Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
I get to crow just a little. For the first time in my life, two pieces of journal writing went live the same day (only book reviews, but still pretty neat). I [also] had a book chapter in an edited collection released on Monday, and another journal article expected live today. When it rains, it pours. Now I just have to refill the queue.
On the other hand, I am still picking my way through French-language scholarship and historical sources for another project, which is interesting but very slow going. Gaining speed in a language I have never studied formally as an adult (or after age 13, honestly) is a challenge, but there is a lot of help out there, and my Latin has never been so useful.
I'm currently doing an internship with the National Park Service as part of my grad program, and am about a third of the way through digitizing the insurance ledgers of Joseph Taylor (1745-1816), one of the largest insurance underwriters in Boston circa 1800. The papers are a literal who's who of early Massachusetts merchants, listing off names such as Derby, Perkins, Thorndike, Cabot, etc. What sparked my interest is that there are a few insurance policies regarding the slave trade during the period.
While we have the absolutely amazing Slave Voyages Database providing insight into the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the resources which cover the Inter-Colonial trade are much more sporadic - and are not concentrated in any one source. Not to mention we know that by the very nature of the trade we will never have a complete accounting of slave voyages.
My hope is, given how detailed this insurance records are, that I can develop a model which will help identify potential slave voyages during the period. A key part of this is cross-referencing policy information against slave voyages we do know about. Vessels used in the trade tend to continue being used for those purposes, and the few studies done on the Captains of slave ships suggests that they A) are involved in multiple slaving voyages over their careers and B) their sons are likely to become involved in the trade. In addition, merchants tend to re-hire the same individuals with records of success.
If I can identify other characteristics of the voyages and trace them to individual merchants, my hope is going through their records with greater scrutiny will help uncover other vessels involved - building an expanding network. I've used this model against two other known slave trading merchants and had success identifying an additional captain and voyage. So I know, at least in application, it works. Now I just need to throw in a hell of a lot more data.
Verumtamen Rex Ricardus anno regni sui XIX. proceres et valectos de comitatu Cestrie sibi sic adstiuit [sic] et ut condentissimos et carissimos in custodiam sui corporis deputavit pre omnibus aliis regni sui per vigilas diurnas atque nocturnas ita ut sub eorum tutela securius acquiescius ut putavit ubique respiraret : quos sue salutis consematores veresimiliter existimauit. Hii namque in curia regis Ricardi pre ceteris tantum favebantur ita quod nullus oficiarius ausus fuerat quod petebant in aliquo denegare. Et in tantam familiaritatem domino regi annectebantur ut eidem in materna lingua audacter confabularentur: "Dycun, slep sicurly quile we wake, and dreed nouzt quile we lyve sestow : for zif thow haddest weddet Perkyn douzter of Lye thow mun well halde a love day with any man in Chester schire in ffaith." Ecce quomodo nii familiaritas parit contemptum maxime in populo stulto et insipienti.
I've been going around muttering "zif!" to myself for 48 hours thanks to this. Those damned Cheshire archers are at it again. Anybody know what the hell a love day is in a late-14th century context? (Perkyn of Lye is presumably Sir Piers of Legh, doomed Richard II superfan.)
For those that have only a BA in history, how did you continue your advance education without applying for a PhD? What source materials or medias did you use? Thanks!
And I fenced with foils, sabres, and epee. With my teammate, Cadet (now Major) John M. Pesek, won the Intercollegiate Epee Team Championship. Pesek and I doped out our epee technique under the expert guidance of Louis Vauthier, the grandest swordsman of them all, and Warrant Officer John Dimond. We supplemented this by digging up old manuals and treatises on the art of fencing.
We don't often think much of how sword & sorcery fiction got its start in the interwar period, but there was a degree of romanticism to it as it was really during WWI that the military sword as a practical weapon of war largely ceased its function. One of the few pulp writers of the period to have direct experience with these weapons was E. Hoffmann Price - famously, the only man to have met H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith - who was enlisted in the 15th U.S. Regular Cavalry in 1917, served in the Phillippines, Mexican border, and France before getting attending West Point, where he graduated in 1923. Price wasn't fond of the U. S. cavalry sword of the period - the M1913 cavalry sword which had been designed by then-Lt. George S. Patton, who had represented the US in the 1912 Olympics and then studied swordsmanship in France under a master-of-arms before returning with his new sword design and a new manual of the sword.
Price's specific complaint about the M1913 is that it was essentially a pike - and that's maybe a crude way to put it, but it was essentially a one-handed lance: a long straight blade with a heavy dish guard, similar to the British P1908 cavalry sword, the Swedish 1893 pattern sword, and the Spanish 1905, etc. This followed the idea of the period of cavalry as shock troops, to use the mass and momentum of horse and rider to pierce through the enemy, rather than to engage them with cuts. The M1913 was very good at this, but not so good to fence with as it was long and heavy and the straight blade didn't cut as well as a saber and wasn't as flexible as a foil or epee, hence Price's derision. I made a gallery some time ago for folks to get an idea of what I'm talking about with these kind of swords.
The thing that really intrigues me from the 1941 article is when Price says "We supplemented this by digging up old manuals and treatises on the art of fencing." - and I'd dearly love to know what fencing manuals he referenced! I suspect they might have been the works of popular English fencers like George Silver's Paradoxes of Defense (1599) [PDF], but we don't really know. Most other pulp writers had fairly poor ideas of swords, some of them like Seabury Quinn believing medieval war-swords weighed 20 pounds or more!
My research into the US Submarine Fleet in WWI continues. For my capstone paper, I'm focusing on the diary of an enlisted submariner, and using that as a springboard to discuss the larger concepts and issues within the Sub-Fleet at the time.
The first part I'm writing as if it's a story where I'm placing the reader in the shoes of this submariner - telling the tale of the perilous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Once they arrive in Ireland, I shift the focus to that guy in particular.
I'm not 100% if this is the best way to introduce what I'm talking about in this paper, but since I'm focusing on one individual/submarine I feel having that part read like a story will be more engaging. I'll have to see what some of my classmates think of it though.