Category Archives: Historiography

Historiography, Movies

Do You Care if a Movie is “Historically Accurate?” I Don’t – Here’s Why

While I have movies on my mind, I am going to confess something that may shock you: I don’t care if a movie is “historically accurate.”

I’ve endured countless debates and conversations with friends about which movies are “accurate” and which are not. I’ve read lists published by web sites touting the alleged accuracy of some movies while vilifying the inaccurate. I do not suspect that these debates will end anytime soon, and honestly, they shouldn’t. But, I do want to say a few things about the movies and historical “accuracy,” and why, ultimately, it does not matter.

Most importantly, true accuracy is impossible. No matter how hard I try, or anyone tries, we will never truly be able to perfectly re-create a past event in the human mind. Even a person who was there to witness an event cannot recreate it. That person might come close, but he or she will always be inaccurate. Think about a battlefield, for example. Eyewitnesses to battles attempt to tell it as they see it, but by virtue of position, they cannot relay everything. They are very occupied with the important business of surviving, after all. Ever been in a high stress environment? How well do you remember anything about that environment? What about a low stress environment like a baseball game? Think about the last time you swung a bat in a game. Did you get a hit? What was the count? How many outs were there? Can you name everyone on your team? How many people were in the crowd? What was the umpire’s name? You might then say, well, the umpire’s name is not really important. What’s important was that I got a hit. That’s exactly how a movie producer would see it. Because…

Historically accurate? Not with those fillings in your molars, Gerard Butler!

When a person makes a movie, it is less about interpreting evidence and more about story. A historian would do his best in the example above to identify the umpire. How could the umpire NOT be important to a historian? After all, he’s the only person who determines whether someone is out or safe. Surely, who that person is – and his background – is important to interpreting what really happened that day. But if we were to make a movie about that baseball game, we would not start with the umpire’s life story. That’s because the story would be boring, and movies are made for entertainment purposes. Movie producers are challenged with, among many things, the limits of time, speech, and traditional (three act) storytelling structure to portray an event from history. Choices have to be made to streamline the most important storytelling elements while setting aside less important evidence. In the movie 300, for example, we know that there were more Greeks fighting than the 300 Spartans featured (there was no less than 5,200 according to Herodotus), but the movie is centered on the Spartans, their characters, and their actions. So when the fighting starts, the additional Greeks are barely depicted, if at all. There’s actually a lot more that I could say about 300 in particular, but I’m not going to beat a dead horse. Because…

Audiences are already aware that the movie is inaccurate. That’s right. Let’s not underestimate the intelligence of the average movie-goer. Sure, there are plenty of people who have not taken advantage of the opportunity to learn history. But the audience for a movie based on history is more likely to know at least something about the material depicted in the movie. These viewers are already accustomed to the liberties that movie producers take with history, and they know not to take the movie as the definitive source material on a historical event. In fact, for many, a movie serves as a spark to learn more about the time, people, places, and events in the movie.

Gee, thanks for the box, Pandora. I can open it, right? Nothing bad’s going to happen?

The story serves as a gateway to learn more about the material. Think about when you were a kid. What made you want to know more about a particular subject? Did you see a documentary about it, or a movie, or even a cartoon? For me, it was the The Mighty Hercules cartoon that inspired my interest in mythology. I watched the adventures of Hercules on New Orleans’ WGNO-TV in the afternoons, and I went to the library to find actual books on Greek myths shortly thereafter. Even as a kindergartner, I was smart enough to know that the cartoon was based on source material. I knew someone drew the cartoon, and whoever that was based his story on actual myths and mythological characters. Let’s give people a little bit of credit here, and not assume that they are going to believe everything they see on the screen, without questioning it.

Fess Parker Davy Crockett > John Wayne Davy Crockett > Billy Bob Thornton Davy Crockett

One of the things people SHOULD question about movies, but frequently don’t, is what the movie says about the time in which it was made. Movies about historical events give us the opportunity to see well-known stories told over and over. The movie itself becomes a capsule of the time, place, and people who made it. For example, if we watch the 1960 version of The Alamo, we will see a Davy Crockett character who is much more in line with the folk hero version of Crockett than the flawed hero presented in the 2004 version. This would indicate that the producers of the 2004 version thought the audience of the time would relate to a more conflicted hero than the icon (portrayed by John Wayne) driving the 1960 version. Perhaps the 2004 version’s producers had a more cynical view of heroes, reflecting a social attitude of the 21st century.

This scene made me so mad, I wrote a thesis.

Inaccuracies in history-themed movies even inspire historians to set the record straight. I saw The Eagle on Netflix a while back. It’s not a bad movie. I enjoyed it. But I noticed something I doubted very much about it. Near the beginning of the movie, Channing Tatum’s character is wounded by a scythed chariot. I was immediately suspicious. I wasn’t aware that there were any scythed chariots being used in Great Britain at that time. I did the research, and what do you know? There wasn’t. I based a paper on that research, and that research also later helped me write my master’s thesis about Julius Caesar’s invasions of Britain.

In conclusion, take it easy on Hollywood, and stop giving them so much importance. Movie producers, writers, and actors never will have the final say on how events and people are remembered by history. That burden is actually up to you. If you want to let Mel Gibson’s version of William Wallace be your version of William Wallace, then I can’t stop you. But you will be settling for something less than you should, and I think you know that. If you want to truly understand someone or something better than you do, seek out opportunities to get closer to the subject. Read journals, letters, newspapers, and contemporary evidence. Visit the battle field. Tour the battleship, submarine, or aircraft carrier. Talk to veterans about their experiences. Talk to your grandmother about her childhood. Go to that traveling exhibit at the art museum. Go deeper than what you see on the silver screen!

Copyright 2017 Copperkettle Media LLC

Historiography, Military History, Roman History

Hannibal and Rome – What’s the Angle for Polybius and Livy?

One of the most important things to keep in mind about many ancient sources is that, frequently, they were written many years after the events described in those sources. This leads to two things: the event described will be flawed in some way – possibly a large way – and the narrative will tell the reader as much about the time of the author as it will about the event in question.

polybius
Polybius hung out with some pretty powerful people. How do you think that may have affected his work?

A good example of this are two accounts of the Battle of Cannae and its aftermath, provided to us by Polybius and Livy. In each historian’s narrative, they rightfully praise Hannibal’s tactical brilliance and describe him as a legitimate danger to the existence of Rome. I think that Hannibal’s tactical achievements stand for themselves, and would be apparent no matter who tells the tale. I also think that even though Polybius and Livy contribute to his legend, they do so in a way that speaks for the glory of Rome. By painting Hannibal as a terrible and cunning opponent, Polybius and Livy cast the Roman Republic as a determined and unbreakable entity that can withstand a threat like Hannibal, take on any challenge, and stand the test of time.

Both Polybius and Livy had personal connections to powerful Roman aristocracy. Polybius was the tutor of Scipio Aemilianus, the grandson (by adoption) of Publius Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War. Livy frequented the court of Augustus Caesar and was known in the halls of power at the time. Being close to powerful people, neither writer is motivated to paint Rome as easy to defeat, or the victory over Carthage as anything but a glorious act of national willpower by Rome. Praising Hannibal is in line with this notion. After all, who could defeat the terrible and brilliant Hannibal but the more brilliant and resourceful citizen-soldiers of the Roman Republic?

Both Polybius and Livy were writing large-scale histories of the Republic. In telling the story of Cannae and the ravages of Hannibal upon Italy, ultimately their focus is on Roman fortitude and determination – the unbreakable Roman character.

Following his account of Cannae, Polybius brings the reader’s attention back to the real story. “Yet the Senate neglected no means in its power, but exhorted and encouraged the populace, strengthened the defences of the city, and deliberated on the situation with manly coolness. And subsequent events made this manifest. For though the Romans were now incontestably beaten and their military reputation shattered, yet by the peculiar virtues of their constitution and by wise counsel they not only recovered their supremacy in Italy and afterwards defeated the Carthaginians, but in a few years made themselves masters of the whole world.” [1]

Livy also brings the post-Cannae focus back to Roman resilience: “Certainly there is no other nation that would not have succumbed beneath such a weight of calamity.”[2]  Livy later praises the Roman civic traits of remaining level-headed and cool under threat of extermination: “… no one anywhere in Rome mentioned the word ‘Peace,’ either before the consul’s return or after his arrival when all the memories of their losses were renewed. Such a lofty spirit did the citizens exhibit in those days that though the consul was coming back from a terrible defeat for which they knew he was mainly responsible, he was met by a vast concourse drawn from every class of society, and thanks were formally voted to him because he ‘had not despaired of the republic.’ Had he been commander-in-chief of the Carthaginians there was no torture to which he would not have been subjected.”[3]

Because the Livy and Polybius make sure the focus is in the proper place, on the glory of Rome, it becomes safe to praise Hannibal. By the time Polybius and Livy wrote their histories, the Carthaginian leader and all his people had long been vanquished. The city of Carthage itself lay in ruin, never to revive. What harm could it do to praise a valorous enemy, who threw his best punch at Rome, but still could not finish the job?

Over the years, the Roman defeat at Cannae remains more famous than the Roman final victory at Zama, where Hannibal ran for his life and lost tens of thousands of men. Why?

The Roman victory at Zama ended in a peace treaty. There’s nothing more to say after that battle, which ended the Second Punic War. Cannae, however, is not the end of the story. It’s the high point of the story, in which Rome’s survival is hanging in the balance. Enter the final act, in which Rome recovers and a hero, Scipio Africanus, emerged. Polybius and Livy take the opportunity to cast Hannibal as the tactically brilliant but doomed villain, who defeated the soldiers of Rome, but not the spirit of Rome.

There are more factors that come into play than just Roman moral fortitude, but it’s interesting that the writers choose focus on this. As an institution, Rome was always very concerned with its image, both to its own people and to people outside of Rome. It was important for the people of Rome to feel as though they came from good stock, that their ancestors were morally righteous and virtuous, worthy of the ancestral veneration practiced in their homes and in the Senate. Livy and Polybius acknowledge that need with their writing, which elevates the idea of Rome. But the nitty-gritty of how Rome won is another story.

hannibal
The GOAT of transcontinental road-trips involving elephants.

Keeping an invasion force well supplied deep into enemy territory was quite the challenge for any nation in the ancient world, but for Hannibal, it was almost a worst-case scenario. Hannibal’s only hope for resupply would be what he could forage from the countryside or wiggle out of Rome’s shakier Italian neighbors. For supplies to come from Carthage, they would have to come the same way Hannibal came, over the Alps. The sea wasn’t an option. Rome had control of the Western Mediterranean at the time (thanks to the First Punic War), and surely if Hannibal could have launched his invasion by sea, he would have done so.

Resupply would have been essential in a protracted siege of Rome, which had walls, manpower and, most importantly, river access.  Perhaps Hannibal’s best options, strategically, were to either force a political settlement to end the war, or find a way to rally the Italian cities and countryside against Rome.

Communication also played a vital role. It was much easier for Rome to communicate the will of the Senate to its people and nearby allies than it was for the Carthegians to coordinate strategy with Hannibal, across a sea that they did not control.

Surely, if we can see the difficulty/near impossibility of capturing Rome in this scenario, then Hannibal himself could as well. Is it possible, then, that Hannibal underestimated Roman resolve? In that case, the mistake would have been in assuming that the Romans thought like everyone else did. They clearly do not. That was one tough town, and it is a culturally unique element of Romans. The uniqueness of Rome – the things that make them exceptional – are the traits that the people of Rome celebrated most about themselves, and wanted to hear most from their writers and see from their artists. Busts, statues, arches, triumphs, celebratory games, theater, legends, and histories were all dedicated to their city, its heroes and its ancestors. It’s quite the multimedia public relations machine. The extent to which Livy and Polybius contribute to that machine is worth much consideration.

____________________

[1] Polybius: The Histories II, W. R. Paton, trans., (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 293.

[2] Livy, The History of Rome, Vol III, 22.54. http://web.archive.org/web/20080709091744/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Liv3His.html

[3] Ibid., 22.61.

Copyright 2016 Copperkettle Media LLC

Greek History, Historiography, Military History, Naval Warfare, Roman History

A Closer Look at Sources: Herodotus, Polybius, and Aeschylus

It would be great if all sources we used to create history were complete, with perfect viewpoints, and no agendas of any kind, but that’s simply not true. It’s never been that way, even among the earliest of historians. Limitations due to point of view, time, and distance affect us all. In this post, I’m going to take a look at three ancient writers, Herodotus, Polybius, and Aeschylus, and show some of the characteristics and factors that affect their view of certain events.

One of the big issues when it comes to describing naval warfare, as opposed to land warfare, is point of view. In most situations, unless the battle was near an elevated terrain feature, it would be difficult for an eyewitness to describe the exact movement of naval forces against each other. Eyewitnesses are limited to the ship they occupied and its view. Herodotus and Polybius show us that there can be hundreds of ships in any ancient naval battle, and the spread of forces had the potential to be much wider than in a land engagement. Land battles in the ancient world are usually more compact affairs, and the potential to observe coordinated movement of troops would be greater, for observers and participants.

The general body of knowledge regarding naval warfare is not as well-known as that of land warfare. A typical historian writing well after the fact can  more easily imagine the movements and collision of forces on land than the specialized tactics and movement of ships. The exception, of course, is the historian experienced in that sort of warfare.

herodotus
Herodotus, the “Father of History.”

Herodotus’ account of the Battle of Salamis suffers from a lack of detail regarding the tactics of what happened during the battle. In   fact, he almost dismisses the collision of the main body of ships: “For as the Greeks fought in order and kept their line, while the barbarians were in confusion and had no plan in anything that they did, the issue of the battle could scarce be other than it was”[1]. That, according to Herodotus, sums up what happened in one neat little line. Apparently that was enough?

Though Herodotus is light on tactics, he does provide however, a who’s who of participants in the battle, a summary of how the squadrons were lined up, and the fates of several groups of participants. He provides a good deal of information on the actions of Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus [2], which could be due to Herodotus himself being from Halicarnassus.

It seems that the biggest problem Herodotus faced when recounting Salamis was not the strategic meetings and maneuvering before the battle but the actual tactical disposition of the ships during the battle. This could have been because the history was written 40 years after the fact, when larger details would have stood out more than smaller ones, particularly if eyewitnesses by that time were hard to come by. We also have to remember that Herodotus was one of, if not the first person to bring together historical accounts into record. He did not have the benefit of much that was written down before him. Had there been written accounts of what happened at Salamis before Herodotus created his history, he may have been able to provide a more accurate account of the tactics of the battle.

Polybius, on the other hand, benefited from more than 200 years of historiographic practice between Herodotus and himself. His accounts of Roman naval tactics are much more detailed, presumably because he was able to draw from more accurate sources.

polybius
Polybius on a pedestal.

Polybius gives a highly detailed tactical account of the naval Battle of Ecnomus, which resembled the land Battle of Cannae, with an attempt by the Carthaginians to execute a pincer maneuver on the Roman fleet.  Polybius describes the movements of all of the Carthaginian and Roman squadrons, including the pivotal moment when the two Roman squadrons in the center were able to flip direction and attack the flanking Carthaginians in the rear [3].

Elsewhere, Polybius also very accurately describes the structure of the corvus boarding ramp [4] and gives details of how it was used for the first time in battle [5]. Polybius wisely relates to his readers how this device worked near the beginning of his account of the major naval actions of the First Punic War. As this was a primary Roman naval machine used throughout war, the reader has the function of the corvus in mind while reading the tactical accounts of a battle like Ecnomus. Polybius, also being a close ally of the Scipio family, had access to information about the Punic Wars that other writers did not possess.

Even a poet in the right place and time can provide insight into a battle. Aeschylus’s play, The Persians, fills a different sort of role for those seeking information on the Battle of Salamis. We know from the play, written eight years after the battle, that the Battle of Salamis was viewed by the Greeks as an event worthy of dramatic retelling, and worthy of inclusion in a sacred event. Greek theatre was intended to honor the gods, and Aeschylus demonstrates Xerxes’s offense against the gods, bridging the Hellespont, as an act of hubris:

“Remember Athens: henceforth let not pride,

Her present state disdaining, strive to grasp

Another’s, and her treasured happiness

Shed on the ground: such insolent attempts

Awake the vengeance of offended Jove.

But you, whose age demands more temperate thoughts,

With words of well-placed counsel teach his youth

To curb that pride, which from the gods calls down

Destruction on his head” [6]

aeschylus
Aeschylus, warrior-poet.

Through the course of the play, Aeschylus recounts the names of many Persian lords who perished at the hands of the Greek fleet. Whether this list can be trusted is debatable, as Aeschylus could be just making up names for dramatic effect. However, Aeschylus is believed to have been a veteran of the Battle of Salamis, so he might have had privileged knowledge of the commanders involved in the battle.

Aeschylus’s status as a veteran of the battle lends credence to the play’s usage as a primary source for the Battle of Salamis. While it can provide little in the way of tactical description of the battle, it does demonstrate the mindset of at least one veteran, who believed that his actions, and the actions of his fellow sailors, were a divine instrument of punishment against a prideful and reckless foreign leader. By bridging the Hellespont, Xerxes laid offense to the people of Greece, the gods and the land itself. Furthermore, it also shows an attitude of acknowledgement by the people of Greece that the gods played a role in the victory, and that victory was definitely not assured otherwise. If the Greeks were confident that the victory was entirely their doing, the play would be celebrating themselves, and not the gods. This would indicate that to the Greeks, the Battle of Salamis was indeed a desperate and serious battle for the survival of Greece itself.

Take a moment and look at the featured image above this blog post. The painting is Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s Die Seeschlacht bei Salamis (1868). Notice that the idea of divine intervention in this battle is one that has lasted through the centuries. Those figures floating in the upper right corner of the painting are gods. Aeschylus helped create the lasting notion that the gods were watching and acting at Salamis. You can actually see Aeschylus’s influence reflected in the painting, more than 2,300 years after Aeschylus fought at Salamis.

____________________________

[1] Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, trans. George Rawlinson, accessed June 24, 2015, http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.8.viii.html.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Polybius, Histories, trans. W.R. Paton, accessed June 25, 2015, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/polybius/home.html, 28.10.

[4] Ibid., 22.3.

[5] Ibid., 23.5.

[6] Aeschylus, The Persians, trans. Robert Potter, accessed June 25, 2015, http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.pl.txt.

Copyright 2016 Copperkettle Media LLC

Bronze Age, Historiography, Military History, World History

The End of the Bronze Age – When is Guessing Okay?

51ptf1oqujl-_sx331_bo1204203200_
Recommended. You should check it out.

Robert Drews’s book, The End of the Bronze Age, is an interesting read in terms of content and methodology. Drews attempts to explain the sudden end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean by attributing it to a mysterious Catastrophe, which  has its origins in military change.  According to Drews, the losses of palace-based aristocratic chariot soldiers both on the battlefield and in societies created a disruption within many Late Bronze civilizations from which there was no recovery [1]. Drews makes the case that this military change was the direct cause of the Catastrophe, which ended or weakened dominant civilizations across the Eastern Mediterranean around the year 1200 BC, and marked the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

When determining his hypothesis for the Catastrophe, Drews considers a number of factors. First, what was the Catastrophe and, specifically, what was the difference between the civilizations of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age? Drews spends the first two parts of his three-part book explaining both the nature of the Catastrophe and debunking the alternate explanations for it: earthquakes, migrations, drought, systems collapse and raiders. Critics of Drews’s work have varying opinions on this analysis of the alternate causes of the Catastrophe. Young and Thomas make generally favorable remarks, but there is tough criticism from Van Wees and Cline. The former characterizes Drew’s attempts to discredit the alternate explanations, particularly the “raiders” theory as unconvincing due to a lack of evidence [2]. Cline accuses Drews of distorting conflicting explanations for the Catastrophe to fit his hypothesis [3] and of incorrectly labeling systems collapse and raiders as consequences of the Catastrophe, instead of causes. In part three of the book, Drews details the prominence of chariot warfare in the Late Bronze Age and its disappearance in the Iron Age. The decline of the chariot coincided with the rise of infantry as the main focus of the Iron Age military. This distinction is the focal point of Drews’s work.

sea-people
Let’s be real. We all know it was the Sea People, right?

This begs a question: do the sources exist to explain what happened in the Catastrophe, and to solidly support Drews’s hypothesis? The short answer is no, and Drews seems to be the first to admit it. “On many questions one can only guess, and since guessing seems unprofessional, historians do as little of it as possible,” Drews writes. “The result, however, is that for lack of evidence one of the most important things about the preclassical world is largely ignored. There is good reason to think that the evolution of warfare made and unmade the world of the Late Bronze Age. Even though we cannot be certain about this evolution, and especially about its details, it is time that we begin to guess.”[4]

Now comes the philosophical question which I think is very important to history: is it okay to guess? I was quite surprised to see that many of Drews’s reviewers failed to address the act of guessing directly. Rather, most who criticized Drews’s hypothesis as inconclusive, such as Cline [5] and Haggis [6], did so by pointing out a lack of evidence. Only Young directly addressed the issue of guessing. Of Drews, he says, “…he marshals old and new evidence on what he calls ‘the Catastrophe’ in a masterly fashion which, mixed with a little guesswork, provides us with significant and exciting new scholarly insights on a pivotal period in ancient history. Would that we could all ‘guess’ as effectively.”[7]

The great obstacle to any study of the ancient world is a scarcity of sources. Even within the range of available sources, there are bad translations, bias,  and great variances in quality of authorship. Does this great obstacle and its associated, smaller obstacles excuse Drews’s approach, in which he unabashedly admits guessing at the main points in his work? Young seems to applaud the effort. I am conflicted. On the one hand, all hypotheses are guesses to some degree, backed by evidence. On the other, when evidence is so lacking, is it better to not present a half-baked hypothesis?

There are more questions to ask when confronting this particular historical issue: is there a single cause for the Catastrophe or multiple causes? Is the cause the same from civilization to civilization? How sudden was the transition from chariot to infantry?

Drews presents the idea of a military shift as singular causation, but there are critics that remain unconvinced. Cline states that Drews’s explanation for the Catastrophe is not the only possible explanation, and does not provide the final answer [8]. Young states that Drews’s argument does not negate the theory of systems collapse effectively, and that a military change and systems collapse are not mutually exclusive [9].

Haggis is concerned with Drews’s one-size-fits-all approach to causation. Drews presents the military shift as the singular cause of the Catastrophe for civilizations from one end of the eastern Mediterranean to the other. Were these cultures not different from one another? Haggis suggests this hurts Drews’ assertion of singular causation, and that Drews should provide more explanation regarding to the culturally specific variables of each region, relative to his thesis [10].

Lastly, the lack of sources and frames of reference on time have the potential to make events in the ancient world seem closer together and more connected in the causal chain. This is another criticism that Haggis has of Drews’s argument. Haggis suggests Drews’s narrative makes the Catastrophe seem like it occurred more quickly than it actually did. Haggis says that length of time could have allowed for a more gradual, internal shift to dominant infantry than Drews suggests [11]. Young defends Drews by stating that the destructions of the Catastrophe took place in a compressed enough period of time for them to be considered closely related events.

After thinking about it for a bit, I can see that Drews is sincere about what he is attempting to do. At one point, he even unnecessarily apologizes for writing a military history while not being a military historian [12]. So he is aware that he is operating in an imperfect situation and he makes it clear that he’s doing the best he can with the resources he has.

I also suspect that his reviewers were happy to see a new work of scholarship on the Late Bronze Age Catastrophe and were respectful of an attempt to inject new life into an old mystery. Ancient history can be very intimidating to write. Ideas are often stopped before they start because of the vast amount of writing that has already been done on the era, combined with the scarcity of sources.

It just struck me odd when I was reading Drews’s conclusion that I came across so many terms indicating uncertainty. This is the thesis wrap, where the author is supposed to be most convincing in his argument. On page 216 and 217, I flagged a “whatever,” a “very likely”, two “imagines” and a “perhaps” all in a pretty close arrangement regarding a key point of support for his thesis [13].

I agree with Young, who says that Drews’s work seems partially developed and he would like to read more of what Drews has to say [14]. It’s a very entertaining book, but I think Drews is really stretching his reasoning pretty thin. I want to believe him, but I’m sticking with multiple causation when it comes to the Catastrophe.

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[1] Stephen Morillo, Jeremy Black, and Paul Lococo, War in World History: Society, Technology, and War from Ancient Times to the Present, vol. 1 (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2009), 14.

[2] Hans Van Wees, “Review,” Greece and Rome, Second Series, vol. 41, No. 1, (April 1994), 75

[3] Eric H. Cline, “Review,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56, no. 2 (April 1997): 127.

[4] Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe CA.1200 BC (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 98.

[5] Cline, “Review,” 129.

[6] Donald C. Haggis, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer 1995), 323.

[7] T. Cuyler Young, Jr., “Review,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115, no. 2 (June 1995): 312.

[8] Cline, “Review,” 129.

[9] Young, “Review,” 312.

[10] Haggis, “Review,” 324.

[11] Ibid., 323.

[12] Drews, “The End,” 102.

[13] Ibid., 216-17.

[14] Young, “Review,” 312.

Copyright 2016 Copperkettle Media LLC

Historiography

But… All the Good Topics are Taken!

One of the mental barriers that historians have to conquer is stopping an idea before you start. Haven’t you had a great person or event or trend that you wanted to write about, for instance, only to discover that the topic has been “done” to death, or that your idea has been thoroughly disproven by historians A-Z over the course of two centuries?

Edward_Gibbon_by_Henry_Walton_cleaned
I can’t let this dude be the last word on the Roman Empire, and you shouldn’t either. He’s a great guy. But he wasn’t the first to write about Rome, and he won’t be the last!

I’m here today to tell you two things, primarily. First, the chances that you will come up with an original thought, much less an original idea for a historical research project, are practically nil. Second, you shouldn’t let that stop you from writing what you think. In history, as in most forms of writing, it doesn’t matter who wrote it first so much as who wrote it best. Do you have something to contribute to the conversation surrounding a historical topic? Then, say it.

It might have been said before. It might have been said brilliantly by a historian waaaaaay more accomplished than you. But you have two advantages that brilliant historian did not have. You have his brilliant argument to start from, and you have a more modern audience than he did. You see, the historiography of a particular topic will always be there, whether you contribute to it or not (and you should). A book is a book. A journal article is a journal article. Those things, once written, remain static. They don’t change with the times. But, your audience does. Your audience is a constantly evolving entity which places emphasis on certain ideas and media that did not exist the day before, or decade before, or century before. A historian who can frame an observation from a certain point of view, and communicate that viewpoint to an interested audience, will always be a successful historian, even if his topic has been beaten into the ground.

There will always be someone new who has not heard the story you are writing about. Wide-eyed readers are a constantly renewing resource. Who will these people turn to, when they want to read the story of the Alamo, or the *USS Tang*, or the conquest of the Aztec Empire? They will turn the historian who reaches them first and speaks to them via the method and viewpoint that is most accessible to them.

Modern historians have the advantages of new media available to them. Blogs, self-publishing, podcasts, Youtube… the methods of reaching new audiences are so much greater now than in the days of Gibbon, Ranke, or Mahan. You’ve been given amazing gifts: the collected knowledge of the human race is at your fingertips via the internet, and you have the ability to reach millions from your living room.

Don’t worry if your topic is original or not. Bring a new take to it. Modernize an old topic. Bring new people to the old topic and give it new life again. If your topic is weak, don’t worry. As you write, it will change, and become strong. Trust the process and don’t kill your idea before it’s had a chance to live.

Copyright 2016 Copperkettle Media LLC