Back with another review this week, this time it's Christopher Allmand's classic history of the Hundred Years War. Per usual this was originally published on my website at: https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/the-hundred-years-war-by-christopher-allmand. There are plenty of other reviews on it so if you like this one maybe check it out!

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Christopher Allmand’s history of the Hundred Years War is the classic college textbook on the subject. The book is (very slightly) older than me and a venerable institution in the study of this somewhat misnamed conflict. I have to confess that up until now I had never actually read it. You see, I came to the Hundred Years War by a slightly weird route. Since my background was in studying weaponry, I didn’t read many grand sweeping political histories of the conflicts where crossbows were used, instead I jumped straight into the nitty gritty of the detail. This is something I have decided to rectify and Christopher Allmand seemed like the best place to start.

It's not often appreciated how difficult writing a succinct history of a massive topic is. Christopher Allmand’s book clocks in at just over 170 pages and in that he has to cover over a hundred years of complex political, cultural, financial, and military history. It is quite the challenge, and he rises to the occasion admirably. While the book can at times be a little dense and a little dry, the amount of information packed in is nothing short of stunning. After finishing the book you will be filled with new knowledge about Anglo-French warfare in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the Hundred Years War in contemporary literature, discussing how writers and literary figures of the day reacted to what must have seemed like a war without end that was happening around them. That chapter is emblematic of how Allmand doesn’t let the fact that this is a history of a war bog him down in making it just a military history - the history of warfare is so much bigger than just logistics, politics, and battles.

That all having been said – this book is over thirty years old and plenty of new scholarship covering the period of the Hundred Years War has come along since that obviously isn’t reflected in it. For instance, Allmand dismisses out of hand the idea that the English were seeking battle with their chevauchees and instead argues that they were trying to avoid it. In contrast, Clifford Rogers has made extensive arguments detailing how Edward III was actively pursuing a battle-seeking strategy in the Hundred Years War. Now, you might not agree with Clifford Rogers, there are a good few scholars who do not, but it is a major element of modern historiography that is entirely missing from Allmand’s book because it happened after he wrote it.

This is the peril in reading older works of history. I generally try and dissuade people I know who might only read one book on a subject from reading a ‘classic’ in the field. This is not to say Christopher Allmand’s book is bad – it’s still an excellent book – but there is a lot you will miss if this is the only book on the Hundred Years War that you read. In its place I would probably recommend David Green’s The Hundred Years War: A People’s History. David Green’s book is very similar to Allmand’s – both give a high-level overview of the military history of the war at the very start of the book before moving on to more cultural and political themes that underpinned the war. I think Green’s book also has a slightly cleverer structure where he uses case studies from the war for each chapter, but those case studies are laid out chronologically, so not only do you get an overview at the start of the book the it also carries you through the war in a mostly chronological fashion. It just makes it much easier to parse whereas Allmand can be a bit dense and sometimes feels like he’s jumping around a bit as he tries to fit all the information into the book.

If you’re obsessed with the Hundred Years War and you haven’t read Allmand’s book then you should, it’s a classic for a reason and it is worth getting his perspective, but if you’re just looking for one book to read then David Green’s The Hundred Years War: A People’s History is the book you want.

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