So this isn't about what I'm reading now so much as sharing some resources I use quite a bit in my research. They've been useful in my on-again off-again pre-1510 infantry breastplate project, as well as in answering a lot of questions here.

I am celebrating having an internet connection again by talking to you, my fellow history nerds dorks enthusiasts about all the awesome online resources museums have made available to us. I’m going to focus on museums with good armour collections, and make notes about their collection, but these are some of the world’s great art museums as well, so check them out for all your Rembrandt-gawking needs. But first, I will say some general words about how to view pieces in a museum critically, with a particular focus on arms and armour. Or in other words, sit back for everyone’s favorite part, caveats!

“But I saw it in a museum!”

Museum displays are not the direct, unfiltered truth. They don’t necessarily present the object just as it was found, let alone how it looked when it was first made. Finishes have been polished off, fabric or leather coverings removed, brass borders lost. The plain expanses of polished steel that you see today may not reflect the appearance of the armour when it was made.

More than that, if you see a full harness (suit) of armour in a museum, often not all of the pieces will be original - in the better cases, this means a gauntlet or greave or pauldron has been replaced, while the overall ‘look’ of the armour is correct. This is the case with this armour. In other cases a harness will mostly ‘belong’ but some pieces will not - as is the case with the famous ‘Avant’ Harness at the Glasgow museums - it has an infantryman’s barbut that would never be worn with it, and a pair of oversized guantlets made for a much bigger man. A trickier case is ‘composite’ armours like this onein the Royal Armouries - it mixes pieces from armours of different origins and purposes (the breastplate is probably for an infantryman, not a man at arms), and many of the pieces may be authentic, they wouldn’t necessarily have been worn together historically. Finally, there are frauds and abominations. Some museums have pieces that are mostly 19th century ‘reconstructions’ or fakes - most good museums have weeded these out, but always look carefully at the dating - if the placard says ‘15th century with 19th century elements’ then some of it may not be the real deal. Also be on the lookout for something that just doesn’t look right - not all ‘reconstructions’ and frauds are labelled. Then there is this interesting piece in the Metropolitan museum of Art. It is one of the most famous armours in the world...and important parts of it are not real. Oh, some of the pieces of it are original (the bascinet, the gauntlets and most of the limb armour), but the odd one piece pauldrons and the breastplate...thing have been cobbled together from other pieces of armour that were cut up and put back together. They are the only pieces of armour in the world that look like this, because they were ‘reconstructed’ in 1920. Bashford Deen wanted an armour from 1400, so he had one put together. Note the dating - 1400-1450 and later.

In addition to pieces that are not 100% original or are reconstructed in misleading ways, there are also pieces that are not labelled correctly. The dating on the placard is not gospel - it may have been established 80 years ago and never reviewed, and in any case may be highly aproximate. Composite armours often have long date ranges to reflect the many different dates of the pieces that were cobbled together to make the armour.

Then there is survival bias. You can see all the armour in all the world’s museums and not get an accurate picture of what armour really was like, because so much does not survive. Almost all the armour that survives from the 15th century is either German or Italian. This does not mean that only German and Italian smiths were making armour! In addition, the pieces that a museum will display are often the ones in best condition, and often the gaudiest - the armours of nobles and kings. For a student of armour history the half-corroded infantryman’s breastplate that was dredged up from the river muck may be just as informative. One thing online catalogs allow us to do is view pieces that aren’t on display, which can include armour that’s more representative of that worn by common soldiers.

Finally, and more abstractly, keep in mind that art museums are not necessarily historical institutions - they do not exist to educate about history, but to encourage the appreciation of art by the public. There are approaches to exhibiting art - including art that originally had a practical purpose like silverware and chairs and armour - that suggest that art objects should be appreciated detached from their historical context, as objects of beauty. The upshot of this is that art museums don’t always present as much background as we students of history would like.

So how do you view museums pieces critically?

• View a lot of them! Your best guide to whether something ‘feels off’ is to view a lot of pieces. Get a sense for the proportions of original armours so that you can spot when something is mismatched. Study the way that 15th century German armourers apply fluting and compare it to reconstructions. Study different styles of armour so that you can see when two have been combined (but keep in mind that style is very fluid - 15th century Italian armourers made armour with fluting, too!).

• Read supplemental material, if possible. Does the museum or the exhibit you just saw have a catalog? One of the great things about museum’s online collections is that they often have more complete descriptions than the placard in the gallery. Pay attention to dates, provenance and any descriptive notes - often these will include which parts of a piece are original.

• Compare museum pieces to depictions in art. Art can help us know when armour is put together correctly, because (when viewed critically) it helps us contextualize armour as it was worn.

In general, museum pieces are no more the be all and end all of armour studies than any other source. As always, a variety of sources is important in studying any aspect of history. Written accounts, artifacts, and artistic depictions all tell us something, and together they tell us even more.

EDIT:

One thing I didn't mention is -why- pieces were altered over time. It is simple to say that armours were reconstructed in order to recreate what people thought they looked like, or to make them more desirable for sale, but it's both informative and interesting to ask -why- they thought something was 'correct' or why certain features were more desirable. The European conception of armour and knights changed through the 19th and 20th centuries (and changes to this day - look at popular culture). It has been shaped by romanticism (knights in shining armour, the influence of Walter Scott), nationalism (the idea of 'gothic' armour as embodying something essentially 'German') and other ideologies, aesthetics and intellectual trends. For instance, the love of bare polished steel is similar to the neoclassical and neogothic preference for bare stone - in all these cases the monotone preferences of 19th century revivalists contrast with the often colorful originals. In addition, ideas about best practices for conserving artifacts have changed - the aggressive polishing an reconstructions undertaken up to the early 20th century are no longer considered 'best practice', to say the least.

I'm about to make more good/bad choices due to my lack of self control surrounding pretty, pretty books. Has anyone read Bowes' Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal? The book just came out earlier this year and is an area I'm woefully ignorant about. The other is Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. I loved her Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, and this new one has been very, very well-received so I have high hopes. Anyone read Encounters yet?

On the other end of the spectrum I tried to read The Devil in the White City by Larsen after several friends recommended the book, but couldn't make any progress. I don't know if it was the pop history style, but I haven't felt so "meh" about a book in a long while.

Finished up Huston's Calculating the Value of the Union. Contrary to his repeated protestations, there's not a lot new in it. What's there is really good; he clearly did a tremendous amount of statistical work for his argument, and he's very thorough, but even the centrality of property rights in slaves to his argument seems to me like a minor shift in emphasis. I don't know anybody who thinks the South was eager to lose the huge piles of cash invested in slave property. It's just usually expressed without specific reference to property rights, because it's property in slaves that's really at issue. Huston clearly knows as much, but cloaking it all in reference to property makes things sound like very antiseptic.

Huston's essay at turning disputes over property rights into the cause of all American political realignments, which he presents more as an interesting idea than an argument as such, strikes me as either trying too hard or asserting something that might be true but is also fairly trifling. Realignments concern power and security, which I don't think anybody would dispute, and property rights are one way that might play out. But there are other sources of power and security that often coincide with but aren't necessarily dependent on property and might precede it. The decision to stop at property and say it explains the lot seems arbitrary to me.

Still glad I read it. Moved on to Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation, edited by Matthew Mason and John Craig Hammond. It's all about reviving Early Republic antislavery as a serious issue. Decent so far and right up my alley. The first essay is essentially a ~thirty-page abridgment of Mason's Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic.

Still doing primary research on the bankruptcy of noted Salem, MA shipwright Retire Beckett - though the paper has turned to more of a biography at this point. Unfortunately I have absolutely nothing between his birth in 1753/54, and the first pair of schooners he built in 1784 and 1785.

Worse still, he falls off the record again until 1794 when he launches a schooner, gets married, and buys the family shipyard from his father's estate.

Going to check NARA-Boston on Monday to see if a Rev. War pension was ever filed, and the Mass state archives to check for criminal records of some sort. I have little hope for either.

What I do have is a near complete bankruptcy file with a plethora of receipts for everything from axes to ships that were never made - and a who's who of Salem and the surrounding area. Shipwrights, yeoman, caulkers, physicians, tailors, all of them are there. The man owed over $10k.

On the family front, the man had 3 daughters die in infancy by 1800, a young daughter die in childhood around 1805, and a son killed onboard the privateer Portsmouth circa 1814. Only one child a daughter, made it to adulthood.

As a father its been a real reminder just how lucky we are today.

I picked up this book "The making of a modern army and its operations in the field; a study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917)" by a General Rene Radiguet that was published in 1918 and was probably finished around September 1917 judging by where the beginning account of the war ends. Going through it I realized the very first page has the actual signature of the author! I was very nervous about touching this thing to read it, I worry about the binding and the oil on my fingers, but fortunately I have found a PDF someone made of this book, which I have linked here

The book itself is interesting because the intent seems to be to get the USA up to speed on what modern armies look like. I intent to use this book in either my US Military History class or my Great Power Politics class next semester, as it offers an interesting mid-war perspective.

Also can anyone give me any tips on how to handle this book without wrecking it any further? And in deed to ensure the author's signature remains intact as it appears to be either in faded ink or pencil?

Hi guys, I realized that my knowledge of my home country is pretty basic, so I was wondering if any of you are aware of the existence of a book on Dutch history from about Habsburg times to just after Napoleon. If that doesn't exist, are there any works that fall into this period that you would recommend? (Preferably not too academic.)

I've also made it a habit to buy books as souvenirs whenever I see an interesting one, but as I've been cycling through Italy for a month they are stacking up faster than I can read them. Currently looking over Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo while still reading Norwich's 'History of Venice' which I bought when I was there.

Reading up on William Sharp, a Scottish writer and poet who perhaps more famously wrote as a Celtic Twilight author under the pseudonym Fiona Macleod. He was probably what we today we would call "genderqueer," although that's sort of imposing modern concepts backwards in time, but the 1890s was a weird period in Victorian sexuality and I don't mind the excuse to dip into stuff about the Cleveland Street Scandal, Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis, and the Yellow Book again.

This is a spin-off of the Lovecraft research, as Lovecraft borrowed a line of Gaelic from Macleod's "The Sin-Eater" for his short story "The Rats in the Walls." Texas writer Robert E. Howard, who was a bit of a Gaelic nerd and history buff, noted the line and wrote to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright wondering if Lovecraft was a believer in a theory about the Gaels populating Britain. Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who replied to Howard, sparking a correspondence that would last most of the rest of their lives (Howard died in '36, Lovecraft the following year).

It's funny because these two great weird writers might never have corresponded if not for that one borrowed line from a genderqueer author - and none of the work that came from that meeting (basically all of Howard's "Mythos" stories, and Lovecraft and Price's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key") would have been written without it.

Tomorrow, I'm going to dig more into Lovecraft's letters to see what else he might have read from Sharp/Macleod - since he mentions knowing of the dual identity (no big surprise in the 1920s).

Does anyone know any good sources about food history in China? Preferably from the Tang and onwards but I'm not picky.