Thursday Reading and Research is intended as an academic free-for-all, for the discussion of all issues historical, or tangentially so. Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to:
New developments or discoveries in the field
Recent book releases, old book reviews, reading recommendations, or just talking about what you're reading now
Historiographical discussions, debates, and disputes
Your current research interests or projects
The goings on within the academy
...And so on!
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters historical discussion, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
Just asked this in the other sticky, but maybe this is the better place for it:
Does anyone have any good book recommendations about the Nigerian Civil War or about Biafra as a country?
Three short reviews from me this week, all of which are positive in a change from the last couple of weeks.
Soldiers' Lives Through History: The Middle Ages, by Clifford J. Rogers. This book is part of a larger series focused on what life was like for ordinary soldiers in the past. As such, it hardly focuses on battle tactics or broader strategy, but the elements that make those up. Scouting, camps, ambushes, recruitment, training, how combat was fought, etc are all addressed and emphasised with quotes from primary sources. Especially interesting is Rogers suggestion that infantry might gain experience at fighting from tournaments, just like knights, which is something I've been considering. He also quotes a source that has the 12th century citizens of London practicing fighting each other with sharp weapons, and the youths using spearshafts without heads to do the same. Medieval infantry have, for a long time, been considered to have been untrained and to have only gained skill from waging war, but Rogers seems to have led the way or been ahead of his time in suggesting that they did sometimes train, something that is being increasingly recognised.
Overall, Soldiers' Lives Through History: The Middle Ages is a superb book that anyone interested in medieval warfare should read. And that brings us to the major downside to the series. The books, and apparently this one in particular, are very expensive and not something most people can just pick up on a whim. So, if you're interested, I'd highly recommend borrowing it from a library if you can.
Merchants and Moneymen: The Commercial Revolution, 1000-1500, by Joseph and Francis Gies. Merchants and Moneymen is one of the Gies' excellent pop-history books on the Middle Ages and is one that's sadly out of print. Starting in the late 10th/early 11th century, the work is an exploration of the medieval world and how trade and commerce developed as told through the experiences of twenty merchants or financiers (and often both). The use of biography to contextualise the changes, how they were implemented and how different aspects of the economy functioned was an excellent one, as it brings out both the best and the worst of the Middle Ages and shows just how vast and interconnected trade was. Other books from the same period (the 70s) offer a better summary of how the economy as a whole functioned according of the traditional model (The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Volume 1) or a better history of the medieval economy (A History of the Medieval Economy, by NJG Pounds), but Merchants and Moneymen does a fantastic job of making the period come alive and connecting us with those responsible for international trade.
As Tough as Old Boots, by Chris Dobson. This is very much a specialist work focusing on hardened leather, and is an update and republishing of an long article he wrote back in 2003. In contrast to the work of Edward Cheshire, who has been such a strong advocate of rawhide as the primary material cuir-bouillie was made from, Dobson makes the case for "scabbard butt" leather - essentially leather that has only been tanned part way through - being the main material. Whereas Cheshire's strength is his exhaustive testing, Dobson's strength is his examination (and in one case the preservation) of much of the world's extent hardened leather armour, including examples going back to Antiquity. His argument, as such, is extremely well supported by existing pieces of armour.
The one caveat that stops me from completely disregarding the use of rawhide as the base material for some forms of armour (most notably the breastplate) is that all the examples Dobson has from from the 14th, 15th or 16th centuries, and might not reflect practice in the late 12th century or the 13th. I'll need to go reread Cheshire and see what his arguments against Dobson were before making my mind up one way or the other.