I submitted my PhD dissertation on Monday. Still have to do the viva/oral examination in a few months, but it feels good to have turned the beast in.

One of the things that sometimes strikes me in my research is how much certain things which we hear of and think of in generalities are brought into sharp focus by specific examples. In particular, this line from a letter got to me:

Indeed, no colored person is allowed to remain over night in this county.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Sep 1930, A Means to Freedom 1.44

Sundown towns were places in the United States which did not permit African-Americans (or other persons of color) to stay the night, keeping them excluded with threats (and sometimes, regrettably) actions of violence. It was one of the major obstacles to African-American travel which The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936-1966) was created to help people of color navigate the dense and often dangerous United States.

Howard lived in Cross Plains, Texas in Callahan County; it was historically, and is today predominantly white. The town newspaper is the Cross Plains Review, and issues from the turn of the century scanned and archived online include such newsworthy items as a black man passing through on the local railroad line. The nearest town of any size is Brownwood, TX, across the county line in Brown County, and does have a section of town where African-Americans predominantly settled in the 1930s - in Robert E. Howard's time this was called "the Flat." Howard doesn't discuss this area in his letters, but it crops up in a memoir about him written by Novalyne Price Ellis, who was his on-again, off-again girlfriend from 1934-1936. The book was later adapted into the film The Whole Wide World.

I feel I'm rambling at this point, but I guess it's just important to remember that the things we think of as "of the past" were lived realities for these folks.

Revelation of the week: I'm thinking George Lucas may have stolen the ending of Star Wars from Johannes de Fontana's 1420 work Bellicorum instrumentorum (digitized).

A few days ago, a great discussion (if I may say so myself) transpired elsewhere, after a question was asked here, regarding whether or not Roman emperors believed in humanoid deities. I will transcribe some of my thoughts here, it might spark another interesting conversation!

I remember reading an article years ago, discussing whether or not Nikolai II's belief in his divine right to rule was based on a religious belief or if he believed God had chosen him because it suited him to think that.

In a tiny scene during an episode in the final season of Downton Abbey, one of the characters, Molesley, who is a teacher, asks his students the same question about English kings before the Glorious Revolution.

I get it. We have evidence of divine legitimacy of absolute rule dating as far back as Hammurabi and Egyptian iconography (I'm particularly fascinated by the latter, with symbols linking the gods not only to the Pharaohs, but to their capacity to create and construct).

The issue I find is, is it really possible to accurately demonstrate if a ruler actually believed in their religion? Surely it's far too subjective an issue, even for a microhistorian. Sure, one can surely find primary sources where a ruler states their belief in divinity in the most fervent terms, but what I'm asking is, would that be enough? Can a historian accurately prove what someone did or didn't believe?

I also find it interesting how people have these sort of doubts about certain rulers and not others. I don't think I've ever seen people asking if Louis XIV really believed he was chosen by God to be the embodiment of all things stately. Or if Popes, who by Poli Sci definition are divine rulers, think they were chosen by God, through the cardinals who elected them.

I also think that nowadays, we're somewhat biased against religion. I'm not religious. We only ask this questions about divinely appointed rulers, but what about the rest? Did Napoleon only use the term "Emperor of the French" to distance himself from divine absolutism and gain legitimacy, or did he believe he was representing the interests of the French people?

I'm not saying these aren't interesting questions, but, they're not questions for historians. They're more metaphysical in nature, and, at best, we can account for the particular Zeitgeist and context of that person, but to be actually able to tell if anyone believed or didn't believe something, seems like an impossible task for a historian. However, it would be interesting to see us challenging our anti-religion bias when it comes to thinking about the past. Presentism and trying to see the past through our contemporary lens, is a problematic approach, at best.

I've just come back from a week long bush camp led by Indigenous elders from my uni.

I wasn't shocked at the abusive colonial history like most other students, but it was still a great time. A lot of reflection, a lot of encouragement for what I do, and a lot of fun.

I really like to read books about Russia and to learn about Russia in general. Some time back someone told me that I am the guy that likes to learn about Russia’s but who don’t know anything about it at all, because I am an outsider and not Russian. This really stuck with me for a long time but yesterday I thought of a pretty good analogy that I think can be modified and used elsewhere too.

Imagine two houses - one of the two houses is Europe and the other is Russia. Indeed I am looking at Russia from the window of another house (Europe). All I can see of the other house is the outside and the only way I can know how the inside of the other house looks like is to read descriptions about it (books), but no matter how hard I might try I won’t fully never know the other house until I visit it and live in it, and all my knowledge about the other house is shaped by the window of my house from which I am looking at Russia. But at the same time this also applies to the person who said that I don’t understand Russia. He doesn’t understand Russia fully himself because he can only see the inside of his house and not the outside. In order for him to understand how Russia is perceived by foreigners is to go to the other house and look through their windows at his own home, or the very least listen and not dismiss opinions of foreigners about his homeland.

I don’t really know if this is the right place for this, but as I said I think this analogy can be modified and applied to lot of other situations, especially in the context of history.

It's too bad that we never got an answer about Roosevelt's silly walk into the NY State Assembly. Over 5,000 upvotes, but no answer. I guess the subject is just too obscure and culturally ephemeral.

​

Or is this too Meta for this thread?

I've recently got a hold of a few books on the Pacific Theatre of WWII, my first actual delve into history books. As someone who's mostly been spending his time in fiction, the difference is fascinating.

Of these, the first one was Parshall and Tully's Shattered Sword, and it is utterly magnificent. In fact, it may have been a mistake reading it first - it's just too good that I've measured the other two books to it and they rather come up short. It's a most excellent mix of both a retelling of the events plus the little snapshots into the men's lives in between. (No lie, I cheered when Fujita Iyozo, one of Soryu's fighter pilots, finally got a bite to eat after being on CAP for far too long on an empty stomach.) There are very few things I like on a first go, I always wait until the second read to give something a rating, but Shattered Sword had me from first read.

It's weird to compare it to Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. I'm still on the fence about that book, because looking at it from a writer's perspective, Hornfischer eggs the pudding to an almost hideous degree. The prose is something I'd write...were I the writer I was seven years ago. Not to say it's a bad book, as it certainly catches the imagination, and I did learn a good few things, but I just can't silence the little voice in my head that keeps saying "blight, this'd never get past my editor".

Lundstrom's The First Team was the last one I got. I'll be honest, it didn't have the grip of Shattered Sword, but it also dispenses with the iffy prose of Tin Can Sailors. I read a description of it that said that if you wanted to know what every Wildcat pilot was doing at every minute of Midway, this is the book for it - and it's not wrong at all. As a read, it's a bit of a slog; as a resource, it is excellent, and I've no doubt I'll be coming back to it for when I resume fleshing out carrier operations in my own fictional work.

Speaking of said fictional work, I actually want to write an in-universe history book in the style of Shattered Sword - yes, that's how much I love it. Plus what could be a better way to flesh out a battle than to have a retrospective work on it?

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