Friday, June 30, 2017

“Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria”, by Carolly Erickson


304 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0684807652

If you’re looking for a serious biography of the woman who gave her name to an age, then Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria by Carolly Erickson is not the book you’re looking for. This is a quick, ultimately readable yet light overview of a complex character. Erickson focuses mostly on a lifetime of emotional turmoil rather than a lifetime of actions and accomplishments; thus, while not a book for the serious historian, Her Little Majesty is still a nice summer read or a good way for a young adult who needs a little encouragement in studying history, for after finishing these 300-or-so pages, I was left with an impression of a rather whiny, resentful, erratic woman who never accomplished anything of note other than producing A LOT of children and thus ensuring that most of the crowned heads of Europe were related to each other (not that that helped to keep the peace, mind you). This book was great for stimulating my interest in finding a good biography of Victoria; something that talked more about the time she lived in, the role of the monarchy in England at that time, and, most importantly, what she did with her life – besides make A LOT of children. I am a fan of Erickson, and while this is by no means her best work, her book does not pretend to be an all-encompassing tale of this queen’s life…sad to say.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

“Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu”, by Laurence Bergreen


432 pages, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-1400078806

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen relates the tale of Marco Polo (1254-1324) and his journey from the West to the Mongol-dominated East via the Silk Road, that treacherous journey that connected the two continents for centuries. Contrary to popular belief, Polo was not the first European to make it to China; he was, however, the first to bring back news knowledge of the mysterious East to a wider European public through the medium of his book, Travels, first published (we think) around 1298. As per usual with Polo, things are not this straightforward, for the Travels is not a single account, but rather a series of about, oh, 119-or-so surviving manuscripts, each one different and none authoritative. Scholars have tried to patch the various versions together over the centuries, but in the age before the printing press Marco kept handing out new hand-written copies with additions and subtractions, and others would make more copies adding their own embellishments or mistakes: the chronology would change, the ordering of events would shift (as if the pages were dropped on the floor and re-assembled incorrectly), the specifics of events would differ, the places and people would alter, etc…thus, there is no “correct” or “final” version of the Travels. Bergreen bases his account on the longest version available and usually does not question its accuracy, often pointing out why it must be so (except for a few well known problems).

The Great Question that has haunted the Travels since it first appeared is its veracity; children are said to have followed Marco Polo chanting, “Messer Marco, tell us another lie!” Until the 19th Century it was mostly seen as comparable to The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a travel memoir by the same which first circulated between 1357 and 1371 and which is rightly seen as a work of fantasy. Starting in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when scholars were able to verify, through Chinese records, many of the details, and with the recognition of the importance of the Age of Discovery and global trade and travel in World History, Marco Polo has become today one of the most well known figures of the Middle Ages. Yet there still remain a few critics who question if Marco Polo actually ever went, and this myth of the “faked Travels” hangs over it. But as Bergreen says in the Epilogue, it would have been a more amazing feat to amass so much accurate information about Asia without actually going there than to have made the trip and write about it (Thank You, Occam). Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, I find, is a lot like a basic meatloaf-and-potatoes dinner: sure it nourishes, but it doesn’t delight. Bergreen doesn’t create a convincingly strong central narrative to the book: he shows Marco Polo develop from a naive youth, to a curious sensualist, into a spiritual awakened middle aged man, and then finally into a petty and aged ex-opium addict (perhaps); we learn very little about Marco Polo the man. All is conjecture when faced with Marco’s externally orientated Travels: the portrait is believable, but the sources are weak.

Monday, June 26, 2017

“Medieval Warfare: A History”, edited by Maurice Keen


352 pages, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0198206392

In Medieval Warfare: A History, Maurice Keen, a fellow in Medieval History at Balliol College, Oxford, has edited a superb compilation of essays from a worthy collection of a dozen scholars from British and Irish Colleges (with one contributor from West Point) that illustrates how the Medieval period was a singular epoch in military history – an age profoundly influenced by martial ideals, whose very structure of society was organized for war, and whose leaders were by necessity warriors. This collection spans nearly a millennium of warfare in the European theatre and environs, including Vikings, Crusades, French and English wars, and the wars of Charlemagne, an examination of over seven hundred years of European conflict. The book is divided into two broad categories: The Phases of Medieval Warfare and The Arts of Warfare; the first section explores the experience of war chronologically, with essays on the Viking age, on the wars and expansion of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on the Crusades, and on the great Hundred Years War between England and France, while the second section traces developments in the art of warfare: fortification and siege craft, the role of armored cavalrymen, the use of mercenary forces, the birth of gunpowder artillery, and the new skills in navigation and shipbuilding. Keen's analysis is insightful and essays work well at illuminating their subject, yet each essay has its own integrity. As Keen writes in the preface: “Warfare was a formative influence on the civilization and the social structures of the European middle ages. Its history in that period is in consequence of high significance alike for those who are interested in the middle ages for themselves and for their legacy, and for those whose interest is in war and its place in the story of human development”. There are many theories on how far war has affected the development of human history, one of the strongest being that warfare is the primary driving force behind social change, political change and technological change. Keen pulls together in the last few paragraphs the themes of many of the essays, pointing the direction toward modern warfare. The contributors are obviously researchers and historians of the highest caliber, but sometimes their writing skills made it difficult to render all that was there to be gleaned. Still, the depth and breadth of the information makes this book worth the effort.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

“A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, by Barbara W. Tuchman


697 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0394400266

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman is an in-depth look at the chaotic 1300s in Europe, using the life of the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy VII as its narrative vehicle. The author chose this particular individual because he lived a relatively long life and could, therefore, stay in the story during most of the tale (Coucy was born in 1340, seven years before the Black Death began in southern Italy, and died in 1397). Additionally, he was also close to much of the action described in the book, tied to both France and England, for while Coucy was a French nobleman, he was also married to Isabella, the eldest daughter of King Edward III of England. Now, if the idea of following the life and biography of an obscure 14th Century French lord you’ve probably never heard of turns you off to the idea of this book, be not afraid, for Tuchman is an absolute master at her work and manages to make Coucy’s life deeply interesting and entertaining, while using the larger narrative to talk about every aspect of 14th Century life in griping detail.

Tuchman’s focus is the “Crisis of the Late Middle Ages”, suffered by Europe in the 14th Century. Drawing heavily on Froissart’s Chronicles, Tuchman recounts (wait for it): The Hundred Years’ War; The Black Death; The Papal Schism; bands of pillaging mercenaries; rabid anti-Semitism; popular revolts, including the Jacquerie in France; The Liberation of Switzerland; The Battle of the Golden Spurs; widespread peasant uprisings against laws that enforced the use of hops in beer; and, The Battle of Nicopolis which saw the advance of the Islamic Ottoman Empire into Europe. Yet Tuchman’s scope is not limited to political and religious events. She begins with a discussion of the Little Ice Age, a change in climate that reduced the average temperature of Europe until the 18th Century (remember that little nugget the next time some SJW tells you that climate change is “unprecedented”), and describes the lives of all social classes, from nobles and clergymen to the peasantry.

Tuchman was a truly entertaining writer, and I love how she shows her work as she goes along and grounds sources before using them by warning the reader as to how accurate and/or unbiased the source is understood to be (one terribly amusing anecdote of a brigand company shaking down the Pope for money is prefaced with the note that “it has been said of Cuvelier that ‘the tyranny of rhyme left him little leisure for accuracy’”). And while this is absolutely a history book, it reads just as fluidly and fascinatingly as a novel. I left with nothing but admiration for this book and the feeling that Tuchman had made a really large and complex subject very accessible to the lay-person.

Saturday, June 17, 2017

“Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army”, by Meirion and Susie Harries


569 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0394569352

In Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, the husband-and-wife team of Meirion and Susie Harries ask the question: “How was it possible for an organization displaying the highest of soldierly qualities to possess such a capacity for barbarism?” In this well-written and comprehensively researched survey of the Imperial Japanese Army – from its inception during the Meiji Restoration to its dissolution in 1945 – they describe an ethos based on service to the “Japanese Way” embodied in the devotion to service to the Emperor as expressed in the code of bushido, or “the way of the warrior”, a codified samurai way of life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry in Europe. According to the Harries’, bushido was perverted by modernizers of the Japanese military into a philosophy that exalted death and violence and taught contempt for the vanquished; alterations, that did indeed contribute to war crimes. But the Imperial Japanese Army was also influenced by the military institutions of Europe (particularly Prussia) and, in emulating the armies of Europe, the Japanese distilled much of the best of both the samurai and the European traditions while developing a fighting force that could compete successfully with those of the Great Powers.

Once it emerged from international isolation, Japan began to imitate Europe's imperialism as well as its militarism, with the soldiers increasingly advocating transforming Japan into a self-sufficient garrison state through total physical and psychological mobilization. This ideology, however, was not translated into operable strategy. Detailing Japan’s intrigues against China and Russia and its successes in the first Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, as well as its successful though peripheral involvement in WW I, the Harries’ show how the island nation's warlords developed a hubris that led inexorably to Japan's imperialist adventures on the Asian mainland. Unable to conquer China, the army embarked on war with the West, as well. This reckless advance into the unknown involved missed opportunities and repeated mistakes from Bataan to Imphal. Spirit and willpower were expected to compensate for material weaknesses. Unreflected decisions were made at all levels of planning and command. Eventually the gap between the samurai way and modern high-tech warfare became obvious even to true believers. But by the time of Japan's WW II surrender its army had unrepentantly inflicted death and destruction throughout the Pacific on a scale that continues to assert Japan's status as an outsider among Western-style democracies. This first-rate analysis will appeal to general readers and specialists alike.

The Harries’ show sympathy for the Japanese, acknowledging, for example, that the extraordinary commitment of resources and energy to the army was a virtual necessity, from the inception of the Imperial Army in the 1870s and 1880s well into the 20th Century, if Japan was to fend off Western imperialism. Nevertheless, while they are hardly Japan bashers, much of the history they narrate is so ugly that the reluctance of the Japanese to confront this part of their past becomes thoroughly understandable. As part of their repudiation of their warlike past, the Japanese rarely study the history of the Imperial Japanese Army. Among historians in Japan, the few who specialize in military history are even more isolated from other academic historians than are their Western counterparts. The Harries’ plead for a reversal of such attitudes in both Japan and the United States – an appeal that is a quarter of a century old, this book having been published in 1991. It argues that war and armed forces in general cannot be controlled unless they are studied and thus better understood. It also contends that the Imperial Army in particular was so closely bound to the Japanese people that it must be studied to understand Japan's future as well as its past. Soldiers of the Sun offers the most readable introduction to the special qualities of the Imperial Japanese Army and to the sources of its especially appalling history.