Swashbuckling history, Chevalier fiction

I’m currently reading Alexandre Dumas’ Twenty Years After, the sequel to the more famous The Three Musketeers, and I must say it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a while. It has a brilliant energy that I found lacking in The Three Musketeers – which, though I think it deserves the status of classic for giving the world d’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis and (my favourite) Porthos, I felt didn’t have much narrative drive. Not so with Twenty Years, although admittedly it’s not the most imaginative title in the world.

Maritime history: some thoughts

A few weeks ago, while at the National Archives sampling the delights of the High Court of the Admiralty Papers, I had the good luck to meet a fellow postgraduate also working on maritime history in the early modern period, although chronologically later than my own focus. As is the wont of graduates, we fell to discussing our research, and this post is the result of me mulling over that conversation since.

What really struck me from the conversation is just how reluctant I’ve always been to think of myself as a ‘maritime’ historian. Self-definition is one of those minefield topics that can go on for ever, and I’ve usually left it at ‘early modern’ (sometimes with the codicil ‘for the time being’) as I don’t consciously or deliberately follow any particular paradigm or focus over any other. Yet sometimes it is a useful experience to take a look at the kind of background from which you are approaching your research, at the very least to be aware of what effect it might have.

I’ve always looked at my MPhil dissertation (see Projects) through an early modern lens: applying the ideas and theories of historians both focusing specifically on the Stuart period, and on the early modern world in general. Partially this is the result of the course I’m on, and it’s expedient because so many of the skills a graduate needs to learn are period-specific. Palaeography, for example: I can manage most 16th-17th century hands now, whereas I’m sure a 12th century hand – even if it were written in a language I could understand – would baffle me still. I go to early modern seminars and workshops, and read early modern texts; this is still primarily how I locate myself in a scholarly sense.

But the reason I avoided ‘maritime history’, in my own mind, was largely to avoid the association it sometimes carries, e.g. early twentieth century triumphalism, a focus on fleets, battles and Great Personalities, an equation of ‘maritime’ with ‘naval’. There are historians who have already challenged this association – from my own studies I know of at least Kenneth Andrews and Nicholas Rodger – but it persists, or at least seems to persist, even unfairly. I’ve now realised that to avoid this concept because of an unsavoury association is short-sighted, since there is still much the concept has to offer. Like so many realisations, I can’t understand why I never saw it before.

What really changed my mind – what emerged from the aforementioned lucky meeting and conversation – is that it’s the definition of ‘maritime history’ which really matters. If maritime history is all those things mentioned above, it seems outdated, perhaps a little antiquarian; but it can be much more than these things. It can be the study of seas and oceans as spaces dividing, linking and defining lands, as theatres of events and transference (of commodities, peoples, ideas, cultures). It can be a study of the role of seas and oceans in history, in shaping and affecting societies and cultures, or of perceptions and beliefs about the maritime world. After all, two thirds of this planet’s surface is, and has been for a very long time, water.

This is, I’m sure, no new manifesto, and as I said it now seems so clear that it should have been obvious. But it has been a conceptual shift for me, and has affected not just how I look at my project now, and any projects I might undertake in the future, but also the kind of ideas I bring to bear in these projects. Sometimes it’s a useful experience to step beyond your usual mental framework and view your work from a different direction, although I can’t claim any credit for doing this deliberately. Anyway, it’s opened up a whole new avenue of thought, new questions to be addressed. Whether this is a good thing, considering that time and word limits are already chafing, remains to be seen…

Snow Day

Naturally, the first thing one does when the  National Archives – and most of the Underground network – are closed due to the ‘adverse weather’, with the snow coming down outside and almost everyone in a student household shouting ’snow day’ at the top of their voices, is search on EEBO for something topical.

And, EEBO being as it is, something quite interesting emerged from a rather whimsical search for ’snow’. This is a short tract by the intriguingly named Kinki Abenezrah entitled An Everlasting Prognostication of the change of Weather (London, 1625: STC [2nd ed] 62, ESTC citation number S115235).

 

Apart from the curious implications of the author declaring himself, on the frontispiece, ‘a wandring Iew’, it seems fairly straightforward – a guide to predicting the weather. Here is what Abenezrah tells us about snow:

‘If in winter the cloudes be whitith it is a signe of Snow at hand. If when it raines the aire be troubled and overcast, and that the Cloudes bee more whitith than they are wont, it is a manifest token of snow: and so much the more if the aire be warme and soultry. If for two or three daies together in Winter the cloudes be very whitith towards the evening, it is a signe of much snow.’

The cries of ’snow day’ are mounting – it appears that it is now time to go outside and enjoy the ‘adverse weather’. I’ll be keeping an eye out for those whitith cloudes…

360th Anniversary of Charles I’s execution (yesterday)

Having  spent all week slaving over High Court of the Admiralty papers in the National Archives, I never had the time to produce a post about Charles I as I suggested I might. However, it has been admirably covered by this mini-blog-carnival Nick has produced at Mercurius Politicus, making  any offerings of mine entirely superfluous…

Carnivalesque 46

Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, to the 46th early-modern edition of Carnivalesque! It’s a great pleasure to have done this; it’s the second blog carnival I have hosted, and once again it has been a very rewarding experience – and once again it has come at the start of a very busy term, and nicely covered the fact that I’ve done no significant posting of my own.

And so to business.  I’ll begin with posts recounting historical happenings. The recent cold weather brought out not one but two posts abouts the early modern custom of the frost fair (1, 2). On a completely unrelated note, except that it also happened in an early-modern winter, at Executed Today witchcraft-historian Louise Yeoman tells the fascinating but tragic story of Anna Tait, executed 6th Jan 1634. Meanwhile, to round of this section, Sir Henry (of Gauntlet fame) discusses the Popish Plot.

To follow on, we have posts dealing with particular texts of our well-beloved early modern period. A particularly intriguing one can be found over at BibliOdyssey, all about how Tokugawan Japan – a ‘closed country’ - was portrayed in Western travel-literature. Early Modern Whale has been reading Joanereidos, a poem commemorating the courage of the women of Lyme during the 1644 siege; while Wynken de Worde has an educational post about educational books. Mercurius Politicus has produced an incredibly useful post about online manuscript resources, and on the light entertainment side of things, there’s a series of posts (1, 2, 3) about early modern jokes over at Blogging the Renaissance.

The end of 2008 and the start of 2009 also saw a number of new books out and, to match, we have a range of book reviews (although not all of them, necessarily, about immediately recent books). Christopher Thompson reviews a recent collection of articles edited by John Adamson; this is also reviewed at the History Today blog, along with Blair Worden’s recent narrative work on the civil war: there you can also find links to Blair Worden on the radio. At Gilbert Mabbott we have a review of Cyndia Clegg’s Press Censorship in Jacobean England, while Tom Levenson at the Inverse Square blog gives us his thoughts on Steven Johnson’s new biography of Joseph Priestley, and whether it’s really fair to compare Priestley and Newton.

The last two come under the heading ‘practicing history’. The RHS Making History website has interviews from a wide range of historians, including David Cannadine, Eric Hobsbawm, John Morrill and Quentin Skinner, all talking about their experience of the historical discipline. Lastly, at Ink and Incapability there is a post musing on the agonies and necessities of writing two pages a day.

And here endeth the carnival, except to say that the next, medieval, edition will be held at Notiorious PhD. Also, next Friday (30th) will mark the 360th anniversary of Charles I’s execution, so expect topical posts (I hope to produce one myself), and word has it that Nick at Mercurius Politicus will be holding a mini-carnival on the subject.

All that remains is to thank the good people at Carnivalesque for allowing me to host this edition, and for all the submissions. Keep on blogging!

Cambridge University 800th Anniversary

This year, Cambridge University will be 800 years old. To celebrate this august occasion, the town will be ‘ringing in the year’ this coming Saturday (17th): the churches of the town will be tolling a vast arrangement that amounts, altogether, to 800 ‘changes’, beginning at 7.15pm. There will also be a light show all about Cambridge history projected onto the Senate House on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Information on these events and others can be found here.

Carnivalesque 46 – Call for Posts

It is a great pleasure to announce that January’s early modern edition of Carnivalesque will be taking place right here at Chronologi on the 24/25th of this month (I haven’t decided which day yet). For those unfamiliar with Carnivalesque, it’s a blog carnival focusing alternately on early modern and medieval history; as mentioned, this will be an early modern edition, so posts dealing with the early modern period are the order of the day. To get some idea you could check out the October early modern edition, at Mercurius Politicus, or the December medieval edition at the Cranky Professor.

Posts can be submitted either using the handy nomination form or directly to me at blakemore_9[at]hotmail[dot]com, in which case please put ‘Carnivalesque 46′ in the title.

Cromwell by Monty Python

I recently came across this video on Youtube of Monty Python’s sung biography of Oliver Cromwell (the video is a recording with some added images of Charles I and Cromwell). Being a Python fan I was surprised I’d never heard of it before. Not only is the song amusing and, apart from a few minor points, surprisingly accurate, the comments amazed me as to how bizarrely incorrect some people can be…

A bit more Breton

‘Twas the weekend before Christmas – and I thought I’d follow up my Advent post, as promised, with Nicholas Breton’s musings on Christmas as it was in 1626, from his Fantasticks:

It is now Christmas, and not a Cup of Drinke must passe without a Caroll, the Beasts, Fowle and Fish come to a general execution, and the Corne is ground to dust for the Bakehouse, and the Pastry: Cards and Dice purge many a purse, and the Youth shew their agility in shooing of the wild Mare: now good cheere and welcome, and God be with you, and I thanke you: and against the new yeare, provide for the presents: the Lord of Misrule is no meane man for his time, and the ghests of the high Table must lacke no Wine: the lusty bloods must looke about them like men, and piping and dauncing puts away much melancholy: stolne [sic] Venison is sweet, and a fat Coney is worth money: Pit-falles are now set for small Birdes, and a Woodcocke hangs himself in a gynne: a good fire heats all the house, and a full Almes-basket makes the Beggars Prayers: the Maskers and the Mummers make the merry sport: but if they lose their money, their Drumane goes dead: Swearers and Swaggerers are sent away to the Ale-house, and unruly Wenches goe in danger of Judgement: Musicians now make their Instruments speake out, and a good song is worth the hearing. In summe, it is a holy time, a duty in Christians, for the remembrance of Christ, and custome among friends, for the maintenance of good fellowship: In briefe, I thus conclude of it: I hold it a memory of the Heavens Love, and the worlds peace, the myrth of the honest, and the meeting of the friendly. Farewell. [Nicholas Breton, Fantasticks, (London, 1626), foD2r-v)

On a related topic, Edward Vallance has an article about the Interregnum attitude to festivities. Merry Christmas!

Do dates matter?

Andrew Roberts, author of (amongst others) Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West, (reviewed here) wrote an article in the Sunday Times this week championing the teaching of history-by-date in schools.  This was apparently prompted by a ‘trendy educationalist’ on the radio proclaiming that dates are boring and prescriptive. Roberts’ opinion is that school pupils should be, as he was, taught the ‘50 most important dates’ in British history, and taught them early, because that way they stay with you for the rest of your life. He brings out some interesting statistics from ’surveys’ (he neglects to mention by whom), showing, for example, that 13% of 16-24 year-olds thought Horatio Hornblower defeated the Spanish Armada, or that one in seven adults thought the battle of Hastings was a fictional event, while a third of students who did believe in its existence thought it had been won by Oliver Cromwell.

I have some sympathy with what Roberts says here. I think there are many lacking elements in the teaching of history at school (admittedly my impressions are largely based on my own experience at GCSE, now five years past, and conversations with younger cousins). As Roberts observes, many a modern syllabus focuses on the Tudors and the Nazis – and I didn’t even get the Tudors – and while these are both important periods to study, there is a much vaster range of history (and not just British history) which children could, and should, be able to learn about.

The article, though, feels a little half-baked. I don’t think ’a return to traditional teaching practices’ incorporating ‘”kite-marked” historical dates’ is really the answer.  Roberts seems to have a particular dislike for children being taught to empathise with historical characters, which I have always thought was something which attracted children to history (it certainly attracted me when I was a child). Is it the fact that economists and politicians knew about the date 1929 that allowed them to compare the current crisis with the Wall Street Crash, and thus stimulate urgency in their responses, as Roberts suggests? Or is it, perhaps, because they understood the crisis of 1929, and empathised with the people involved?

What it comes down to is that it will take more than just teaching children 50 dates (of whatever importance) to correct the faults in the current historical syllabus.  A chronological framework, although useful, is impotent without an understanding of the events within that framework. Dates do not make history significant: surely it’s the other way around.