war, even after losing all their materiel and equipment. Those engineers were geniuses, one of them even built a printing press out of native materials from scratch. They built all sorts of tools from nothing, using what was available in Alexandria and Cairo.  Here's a pull from Wikipedia about the savants:

Quote

.... These scholars included engineers and artists, members of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, the geologist Dolomieu, Henri-Joseph Redouté, the mathematician Gaspard Monge (a founding member of the École polytechnique), the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, Vivant Denon, the mathematician Jean-Joseph Fourier (who did some of the empirical work upon which his "analytical theory of heat" was founded in Egypt), the physicist Étienne Malus, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the botanist Alire Raffeneau-Delile, and the engineer Nicolas-Jacques Conté of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. ....

I knew rather more -- though not very much -- regarding Napoleon’s series of debacles start at the start of the campaign, from the storm that sunk their supply ships, including the one on which all the necessary gear for his corps de savants, from the slog from the shore to Alexandria, the destruction of the anchored fleet by the Brits, then the retreat back to France. It feels as though this is a preview of his later hubristic debacle, of the Moscow campaign and the 1812 retreat in snow. Except this was killing dry heat instead of killing ice and cold.

The Egyptian Mamluks, who ruled Egypt as in name-only Ottoman imperial forces, we see again in Spain in French forces: the Spanish would see them as much as an enemy as the French. The Brits and the Turks were in alliance against Mamluks and French. The Revolt of Cairo was like a preview of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Revolt of Madrid in the Peninsular War -- which I keep thinking of since seeing Goya's interpretation of it in the Prado earlier this year. But I am confused, since the Brits and the Ottomans were allies in driving the French out of Egypt, how did the Mamluks become a part of French forces in Spain?  As mercs?

Sometimes it's difficult to see Napoleon as a military genius, particularly after the Egyptian debacle, not to mention sending 'Saracens' to Spain, and the wreckage that was his invasion of Russia.  The moment I learned all the scientific, engineering, art materials, including paper and writing materials were all loaded on a single ship, my little mind is going, "O no!  You are asking for a debacle." It seems that redundancy as far as possible is as necessary for logistics as for tactics and strategy.  OTOH, what do I know about waging war?  I am so NOT a military historian, game player, never have been a member of the military, know nothing about weapons, etc.  I just read some books sometimes. Which has nothing to do with reality on the ground of war, campaigns and battles.

[SeanF]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:41 PM, Zorral said:

The workout-audio book at the moment is Burleigh, Nina (2007) Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveling of Egypt.

I am hoping @SeanF can illuminate this!

Kirkus called the book superficial. I don't know enough to know whether or not it is.

The author's narration with regard to the cohort of Napoleon's savants, who included artists as well as engineers and linguists, whom he took with him, deliberately, on his Egyptian campaign, other than he took them, and the results of doing so, including their discovery of the Rosetta Stone, is new to me.

I appreciate the author providing us with bios and details of her selected 10 figures from the cohort, of their lives before, during and after the Egyptian campaign.  They accomplished so much, despite it being enabled by war, even after losing all their materiel and equipment. Those engineers were geniuses, one of them even built a printing press out of native materials from scratch. They built all sorts of tools from nothing, using what was available in Alexandria and Cairo.  Here's a pull from Wikipedia about the savants:

I knew rather more -- though not very much -- regarding Napoleon’s series of debacles start at the start of the campaign, from the storm that sunk their supply ships, including the one on which all the necessary gear for his corps de savants, from the slog from the shore to Alexandria, the destruction of the anchored fleet by the Brits, then the retreat back to France. It feels as though this is a preview of his later hubristic debacle, of the Moscow campaign and the 1812 retreat in snow. Except this was killing dry heat instead of killing ice and cold.

The Egyptian Mamluks, who ruled Egypt as in name-only Ottoman imperial forces, we see again in Spain in French forces: the Spanish would see them as much as an enemy as the French. The Brits and the Turks were in alliance against Mamluks and French. The Revolt of Cairo was like a preview of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Revolt of Madrid in the Peninsular War -- which I keep thinking of since seeing Goya's interpretation of it in the Prado earlier this year. But I am confused, since the Brits and the Ottomans were allies in driving the French out of Egypt, how did the Mamluks become a part of French forces in Spain?  As mercs?

Sometimes it's difficult to see Napoleon as a military genius, particularly after the Egyptian debacle, not to mention sending 'Saracens' to Spain, and the wreckage that was his invasion of Russia.  The moment I learned all the scientific, engineering, art materials, including paper and writing materials were all loaded on a single ship, my little mind is going, "O no!  You are asking for a debacle." It seems that redundancy as far as possible is as necessary for logistics as for tactics and strategy.  OTOH, what do I know about waging war?  I am so NOT a military historian, game player, never have been a member of the military, know nothing about weapons, etc.  I just read some books sometimes. Which has nothing to do with reality on the ground of war, campaigns and battles.

I think the Mamelukes were just a unit that was personally loyal to Napoleon.  Some of the locals liked him.  He had an Egyptian girlfriend, whom he abandoned.  Later, her father beheaded her.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

her father beheaded he

   Unlike the enabling father of his Polish mistress, who actively pushed her into that role, hoping that way to get Poland's statehood restrored.

He and Josephine each had personal body servants who were Mamluks, gifted to Nap by the Bey early into the (brief) occupation, from which Nap departed even earlier.

[Zorral]

Every bit of this story is thrilling for historians.

‘Heart-stopping’: censored pages of history of Elizabeth I reappear after 400 years
British Library uses new technique to uncover passages of Camden’s Annals, the first official account of Elizabeth’s reign

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/14/heart-stopping-censored-pages-of-history-of-elizabeth-i-reappear-after-400-years

Quote

 

.... It casts new light on significant historical episodes such as Elizabeth’s excommunication by Pope Pius V and her nomination of James as her successor.

Julian Harrison, the British Library’s lead curator of medieval historical and literary manuscripts, told the Guardian that seeing unknown passages emerge for the first time was “heart-stopping”. He said: “It’s really one of those moments where ‘now you can’t see anything, now you can’, the absolute reversal of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’. The imaging is revolutionary. We’ve never done anything quite like this before. It’s just incredible.”

Written in Latin, the Annals were based on first-hand evidence such as witness reports and official parliamentary records, collected by Camden, who died in 1623.

Harrison said: “We have 10 volumes of the handwritten manuscripts … [of which] literally several hundred pages … [have] passages which had been covered up.”

He added: “Modern historians have commonly relied on Camden’s Annals as an impartial and supposedly accurate record. This new research reveals that key sections were revised … It implies that Camden’s Annals were deliberately rewritten to present a version of Elizabeth’s reign that was more favourable to her successor.” ....