History In Books -- Fiction and Non 2

[Zorral]

30 minutes ago, maarsen said:

binge this summer

It's splendid to come into a binge.    

We're deep into Andalusian kingdoms history prior to the Reconquista.  Unlike what so many might think, there were even kings in southern Spain in the taifa era who were Jews, as well as Christian (don't forget -- al Sayed -- el Cid -- fought more on the side of Muslims than Christians)  and Muslim.  It's so exciting. We're really attempting to get the Jewish history elements together here in preparation for taking a buncha people to Andalusia in March, many of whom are really looking forward to exploring those elements of Jewish culture and history in the cities of Granada and Seville -- and particularly Córdoba.

[Wilbur]

I really enjoyed Paul Cartledge's Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, another book with a slightly out-of-scope title.  I would suggest that Cartledge actually provides a full history of Boetia as a whole, not just the largest, most influential city.

David Timson reads the audiobook, and I enjoyed his work very much, as he clearly did some serious preparation in terms of pronunciations.  Of course, no one really knows the "proper" way to pronounce all those names and places and objects in pre-Bronze Collapse, Ancient, or Classical Greek, but he is consistent throughout, which is really what I want in a reader using a lot of foreign or technical terms.

Cartledge writes using the old "Survey of' structure, and because he addresses various elements of Theban history and culture in different chapters, you might think that he would miss or omit the connections between the elements.  But no, he carefully and comprehensively makes those connections, and even expressly calls out where he is going to or already did talk about a related or referenced item.

I just can't really express how enjoyable it is to be immersed in a well-written history book like this one.  Terrific.

[Zorral]

18 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I just can't really express how enjoyable it is to be immersed in a well-written history book like this one. 

Thank you!  I shall have to try and look this out and read it too.   Ah, the library has it.

~~~~~~~~~~

Partner and I really enjoyed this book 

Catlos, Brian A. (2018) Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain. Read Aloud.

An interesting, easy, colorful, anecdotal read.  Good intro for people who know nothing about this, and good for people like me who don’t have a granular knowledge, particularly of the first decades of, and after, the Islamic conquest, of either the figures involved or how . 

The conquest wasn't powered by burning faith we’re conquering for Allah unity of all parts that made up the invading forces, though this is what we've been told for centuries was the case.  Of course, faith/religion was a part of it. Instead, as per usual when there are conquests, plunder, booty, power and personal kingdoms are the objectives above anything else. Considering the many and varied rivalries and conflicts among the conquerors, it at times appears a miracle the invaders did as well as they did, and were able to keep hold of what they took.  This was accomplished of course, by the invaders forging alliances and marriages with powerful Visigoth houses, as the Visigoths did with the remnants of the Roman powerful families earlier when they invaded and conquered Iberia. One of their best alliances were with Charlemagne. They did the same with wealthy, powerful Jewish families.

[Myrddin]

I've been reading up on Italian Renaissance history, specifically around Federico de Montefeltro. Fascinating guy. Mercenary captain. Prince. Patron. Honorable yet not above scheming to assassinate rivals. 

Vendetta: High Art and Low Cunning at the Birth of the Renaissance by Hugh Bicheno gives a very detailed account of the rivalry between Montefeltro and Sigismondo Malatesta. Two condotierre basically on the opposite sides of the battlefield most of their lives.

Another good read uncovers Montefeltro's role in the Pazzi Conspiracy. Pretty damning evidence that he was one of the main drivers to assassinate Lorenzo de Medici and his brother: The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded by Marcello Simonetta. Simonetta cracked the cypher that was invented by his own ancestor and advisor to the Sforza dukes in Milan, Cicco Simonetta. 

Do any of you have more recommendations about the life of Montefeltro? I'm also very interested in reading up on his brother, Ottaviano Ubaldini. He was one of the few people Federico trusted and basically ran Urbino when the Duke was off fighting. Ubaldini was an alchemist as well.

Also interested in the Siege of Volterra in 1472. Any recommendations around this are welcome. So far, I've only found short passages in books about Lorenzo or Italian military history (like Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy).

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Myrddin said:

...Do any of you have more recommendations about the life of Montefeltro? I'm also very interested in reading up on his brother, Ottaviano Ubaldini. He was one of the few people Federico trusted and basically ran Urbino when the Duke was off fighting. Ubaldini was an alchemist as well...

I wish there was more available in English on this period and these players.  One of my high school teammates is Italian and lives in Lombardy, and he has access to all kinds of cool books on the subject - in Italian.

With respect to Ubaldini, I recall that Lois McMaster Bujold mentioned once that she had read a book about him or his period prior to writing The Spirit Ring.  He gets nearly a chapter in The Great Courses session on Italians before Italy or whatever they are calling it nowadays.  He is also one of the characters in Princes of the Renaissance by Mary Hollingsworth, who has written a fair number of books on the period, focusing on the Medici.

[Zorral]

52 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

a fair number of books on the period, focusing on the Medici.

Paul Strathern has published several useful histories of the region, the era, the figures, particularly the Florentines.

you might be able to use google translate usefully for this book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/il-sacco-di-volterra-nel-mcdlxxii-1472-anonymous/20371473

Il Sacco di Volterra is a historical account of the siege of Volterra by the Florentine army in 1472. The book provides a detailed description of the military tactics used by both sides, the daily life of the besieged city, and the aftermath of the siege. A must-read for anyone interested in Italian medieval history and military tactics.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

[Myrddin]

I found a translation of il Sacco di Volterra online. The translation is pretty rough, but there is even a scanned version on that site too if I need to check original language or something.

Thanks for the tips, all.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Myrddin

[Zorral]

A crown branded onto bodies links British monarchy to slave trade

This may not be much of news to the commenters here, but it was nice to see in the Washington Post.  So many don't know how intimately and personally royalty in Britain and Europe were involved in the African slave trade, receiving shyte loads of the fula for their private purses.

Gift link from the pay walled Washington Post:

https://wapo.st/3PXOup6

It's a long piece -- with thousands of reader responses, about half of which trot out all the cliches about why should we care because slavery is/was historically universal, so, so what? as well as so much cliched ignorance about what slavery in modern times -- why yes, historians do call the eras of the African slave trade engaged in by Europeans, 'modern' -- was about, its effects, etc. *

Quote

 

.... “It was striking,” said Radburn, a historian at Lancaster University, who discovered the illustration as part of a project to digitize the records of the South Sea Company and its monopoly over the trade of enslaved Africans to the Spanish-held Americas. ....

.... “This clearly demonstrates the close connection between the crown,” Radburn said, “be it Queen Anne personally or the institution more broadly — with the South Sea Company and its activities, in this case, enslaving and branding people.”

The Washington Post, with permission from the British Library, is the first to publish the documents in which the drawing of the brand appears. Asked about the illustration, Buckingham Palace said in a statement to The Post, “This is an issue that His Majesty takes profoundly seriously.”

King Charles III has not apologized for his predecessors’ role in the slave trade, as Dutch King Willem-Alexander did in the summer. Instead, Charles has expressed “my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many.” And he has signaled support for research on the British monarchy’s historical links to slavery.

Dutch king apologizes for monarchy’s role in colonial slave trade

The broad outlines of that history were already known: For 270 years, British kings and queens, as heads of state, oversaw a commercial enterprise that denied people their basic humanity and condemned them into bondage, sending them across an ocean to be exploited for their labor — though thousands died as a result of the brutal conditions of the passage.

But new investigations, based on records scattered in libraries and archives on multiple continents, are revealing that successive British monarchs played a more intimate role than previously recognized, reaping profits that continue to benefit British royals today.

The Washington Post is the first to publish centuries-old documents in which a crown marking further links the British monarchy to slave trading. (Video: Joe Snell/The Washington Post)
Historian Brooke Newman of Virginia Commonwealth University discovered a 1689 document, republished by the Guardian in April, showing that King William III, who built Kensington Palace, profited from a free transfer of shares in the Royal African Company given to him by a notorious slave trader, Edward Colston.

London-based researcher Desirée Baptiste found documentation that a direct ancestor of King Charles III purchased at least 200 enslaved people to support his tobacco plantation in Virginia.

Britons cheer toppling of slave trader statue but are divided over tagging of Winston Churchill as racist

Such discoveries are providing a paper trail for those calling for a reckoning in Britain and beyond about the legacy of colonialism. The findings may also figure in debates in some of the remaining Commonwealth realms about whether to continue to recognize the British monarch as their head of state.

“All the trappings [the British royals] claim — palaces, art, and the ceremony and pomp that goes along with it — have to be tempered with the other side of history that is not as positive or laudatory,” Radburn said.

The specific research that Charles has facilitated involves royal archive access for a PhD student, Camilla de Koning. ....

 

 

* Having engaged for so many decades now in the study of slavery and the slave trade, and not only concerning my principal area, the US domestic slavery and slave trading, it's extraordinarily disheartening to see how much slavery has grown again, globally.  If we end up with a real breakdown of what we've known for the last couple of centuries, with machines able to perform so much of the heavy labor that used to be human labor, I really expect human slavery for all this work will return.  Shyte, in the US slave states, even after machines arrived, for a long time the cotton growers, etc. refused to go mechanical, preferring to use humans to do the picking etc.  Kind of like so many British lords resisting the modern conveniences because they preferred having the constant reminder of Who I Am of human subservience.

[Zorral]

Wrong thread!  

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

On 9/30/2023 at 8:46 PM, Zorral said:

A crown branded onto bodies links British monarchy to slave trade

This may not be much of news to the commenters here, but it was nice to see in the Washington Post.  So many don't know how intimately and personally royalty in Britain and Europe were involved in the African slave trade, receiving shyte loads of the fula for their private purses.

Gift link from the pay walled Washington Post:

https://wapo.st/3PXOup6

It's a long piece -- with thousands of reader responses, about half of which trot out all the cliches about why should we care because slavery is/was historically universal, so, so what? as well as so much cliched ignorance about what slavery in modern times -- why yes, historians do call the eras of the African slave trade engaged in by Europeans, 'modern' -- was about, its effects, etc. *

* Having engaged for so many decades now in the study of slavery and the slave trade, and not only concerning my principal area, the US domestic slavery and slave trading, it's extraordinarily disheartening to see how much slavery has grown again, globally.  If we end up with a real breakdown of what we've known for the last couple of centuries, with machines able to perform so much of the heavy labor that used to be human labor, I really expect human slavery for all this work will return.  Shyte, in the US slave states, even after machines arrived, for a long time the cotton growers, etc. refused to go mechanical, preferring to use humans to do the picking etc.  Kind of like so many British lords resisting the modern conveniences because they preferred having the constant reminder of Who I Am of human subservience.

Yes, slavery has never been purely about economics.  The Confederates would not have been tempted by an offer to buy out the slave owners in 1861. (Someone like Jefferson might have been willing to be bought out).

A lot of people (whether or not they are slave owners) derive satisfaction from having other groups of people to despise.

This is indeed dealt with an ASOIAF, where the customs officer remarks to Tyrion that even a free beggar derives pride from standing above a slave.

Even in a pre-industrial society, I expect that free labour is more efficient, overall, than slave labour, since the typical slave fieldhand gains nothing by working especially hard or productively.  Also, huge resources have to be deployed to guard the slaves.  Admittedly, there are absolutely enormous profits to be made by the greatest slave-takers, like Caesar or Scipio Aemilianus, which could not be matched by more legitimate means.

But, there’s still the prestige element of owning, managing, and despising, tge slaves.

[Zorral]

@SeanF  This weekend's horrid events has that odd seeming strand from Tom Holland's Pax back in mind, the strand that gets a long chapter, and then disappears for other chapters, and then reappears, the Romans and Jerusalem, and those figures, then the war(s) and finally the massive destruction and displacement.

Holland was making some sort of observation/point, but damned if I have figured out what it was, particularly since he never mentioned the Christians, who were seen by Rome's administration as Jews/Hebrews, not separate from rebellious Syria Palaestina. This strand was to bolster or explain or describe another strand of Pax, which the performance of emperor and imperium.

I wasn't able to parse this out.  Maybe you can help me with this? -- as you are the only person around I know who has also read Holland's Pax.

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

@SeanF  This weekend's horrid events has that odd seeming strand from Tom Holland's Pax back in mind, the strand that gets a long chapter, and then disappears for other chapters, and then reappears, the Romans and Jerusalem, and those figures, then the war(s) and finally the massive destruction and displacement.

Holland was making some sort of observation/point, but damned if I have figured out what it was, particularly since he never mentioned the Christians, who were seen by Rome's administration as Jews/Hebrews, not separate from rebellious Syria Palaestina. This strand was to bolster or explain or describe another strand of Pax, which the performance of emperor and imperium.

I wasn't able to parse this out.  Maybe you can help me with this? -- as you are the only person around I know who has also read Holland's Pax.

The Romans put down any form of rebellion with horrifying cruelty, as at Jerusalem.  There was an interesting tweet from Bret Devereaux, in which he complains about a computer war game, where you play the part of a Roman general, which essentially sanitises what the Roman army did.  But, I think the truth of what they did would be far too distressing for most players.

The Romans' response to an attack like that of Hamas, would simply have been inhuman.   Any prisoners taken would have been publicly crucified or thrown to wild beasts in the arena.  Towns and villages in Gaza would have been burned to the ground, the inhabitants either slaughtered, or sold as slaves, places of worship destroyed, and mass rape deployed as a terror tactic.

I think Holland sees the Roman response to the revolt, in purely secular terms, but in my view, the Roman leadership became increasingly anti semitic in succeeding decades.  Hadrian, by building a temple to Jupiter at Jerusalem, was looking to provoke a fight, and even more than in 66-71, the Roman response to revolt in 132-133 was genocidal.

Edited October 9, 2023 by SeanF

[Zorral]

Yes, all this. However, Holland contrasting the public display of Vespasian's, Trajan's, then Hadrian's victories and loot was to make some kind of point, but I still don't comprehend what it is, exactly, and how it leads to 'our best emperor'.  The weeds there are perhaps too thick for my digging limitations.

There seems to be more text devoted to the end of the Caesarian dynasty, and the Year of Four Emperors than to the rest of it too!  Which, like everything in the book, was very interesting, and I learn all sorts of isolated bits and pieces of Roman imperial ruler development and history. Yet, all these bits and pieces in the first sections no more in the later ones, seem to hang together.  So much seems isolated in a way we don't expect in a Big History. 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Zorral

[FalagarV2]

I haven't read Holland's book, but would be interested in seeing what he writes that piqued your interest! The question of Hadrian's relationship with the Jews, beginning already with the war of 115-117, is a complex one and still debated by historians. Not sure the Bar Kochba war has much to tell us about the present-day conflict though, although thinking about it one can certainly find (superficial & tabloid) similarities: religious zealots initiating unwinnable war due to simmering resentments & grievances (more than) half a century after a catastrophic event, hiding in underground tunnels while fighting an overwhelmingly superior military.

[SeanF]

21 hours ago, FalagarV2 said:

I haven't read Holland's book, but would be interested in seeing what he writes that piqued your interest! The question of Hadrian's relationship with the Jews, beginning already with the war of 115-117, is a complex one and still debated by historians. Not sure the Bar Kochba war has much to tell us about the present-day conflict though, although thinking about it one can certainly find (superficial & tabloid) similarities: religious zealots initiating unwinnable war due to simmering resentments & grievances (more than) half a century after a catastrophic event, hiding in underground tunnels while fighting an overwhelmingly superior military.

I'm inclined to view Hadrian as a bit of a shit, on the whole.

I'm persuaded by Martin Goodman, who argued that the Romans treated the Jews with particular spite, after the revolt was put down.  The brutal treatment of the rebels was standard operating practice for Rome.  Refusing to let the Jews rebuild their Temple (while still collecting the Temple tax) was untypically spiteful.   anti-Semitism became part of official Roman ideology.

Edited October 20, 2023 by SeanF

[Wilbur]

Eh, the Romans didn't have any problems with the large population of Jews of Asia Minor during that period, mainly because the military colonist Jews in Asia Minor didn't rebel against Roman authority.  So it was business as usual there.

It seems less like the Romans were practicing specific anti-Semitism than they were practicing general anti-Rebellionism, which was an extension of their overall foreign policy for three hundred years of expansion: make friends with Rome and we will include you in the club, fight against the Romans and we will loot and pillage and otherwise make your lives miserable.  See also Corinth and Carthage, et al.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Eh, the Romans didn't have any problems with the large population of Jews of Asia Minor during that period, mainly because the military colonist Jews in Asia Minor didn't rebel against Roman authority.  So it was business as usual there.

It seems less like the Romans were practicing specific anti-Semitism than they were practicing general anti-Rebellionism, which was an extension of their overall foreign policy for three hundred years of expansion: make friends with Rome and we will include you in the club, fight against the Romans and we will loot and pillage and otherwise make your lives miserable.  See also Corinth and Carthage, et al.

All Jews had to pay the fiscus judaicus, after 71, a special tax that was imposed upon Jews, and nobody else, to maintain the Temple of Jupiter in Rome.  The charge was not huge, two Denarii p.a., about two days' average wages, but unlike the earlier Temple Tax, it was imposed upon every Jew in the household, not just adult males, and it was not used to support the Temple at Jerusalem.  If you were married , with four children, that could be 5% of your income.

Then, Hadrian decided to build a temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem, and impose a ban on circumcision, which seems like a deliberate provocation to me.  Roman propaganda tended to treat Jews as enemies of Rome.

There still remained individual Jews, and Jewish communities that prospered under Roman rule, but relations between the Romans and the Jews of Syria/Palestine, and neighbouring parts of Parthia were very poor.

Edited October 20, 2023 by SeanF

[Wilbur]

I want to plug The Great Courses, a series of audio lectures produced for auto-didacts.  Beginning in the 1990s, our library systems started to have these available in great, creaking plastic book casings full of cassette tapes.  I thought they were great then, and now the successor company makes courses available in all kind of subject matter.

Last week I listened to Dr. Kenneth Harl's Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor.  Harl is the kind of professor I recall from my own salad days, and his enthusiasm for the subject matter at hand elevates something that already interests me into something that holds my attention through the period of my focus and on past into knowledge that I didn't know would be fascinating as well.

If your library has this as a resource, it is well worth your time to try at least one of these.

[Myrddin]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I want to plug The Great Courses, a series of audio lectures produced for auto-didacts. 

I just plowed through The Italians Before Italy one (yay free Audible trial). Some sections were basic and light (well, for me since I've been reading tons about the Medieval/Renaissance eras), but overall well worth the listen. 

[FalagarV2]

On 10/20/2023 at 6:18 PM, SeanF said:

All Jews had to pay the fiscus judaicus, after 71, a special tax that was imposed upon Jews, and nobody else, to maintain the Temple of Jupiter in Rome.  The charge was not huge, two Denarii p.a., about two days' average wages, but unlike the earlier Temple Tax, it was imposed upon every Jew in the household, not just adult males, and it was not used to support the Temple at Jerusalem.  If you were married , with four children, that could be 5% of your income.

Then, Hadrian decided to build a temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem, and impose a ban on circumcision, which seems like a deliberate provocation to me.  Roman propaganda tended to treat Jews as enemies of Rome.

There still remained individual Jews, and Jewish communities that prospered under Roman rule, but relations between the Romans and the Jews of Syria/Palestine, and neighbouring parts of Parthia were very poor.

There is certainly much evidence for tensions between Jews and other people in the Empire (especially Egypt), and as you say, for taxation and hostile propaganda being inflicted on them by the Romans after the first war.

Hadrian's approach specifically is more complex though. The question of his policies leading up to the Bar Kochba war are still debated, and some argue that his decision to re-found Jerusalem was not originally intended as a Roman colonia, and that the circumcision ban was introduced as a punishment after the revolt. At any rate, his policies would have to be seen in light of the extremely violent events of 115-117, rather than as an anti-Jewish mindset per se (a position which I think Goodman would also incline towards). It is for instance notable that Hadrian did not engage in any great anti-Jewish propaganda campaign to glorify his victory after the war.

Edited October 26, 2023 by FalagarV2