For the last week and a half I've been on an archery related tangent. What began as a quick look at Anglo-Norman archery in Ireland as a way of getting some idea about Norman archery in the mid-11th century has now morphed into shake up of my understanding of medieval archery. To wit: 75% Mary Rose longbows were most likely under 120lbs, or 130lbs at the most.

This revelation has come to me via Weapons of Warre and an email exchange by Dr Bob Kooi, whose equations for determining a bow's draw weight were used to calculate draw weights for the Mary Rose bows. On P616, there is a graph of bow draw weights, attributed to "Kooi and Pratt" (though Bob Kooi believes it came from Pratt's work for Robert Hardy, of which he had minimal involvement in), which shows 110lb bows as the most common by far, and has 75% of them under 120lbs. Just under two thirds (63.5%) of them are between 100-120lbs, and they range from 95-165lbs. Later, on p629, Robert Hardy notes that 130lbs @ 30" was more likely to be the most common draw weight. This seems to be down from 150lbs @ 32", so it's possible that the graph was for bows with a draw length of 28", which would match 130lbs @ 30" being the most common bow well enough. For what it's worth, Bob Kooi believes that 110-120lb was more likely to be the correct figure. Also worth noting is that, in The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years' War, Clifford Rogers decided that 100-120lbs was the most likely weight for longbows based on a paper about the Mary Rose longbows that Robert Hardy presented at a conference in 1991, before official publication of the 150-160lb figures now commonly accepted.

Then there's the question of shortbows. For about a year now, I've accepted the existence of shortbows. Richard Wadge's Archery in Medieval England: Who Were the Bowmen of Crecy demonstrated that bows with a length of 4'6" (137cm) existed in the late 13th and early 14th centuries through two legal cases where the bows were measured, and that longbows with a length of 6 feet (183cm) coexisted with them in the early 14th century. He also used archaeological evidence of arrowheads to show that most arrowheads prior to the 14th century, including military arrowheads, had small socket diameters (8-9mm) that would make them unsuited to a powerful longbow. Even some of the 14th century war arrows (particularly the Type 16/M4) had socket diameters of 8-9mm.

However, Clifford Rogers makes a powerful argument for the shortbow, and the "medium" bow, as he calls it, being predominant in the early and high medieval world. In almost 1000 images of medieval artwork, only one contained an unambiguous longbow prior to the 14th century. All the remainder were shortbows and medium bows. While interpreting art is a very tricky business, as Rogers confesses himself, it can be usefully with a large enough sample and careful consideration of the value of each image. He also uses much the same documentary and archaeological evidence as Wadge.

I might not base an argument entirely on the art, but what limited archaeological evidence we have does support the notion of, if not shortbows, then very weak longbows. Anglo-Norman military arrowheads in Ireland are mostly for arrowshafts of 8-9mm diameter, and a large number of both military and non-military arrowheads in 13th century England are the same. However, until someone collects and publishes data on all medieval English arrowheads that are a) dateable to at least a specific century and b) have their sockets sufficiently intact for a direct measurement or close estimate, the question will have to remain open for now. Based on current research, though, I'm definitely tending towards the side of the shortbow.

Just finished What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice by Magnusson and Szijarto. I was really intrigued about the discussions on the impact of postmodernism and poststructuralism on different histiographical methods. Anyone have other books that go into that on fields other than microhistory?

Finished up Black Slaveowners. It was decent, but not amazing.

About then I realized that the blog caught up to my reading, so I had to shift and read a bunch about John Brown. Started with John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. Shockingly enough, it's very favorable to Brown. I don't mind that -if anything, Brown has more problems with people casting him as insane or a supervllain- but it's also a cultural biography so it might have been better called John Brown's World or something like that. He's the star of the story and it's vaguely chronological, but it wavers between trying to also be a conventional life and ducking that completely. Gets a little annoying.

I'm going to finish it, but I think I'll stop for now and read Stephen Oates' The Purge This Land With Blood instead. It is a conventional biography which aims for fairness. Reviewers have warned me that the Reynolds book, above, works a bit too hard to shoehorn the Transcendentalists into Brown's story and badly overreaches in most of the stuff in the title. Oates does not, so far as I can tell.

Ok, I made a thread to try and raise the point that there's not a lot of stuff about post independence and colonial Latin American history in this sub's recommendation list, it didn't get much traction. So, given this is the thread to ask for book recommendations, do you guys have some good* books on either Latin America as a whole or the histories of the countries within?

*Up to date with the academic consensus and moderately in-depth but not so much as to overwhelm people who are simply amateur historians.

Although still very early in my graduate career, I have some preliminary thoughts on my thesis. I was thinking of potentially writing on the nationalizing force of the Yugoslav People's Army, yet I find myself at an impasse in the acquisition of sources. In both English and in Serbo-Croatian, I'm having trouble finding any sources which discuss the JNA in any substantial form. If anyone has any advice to offer, it would be much appreciated.

I am about halfway through China Candid by Sang Ye. He interviewed and recorded various Chinese people during the '90s. Using oral history, he presents various aspects of China during the second half of the 20th century. The interviewees are anonymous and very frank, the book was published in Hong Kong and the US and so was not subject to censorship.

Overall there is no new information about big history, and the stories are all anecdotes told years after they happened. I did find it interesting to better frame how people can think so differently from me, especially how can one survive the Great Leap Forward and still think it was a good thing. It seems nuts but I sort of see their point, while keeping in mind the warning of the author that the interviewees might not be entirely truthful.