Investigations of a Dog

This is the 14th Military History Carnival, with a special theme of Contested Boundaries. Today is also the day that Bloggers Unite encourages bloggers to write about human rights (hat tip: Mark Stoneman). I might post something on that theme later today if I have time (and I probably won’t have time), but this carnival edition gives plenty of attention to human rights issues.

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While trawling (not trolling) for more posts that I can include in the next MHC, I found something interesting via Muhlberger’s Early History:

The Soldier in Later Medieval England is a major research project directed by Anne Curry (who was my personal tutor when I was an undergraduate at Reading). They now have a pilot database online (with free access) with details of thousands of soldiers who fought in the Hundred Years War. This should be really useful for anyone interested in medieval military history, not least because the financial records that the data comes from give much more accurate figures for army sizes than the estimates in chronicles.

The 14th Military History Carnival will be here next week on Thursday 15th May. We still need more submissions: you can submit your own posts or someone else’s, relating to the Contested Boundaries theme or anything else within MHC’s usual remit. Please e-mail submissions to fallon.young@4-lom.com or use the the submission form.

More details of the Contested Boundaries theme:

This can cover disputed territories and borders, which are a big part of many wars. It can also cover cultural boundaries. How does war complicate, question or shift the boundaries between races, genders, classes, and sexual orientations, between able and disabled, or between human and animal? Above all, how is the boundary between war and peace constructed and contested? Just use your imagination.

You can submit your own posts or posts written by someone else. If you feel inspired to write something on this theme, then go for it. Considering the number of submissions we normally get it’s unlikely that your post will be rejected unless it’s outside the scope of the carnival or fails to meet basic standards of factual accuracy. Submissions don’t have to be limited to the theme. As usual, anything about armed forces and conflicts in any part of the world is eligible. Only wars that happened after 1 January 2001 are excluded. See the Military History Carnival page for more details of the carnival’s aims and scope.

The next edition of the Military History Carnival will be here at Investigations of a Dog on Thursday 15th May. As always we need as many submissions as possible. To make it more interesting I’ve decided to give this edition a special theme: Contested Boundaries.

This can cover disputed territories and borders, which are a big part of many wars. It can also cover cultural boundaries. How does war complicate, question or shift the boundaries between races, genders, classes, and sexual orientations, between able and disabled, or between human and animal? Above all, how is the boundary between war and peace constructed and contested? Just use your imagination.

You can submit your own posts or posts written by someone else. If you feel inspired to write something on this theme, then go for it. Considering the number of submissions we normally get it’s unlikely that your post will be rejected unless it’s outside the scope of the carnival or fails to meet basic standards of factual accuracy. Submissions don’t have to be limited to the theme. As usual, anything about armed forces and conflicts in any part of the world is eligible. Only wars that happened after 1 January 2001 are excluded. See the Military History Carnival page for more details of the carnival’s aims and scope.

Please e-mail submissions to fallon.young@4-lom.com or use the the submission form.

If this is a success there might be more themed editions in future.

The 13th MHC is now up at The Cannon’s Mouth. In this case 13 isn’t unlucky at all as Ken has done an excellent job.

The next edition will be coming home to Investigations of a Dog on 15th May. This is a special edition with a theme of Contested Boundaries. As well as territorial disputes, we’d like to see posts about how war complicates boundaries of race, class, gender, sexuality, species etc. Above all we want to question the boundary between peace and war. If you see anything on these themes, please submit it. Or you could even write something if you feel inspired.

Submissions don’t have to be on these themes - you can still submit posts about any aspect of military history, war and armed forces. The usual limits apply: posts mainly about wars that happened after 1 January 2001 are not eligible.

E-mail submissions to fallon.young@4-lom.com or use the the submission form.

And we still need hosts for June and July - I’m not doing it two months in a row! If you’d like to try hosting please get in touch.

Anyone with online access to War In History can now download my debut article which is about horses and the New Model Army. I haven’t got my hands on a hard copy yet, but it’s quite exciting to see it on the website. Now I just need to finish the Difficult Second Article…

1. Gavin Robinson, ‘Horse Supply and the Development of the New Model Army, 1642-1646’, War In History, 15 (April 2008), pp. 121-140.

The next MHC will be at The Cannon’s Mouth on Thursday 17th April. E-mail submissions to militaryhistorian at gmail dot com or use the submission form. Anything vaguely related to wars and armed forces before 1 January 2001 can be included.

Then we need more hosts, especially for May. I’m thinking of hosting another one myself later in the year, but preferably not May as I have too much writing to do. If you have a blog (it doesn’t have to be about military history) and you’re interested in giving it a go please get in touch.

The 12th Military History Carnival is now up at Thoughts On Military History. Thanks to Ross for doing a great job.

The 13th edition will be hosted by Ken Reynolds at The Cannon’s Mouth on 17th April. E-mail submissions to military historian at gmail dot com or use the submission form.

We need hosts for May, June and July, so if you’d like to give it a go please get in touch. You don’t have to be an academic or a military historian, as long as you have a blog and are interested.

Back in December 2006 I posted about cavalry charges. Inspired by John Keegan and Frank Tallett, I argued that the idea that cavalry horses crashed into each other in a “shock” charge was completely spurious because horses won’t willingly crash into a solid object, and if they could be made to the outcome would be disastrous because they would be killed or seriously injured by the impact. Physics and common sense are both on my side, but empirical evidence of horse collisions is very difficult to get. The best I could do back then was the footage of Anmer hitting Emily Davison in the 1913 Derby.

Now Peter at That’s Pretty Lame has found exactly what I needed: YouTube footage of two horses colliding head-on at a full gallop. According to the commentary this happened at Prescott Downs, Arizona on 26 August 2000. Both horses were killed and jockey Stacy Burton suffered severe brain injury. I shouldn’t be pleased about such a tragedy, but it’s the perfect empirical evidence to prove my point.

If only I’d thought of searching YouTube for horse collisions, but I assumed they were so rare that I wouldn’t find one. In fact that isn’t the only one. This is another - it looks like the collision is at a slower speed than the Prescott Downs accident but both horses are brought down. In this one the collision is at a very slow canter - looks like no-one was hurt but the riders only just stayed on. This is about as close as you can get to knocking the enemy out of the way with your momentum, but I think it supports my point that the effects of a collision are equally bad for both parties (just as Isaac Newton predicted - who’d have thought it?). So the bay barged past the grey and kept going, but if this was a cavalry charge I don’t think you could really say that the bay won. Both sides would be disordered and neither would have gained an advantage.

The 12th Military History Carnival will be hosted by Ross Mahoney at Thoughts On Military History on Thursday 20th March. If you’ve recently seen or written a post on any aspect of wars, conflicts or armed forces that you’d like to see included, please e-mail the link to $mahoneyross$@$hotmail.com$ (without the “$” signs) or use our carnival submission form.

Remember the carnival takes a very broad view of military history and covers any part of the world in any period up to the end of the 20th century.