On the ways of historians
Oct. 12th, 2011 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetI've been reading some of the volumes of the new Penguin History of Britain (ed. David Cannadine). I've now read the first five volumes which cover the Roman occupation to the end of Elizabeth's reign. I'm struck by what seems to me a massive disconnect between the first two volumes and the three subsequent ones. David Mattingly's Roman Britain: 100-409 and Robin Fleming's Anglo-Saxon Britain: 410-1066 struck me as distinctly innovative. Both used evidence from epigraphy and, especially, rather specialized archaeological techniques (isotope analysis of human remains, pollen analysis, paleo medical evidence etc) to produce new answers to interesting questions about ethic origins and health status of the populations under consideration. They also used inter-disciplinary techniques to explore issues of imperialism and colonialism and the formation of national identity. The subsequent volumes; David Carpenter's The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284, Miri Rubin's The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages and Susan Brigden's Lost Worlds, New Worlds: Britain 1485-1603* just don't. I'm sure they incorporate new scholarship but they read like the sort of top down history that could have been written any time in the last fifty or even one hundred years. This surprises me because it seems that there are many questions about the middle ages that the sort of techniques used by Mattingly and Fleming would be handy for. For example, in the wake of the Black Death did geographic mobility really increase? Or, what were the impacts on the health status of the population of the population growth of the 13th century and its subsequent drastic decline?
So, historians, especially medievalists, out there; Is this a typical methodological difference between historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages versus those of later periods or is it just an artefact of odd commissioning decisions by David Cannadine?
*This is a misnomer. Brigden's Britain appears not to include Scotland. Another odd weakness in the series. ETA: Nor does Rubin's. Unforgivable really.
So, historians, especially medievalists, out there; Is this a typical methodological difference between historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages versus those of later periods or is it just an artefact of odd commissioning decisions by David Cannadine?
*This is a misnomer. Brigden's Britain appears not to include Scotland. Another odd weakness in the series. ETA: Nor does Rubin's. Unforgivable really.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-12 12:20 pm (UTC)Just out of interest, what's their take on relations in the couple of centuries after 1066? The old line used to be very pro Norman but there's been a lot of stuff recently looking at Norman activities in terms of Nazi occupations and the worst excesses of British Imperialism. I currently live in an area that was affected by the Harrowing of the North and am disturbed by the extent to which it was previously swept under the carpet.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-12 12:34 pm (UTC)That's how it looked to me. Or worse, academia is so compartmentalized that the historians don't even know what the archaeologists are doing.
Carpenter deals briefly, but critically, with William's devastation of the north. I don't think he's much interested in 'labelling' the relationship between the Normans and natives. he's more interested in looking at the relationships between attempts to construct hegemonies in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Mattingly is much more interesting on the subject of occupation and imperialism. He sees the Roman occupation as brutal and exploitative and argues that the record was whitewashed by earlier historians keen to present imperialism in general as positive and civilizing.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-12 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-12 06:20 pm (UTC)Rubin is far worse than Carpenter in this respect.