Earlier there was a question about why "The Myth of Peasant Conscripts" in medieval armies is so persistent, and where it came from. Now I am not acquianted enough with the historiography of medieval military social history to suggest where the idea of peasants forced into service and thrown away like cannon (trebuchet, springbald) fodder came from in the historical literature.

But since this is 'free form Friday' I'd like to spitball some ideas about why it has such staying power. Here are two ideas:

1. The idea of the medieval conscript resonates with modern attitudes toward war, and toward state power in war. There's a narrative, particularly in post Vietnam America and I believe in post WWI Britain as well of wars being fought by poor drafted soldiers, who are fighting and dying to serve the interests of capitalists, or imperialists, or some faceless bureacracy. I'm not a historian of this idea, but I know it's an element in a number of anti-war movements, and it has crept into popular culture in American war movies about Vietnam and media influenced by them. Assuming that non-noble soldiers in the middle ages were conscripts whose lives were thrown away by their lords is a way of projecting this narrative into the past. It's familiar and it 'feels' true becausse these tropes are so omnipresent.

2. I think it appeals to certain very hierarchical ideas of medieval society that people have, where lords command their 'peasants' or 'serfs' to do their bidding, and society is very much divided in between titled nobles and a seething mass of humanity that lives like extras in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". In this view, there is no one among the commoners who would have a vested interest in going out and fighting and dying - not booty, not social advancement (because society in this model is assumed to be static), not glory. In this caricature of medieval society there isn't an in-between class (still a privileged minority of the population, mind you) that holds land and has close relationships to their titled superiors and thus would fight as archers or men at arms or pikemen because it is in their interests to do so. Moreover, the relationship of 'superiors' to 'inferiors' in this view is reduced to simple coercion - nobles make peasants do things - and doesn't account for the ways that people of different classes could form relationships based around mutual benefit - if I sign an indenture with a knight to serve him in his retinue as an archer, I get food, clothing and pay, and I risk losing that relationship if, say, the Lancastrians take over again and he gets beheaded.

TL/DR version, I think that people sieze upon the 'masses of conscripted peasants' narrative because it both plays into modern ideas about the nature of war and simplified ideas about medieval society.

So, u/Squeezymypenisy - that is my spitballed answer from more of a modern, pop-culture level why people still assume so readily that medieval armies were either knights or conscripted serfs.

Here's a video of a guy playing the last fully functioning Stradivarius guitar. It's called the “Sabionari.”

Call for writers + editors at international relations online publication

I'm the Head of Creative for The Diplomacist (diplomacist.com), an undergraduate current events online magazine (I know, it's a lot of modifiers). We publish op-ed articles on international relations and foreign policy - similar idea (maybe not quite execution) to Foreign Policy.

We're looking to expand our (unpaid, for the foreseeable future) writer and editor corps over the next few months. To this end, I thought /r/AskHistorians would be a good place to recruit staff. If you're interested in world events, you should check out our website and see what you think. If you have a strong view on world events and can express your ideas clearly, you should consider writing or editing (see? this post isn't just shameless promotion!).

Over the next semester we are looking to recruit ~25 writers, each writing one article every two weeks (although frequency is flexible). We will also recruit ~5 editors. In writers, we are less looking for people who can reel off facts and more those who can give an interesting slant to an issue or advocate for an unusual policy. In editors, we are looking for people with a strong command of language and argument, alongside an understanding of how writing should flow.

If one or both of those sounds like you, shoot me a message through reddit and we can get this show on the road. Even if you've never written/edited publicly before, message me - many of our current writers/editors had little/no experience before they started at the Diplomacist. Finally, if you know anyone who might be interested in writing/editing, show them our website and point them in my direction. The more the merrier! Thanks for reading this thinly disguised advertisement and I hope to hear from some of you soon.

Another update on my dissertation~

https://gunlord500.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/gunlords-dissertation-saga-episode-12-my-progress-so-far/

It's kind of the final countdown for me at this point, my first draft--very very rough draft, really--is due next week. I gotta buckle down and work as hard as I can, so wish me luck. Hopefully I'll have something better to report by next friday :D

Umberto Eco died! Baudolino was one of the first places I ever encountered Byzantium... :(

I ( finally ! ) have my results for our mid-year exams and I'm in the top 15 of the class ( out of something like 120 ). What a relief to know that after three years without being at school I'm still up to it !

I was so surprised to see that my best result was in Ancient History ( I was so afraid to be disappointed with the results in this class because I had the impression I did good with my paper on the end of legality in the late Roman Republic. I was right ! ) .

I passed 9,000 followers this morning on my Tumblr dedicated to art and archaeology (and sometimes issues of modern Natives) of the Americas. So that's cool.

Are any of those "How to write and research a PhD" good? Which ones have you found useful?

I've been admitted into a PhD programme but funding is still pending (and unlikely to work out). I'm thinking of going part time. However, I currently work in the department where I would be studying and I don't want to give a hint to my boss that I might be leaving as nothing is final yet. So I can't really meet with the supervisor to discuss things much.

But before I commit to a part-time situation, I'd like to figure out more about what I'm getting myself into.

So for those who have a flair, I was wondering what about your flair made you want to specialize in that field?

For Example: If you have a Military History flair, was there a specific battle that sparked your interest, or was there something in the overall theme/concept that drew you in?

I have achieved internet fame by means of a mention in the Omaha History Podcast. Helped one of the hosts sort out how there are two antislavery men named William Phillips, both active in territorial Kansas. One has no middle name that I know of and is barely a footnote. He's a standard example of proslavery violence in books on the subject. The other one was a second or third rank guy (important enough, or lucky enough, to frequently be in the company of the leadership and friends with Charles and Sara Robinson) involved with the free state movement who went on to an officer's rank in the Civil War and then spent a term or two in Washington. That's William Addison Phillips. He also wrote a book that talks about the lynching of No Middle Name Phillips and didn't take the time then to inform his readers that it was a different guy. Thanks loads, Bill.

I found all of this out a few months after writing about it on my blog under the assumption that it was the same guy, of course. A fellow working on a WAP biography got in touch with me and told me he was never lynched, which prompted me to do some checking and learn that No Middle Name caught a fatal case of bullet in 1856. (He survived the lynching.) WAP was still kicking into the final decades of the century, so unless he managed a sneaky resurrection, it's got to be two guys.

The host and I spent a little time commiserating about same-named historical figures active in the same area with the same politics and I thought that was it until she got back in touch Monday and told me the Williams Phillips would feature into this week's episode.

I promise to use my fame responsibly right up until the scandalous tape of me reading a nineteenth century document and muttering obscenities about some ambiguity surfaces.

This week, I have been seeing how the academic sausage gets made in new ways. This is not a pleasant set of discoveries, even though they're not entirely newsflashes. Fortunately, I'm going overseas next week for a good long time, so it will have a chance to fade into a distant traumatic memory.

That said, I may get my first graduate student next Fall--I find out if we have the funding package to do it in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to the prospect.

What is an accurate tl;dr on Nazis and the occult? Are there any books that cover this subject that are objective? I watched a brief Smithsonian documentary that got me curious, but put the word occult into google and you get a lot of weird websites and spurious content.

Edit: Now that I think about it, what's a good tl;dr and/or objectively written book about MKUTRA? I tried looking that up last year and got nothing but the paranoid, crazy part of the internet. Which is a lot bigger than I realized.

I didn't think this warranted a whole post. But I was wondering if any one had any favorite historical figures that were absolute failures at everything they tried, but had the gumption to keep going for it?

Recently my husband visited the ruins of William Hope Harvey's efforts to build an empire near Eureka Springs. And now I'm listening to recording of Florence Foster Jenkins, who seemed to be a woman bound a determined to finally realize her dream of being an singing sensation. Even if she couldn't carry a note, or tune, melody. It's admirable.

I've been nursing a pet theory about Pickett's Charge, and Lee's thoughts on the Third Day at Gettysburg. All military professionals in the 19th century would be familiar with Napoleon, both through study of military history and Jomini's theories; my guess is that Lee was trying to reproduce Napoleon's masterpiece at Austerlitz.

He drew Meade's reserves to the flanks, drew up a grand battery, hit the enemy on the high ground with everything he had. Driving Hancock's corps from the Pratzen heights Cemetary Ridge would split Meade's army into two individually smaller forces, and Longstreet's corps would occupy the Napoleonic central position, where he could defeat them in turn.

Obviously, I just have circumstantial evidence for this, but I think it's better than the simple bewilderment that a lot of people feel when confronted with Lee's miscalculation on the third day.

What advice would you give to someone looking for a career in history? I finish my Bachelors degree next year and really don't know what to do after that. I would like to study more but don't think it's a possibility due to financial reasons, so what jobs/paths would you recommend for an aspiring historian?

Eta: Thanks everyone, some great suggestions here and a few things I hadn't considered, I will have to start looking into some of these options.

If not too late to still join, I'd like your opinions on when do you think that /r/askhistorians will be a valid source in, at the very least, K-12 academics, provided you cited a flaired user?

why do people refer to ww1 as a modern war?

simply due to the advances in weaponry?

Who has witnessed the most deaths in history?

Looking for some good history book/audiobook recommendations. Since I'm not a historian I would prefer books that were written for a broader audience, i.e. fiction-esque writing, first-hand accounts, personal opinions, and everything that pretty much makes it sound like Dan Carlin's podcast.

I'm looking for the following topics:

• Anything about Roman Empire
• 1st and 2nd Chechen war (both in English and Russian)
• Pretty much any other modern armed conflict after WWII

However if there's a certain favorite book of yours on other topics that fits this description, I would love to check it out as well :)