Mr. Beck, making a graphiphany (which is to bloggers as a theophany is to gods–but he’s been blogging even less than I have) refers to Reagan’s “morning in America” time as the Reagan Delusion, and goes on to comment on very recent politics:

This will never be voted away, and the idea that there is something valuable afoot in this threadbare charade in Massachusetts is as appalling a thing as anyone ever knew.

…to understand that the snow will never melt in your remaining lifetime.

We can always hope for a catastrophic collapse. (Hmm, does that now mean I have to register in South Carolina?) As the Rabbis of the Talmud said of the Messiah and the tumults they expected to precede and accompany His arrival, “May he come soon, and may I not be alive to see it!”

I’m not quite as pessimistic as Beck is, but I also don’t think that America was as ever quite so much the shining land of freedom he seems to believe in. This isn’t because of slavery or any of the other stuff leftists use to throw mud on the image of 19th century America. I say that because I don’t think the principles of individual liberty were ever truly core beliefs of much of American society, and certainly not of American politics and government. The document produced in Philadelphia in 1787 proves that by itself: this was the product of a movement to make as strong a central government as was possible back then.

The tendency to strong government was disguised for over a century by the existence of the frontier. If, at anytime in the 19th century, you didn’t like the political setup in your local area, if you thought that the powers that be had too much power over you, you could always choose the option of moving to a relatively unsettled area where government strictures were either non existent or much more tenous. Go West, Young Man! and Middle Aged Man, and Young Woman and Middle Aged Woman. Even, in some cases, Old Man and Old Woman. You could find your own property and build your life there, if you chose. (And it should be noted that the very fact that someone chooses to migrate, absent the threats of war, major famine, etc, whether to a frontier area or to a new country, is itself a sign that they have more than the usual motivation to succeed at the business of living, in contrast to the folks who were content with things as they were and stayed behind.) I don’t think it’s an accident that the West seems to hold more firmly to the principles of liberty and individual responsibility than the East, as a sort of cultural inheritance.
(Yes, California is in the West, but it was after all a Spanish colony and then a part of Mexico, and when American settlers (meaning mostly forty-niners at the start) came, they weren’t dealing with politically virgin territory.)

Shadow Figure, image credit: Sworddancer Krusnik @ DeviantArt.com

By Michael Robinson and Dan Lester

NASA has always stood at the fulcrum of the past and future. It is the inheritor of America’s expeditionary legacy, and it is the leading architect of its expeditionary path forward. Yet the agency has found it hard to keep its balance at this fulcrum. Too often, it has linked future projects to a simplistic notion of past events. It has reveled in, rather than learned from, earlier expeditionary milestones. As NASA considers its future without the Constellation program, it is time to reassess the lessons it has drawn from history.

Statue of the 1804 Discovery Corps party, Kansas City, MO.

For example, when U.S. President George W. Bush unveiled the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) in 2004, the administration and NASA were quick to link it to the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, stating in the vision: “Just as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark could not have predicted the settlement of the American West within a hundred years of the start of their famous 19th century expedition, the total benefits of a single exploratory undertaking or discovery cannot be predicted in advance.” In Lewis and Clark, NASA saw a precedent for the Vision for Space Exploration: a bold mission that would offer incalculable benefits to the nation.

Yet this was a misreading of the expedition. The Lewis and Clark expedition did not leave a lasting imprint on Western exploration. The expedition succeeded in its goals, to be sure, but it failed to communicate its work to the nation. The explorers’ botanical collections were destroyed en route to the East Coast, their journals remained long unpublished, and the expedition was ignored by the press and public for almost a century. In 1809, 200 years ago last September, a despondent Lewis took his own life. NASA might do well to reflect on this somber anniversary in addition to the more positive one used to announce the Vision for Space Exploration in 2004. Doing exploration, Lewis reminds us, often proves easier than communicating its value or realizing its riches.

Robert Peary in Battle Harbor. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

NASA should also remember the anniversary of Robert Peary’s expedition to reach the North Pole, completed a century ago last September. Peary’s expedition, like the ones envisioned by the Vision for Space Exploration, was a vast and complicated enterprise involving cutting-edge technology (the reinforced steamer Roosevelt) and hundreds of personnel. Peary saw it as “the cap & climax of three hundred 300 years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of millions, by some of the best men of the civilized nations of the world; & it has been accomplished with a clean cut dash and spirit . . . characteristically American.”

Yet Peary’s race to the polar axis had little to offer besides “dash and spirit.” Focused on the attainment of the North Pole, his expedition spent little time on science. When the American Geographical Society (AGS) published its definitive work on polar research in 1928, Peary’s work received only the briefest mention. Indeed, the Augustine committee’s statement that human exploration “begin should begin with a choice of about its goals – rather than a choice of possible destinations” would have applied itself equally well to the race to the North Pole as it does the new did recent plans to race to the Moon.

Galileo's illustrations of the Moon, taken from telescopic observations, Siderius Nuncius, 1610.

But the most important anniversary for NASA to be considering is the recent 400th anniversary of Galileo’s publication of “Sidereus Nuncius” (“Starry Messenger”), a treatise in which he lays out his arguments for a Sun-centered solar system. Was Galileo an explorer in the traditional sense? Hardly. He based his findings upon observations rather than expeditions, specifically his study of the Moon, the stars, and the moons of Jupiter. Yet his telescopic work was a form of exploration, one that contributed more to geographical discovery than Henry Hudson’s ill-fated voyage to find the Northwest Passage made during the same year. Galileo did not plant any flags in the soil of unknown lands, but he did something more important: helping to topple Aristotle’s Earth-centered model of the universe.

As NASA lays the Constellation program to rest, the distinction between “expedition” and “exploration” remains relevant today.While new plans for human space flight will lead to any number of expeditions, it doesn’t follow that these will constitute the most promising forms of exploration. Given our technological expertise for virtual presence – an expertise that is advancing rapidly – exploration does not need to be the prime justification for human space flight anymore.

The Augustine committee has shown the courage to challenge the traditional view of astronauts as explorers in its “Flexible Path” proposal, a plan to send humans at first into deep space, perhaps doing surveillance work on deep gravity wells, while rovers conduct work on the ground. Critics have derisively called it the “Look But Don’t Touch” option, one that will extend scientific exploration even if it does not include any “Neil Armstrong moments.”

Yet perhaps 2010 is the year when we challenge the meaning of “exploration.” For too long, NASA has been cavalier about this word. Agency budget documents and strategic plans continue to use it indiscriminately as a catch-all term for any project that involves human space flight. Yet this was not always the case. The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the formal constitution of the agency, doesn’t mention the word in any of the eight objectives that define NASA’s policy and purpose. Rather, NASA’s first directive is “the expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

Geysers in the southern hemisphere of Enceladus, photographed by Cassini spacecraft, 27 November 2005

Perhaps the best way forward, then, starts with a more careful look back. The world has changed since Lewis and Clark, with technology that would have stunned the young explorers. In the year of “Avatar,” we need to think differently about the teams who direct rovers across the martian landscape, pilot spacecraft past the geysers of Enceladus and slew telescopes across the sky. These technologies are not static in their capabilities, nor as are the humans who control them. Their capabilities advance dramatically every year, and the public increasingly accepts them as extensions of our intellect, reach, and power. As Robert Peary’s quest for the North Pole illustrates, toes in the dirt (or in his case, ice) don’t necessarily yield new discoveries.

Of course robots and telescopes can’t do everything. A decision that representatives of the human species must, for reasons of species survival, leave this Earth and move to other places would make an irrefutable case for human space flight. But that need has never been an established mandate. It isn’t part of our national space policy. As we celebrate NASA’s 50th anniversary, NASA begins its sixth decade, do we have the courage to look beyond our simplistic notions of exploration’s past to find lasting value in the voyages of the future?

Michael Robinson is an assistant history professor at the University of Hartford’s Hillyer College in Connecticut. Dan Lester is an astronomer at the University of Texas, Austin.

This essay appeared in Space News.com on 8 February 2010. Our thanks to Space News for permission to reprint it here.

Fig. 1: The Man Himself, All By Himself

1. The Amazing Expanding and Contracting Pronoun: These are not merely letters; these are public performances, self-conscious public performances. The conquest, re-enacted, re-staged, re-written (and eventually re-sung, though one wonders what Cortes would think). At their center (except when the focus must shift, as we shall see) is Cortes, the writer, the hero, the Conquistador par excellence. All that happens here, from his shifty flight from Cuba to his armed excursions across Mesoamerica, to his pleading for fundage from his Majesty, are the actions of Cortes, are focused on Cortes, and, of course, are written down by Cortes. Here we see him performing before the Crown, before the eyes of the public (at least, the public that might get a hold of this record), not just asking for reimbursement, but asking for something grander and more long-lasting, eternal even: recognition, fame, remembrance. And not just any remembrance, not just any fame- his memory must be in the form he desires, in which he is the motive power of the great Conquest, the man who single-handedly set up New Spain, and perhaps, Old Spain as well, himself bestowing Empire upon his Emperor. But more on the business of New Spain below. The point here is that all of this flows from the hand of Cortes.

Well, almost everything. The initial phase of the Conquest- the embarking from Cuba, the setting of up of Vera Cruz, the initial campaigns- Cortes describes through the imperious, all-embracing I. Here and there other wills, other actors, are allowed to intrude- his companions, for instance, wanted him to lead them, to free them from the stupidity and tyranny of Velasquez. But otherwise, Cortes leads, fights, scouts, builds, all of it. Occasionally we appears, but fleetingly. Cortes does it all, and we marvel. Hellofaguy. Of indigenous allies we hear little to nothing; of Dona Marina, so prominent in Diaz’s narrative, there is a brief mention by name in two places, and a few guessed mentions under the title of ‘translators,’ in the plural, appendages to Cortes’ speech, and nothing more really; her origins are not even brought up until well into the Fifth Letter, and then only briefly. Cortes absorbs Spaniard and indigenous, all fading into his looming pronoun. On an even higher level, Cortes assumes the role of the Monarch himself, most pointedly in his repeated magnanimous bestowal of forgiveness upon repentant towns, in the name of the Sovereign. But he does not stop here- at times Cortes appears to be channeling God Himself, as he suggests that his tactical brilliance was in fact divinely inspired. The lines between Cortes and royal authority- and even divine knowledge and right- become blurry. The great and glorious I expansive, indeed.

But Cortes, as attached as he is to his presence and agency in the text, knows when to draw back- or perhaps, must draw back at times. When things go wrong, he is careful to disentangle himself from events as much as he can. He knew that Spanish strategy- or lack thereof- would go wrong at times during the siege of Tenochtitlan; in the end he triumphed, but there were lots of other actors and wills tangling things up. The presence of allied peoples became inescapable further and further into the war; one gets the feel that Cortes must bow to the overwhelming scope of things. He is unable to occlude what is terribly obvious to him and would likely continue to be terribly obvious in any text, coming straight from la Noche Triste to overwhelming triumph. Something had to be different, and even Cortes cannot avoid it. He seeks to maintain control of the narrative- describing one particular Tlaxcala triumph as only having come alongside Spanish assistance. Yet at some points he must admit outright the balance of things- there are nine hundred Spaniards, he tells us, and one hundred and fifty thousand indigenous allies. Yet even once the Tlaxcala and others appear, they tend, more so here than in Diaz’s account, to melt into one mass of ‘Indians,’ a few with names, but fewer than with Diaz. If the many must appear against Cortes’ one, they are as monolithic as possible.

In the Fifth Letter, we see a somewhat more nuanced Cortes, as there is, one might imagine, somewhat less glory and importance attached to this expedition, the jungle shading things over and obscuring the magnificence of conquering the Mexica capital. Yet Cortes remains in control, and at times his self-image is inflated back to its true heights. He is terribly proud of his bridge, a bridge he built when his compatriots failed him. Yet here he must (I think must is the right word, but perhaps there is some further change going on here?) admit- if it had not been for the chieftans and their followers, no bridge, despite the sheer excellence of Cortes’ plan. Even heroes, it turns out, cannot stand completely alone, even in their own texts.

Fig. 2: Cortes and Some Others

2. Redrawing the Map: This is a world full of written documents, of writing over things, both on paper and otherwise. From the notary reading off his required bit (perhaps in translation, perhaps not) at the start of battle to the final (or is it?) act of Cortes putting it all on paper, for History, the world of the Americas is being re-inscribed. Its geography does not escape. As Cortes views again the ‘New World’ through his text, it becomes old. Granada is discovered again, its inhabitants wearing- just like Muslims!- burnooses, slightly different. Like the Muslim kingdom so recently defeated, Tlaxcala is mountainous, independent, and, presumably, far better off absorbed by the (Re)conquest. If it escapes renaming, that is only because even Cortes shrinks from some tasks he deems to enormous. Other towns and rivers are re-branded, recast as familiar places, the Spaniards not content to simply lay their old geography over the land inside their own heads. Names are followed by more vivid, more long-lasting geographical intrusions, as crosses go up, towns are founded and fortresses erected: the slow, granted, marking of the landscape itself with the traces, ever more and more enduring, of the Spanish presence, of Spanish-Castillian, really- land.

The whole land- much of it simply imagined (perhaps there is a Northwest Passage at one end?)- is named by Cortes: New Spain. Not, importantly, New Castille, but New Spain. Long before the whole can be united, before there is even real full union in Old Spain, Cortes has formed with the flourish of his pen a new entity, an all-embracing (like his imperious, pan-optic, pan-active I) place, a place that does not (yet- ever?) exist, that lies over every geographical and otherwise reality beneath it, and which- so Cortes hopes- will remark every place it embraces. Within its boundaries, now, acts of indigenous resistance become rebellions; conquest is not conquest, really, but merely imposition of the Spanish Monarch’s rightful authority. Function follows form. The name is summoned before the fact, and the fact must arise.

Fig. 3: At the Centre of Things

Blackwater USA, for those who have had their heads buried in sand for the past few years, was a controversial private military company that offered a variety of military or para-military services. This isn’t a political post as such, since I won’t mention the controversy surrounding Blackwater– what I am more interested in was its nature.

Blackwater was a privately owned corporation that offered services normally associated with the public state apparatus. In this, Blackwater was not unique, and the “private security” industry is booming. Other famous (now defunct) private military corporations included Executive Outcomes or Sandline International. Many of them were or are controversial, and there is a somewhat disreputable air surrounding the whole notion of a private security organization. Interestingly, they are known as “mercenaries” and that is enough to give it a pejorative meaning. The term “mercenary”  is now considered bad or derogatory and to call somebody mercenary is to insult that person.

Privately owned military power is somehow more awesome in fiction than in real life.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that “mercenaries” were quite common until very recently and there was not always anything negative about them at all. It all boils down to the fact that when we imagine the use of armed might, we associate it with the modern nation state. Modern political theory–Weberian–says that nowadays, violence is the monopoly of the government, and by large we take this for granted. Americans may talk about the freedom to bear arms, but military force in the shape of tanks, fighter aircraft and the capability for organized, sustained and systematized violence is generally accepted to be the purview of the state. As an aside, I do find it vaguely ironic that the Somali pirates and inner city gangs are vilified by those groups who resist state control of their firearms. I guess the freedom to bear arms only applies to people you like.

Be that as it may, we have come to accept that violence must be deployed by a recognized government– one that is the representative of a “nation” or a “people” and theoretically serves the interests of its constituents. This does not imply democratic consent– totalitarian governments frequently claim to be acting in the best interests of their people. As a corollary to this, nation-states impose limits on how much armed force people within their jurisdiction can possess– it cannot threaten national sovereignty. If the state is threatened then it reserves for itself the right to repress resistance to its rule. Different national governments have different definitions of acceptable levels of resistance, of course. A more or less stable democracy like America–with its particular ideologies of private firearm ownership, but also with a culture of legal and healthy dissent of various kinds–has a higher tolerance to dissent than other governments. North Korea, on the other hand, tolerates little to no dissent and firearm ownership is practically illegal.

Raise that ruckus-- but the King of Town is watching.

So because state armies and police are products of nation-states, they are actually fairly recent things. This ideology of state violence is more or less a 19th century (with long roots, of course). And additionally, the ideology of nation-states has created this post-French Revolution revival of the citizen soldier. Don’t let some disingenuous theorists of the “Western tradition” fool you: citizen soldiers only really revived in the “West” in the French Revolution. What the concept means, however, is that since the “state” represents the “people” and works for their best interests, then it is the responsibility of the “people” to fight for the state. Unlike Roman or Greek citizen-soldiers, French concepts were truly radical: everybody had to fight for the state somehow. This quote from the Committee of Public Safety is justly famous:

“The young men shall go to the battle; it is their task to conquer: the married men shall forge arms, transport baggage and artillery; provide subsistence: the women shall work at soldiers’ clothes, make tents; serve in the hospitals. The children shall scrape old-linen into surgeon’s-lint: the aged men shall have themselves carried into public places; and there, by their words, excite the courage of the young; preach hatred to Kings and unity to the Republic.”

Eugene Delacroix's famous "Liberty Leading the People." Come on everybody: "Allons enfants de la Patrie..."

Prior to that, many of the soldiers or warriors who fought in Europe did not fight for “patriotic” reasons. Of course trying to determine why people fought is hard, but the broad theory is that many fought for a variety of reasons we would not recognize as “state”-founded. No “support our troops” mentality would have existed in 18th century Britain or 15th century France. For instance, the Spanish tercios may have been one of the first permanent (semi-permanent, really) formations in Europe, but the members were not “nationalists” since the wars for which they fought were not “national” — they were dynastic.

The term mercenary can be applied to a broad spectrum of combatants in history– and without the negative connotations attached to the term. The longbowmen of England in the Hundred Years’ War were essentially mercenaries, fighting for pay and not for country– although this would be muddled later as they developed a sense of “national feeling” as the war dragged on. This didn’t stop many English archers and knights from fighting for whoever could pay for them, though, as mercenaries in very recognizable terms. They became Free Companies, and many made their way to Italy to become condottieri, the classic historical mercenary.

John Hawkwood was the most famous British mercenary in Italy. He ended up as something of a "national" hero in England despite fighting for various Italian city-states.

Mercenaries also played a vital role in disseminating military skills and technology. Gunners and siege specialists in the early days of gunpowder lent their skills to pretty much anybody and probably played a key role in helping spread gunpowder technology.

The term mercenary might be more doubtfully applied to people who fought for entities that we don’t recognize as “national governments.” Various corporations, organizations or such had armed might–often considerable armed might– without being “national governments.” A famous example would be the East India Company. Robert Clive, for instance, helped secure the supremacy of the Company in India but I wouldn’t be confident of saying he fought for “England.” The same could be said of the famous Redcoats– by and large, these men were not fighting for ideas of patriotism– and their officers expected this. Indeed, it was assumed that anybody who became a soldier must have been scum, because who would be so desperate as to join the ranks? The Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell give some idea of this military culture.

Richard Sharpe, played by Sean Bean. For once, he isn't the screwed up team member who betrays them all (see: Patriot Games, Ronin, Goldeneye, National Treasure and Lord of the Rings)

As the ideas of the French Revolution took hold, mercenaries dwindled and citizen-soldiers became more prevalent. For one, people saw how effective the French soldiers were and how large an army France could field. Even Prussia followed suit with the reforms of Gerhard von Scharnhorst. As the 20th century rolled around, conscription had become the main means of providing military manpower– and a vivid example of the idea of citizen-soldiers. The armies that faced off in the Franco-Prussian War were composed of citizen-soldiers and World War I was fought with citizen-soldiers. Because of this, the term “mercenary” gained its negative overtones. Surely, a man who fights for money, and not country, must be disreputable? This is ignoring the very recent hold of the idea of citizen-soldiers on history.

There are many reasons why mercenaries existed in history. They don’t always presuppose a weak central government or a people unwilling to fight. Quite often, however, they do represent a political environment where there are many power groups of considerable authority and reach. “Globalism” has tended to weaken a lot of traditional state power, and it is no coincidence that “globalism” has produced an explosion in private military companies– who often deploy their services for non-state actors. Mercenaries were common in history, and they look to be common again. It might even come to pass that the word will lose its negative connotations again as more and more people either rely on a mercenary’s services or join these private military corporations.

And to that I say: GO COLTS!

Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co, 1965.

I have a longstanding interest in demographics, both as a method in studying history and as an analysis of trends in itself. My master’s thesis, in fact, made heavy use of demographic analysis as a tool in identifying migration patterns along the Red River in north Texas. That was thirty years ago and this fat anthology was one of the preparatory sources in which I immersed myself. I still go back and reread certain of the included essays when I’m engaged in a project in which demographics plays a role.

Of the twenty-seven essays, seven were previously published, and several of those have become classics. Foremost among the latter, I think, are Sigismund Peller’s “Births and Deaths among Europe’s Ruling Families since 1500,” which introduced several new analytical techniques (he was a physician, actually, not an historian, with an interest in the shifting causes of mortality), and T. H. Hollingsworth’s “A Demographic Study of the British Ducal Families,” which built upon Peller’s methods and brought to the fore a number of previously unnoticed trends among the British elite. (Yes, I have a long interest in peerage genealogy, too.) Of the other essays, one of the most fascinating is “The Vital Revolution Reconsidered,” by Karl Helleiner (a noted medievalist with a particular interest in the effects of the Black Death), which considers the abrupt shift in mortality rates throughout the western world within the few decades on either side of 1700. Two others of particular interest, especially for the 1950s and ’60s, are D. E. C. Eversley’s “Population, Economy, and Society,” a groundbreaking consideration of the “new economic history” (new then, anyway) and how to measure population changes within that context, and Louis Chevalier’s “Toward a History of Population,” which lays out in detail the reasons demographic analysis is useful in the study of history and how to achieve that utility. Younger historians are generally up-to-date on the new historiographical methods and tools they learn about in grad school but they tend to ignore the older methods. Rather than taking the earlier “revolutions” for granted, today’s students need to delve into the reasons why they were revolutionary. This volume is an excellent way to do that.

I am among the nerdiest of the history nerds. Need proof?

Historiography excites me, baby.

I didn’t know what historiography was until my senior year of high school, and I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t introduced to the basic concept, without the hifalutin’ name, before  then. You see, back in the 70s, nobody but professional historians and their collegiate charges really cared about the nuances of historical interpretation, the shifting social climates and the individual biases that shape the documenting of history. For the average Joe, history was still largely fueled by Official Story, god-bless-America interpretations of the past (and probably still is). Any attempt to pull back the curtain on cherished myths, to suggest Americans ever did anything wrong in their march toward fulfilling their destiny as God’s truly chosen people (sorry, 12 Tribes) was verboten. Or done only by those commie-inspired revisionists hell-bent on destroying the country and turning us over to the Russkies.

What’s changed since then? Well, educators actually introduce the idea of historiography to much younger students, as I’ve learned in the books I’ve written. They don’t need to know the h word to understand that historians change their interpretations of facts and people as new material is uncovered and old theories are proved wanting. And because of this, there’s a greater willingness to accept challenges to some of the American myths, though conservatives are still apt to sneer out the word revisionist when attacking the historians they don’t like, even if no one believes those historians get their marching orders from Moscow. Actually, both the right and left seem to use revisionist as an epithet. I dunno, to me revisionism is just accepting new facts and adapting accordingly. But whose facts do we accept? And what happens if we don’t agree which facts are true? (Maybe David Byrne should be the troubadour for the modern historian: “facts all comes with points of view, facts don’t do what I want them too…“)

Dig that 'stache!

What deep, contentious point of history got me thinking about all this? Dracula. The real Dracula that is, Prince Vlad III of Wallachia, Son of the Dragon, Vlad Tepes – Vlad the Impaler. Historical study of Dracula is not new: Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally pioneered it here in the States several decades ago, and certainly Romanian and other Eastern European scholars have recounted his deeds for centuries. Of course, the modern American interest is fueled by the prince’s sharing a name with a certain fictional bloodsucker you may have heard something about…

I’m doing a book on the real Vlad Dracula, with an emphasis on the horrible-but-true exploits that filled his three short reigns in Wallachia (no, not Transylvania; Vlad had plenty of connections to the other count’s stomping grounds, but he did not rule or build a castle there). The problem is, some of the sources on Vlad are, well, sketchy. Either they were written down years after his death, or they were based on oral history, or, most commonly, they were written by people with an axe to grind.

More stakes! We need more stakes!

The worst of the tales come from German propaganda printed during Vlad’s life and after his death. Gutenberg’s press let the proto-tabloids churn out grotesque depictions of Vlad’s cruelty toward Germans living in Transylvania.  Some of the deeds are corroborated in other places. Some are really exaggerated or just plain unprovable by more objective sources. The impalements by the hundreds – nobody disputes that. But forcing mothers to eat their own children; well… The German press, however, did the most to shape the image of Dracula as a blood-crazed (though not blood-drinking) madman.

Turkish sources are also not flattering, since Dracula battled the Ottomans and impaled a few of them along the way. Which was not a very nice payback for the fine education he received at their hands years before, when his father Vlad II, Dracul (dragon), turned two of his sons over to the Turks. Since the days of the Persians and Romans, rulers sometimes left their boys with putative allies or potential enemies, a diplomatic move meant to show loyalty to more powerful nations. Vlad would be less likely to disobey the Turks if his sons were in their care. The Turks, in response, had an obligation to treat the young princes well, unless their father screwed up. Around the time of Vlad III’s stay in Turkish hands, the son of another European ruler had his eyes poked out when Dad upset the Turkish hosts.

The remains of Castle Dracula, at Poenari; the one at Bran often labeled such is an impostor

Romanian sources, not surprisingly, are a little kinder to Vlad. Sure, he impaled people. But those were lawless times. He was just trying to bring a little order to a chaotic land. And rein in the boyars, nobles who tried to keep Wallachia decentralized and under their influence. And don’t forget all the pretenders to Vlad’s throne that he had to thwart. In an era when war and brutality were part of life, Vlad did what he had to do to secure his rule, strengthen Wallachia, and keep out those damn Muslim Turks always knocking at the door.

So, the modern historians sift through these sources, looking for parallel accounts that seem to offer more credibility than others, and paint as true a picture as possible of the real Dracula. But of course, the interpretations differ; that‘s what makes history such a fun bloodsport.

An illustrated version of Dracula's story, as retold by your humble narrator

One small conflict developed a few years ago. Florescu and McNally noted the parallels in the real Vlad‘s life and the details Bram Stoker incorporated in his book.  For a time, the two historians thought Stoker got some of his info from a Hungarian historian he knew. The character of Van Helsing, claimed by some to be Stoker’s alter ego, mentions the Hungarian by name: Arminius (last name Vambery). Stoker and Vambery did dine together several times, but there is no evidence in Stoker’s detailed notes for Dracula that he based the fictional count on Vlad the Impaler, other than some of the general bits of Romanian history and geography. Now, Stoker got plenty of things wrong, but he wasn’t writing history. And Stoker did not base his count on the real Dracula, as far as any blood-sucking tendencies. Vampire legends were common, and the author was already writing his when he learned about the real Vlad and used elements of his life and times in Dracula.

Another Dracula scholar, Elizabeth Miller, has worked hard to discredit the Vlad-Count Dracula connection, which other writers have hyped, so people will not associate the real prince with Stoker’s creation. She wants to “separate fact from hypothesis” and “vehemently challenge the widespread view that Stoker was knowledgeable about the historical Dracula”  (more on this here).

Does all this really matter to you and me, how we live our lives, or whether or not we enjoy Stoker’s book? No, But for the historian, it’s all part of what we do: Point out inaccuracies. Debunk myths.  Find the truth of a matter, as much as it can be found.  As much as there is any one truth. And of course, there never really is. Hence, historigraphy.

My Vlad book will talk a little about the different views of the 15th-century-prince, but only a little. The kids want to read about the blood and guts. But I hope I will help them understand that the fictional count and Vlad the Impaler have only the loosest of connections. And then I move onto another historiographical hotty: What really happened before the attack on Pearl Harbor? Who knew what? Incompetence or conspiracy? I’ll let you know when I find out.

[For the historically curious, a good oveview of historiography as a broad concept is John Burrow‘s A History of Histories. I especially like the bits on ancient and medieval history. See a good review of it here, which notes the shortcomings I was too ignorant to see, while still offering some overall praise. A perfect gift for the history geek in your life.]

There is an interesting article by John Morrill in the February issue of BBC History, announcing that he is part of a team of eight editors picked by Oxford University Press to compile a new, scholarly edition of Oliver Cromwell’s collected writings and speeches.

As Morrill says in the article, this is long overdue. The first collected edition of Cromwell’s words was Thomas Carlyle’s Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, published in 1845 and updated by S. C. Lomas in 1904. If you skip Carlyle’s commentary, it is a reasonable reference edition, but the provenance of the texts – especially where variant versions exist – is not really covered. Then there is W. C. Abbott’s Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, published between 1937 and 1947. I have all three volumes of this and the only good thing about them is that one copy used to be owned by Brian Wormald and still has lot of notes he made tucked into the dustjacket. That, and that in an emergency it can double as an effective doorstop. Otherwise, it is a pig of an edition to use. Abbott’s accompanying history of the period takes up most of the space, it’s really difficult to find what you’re looking for, and like Carlyle/Stainer it doesn’t deal with variant versions.

Morrill’s argument in the article – which he has made before in the Historical Journal, and to a generation of undergraduates like me who took his Cromwell special subject in the late 1990s – is that being clear about variant versions matters. One of the examples he gives in the article is the famous one, pointed out by Austin Woolrych in his study of the Barebones Parliament, of Cromwell’s speech at the opening of that body. One version, recorded in 1654,  is as follows:

I confess I never looked to see such a day as this – it may not be nor you neither – when Jesus Christ should be so owned as He is, at this day, and in this work. Jesus Christ is owned this day by your call, and you own Him by your willingness to appear for Him; and you manifest this, as far as poor creatures can, to the day of the power of Christ.

Another, recorded a century later, runs like this:

I confess I never looked to see such a day as this – it may not be nor you neither – when Jesus Christ should be so owned as He is, at this day, and in this work. Jesus Christ is owned this day by you all, and you own Him by your willingness to appear here; and you manifest this, as far as poor creatures can, to a day of the power of Christ.

The differences are small but important. In the first version, Cromwell is far more radical. Members of the Parliament have called forth the spirit of Christ through their presence, and the day itself is “the day of the power of Christ”, an apocalyptic climax to the struggles of the past eleven years. In the second version, Cromwell calls it “a day of the power of Christ”, which softens its millenarianism. Representatives have been summoned by Christ, not the other way around.

Establishing the provenance of these variant versions more precisely, and weighing up their likely accuracy, could make a fundamental difference to how historians interpret this and many other of Cromwell’s actions. If Morrill and his co-editors can pull this off, it will be a fantastic achievement. They ought to produce a definitive edition of Cromwell’s recorded words. As Morrill puts it:

Cromwell will come alive in much the same way as a Great Master painting takes on a new and different life when it is cleaned and restored.

I agree with the sentiment of this statement, but part of me wonders about the extent to which his work will “restore” Cromwell’s original words. A new version of Cromwell will be born, it’s true: but whether it will be the original Cromwell resurrected is a different matter. Like any historian of Cromwell, the editors will still have to wrestle with numerous ambiguities in what survives of his words. One example that springs to mind is Bulstrode Whitelocke’s famous description – or more accurately, descriptions – of a night-time encounter with Cromwell in Hyde Park in November 1652. Here is the version in a manuscript ‘diary’ written up by Whitelocke years after the event:

But suddeinly and unexpectedly Crom brake forth in this expression, What if a man should take uppon him to be King? Wh answerd that it would be more to his prejudice than advantage to doe so.

And here is the version in Whitelocke’s Annals:

Cromwell.—” What if a man should take upon him to be King?”

Whitelock.—” I think that remedy would be worse than the disease.”

Cromwell.—” Why do you think so?”

Whitelock.—” As to your own person, the title of King would be of no advantage, because you have the full kingly power in you already, concerning the militia, as you are General. So that I apprehend less envy, and danger, and pomp, but not less power and opportunities of doing good, in your being General, than would be if you had assumed the title of King.”

Here we have two versions of an encounter written retrospectively – both in the third person, but one in direct speech and one in reported speech. Which is more accurate? Has Whitelocke remembered events correctly, and dated them properly? Has he embellished, or even made things up? Given what we know of Cromwell’s frustrations with the Rump Parliament at this time, it is not implausible that this conversation took place. (One might add that given what we know about Whitelocke, it’s not implausible that it’s exaggerated, either). But it would be more plausible if it had taken place in 1657, when the offer of kingship was for a time seriously on the table. From what we know of both Cromwell and Whitelocke, we can contextualise this source to some extent. But ultimately, we can never know whether it reflects Cromwell’s actual words.

A similar problem might be raised with those of Cromwell’s words intended for publication. Cromwell wrote detailed accounts to William Lenthall, Speaker of the Commons, of battles in which he had commanded Parliamentary forces. Many of these were ordered to be published by Parliament, and formed part of an increasingly sophisticated propaganda war as the 1640s went on. We rely on these letters for much of our insight into Cromwell’s military and political career during the 1640s. One example amongst many is Cromwell’s famous – or infamous – account of the sack of Drogheda in September 1649. This is a critical source for trying to understand what happened during the siege, and for unpicking Cromwell’s attitude towards the Irish. It includes this grim account of the assault:

And indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men, diverse of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about one hundred of them possessed St. Peter’s church-steeple, some the west gate and others a strong round tower next the gate called St. Sunday’s. These being summoned to yield to mercy, refused, whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter’s Church to be fired, where one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: “God damn me, God confound me; I burn, I burn.”

It also has this oft-quoted phrase:

I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.

This letter survives in a number of printed sources: in the “official” pamphlet ordered to be published by Parliament, and reprinted in various newsbooks. But do we know that its contents are actually Cromwell’s words? As far as I know, Cromwell’s original letter does not survive. We don’t know whether the Council of State, or the clerk to Parliament, or the printers, may have made alterations or amendments. And even this aside, we also know very little about how Cromwell composed these letters. John Rushworth is known to have ghost-written equivalent letters sent back to Parliament by Thomas Fairfax. Did Cromwell write these letters on his own, or with the help of others under his command? Were they “tidied up” before publication?

My own answer is that I don’t really know. If anyone does, it’s John Morrill, which is why the work he and his co-editors are taking forward is so important. The Cromwell that emerges from their work will no doubt be much more sophisticated portrait than anything produced so far. But to extend Morrill’s metaphor, bits of it will be still be smudged or frayed at the edges. They will probably always remain that way. That is part of the challenge for anyone studying Cromwell, but it’s also what makes him such a fascinating and controversial figure.

As a footnote, a podcast by Professor Morrill about the work on a new edition of Cromwell’s words will go up on the BBC History site on 12 February.

In some ways, being a historian is like being a detective. Yet, where Sherlock Holmes (and his real-life counterparts) could look at many disparate clues and say “this is what must have happened!” This is not how history works. A murderer or robber will probably have one motive, but historical events are the result of many different factors, each important in their own way. I still remember the day I really learned that this is so.

First semester sophomore year. I was a freshly declared history major, taking “Colonial America, 1500-1750,” taught by the department chair. That day in class we were set to talk about the Salem Witch Trials, and I was so excited because over the summer I had seen an episode of Secrets of the Dead which that explained the strange behavior of the animals and humans were likely the symptoms of ergot poisoning. The professor gave a short lecture on the basic facts, and opened up the discussion.

With all the enthusiasm and pride of a college student with newly acquired information, I explained the ergot theory. The professor listened, and acknowledged that he had heard the theory and it did explain some of the odd physical behaviors. But, he said, it did not explain why certain people were accused of witchcraft.

The discussion went on as I sat there, my ego a little bruised but rightly so. By the time class was over, I had begun to get what he was saying, and I definitely understood it by the end of the semester. People are complex; society, being made up of people, is also complex.

Ergot poisoning may have led to behavior in animals and humans which was perceived as witchcraft. Established social relationships in the community contributed to who was suspected of being a witch. Legal systems which gave a succesfull identifier of a witch monetary gain motivated accusations.

Each aspect of the history of Salem, Mass., at the time of the trials is important, but individually, they’re just a thread. It is not until you start to put them all together that you get the woven piece, the portion of the tapestry of history which tells the whole story. There are many threads in the tapestry of history, and the good historian tries to see them all.

As the author of an article on teaching history with YouTube, I naturally liked Randall Stephens’ post on videos to use in historiography classes. But I also like it for two more reasons:

1. It reminded me that I wanted to see Howard Zinn’s “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” again all the way through.

2. It gives me an excuse to post the only YouTube clip I’ve ever used teaching that class:

I made a vow a long while back not to talk Python with students, but I make an exception here because an argument really is “a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition.”

La Malinche, she is everywhere present, unsteady, constantly moving, transforming, just under the few words, relatively speaking, allotted her in Diaz’s story. Sold by her own mother/step father/ brother, she appears in one town after another, accumulating languages, accumulating lovers/owners/husbands/companions, accumulating meanings, still accumulating meanings, now. Under Diaz’s pen, she becomes Joseph, whose Biblical story perhaps at once suggests itself to Diaz and shapes Diaz’s memory. Sold by her family, wrested from her homeland Dona Marina becomes a stranger, an outsider, intruding but still noble, still intelligent, still beautiful (she is Yusuf of the Qur’an, whom the women stab their hands over in love- coincidence?- probably, but still…). She is still capable of acting, her blood still runs noble. It is all- all these wrenching transformations/translations- for the good (but whose good? her people’s? her’s? what is her good, anyway? the Spaniards’?), for her cultural/geographic migrations, her accumulated strata, are the key to everything. She is the Prologue, the Genesis that enters into the end of the story, her bones are borne on and on in Mexican history, have yet to come to rest.

She is Joseph, her accumulated wisdom, stored up in the unhappy prisonhouse of her pre-Spanish, pre-Christian days, wisdom that she presents to the Pharaoh, wisdom through which she interprets/translates the dream-world that spins madly out more and more the closer they come to the Floating City; yet when the Hispano-Tlaxcala alliance reaches their goal, she largely fades into the background. When at last, having reached her apogee of power and nobility, she rediscovers her traitorous family, she, Joseph-Marina, weeps and embraces them. All is well: the breaks, the weight of the accumulations, disappear in love and forgiveness. But this comes early in the narrative; before the gates of the great city, she disappears. But her bones live on, like Joseph’s, her people (but who are her people?) finding themselves in a new land,  a restless land itself.

She is one of the heroes of this tale, indeed one of the few unambiguous heroes, maybe the only one. She is a Joseph-figure, but she is more than a Joseph figure: she is in a long line of women praised for ‘manly virtue’; in battle she does not fear, and her loyalty is unswerving. Her place in the world is at once clear and at once ambiguous: not only can she translate, she can melt back into her ‘native’ milieu, and receive knowledge- interpret the shape of things- that others cannot have. Again, like Joseph, she is between multiple worlds, and not just ‘indigenous’ (which is, of course, multiple worlds in reality) and Spanish.

I read that Howard Zinn, author of The People’s History of the United States, died last Wednesday.

His book is one of the most eye-opening that I ever encountered in regard to alternative ways to look at history.

Goodbye, Howard.

You raised a heck of a fuss.

James Hamilton’s life, as he saw it, and as it’s largely retold, had three acts: years as a successful politician associated with nullification, years as an important businessman and agent for the Republic of Texas to European bankers, and impoverished years caused by investments soured by a bad national economy.

Robert Tinkler believes many were hesitant to look for a deeper pattern, because his personal narrative “reminded his fellow planters that their world of wealth and honor rested precariously on the vagaries of an international commodities market they could little influence.”

However, there were those at the time that looked for more consistency and personal responsibility. William Behan’s description of a man intent on fraud from before his marriage to Elizabeth Heyward is probably not as malicious as the private opinions of his creditors.

Those who supported nullification in the 1840’s and 1850’s could only see Hamilton’s willingness to compromise on slavery to get his Texas claims repaid as “the last cry of a child against being put to bed in the dark.” A man who might benefit from his support for Texas, Sam Houston, believed the man “was destitute of all sincerity.”

Tinkler himself was more interested in Hamilton’s political importance, and provided little evidence in his biography from the details of the various law suits and his associates that would shed light on his character. In the absence of such hard facts, it’s too easy to pick and choose evidence to support any personal prejudice.

Historians with a scientific bias have tried to use theoretical constructs to provide some objective way to interpret an incomplete factual record. In the 1960’s, some historians were trying to use different ideas drawn from psychology to describe the link between people like James Hamilton and their political cultures.

In 1961, David McClelland suggested there were three basic things that motivated people to act: the desire for achievement, for power, or for social acceptance, and that individuals and cultures were some mix of the three.

As old as those ideas may be, they spring to mind when one looks at the life of a man who spent his childhood and youth in boarding houses and private schools where proprietors were probably more interested in flattering him to maintain their income, than socializing him as they would their own sons. Oliver Hazard Perry remembered that at John Frazer’s Latin school “the local boys took their turns at cleaning the classroom each week,” but “the comparatively rich – or self-consciously aristocratic – southern students often paid others to perform their chores.”

Hamilton spent much of his later youth living with men, rather than with families, where comfort, if not success, depended on pleasing others. After time in the army, he went to Washington, DC., where he lived in boardinghouses or messes with other congressmen. He did spend time with his wife in South Carolina, but, Tinkler says, he always became bored if isolated too long from the society of Charleston or Washington and displayed what one his sons remembers as a “peculiarly mercurial temperament subject to fits of elation and gloom.”

One rather suspects that he had no strong political opinions, but absorbed those of others, like John Lyde Wilson and John Cordes Prioleau, and lacked the instinct for power of a man like John Calhoun, who knew how to temper actions. After South Carolinians backed away from the more extreme implications of the nullification crisis in 1832, one of his friends, William Preston, said Hamilton’s problem “was an over anxiety to exhibit himself strikingly to the public eye.”

Once he lost an opportunity to return to Washington and recognized he had no serious interest in running plantations, I would guess Hamilton took up one scheme after another because some friend of his supported it. He became involved in Texas after Joel Poinsett invested in land there and after Bernard Elliott Bee joined the government of the republic. Poinsett was a neighbor who supported him after nullification. Bee had worked for him when he was a governor and claimed to be a brother-in-law, apparently through the Prioleaus.

Hamilton supported Nicholas Biddle’s national bank before nullification, and believed he stayed close to the man without realizing men seeking power use people seeking affirmation. No doubt, he believed he had absorbed enough watching the man to successfully exploit the cotton market without any experience of men who make their living in speculation.

Similarly, he thought he could grow rice in South Carolina, cotton in Alabama, and sugar in Texas, if he left others run his plantations, especially if the subordinates were his own sons. Only one, Daniel Heyward Hamilton, became an independent planter, and he ruined his political fortunes when he refused to support nullification in 1852.

Hamilton’s willingness to exploit the trusts of his wife, Elizabeth Heyward, and the widowed Mary Martha McRa probably has deeper roots, and may come from the way his father treated his mother’s lands and the way his step-grandfather exploited the lands of his mother’s mother.

Notes:
Behan, William A. A Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina, 2004.

McClelland, David. The Achieving Society, 1961.

Perry, Oliver Hazard. Quoted by Tinker from a biography by Alexander Slidell Mackenzie; the Perrys ran the boardinghouse where the Hamiltons stayed in Newport.

Tinkler, Robert. James Hamilton of South Carolina, 2004; “last cry” quotation from Charleston Mercury, 5 June 1838; Houston quotation from 9 December 1842 letter; quotation from Preston in 15 October 1833 letter.

Below is my final paper for the course:

Source of the Hudson: Landscape, Theory, History with Professor Lytle Shaw

A PDF of the course description can be found here: The Source of the Hudson: Landscape, Theory, History

I will present this paper at the following graduate conferece:

Click on a link below for a pdf version of my paper!

Paper – American Progress and National Identity: An Allegorical Representation of Sustainable Expansion

Your feedback is important to me.  Many thanks for your interest!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference Date: Friday, April 2, 2010

Deadline for Abstracts: February 1, 2010

Official Website: http://nyugeoconference.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/literature-and-the-mass-produced-image/

New York University’s English Department will host a graduate student conference exploring the fate of literature in the age of the reproducible image. The nineteenth-century emergence of photography, a medium which Walter Benjamin referred to as “the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction,” coupled with the subsequent development of the motion picture, irrevocably shook not only the art world, but also the literary. This conference aims to uncover the affinities, negotiations, and interrelations between literary texts and visual media like photography, cinema, and the more recent medium of digital imaging and video. Investigating these issues from the perspectives of both literary and visual culture, this one-day event aims to bring together new work being produced by graduate students studying literature, cinema studies, visual culture, the history of media, and social historiography.

We will be focusing on a number of related questions including (but not limited to): How has the development of visual media affected literary aesthetics? In what sense has the vocabulary of film and photography been appropriated from and by literary culture? How do motion and pacing – elements inherent to cinema – reveal themselves in creating and staging action, plot, and character development in literary narrative?

Other possible topics include:

• Photographic representation in literary texts
• Literature as motion: imagery and the mind’s eye, storytelling and motion
• Cinema, literature, fragmentation and non-linear chronology
• Descriptions of photographs within literary works
• The ‘urban’ and its centrality to cross-media works
• Modernist critique/appropriation of visual culture
• Art, the avant-garde, and experimental motion/stop-motion
• The function of written text in a visual medium
• Depictions of movies and movie-going in literary narrative
• Film vs. Literature: ‘high art’ in the era of mass culture

Please send abstracts (400 words) to nyugeo.conference@gmail.com by FEBRUARY 1, 2010. Abstracts should include your name, contact information, paper title, and a short bio with your institution & department affiliation and year in graduate school. Please specify any audio-visual requirements. Panel proposals are also welcome for panels comprised of 3-4 participants; in your proposals, please include panel title and brief description (limit 500 words) as well as a list of papers with corresponding abstracts and speaker information.

Conference organizers: Yair Solan, Kathryn Bullerdick and Blevin Shelnutt.

This conference is sponsored by the New York University Department of English, with financial support provided by the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science.

I must be doing something right as a historian since my e-mail box started filling up with Howard Zinn tributes before I even saw the news that he had died.

I went to a Howard Zinn speech before I ever read one of his books. It was Madison in the early-1990s and I must have been the only history grad student in the audience who had never even heard of A People’s History of the United States. I distinctly remember my reaction, though: I couldn’t believe he was saying such things. I had simply never encountered an all-out assault on the Heroic Master Narrative of American history before. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but the notion that one could even contemplate mounting such an attack was absolutely exhilarating

Running into Zinn’s actual scholarship, I was less impressed. I loved A People’s History the first time I read it, but the more I learned about American history in general the more I realized its flaws. I think of it as a book to give precocious 15-year-olds who think that history is boring. Hopefully, it can then serve as a gateway to better-researched stuff.

To me Zinn’s best book is his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. Besides the fact that the title is the best metaphor for discussing historical bias that I’ve ever encountered, it is much easier to enjoy without qualms as you can’t expect him to be objective when he tells his own story. Lifting a sentence from it quoted in the Boston Globe’s obituary:

“From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’ ; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”

As I remember it, he argues that since kids grow up with the Heroic Master Narrative of American history their whole lives, he doesn’t need to give that side of the story. We all already know it far too well.

I think this perspective is why his books have sold so well. People who don’t know anything about history from the bottom up are probably just as surprised by his arguments as I was when I first heard him. He will always be a breath of fresh air to people who pick up his works for the first time.

Modern military historians of the “war and society” school have a crusade of sorts against technological determinism. This is understandable– technological explanations of war and military history have dominated much of the discipline for decades now. This is also very understandable– weapons hold an allure or a fascination that makes them hard to dismiss. There’s also the appeal of “science” since weapons can be turned into statistics, like weight, caliber, quantity, etc… These can then be used to contrast the weapons and one can come up with a “scientific” analysis of military history. E.g. the King Tiger is a better tank than the Sherman because it has this much armor and its gun is this big.

Perhaps another reason for the appeal of technology is that weapons are somehow very appealing to male sensibilities. There seems to be some kind of panzer fetish in the WW2 enthusiasts' community, for instance.

The current charge being led by the “war and society” historians rests on the idea that technology isn’t neutral– technology has the value added of “culture.” There has always been an assumption that technology and science are bland and bare of all forms of cultural interpretation. This is true, to some extent, 1+1 will always be 2 and the formula for water will always be two parts hydrogen for one part oxygen. Technologically, there are some indubitable facts: thicker slabs of the same kind of metal will tend to protect better than a thinner one.

From the viewpoint of historical analysis, this is hardly the case. Weapons and technology are extremely reflective of the culture that produces them. The shape they take, the function they assume, and the way they are used all say something about the people who produce them. Weapons are also laden with the cultural expectations and baggage of the people who study and observe them. It is in fact impossible to examine weapons without factoring in the “non-scientific” human element of either the observer or the people using them. Technological determinism is a dead letter.

Sometimes, the cultural analysis “behind” weapons may seem straightforward.

Take for instance fighter aircraft from the Cold War. The F-4 Phantom was an expression of the American military and engineering society that produced it, possibly even of American society as a whole. It was complex, full of electronics and relied on these electronics, it was multi-mission capable and it was expensive. Contrast it to the MiG-21 “Fishbed” produced by the Russians. It had far fewer electronic systems (not as few as the West assumed, though, since the kinds encountered in the Middle East and Vietnam were stripped-down versions), was undoubtedly simpler, it had a narrower mission profile, and it was much, much cheaper.

Like its opponent, the F-4, the MiG-21 was quite a successful fighter in terms of exports and is still widely used today.

Both are jet fighters from a similar era. To a layman, or from a broader historical perspective, both are essentially similar weapons. The differences lie in how the culture that built them intended to use them, how much resources that culture had, or how much stock that culture placed on sheer technological ability. The Americans preferred complex weapons that could do a lot of things, and crammed with technology to help its pilots. The Russians preferred a simpler jet they could build lots of that could operate in rough field conditions.

The debate isn’t always clear-cut, however. There are some weapons where the differences are much more nuanced, despite being essentially the same thing. These similarities may be a result of congruences in function and culture, as well as just limitations in basic physics. Take the European 13th-16th century long sword, for instance and the (shall we say) Sengoku Jidai katana of Japan.

So this:

A CAS Iberia "Tinker" practice sword. My salle uses these and they're very nice.

And this:

Just an image I pulled from wikipedia. I'm not an expert on katana design myself, and given that the sword evolved over time (contrary to popular conception) this might very well be NOT a katana from the period I just mentioned.

These are both swords. They’re both meant to be used with two hands, but can be used with just one (generally). Both can usually cut or thrust (not all longswords can do both). Both are generally about the same in size and weight (or at least the difference is really small enough not to matter much from a macro-historical perspective).

However, they look different, there are differences in design, and there are differences in use. Just how different they are has been the matter of considerable, acrimonious debate among amateur enthusiasts online. Are they the same weapons, to be judged similarly– and therefore one will be better– or are they different, based on cultural and historical circumstance? If they are different, what makes them so different? The debate usually becomes one of the meanings of culture. What exactly is “Japanese culture”? Does this even exist– this is a uselessly broad term, one that can be twisted and turned based on one’s biases, debating needs and misconceptions. It is no coincidence that the “katana vs longsword” debates are uselessly didactic, involving stereotypes, sweeping generalizations and a whole lot of plain old prejudices.

What this suggests that the biases and agenda (so to speak) of the historian or person making the analysis is just as important to factor in. The debate of “longsword versus katana” is a pointless debate that says far more about the people arguing than they do about the weapons themselves.

The words used to analyze and describe the weapons already betrays a bias. Take for instance the descriptor word “advanced.” What does this even mean? What makes a weapon “advanced?” Some would argue that an advanced weapon is the one with all the newest technology– but what counts as “new?” Does giving something with “new” technology even always matter?

World War II tanks are an excellent example of this. German panzers are lauded to the point of idolatry by many World War II enthusiasts. A tank like the Panther is often lauded as “sophisticated” or “advanced.” Did it contain new technology or science? The Panther was certainly complex, with a complex engine and (especially) very complex suspension system.

The Panther's interleaved suspension system. It enabled this heavy tank to be quite mobile, but was very complex.

The Panther otherwise did not introduce much new, like new gun sights, new transmission, new armor, or others. However, this didn’t mean it was a good use of existing technology. As an exercise in sheer engineering, the Panther managed to combine excellent armor protection with an excellent gun along with mobility that could put the lighter Sherman to shame. It made excellent use of existing technology. So is “advanced” also making better use of existing technology? I am not knocking the Panther’s undeniable technological virtues– only showing how vague the criterion for technological sophistication can be.

And of course, does “advanced” even matter? In the end, for all the Wehrmacht Vorship, they lost the war. Despite a stable of weapons that were surely better or more technologically “advanced” or better engineered than many Allied counterparts on paper (the Me-262, the Tiger tanks and the Panther tanks, the Stg-44 assault gun, the MG-42 and so on) they lost the war. Table top games or video games or war documentaries that ignore everything BUT the battlefield favor the Germans– but they lost the war. Their attitudes towards weapons were surely part of it. It’s become a byword of World War II historical analysis that Germany produced weapons far too sophisticated or too over-engineered for their job. Stephen Zaloga makes this point in his book Armored Thunderbolts: in industrial warfare it is better to have 10 good tanks than 1 perfect tank. Further, this 1 perfect tank or aircraft or gun was often in the shop, being repaired.

All this should just point out how difficult it really is to assess military history just through the “numbers” or “statistics” of weaponry. This isn’t to deny it. The British use of machine guns in the Battle of Omdurman or in the Matabele wars are graphic examples of technological imbalance– machine guns and bolt action rifles versus spears and shields or even older guns (as in the Battle of Omdurman).

"And the white man come again with guns that spat bullets like the heavens sometimes spits hail, and who were the naked Matabele to stand up to these guns?"

The truism is therefore true: it’s not the weapons, but the people who use them that really matters. From a historical perspective, what truly matters therefore is how the people use their weapons, or why the weapons assume that form and are used that way by the people building or using them.

Additionally– lest we forget– it also often matters how we the modern observers think about weapons and technology.