Just finished John Darwin's After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 which follows the course of world history to try to explain the current state of globalization. It was incredibly fascinating to see everything from a macro-view. Does anyone have any other books for further reading into the history of globalization?

This week I managed to get through Medieval Sieges and Siegecraft, by Geoffrey Hindley. I was hoping for something that might be an easy to read update on Bradbury's The Medieval Siege that I could fold into my growing list of good quality pop-history books. Unfortunately, despite being written by a medieval historian who has written about castles in the past, it is very much the bad kind of pop-history.

There are a number of issues with the book. Hindley makes blanket statements such as, for example, that trebuchets were absolutely never used in Western Europe prior to the First Crusade, that he really can't prove. While trebuchets were most likely rare or non-existent up into the late 11th century, the Vikings besieging Paris almost certainly did have one (likely transmitted from Byzantium via the Kievan Rus) and the Normans could well have encountered them in Muslim Sicily or in their campaigns against Byzantine Italy or the Emperor himself. Even the argument that no description of a trebuchet or distinct word for it being used after the siege of Paris can be attacked on the basis of ecclesiastical writers loving to use Classical terms and descriptions in their writing rather than more precise, vernacular ones.

This isn't the only example of strong statements made without evidence or argument, but it's a good example because Bradbury discusses the introduction of the trebuchet and admits to the lack of certainty the evidence allows.

Another issue is that Hindley is uncritical of his sources. For example, he freely uses 'Imād al-Dīn to claim that an unknown Christian noblewoman brought a force of 500 warrior women to fight in the Third Crusade and that the Princes' Crusade totalled 200 000 fighting men. While there are some Muslim accounts of women fighting in armour that are probably true, these refer to them as unusual occurrences, where one woman might act as an archer or they might find two armoured women among the dead. Similarly, while the First Crusade was undoubtedly a massive undertaking and the largest of all the crusades, the Princes' Crusade was more likely a quarter of the chronicler's total.

Finally, the structure of the book is inconsistent. Hindley uses examples from history to make his points, but they're not always expanded on in enough detail to properly convey his point, nor does this method always provide a good overview of the topic. Particularly lacking is his description of how fortifications evolved and functioned and the chapter on logistics. The former provides no clear information on the subject and the latter is scattered and underdeveloped.

Are there good points? Yes. The chapter on gunpowder artillery is a good overview of the developments there, but even that lacks information on how fortifications changed to meet the new threat. The chapters on the rules of engagement and the horrors of siege warfare are also perfectly adequate and do convey all that is really needed for a book of this sort.

Overall, though, Medieval Sieges and Siegecraft was a real disappointment.

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs, and with their poor luggage

Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silenc'd by your brawl,

And you in ruff of your ye opinions cloth'd,

What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quell'd, and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self-same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

[...]

You'll put down strangers,

Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,

And lead the majesty of law in lyam

To slip him like a hound; alas, alas, say now the King,

As he is clement if th' offender mourn,

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you, whither would you go?

What country by the nature of your error

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,

To any German province, Spain or Portigal,

Nay, any where that not adheres to England,

Why, you must needs be strangers; would you be pleas'd

To find a nation of such barbarous temper

That breaking out in hideous violence

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God

Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,

But charter'd unto them? What would you think

To be thus us'd? This is the strangers' case

And this your mountainish inhumanity.

There's a really interesting culture of collaboration in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, sometimes resembling modern script-doctoring where a writer might be brought in to polish up a certain aspect of a text -- Shakespeare's revisions to Sir Thomas More have gotten more attention in the past few years than they have for a while and it's not just because of the novelty of a text written in Shakespeare's own hand.

Elizabethan paleography can be a real pain, and I'm going through a crash course right now -- does anyone have any recommendations for learning historical handwriting and abbreviations? I've turned up Muriel St. Clare Byrne's Elizabethan Handwriting For Beginners/R.B. McKerrow's The Capital Letters In Elizabethan Handwriting and the National Archives' cool web tutorial but every time I look at scans of primary texts I forget how I learned to write in the first place.

Does anyone know of any references on organized crime in 16th century London, and its relationship with the theater/ public entertainment? I'm an alumnus of the local university, so have access to the library.

I just finished Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, by Nancy Isenberg, and loved it. I felt like everything I've read about that particular era deified Hamilton beyond reason. Personally, I have always thought Hamilton seemed like a dick. When I found this book, I was excited for a fresh perspective. It doesn't claim to be unbiased; in fact, one could even call it a defense. Isenberg references his correspondence with his daughter quite a bit, and Burr was prolific enough to leave behind a mostly thorough account of his life. Definitely worth reading.