Investigations of a Dog

Time to start filling up the “Information Technology” category then. Anyone who isn’t interested in SQL should probably look away now. I’ll be posting some thoughts on Zotero sooner or later, but this post is about my own attempts at making bibliographical databases. I’ve always preferred doing it myself to using off the shelf solutions, which can have advantages and disadvantages.

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People often used to ask me whether horses were imported into England during the civil wars to supply the armies, and were usually surprised when I said no. Peter Edwards was the first person to research this in any detail, and my work just confirmed his conclusion that imports of horses were negligible. A few other historians have mentioned horse imports in passing, but apparently without any significant evidence. This post is a modified version of the appendix of my thesis which refuted all these suggestions in (too much?) detail. It’s a cautionary tale of how rumours and misunderstandings can turn into “facts”, and the lengths I had to go to in order to verify or falsify them.

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Esther MacCallum Stewart has recently started a new blog at Glod’n'Epix which covers her work on computer games (in addition to her First World War stuff at Break of Day in the Trenches). Reading this has made me realise that I have no reason to be ashamed of liking computer games. Gaming isn’t a waste of time and can even be a valid subject for academic study. Meanwhile, Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb posted a link to an article by Niall Ferguson about a computer simulation of the Second World War. This led me to think about how games can be used by historians, and what they can and can’t tell us. It’s probably no surprise that I don’t agree with Niall Ferguson on this (or lots of other things).

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This is a brief introduction to one of my more experimental works in progress. Most people seem to think it’s a bit strange, and it could easily be a complete failure. The idea is to combine my interests in military history, gender, and eco-criticism by looking at a subject I’m familiar with (horses in early-modern war) from an unfamiliar angle.

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Some observations on two bestiality cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings.

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Brett Holman at Airminded started a discussion about when the Second World War started (discussion of the question is also taking place at Revise and Dissent and the Rhine River). The many interesting points raised by various people show that there isn’t a simple answer because it depends on definitions and points of view. This reminded me of a post by Mark Grimsley at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age on the military metanarrative.

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This is a brief look at some of my work in progress about women in the London saddlery trade in the English Civil War. It’s based on part of my PhD research, but I’m taking it further now. I’ve tried to make this post as accessible as possible, so it goes into background information about London history and explains some basic things. I’ve also included links to the map of early modern London where I know a saddler’s address (if you follow the link, the place will be marked by a blue star on the map). The map dates from the 1560s, but the City inside the walls hadn’t changed too much by the 1640s.

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Following on from my previous post, these are some random thoughts on how military history might develop in the future. This post points out a few examples of cutting edge work that I’m aware of and some possibilities for using new approaches to military history.

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Most people in the history blogosphere will probably have noticed the debate over John J. Miller’s “Sounding Taps: Why military history is being retired” article which claims that military history is dying. Mark Grimsley disagrees, saying that military history isn’t dying, and even if it is we should be doing something positive to save it rather than just complaining. One of the positive things that Mark has started working on is setting up the Military History Foundation. The whole thing has reminded me that military history is nothing to be ashamed of, so in this post I’m going to talk about my personal experience of military history as a student in British universities in the 1990s. This isn’t necessarily relevant to the debate, since Miller was talking about US universities in the present, but I think my experiences show how military history has been successfully adapting to changing circumstances and suggest that it can continue to adapt.

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Welcome my first attempt at a history blog. Stay awhile. Stay forever…

I discovered history blogging through Sharon Howard’s Early Modern Notes, Carnivalesque, and History Carnival. My first thoughts were: “I could do that” and “why aren’t I doing it already?”. I started blogging in 2004 when I got a LiveJournal, mainly to keep in touch with friends who also had them. It’s still going, but I’ve very rarely posted anything of any consequence. This year I’ve been trying to get back into academic history after a career break of a few years. I’m really excited by the possibilities of new technology such as digital imaging and XML. Experimenting with blogging is another way I can explore these possibilities and find different ways of understanding the past. This is starting to sound too much like a job application, which leads nicely to the fact that I met Sharon when she interviewed me for a job on the project she’s currently managing (I didn’t get it, but one day they will all see my power…). Ironically, I didn’t know much about her web presence back then. It remains to be seen whether blogging will help my career or make me less employable. Whatever happens, it should be an interesting experience.

This is mostly a history blog, but I’m aiming to be eclectic. I’m likely to be posting works in progress; reflections on things I’ve been reading; extracts from and criticism of my PhD thesis; and random thoughts on history, historiography, culture, literature, information technology, and, of course, other people’s blogs. This is all part of my strategy to broaden my horizons. My thesis (’Horse Supply in the English Civil War’) was a meticulous but fairly unambitious work of empirical military, administrative, economic, and social history. Back then (I started in 1997 and finished in 2001) I was completely unaware of theory and wouldn’t have been interested in it anyway. By the time I’d finished writing my thesis I was quite bored with it and needed a break, so I went off and did other things. That just convinced me that history is what I should be doing. I also realised that I hadn’t really been bored with history itself, just the kind of history I was doing and they way I was doing it. While I was away I got interested in literature and philosophy, reading the likes of Beckett, Kafka, Camus, and Nietzsche (and dressing in black, but I drew the line at smoking clove cigarettes and drinking vermouth). Now I’m trying to learn about literary theory and how it can be applied to history. This involves confronting some scary epistemological questions but also opens up new areas and new approaches, making history more exciting and challenging than just counting horses and adding up money. My definition of “theory” doesn’t just include linguistics, philosophy, and literary criticism. I’ll also be trying to find out more about science. If it all gets too much, I might just go back to counting horses.

Meanwhile, technology is making research less labour intensive. When I started my research at the PRO in 1997 I was still taking notes with a pencil and paper. I bought a laptop as soon as I could afford one and started using Access databases. Now I don’t even need to carry a laptop to the PRO: I can just take my digital camera. In some cases I don’t even need to leave my bedroom to do research, thanks to online sources like EEBO, ECCO, British History Online, and the Old Bailey Proceedings. These sites are only a start, and there is far more to be done, but the Old Bailey Proceedings in particular has begun to demonstrate the potential power of XML, and the benefits of making a set of records freely available to everyone. The uses of information technology in history are likely to be a frequent topic of my posts. I’m also hoping that blogging will allow me to explore areas of history that I’m less familiar with, and avoid the kind of narrow pigeon hole that it’s all too easy for a post-doctoral historian to get stuck in.

The look of this site is an experiment in dogme web design: only one font, no colours, no graphics (I might be putting pictures in post content, but the site design itself is completely image free). You might think that would be easy, but it actually took a lot of work to get it looking like this. It’s designed to be as flexible and accessible as possible, and should work with a wide variety of text sizes and screen/window sizes in any recent browser. The only potential problem I can see is if you’re using very big text on a very small screen, but if that affects you, you could still disable the style sheet or add your own. A layout which works perfectly for everyone is probably unattainable, but I think I’ve come up with the best compromise I can find. If you have any problems using the site, please post a comment or e-mail me to let me know. The one annoying thing about Wordpress is that it breaks the principle that no webpage should contain a link to itself (apart from using # to go to another part of the page) but I don’t think I can change that without some complicated modifications to the core files.

[edit: I originally included difficulty level categories, but I've decided to remove them and just write as accessibly as possible]

That’s the background. There should be some proper posts appearing from tomorrow onwards. I’m intending to post quite frequently at first, to give a better idea of what this blog is all about and what my interests are. Posts are likely to range from substantial, well thought out pieces, to “thinking in public”. Even if no-one else finds them interesting or useful, it’s all good experience.

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”