Investigations of a Dog

Ralph Luker at Cliopatria has posted a list of 80 recommended history blogs. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the history blogosphere, this is a great place to start. Down in the I section is Investigations of a Dog. This would happen at a time when I’ve hardly posted anything for ages. It’s nice to get recognition, but all my usual reservations about ranking blogs apply. I like to think of blogging as acentric and non-hierarchical. I think some blogs are better than others, but better for me. It all depends on personal taste. Every history blog on the Cliopatria blogroll has something good in it. The only history blogs I consider completely worthless turned out to be worthless because they were sockpuppets for a troll.

So this is Ralph Luker’s top 80 and not necessarily anyone else’s. But Ralph Luker knows the history blogosphere better than anyone. I’m honoured that he thinks IoaD is in the top 8% along with the likes of Airminded, Digital History Hacks, In The Middle, Mercurius Politicus and all the rest. I just hope this isn’t a poisoned chalice - my Technorati rating went right down after I got into Brett Holman’s top 5 military history blogs! Expectations might have been raised at a time when I’m not posting much. But it might also encourage me to improve. I don’t think IoaD has ever been as good as it was in its first few months. I want to recapture some of that eclecticism and enthusiasm. I had already decided to stop posting about the historiography of the causes of the English Civil War. Those posts were necessary to help me with an article I’m writing, but I’ve nearly finished it now. I always thought those posts were a bit too esoteric. Although some of them were technically very good (and some of them weren’t) they were only ever likely to appeal to a small minority of readers (and that minority turned out to be even smaller than I thought). In fact even I’m not really that interested in the causes of the civil war! I’m still interested in the civil war but there are lots of other questions about it and early-modern England that I find more interesting. So no more “bloodsport”. In the coming weeks I might be revisiting some of the things I wrote about in the early months, as well as trying to think of new and different things to write about.