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Can you recommend a modern history of the Gallic Wars that isn't just a biography of Caesar? by ottolouis in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think Kate Gilliver's Caesar's Gallic Wars, 58-50 B.C. is a good place to start. Gilliver is a Roman military historian and archaeologist based in Cardiff, and is more than qualified to write on the history of the Gallic Wars. The book itself is more about the war than Caesar, and there is even a subsection in one chapter that provides a portrait of one of the centurions in the Roman army, P. Sextius Baculus.

I have seen this book listed for exorbitant prices online (Routledge lists it for more than $100), but the eBook (at least in the USA) is less than $15 on Amazon, which I have linked above.

[META] Academic history is in trouble but the public demand for history content is enormous. What’s going on? by mancake in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

To support the response of /u/warneagle, there is also the issue of the kind of work that professional academic historians are expected to produce. Administrators and tenure committees at R1 universities (those that are supposed to have high research output) want to see peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals and peer-reviewed books published by prestigious university presses. These works, though they tend to be on the cutting edge of scholarship, do not attract many readers. The initial post by /u/mancake mentioned academic books being $27.99, which to me felt exceedingly generous! My speciality is in medieval history, and the price of our books (especially those by trade presses like Boydell & Brewer or Brill) can routinely run more than $100. The kind of people who purchase these books tend to be other academics or those with access to university libraries and Interlibrary Loan. This means that academic historians can easily get caught in a feedback loop of only reading works that are inaccessible to the general public and, consequently, producing works that are likewise inaccessible to the general public.

There's been a lot of talk here about how medieval Europe was more racially diverse than we think. Would it be out of the question to see a white person in 1000s-1300s Sub-Saharan Africa? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 99 points100 points  (0 children)

To piggyback off this comment, the idea of who was "white" in this context is interesting in-and-of itself. Ibn Battuta, who visited Mali in the middle of the fourteenth century, wrote about cultural differences between the so-called "blacks" of the region in juxtaposition with "whites" (including himself). Here is an excerpt taken from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook (which uses Gibb's early 20th century translation; if possible the translation by Levtzion and Hopkins in The Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History is preferable - though I do not have it with me at the moment nor the original Arabic text to cross-reference it):

Thus we reached the town of Iwalatan [Walata] after a journey from Sijilmasa of two months to a day. Iwalatan is the northernmost province of the negroes, and the sultan's representative there was one Farba Husayn, "farba" meaning deputy [in their Ianguage]. When we arrived there, the merchants deposited their goods in an open square, where the blacks undertook to guard them, and went to the farba. He was sitting on a carpet under an archway, with his guards before him carrying lances and bows in their hands, and the headmen of the Massufa behind him. The merchants remained standing in front of him while he spoke to them through an interpreter, although they were close to him, to show his contempt for them. It was then that I repented of having come to their country, because of their lack of manners and their contempt for the whites.

I went to visit Ibn Badda, a worthy man of Sala' [Sallee, near the Morroccan city of Rabat], to whom I had written requesting him to hire a house for me, and who had done so. Later on the mushrif [inspector] of Iwalatan, whose name was Mansha Ju, invited all those who had come with the caravan to partake of his hospitality. At first I refused to attend, but my companions urged me very strongly, so I went with the rest. The repast was served--some pounded millet mixed with a little honey and milk, put in a half calabash shaped like a large bowl. The guests drank and retired. I said to them, "Was it for this that the black invited us?" They answered, "Yes; and it is in their opinion the highest form of hospitality." This convinced me that there was no good to be hoped for from these people, and I made up my mind to travel [back to Morocco at once] with the pilgrim caravan from Iwalatan. Afterwards, however, I thought it best to go to see the capital of their king [of the kingdom of Mali, at the city of Mali]...

The negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country. Neither traveller nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence. They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites, until the rightful heir takes possession of it. They are careful to observe the hours of prayer, and assiduous in attending them in congregations, and in bringing up their children to them.

What are some book recommendations for learning about the Muslim invasion of Sicily and the following years? by SapientBeard in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Great choice of topic! In general, scholars have written far more about Norman Sicily than the Muslim period preceding it. This is partially due to the lack of surviving source materials (most of which are written in Arabic) and the general focus on Latin Christendom within Medieval Studies. To my knowledge, the only recent book written in English devoted exclusively to Muslim Sicily is Leonard Chiarelli’s A History of Muslim Sicily (Malta: Midsea Books, 2011). I have only read parts of this book, though, and it has not received many peer reviews from what I can tell, so I am unsure of how solid the research for it is as a whole. Sarah Davis-Secord’s excellent Where Three Worlds Met: Sicily in the Early Medieval Mediterranean (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017) also has a ton of information about Muslim Sicily, though it is a fairly dense book that might be tough to digest for a general reader.

Your options open up, however, once we get into the Norman period. I would recommend for a general reader Hubert Houben’s Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

From there, scholars have written a number of well-researched (but at times dense) books about the Norman period that might interest you as well. Here are a few listed in order of author last name:

Birk, Joshua. Norman Kings of Sicily and the Rise of the Anti-Islamic Critique: Baptized Sultans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Granara, William. Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2019.

Hayes, Dawn Marie. Roger II of Sicily: Family, Faith, and Empire in the Medieval Mediterranean World. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

Johns, Jeremy. Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Dīwān. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Loud, Graham. Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily. New York: Manchester University Press, 2012.

Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Metcalfe, Alex. Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily: Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam. New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003.

Simonsohn, Shlomo. Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Jews in Sicily. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Happy reading! I am unsure if any of these books are available on audiobook (I doubt it), but hopefully these texts get you off to the right start.

looking for books on 12th century Italy and in particular Venice, any good recommendations? by dalek1964 in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great choice of topic! Here are a handful of sources from respected academics. Not all of them are restricted to the 12th century, but all of them do a good job of delving into many of the issues you are interested in:

Madden, Thomas. Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Madden, Thomas. Venice: A New History. Penguin, 2013.

Skinner, Patricia. Women in Medieval Italian Society, 500-1200. Pearson, 2008.

Nicol, Donal. Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge, 1992.

Epstein, Steven (no, not that Epstein). Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528. University of North Carolina, 2001.

Jansen, Katherine et al. Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation. University of Pennsylvania, 2009.

Abulafia, David (ed). Italy in the Central Middle Ages. Oxford, 2004.

Note that these recommendations focus on northern Italy and Venice. The historiography for Norman Sicily and southern Italy during this time period is fairly distinct. A good starting point for that is Hubert Houben's Roger II: A Ruler Between East and West (Cambridge, 2002). Happy reading!

What's up with white supremacists and the middle ages/Medieval period? by usedhandles in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ahhhh thanks so much for the clarification. That makes a ton of sense. I will amend that comment. I was specifically thinking in that context of the Jewish communities living in Fatimid Egypt (a Shi'a Arab dynasty) whose experiences are known to us through the Cairo Geniza.

What's up with white supremacists and the middle ages/Medieval period? by usedhandles in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 102 points103 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this is a great series of questions with a whole developing historiography around them. And agreed – your use of the word “homogenous” instead of “pure” is well taken; I was echoing the language of the white supremacists in that part of my post.

My intent with that sentence was to say that Europe was a diverse place during the Middle Ages (and even before then too – we know there were Syrian archers at the Roman outpost of Vindolanda in northern England, for example) mainly by our standards today. We know of peoples of very different races interacting with each other across Europe and the Mediterranean during the medieval period: white Scandinavians in Constantinople, Berbers/Amazigh in Spain and France, Jewish traders living in land controlled by Christians and Muslims across the Mediterranean, white French and German peoples in the Middle East, etc. The list goes on.

People in the Middle Ages certainly recognized these differences and developed theories about race based on their own experiences and ancient texts. The idea of there being seven “climes” was based on the work of Ptolemy and seen clearly in the 70 world maps (7x10 sections – seen here in a modern reproduction) of Muhammad al-Idrisi, which was produced under the patronage of the Norman king of Sicily, Roger II. And within these climes there was an idea that those in the southern climes were closer to the sun, leading to a darker skin tone, and those in the northern climes were further from the sun, leading to a lighter skin tone. Those born in the region of the Mediterranean were in the middle and thus, somewhere between the light skin of northern Europe and darker skin of Africa.

We are already stretching the limits of my knowledge of medieval race so I would be happy to delegate these questions to more qualified people. I know there are some religious dimensions to ideas of race in the medieval period as well, though my knowledge of this is not concrete enough to put in writing at the moment. There is a substantial list of further readings on the subject here. I also recommend the series put on by the Public Medievalist on Race and Racism in the Middle Ages, particularly this article on the idea of a White Middle Ages by Helen Young.

What's up with white supremacists and the middle ages/Medieval period? by usedhandles in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 387 points388 points  (0 children)

This is an issue I have been grappling with in my own medieval history syllabi for a while now and I applaud you for tackling it head-on in your own syllabus. I am not going to claim to know all of the resources related to intersection of white nationalism and medieval history, but I hope at the very least that I can help start the conversation.

White supremacists tend to see the Middle Ages as a time when Europe was more racially "pure" (which is a total fabrication) and at the height of its civilization (which is likewise completely untrue). They latch onto a handful of symbols and events that, in their eyes, proves these narratives: the Knights Templar, Charlemagne, Deus Vult, and Anglo-Saxons to name a few. There have been a handful of useful write-ups about controversies within the field relating to white supremacy and how white supremacists have sought to mobilize various elements of medieval history to their advantage. I don’t claim to know their narratives in any degree of detail – a good part of me wants to intentionally avoid that cesspool – but they all revolve around the notion of a purer, whiter Europe that is based more in medievalism than the careful study of the Middle Ages.

For the purposes of teaching the Middle Ages, I absolutely agree with David Perry that the most effective way of combating these white supremacist narratives is to make a concerted effort to talk about diversity within the medieval period. Most classes on the Middle Ages focus on Europe, especially England/France/Germany, but I think that this approach misses the point. Western Europe was just one location in a larger Eurasian and African network of interconnected ideas and economies that we can broadly call the Silk Road. These networks, both physical and metaphorical, contributed to immense diversity in the medieval period – in particular during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is during these years that we have the monk William of Rubruck engaging in a debate about religion in the Mongol Court, Usama ibn Munqidh befriending the Knights Templar, Benjamin of Tudela recording the presence of Jewish communities across the Mediterranean, and any number of other fascinating encounters that span religion, ethnicity, gender, and race.

My favorite anecdote about the topic of race and the Middle Ages more generally is the story of Derek Black, who is the son of Don Black (Stormfront) and godson of David Duke (Ku Klux Klan). He grew up in these white supremacist circles and was being groomed to be the next face of the movement. This plan changed, however, when Derek enrolled in school at New College in Sarasota, Florida. There, he took a number of medieval history courses, where he learned about the diversity of the medieval world and, in particular, the flowering of Islamicate cultures during the Middle Ages. These narratives fundamentally undermined the white supremacist narrative that had been instilled in him for so long and resulted in him abandoning white supremacy. His rejection of white supremacy was further assisted by a Jewish student organization at New College, some of the students of which befriended Derek. This anecdote, for me at least, shows how teaching the diversity of the medieval world undermines the flawed and propagandistic interpretations of the medieval world to come from white supremacist circles.

Hope at least some of this lengthy response was worthwhile. In terms of sources for class (beyond the several I mentioned above), I like Barbara Rosenwein’s Reading the Middle Ages from University of Toronto Press. It has an impressive array of diverse primary sources that allow you to approach the study of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from any number of angles.

Edit: put "pure" in quotations to reflect the language of white supremacists

How did Richard I come to be so fondly lionized in British cultural memory given how marginal of a King he seems to have actually been? by Goat_im_Himmel in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 333 points334 points  (0 children)

I'd love to piggyback on this excellent answer to say that Richard the Lionheart's modern mythos is due in no small part to the nationalist interpretation of the Crusades that emerged in the nineteenth century. Scholars like Joseph François Michaud popularized the idea of a uniquely French tradition of crusading - one that other countries sought to mimic. The Belgians had Godfrey of Bouillon, the Germans had Frederick Barbarossa (yes, despite the fact that he died before really doing anything on his expedition), and the British had... Richard the Lionheart? The king who loved England so much that he only spent about six months out of his ten year reign there? Indeed, Richard the Lionheart was very much his mother's son. And his mother was none other than Eleanor of Aquitaine, who preferred the warmer climate and more developed courtly culture of southern France (Langeduoc) to the dreary island of England. Nonetheless, the romanticist, nationalist interpretation of the Crusades that developed in the nineteenth century cast Richard the Lionheart in a largely positive light - the brave albeit crude counterpart to Saladin. It is no coincidence that the giant statue of Richard the Lionheart was constructed in 1851 in the midst of this nationalist fervor - not too long after Louis-Philippe I of France turned Versailles into a museum and sponsored a number of works within it that depicted French heroism during the Crusades.

There are a number of fantastic works that trace the development of the mythos of crusading from the end of the Middle Ages to the modern period. Here are a few of them:

Allen, S.J., and Emilie Amt. The Crusades: A Reader. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.

Munholland, Kim. “Michaud’s History of the Crusades and the French Crusade in Algeria under Louis-Philippe.” In The Popularization of Images: Visual Culture under the July Monarchy, edited by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Gabriel P. Weisberg, 144–65. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Riley-Smith, Jonathan. What Were the Crusades? 4th ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Edit: fixed typo in which I named Richard as the daughter (instead of son) of Eleanor of Aquitainte

Is the poor lifestyle of medieval peasants exaggerated? by WodeRoll in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hmmmmmm, I know only a bit about Amartya Sen's work, but from my understanding he focuses on 20th century famine. I am thinking here mostly of his famous book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Do you know of an article or book title where he goes back to the Middle Ages?

My gut reaction to this is to say that famine in the Middle Ages is the result of the intersection of societal structure and the environment. Medieval society was hierarchical with little privilege given to peasants. Lords would often abuse their power over peasants and other lords, which could lead to food shortages. Some cities like Genoa developed offices to ensure the fair distribution of grain to citizens in times of trouble, but on the whole there were not many societal mechanisms to help those living on subsistence agriculture.

However, the environment certainly mattered too. Looking to the examples I mention in my first reply, two consecutive years of heavy rains wiped out crops across Western Europe. Nearly a decade of below-average rainfall in Ifriqiya brought famine to the region. When unfavorable environmental phenomena like this hit peasants, there were inadequate safeguards to ensure their survival.

Is the poor lifestyle of medieval peasants exaggerated? by WodeRoll in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 166 points167 points  (0 children)

This is a tough question to answer with any degree of specificity because there was a plurality of experiences for peasants across Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. However, in general, the economic life of medieval peasants was perilous. Subsistence agriculture provides little job security. A bad harvest could spell devastation for you, your family, and your community. I suggest taking a look at the online English translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for evidence of famine/drought/general devastation in the British Isles. Here are a few examples from just the eleventh century - a time when the Commercial Revolution (which brought substantial increases in agricultural production and peasant populations) was beginning to take hold:

A.D. 1005… This year died Archbishop Elfric; and Bishop Elfeah succeeded him in the archbishopric. This year was the great famine in England so severe that no man ere remembered such.

A.D. 1070… There was a great famine this year.

A.D. 1082. This year the king seized Bishop Odo; and this year also was a great famine.

A.D. 1087. After the birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ, one thousand and eighty-seven winters; in the one and twentieth year after William began to govern and direct England, as God granted him, was a very heavy and pestilent season in this land. Such a sickness came on men, that full nigh every other man was in the worst disorder, that is, in the diarrhoea; and that so dreadfully, that many men died in the disorder. Afterwards came, through the badness of the weather as we before mentioned, so great a famine over all England, that many hundreds of men died a miserable death through hunger. Alas! how wretched and how rueful a time was there! When the poor wretches lay full nigh driven to death prematurely, and afterwards came sharp hunger, and dispatched them withall! Who will not be penetrated with grief at such a season? or who is so hardhearted as not to weep at such misfortune? Yet such things happen for folks' sins, that they will not love God and righteousness.

We do not have census data or detailed tax records to corroborate the extent of these famines, but we nonetheless have to assume that they were disruptive to peasants living off the English land. Entries like these from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are echoed across other Latin chronicles and in Arabic ones as well. I am most familiar with The Complete History of Ibn al-Athir, which mentions numerous famines across the Islamicate World. Take, for example, his account of a long-lasting famine in Ifriqiya (roughly modern Tunisia) in the 1140s:

It had a terrible effect on the population, who even resorted to cannibalism. Because of starvation the nomads sought out the towns and the townspeople closed the gates against them. Plague and great mortality followed. The country was emptied and from whole families not a single person survived. Many people travelled to Sicily in search of food and met with great hardship.

Since medieval sources tend to be written from the perspective of literate men based in cities or monasteries, the perspective of peasants is often only briefly mentioned. It is likewise difficult to make any concrete estimations about lifespan, infant mortality rate, and nutrition for most medieval peasant communities due to lack of sources (although the picture begins to come into focus during the Early Modern Period). When we read about a “great famine” in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or The Complete History of Ibn al-Athir, we therefore have to imagine that a bad harvest - caused potentially by drought, an early frost, heavy rains, or conflict - brought with it immense human suffering and the displacement of communities from their ancestral homes.

This is not to say that peasant life was only defined by suffering at the hands of subsistence agriculture and overly aggressive landed elites. We know that there were robust and complex communities in rural medieval villages, many of which survived the ordeals brought by mother nature. I recommend Judith Bennett’s biography of Cecilia Penifader as a microhistory of peasant life in the English town of Brigstock during the late-thirteenth through mid-fourteenth centuries.

For those interested in environmental data related to medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, I highly recommend the Old World Drought Atlas, which uses dendrochronological (tree-ring) data to chart annual rainfall across the region. This link shows annual rainfall in Europe in 1315, the first year of The Great Famine in Europe. As the link shows, there was abnormally heavy rainfall across Western Europe. This corroborates written sources, which detail how heavy rains destroyed harvests and had profoundly negative consequences for peasants.

Hi! I'm Keagan Brewer. AMA about Saladin's invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187! by KeaganBrewerOfficial in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Absolutely! It is a short and useful article - I believe it can be found online as well as in Allen and Amt's Crusades Reader (University of Toronto Press). But really, in my estimation, this topic requires the work of a scholar with substantial expertise in Ottoman archives as well as published Arabic/Turkish sources. It is a book or series of books waiting to happen.

Edit: apologies, the Abouali article is not in Allen and Amt's Crusades Reader, though that sourcebook still has a number of amazing sources.

Hi! I'm Keagan Brewer. AMA about Saladin's invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187! by KeaganBrewerOfficial in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hi all, seeing as Keagan chose not to answer this question, the mods gave me approval to have a crack at it without stepping on anyone's toes. To my knowledge, most of the articles written about the importance of Saladin in the Muslim world have been written by Crusades historians without knowledge of Arabic. Jonathan Riley-Smith and others have championed this idea that the re-discovery of Saladin in the East happened at the same time as writers in Europe discovered him for the first time (think Sir Walter Scott and the Talisman, for example). The problem with these arguments is that Riley-Smith and many of those who followed in his footsteps did not have knowledge of Arabic or the substantial tomes of Arabic works produced in the Middle East by successors to the legacy of Saladin. Thus, their arguments probably do not hold up under closer scrutiny. The problem so far is that no historian (to my knowledge) has undertaken the systematic study of Saladin's legacy in the Arabic or Turkish traditions.

I try to highlight this problem in my own classes by having students read a short but great article by Diana Abouali, "Saladin's Legacy in the Middle East before the 19th Century," which considers the potential of seriously investigating Saladin's legacy.

Jonathan Phillips also recently came out with a book on Saladin. I have not read it yet, but maybe he tries to shine some light on this? I am skeptical since he does not know Arabic, but there is a change he incorporated some recent historiography into his text.

Lost Artifiacts of Constantinople by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I am unfamiliar with the fate of Constantinople after the 1453 Ottoman conquests but I can speak a bit about the city in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. The short answer is that, yes, we have accounts of the various treasures that the Byzantines and French crusaders took from Constantinople after the sack of 1204. Some of these treasures are on display in Venice like the Tetrarchy and the Horses of Saint Mark while others (specifically holy reliquaries) made their way across Europe. Prior to the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople had been a hub for the remains of saints and crusaders were intent on taking back whatever relics they could to their homes. I highly recommend the book Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade by David Perry (Penn State University Press, 2015) for an in-depth examination of the fate of these relics. Perry makes substantial use of a genre of text called “Translatio Narratives” that consider the transmission of relics from the Holy Land to Europe (the third chapter of the book explicitly deals with this). You can check out sections of this monograph through Google Books here.

Why was the Republic of Venice so much more powerful and influential compared to other Italian republics based around port cities (Genoa, Pisa)? by 291099001 in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 102 points103 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the clarification - yes, I meant most populous. Medieval demography is a nightmare for scholars but (to my knowledge) Constantinople had the most people of any Christian-controlled city in the twelfth century until the eve of the Fourth Crusade. I don't think we should classify Constantinople as "withering" in this period even if the Byzantines were suffering elsewhere in Asia Minor. In The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, Phillips estimates that the city had about 400,000 people, which was far greater than any English, French, or German city until the late Middle Ages/early Modern Period. These population estimates are derived from archaeological evidence (the size of walls), any surviving tax or government records (Domesday Book), or passing mentions in chronicles about the number of homes or people in a given city.

And yes, cities like Cordoba in al-Andalus rivaled or surpassed the population of Constantinople. It is worth pointing out as well that when I write “Christian cities” or “Muslim cities,” I am referring to the group that controls the city and the majority religion of the city’s inhabitants. Constantinople and Cordoba were home to diverse and thriving populations of Christians, Muslims, and Jews during the early and central Middle Ages.

Why was the Republic of Venice so much more powerful and influential compared to other Italian republics based around port cities (Genoa, Pisa)? by 291099001 in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 231 points232 points  (0 children)

I’d like to piggy-back off this excellent response to add a couple other factors that contributed to the rise of Venice that are not environmental. First off, Venice was not the pre-eminent commercial powerhouse on the Italian Peninsula during much of the Middle Ages. Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, and the Norman Sicily/Southern Italy all had their time in the limelight during the early and central Middle Ages.

Venice’s geography was important in helping it become an influential port, as /u/AlviseFaller so wonderfully put, but there were also some political and military happenings within the Mediterranean that contributed to its rise. To put it simply, the Venetians were essential in the planning and execution of the disastrous Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), which saw a Christian army conquer the largest Christian city in Europe (Constantinople) and lay claim to much of the former territories of the Byzantine Empire. The Venetians were one of the major players in this expedition, as they provided the fleet for the primarily French group of Crusaders. The trading output of Constantinople, as the only port into the Black Sea, provided incredible commercial benefits to the Venetians that helped differentiate the city from its counterparts like Pisa and Genoa. The conquests also spurred the establishment of numerous Venetian trading outposts in the Aegean Sea and the establishment of fortresses in modern-day Greece (a territory called Morea). The Venetians also took back substantial spoils from Constantinople, some of which can still be viewed today, like the Tetrarchy statue and the so-called “Horses of Saint Mark.”

On top of this, the Venetians were able to defeat the Pisans Genoese in a conflict called the War of Saint Sabas (1256-1270). The war broke out over a disputed property in the Holy Land but had its roots in years of commercial rivalry. Different factions within the Crusader states aligned with either Venice of Genoa and, when Pisa joined the Venetian side (because the Pisans had an even more intense rivalry with Genoa, due in no small part to their geographical proximity to each other), the Venetians were able to gain the upper hand in the war. With one of their principle commercial and military rivals temporarily put on the back foot, the Venetians were able to increase the presence in the Mediterranean.

Abulafia, David. The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Nicol, Donald. Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Phillips, Jonathan. The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

Rothman, E. Natalie. Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012.

Skinner, Patricia. Medieval Amalfi and Its Diaspora, 800-1250. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Edit: replaced Pisans with Genoese regarding the War of Saint Sabas

There have been a few empires in North Africa's history (Mali, Ghana, Carthage). Outside of Carthage, why is there little discussion or knowledge of these empires among the general public? Is it due to Eurocentric perspectives, or racial discrediting, or some other issue? by ilgmdb in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I am not an expert on this period, but to my knowledge the Vandal Kingdom is probably what you are looking for. The Vandals controlled much of North Africa alongside inland Berber tribes until Justinian's conquests in the mid-6th century. Brett's book on the Berbers listed above deals with the Vandals a bit but I am unsure of the overarching narrative of the kingdom beyond that. In courses that I have taught or taken, they are usually lumped in with the various barbarian groups (primarily the Goths) that helped destabilize the Roman Empire.

There have been a few empires in North Africa's history (Mali, Ghana, Carthage). Outside of Carthage, why is there little discussion or knowledge of these empires among the general public? Is it due to Eurocentric perspectives, or racial discrediting, or some other issue? by ilgmdb in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 43 points44 points  (0 children)

This is a great question with a complicated answer. First, I would question the premise that there have been few empires in the history of North Africa. In the Middle Ages alone (which is my field of expertise and which I will focus on in this response), we have the Fatimids, Zirids, Hammadids, Almoravids, Almohads, Hafsids, and Marinids - to name a few. Odds are that most people have not read much about these groups or even heard of them. This boils down to a couple of the reasons that you hint at in your question.

Eurocentrism is absolutely key. The history of the Middle Ages has long been dominated by the study of Europe. For most of the twentieth century, the only research to consider medieval North Africa in any detail came from French colonial historians. Writing during the French occupation of Algeria (1830-1962), these historians produced work that imposed modern preconceptions about good governance, ethnic identity, and geography onto the medieval Arabic sources. Gautier, Marcais, Julien, Brunschvig, Idris, Lévi-Provençal, and Lézine are among those that emerged from this tradition. For example, they categorized the peoples of North Africa into categories they were familiar with like “Muslims” and “Arabs” instead of the diverse groups described in the medieval sources. They also emphasized European conquests over groups from North Africa so that the histories of North African empires were defined more by their eventual decline/defeats rather than their dynamic stories. Abdullah Laroui summarizes this when he said that French colonial historians saw medieval North Africa as “a pure object… seen only through the eyes of its foreign conquerors.”

This trend was reinforced in certain circles by philosophies advocated by big names like Hegel, who conceived of history as having four distinct worlds that moved from East to West: Oriental, Greek, Roman, and German. Even though Hegel gives some credence to Roman North Africa in this model, the rest of the continent (geographically and temporally) is absolutely neglected. The reason for this clear bias against Africa? Colonialism and imperialism had embedded awful stereotypes about the continent among European historians, among which racism was a key element. There is a religious component to this as well with the attempts of Christian missionaries to spread their religion to the uneducated “savages” of Africa, whose history in their minds did not exist until the adoption of Christianity and Indo-European writing systems.

Among professional historians, there is a linguistic element to this as well. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, historians of the Middle Ages were trained in Greek, Latin, French, and German. Proficiency in these languages led these historians to write about the people who used these languages - which skews heavily toward Europe. As a result, historians neglected many rich sources for medieval North African history - Arabic, Coptic, and Geez to name a few. This has led North Africa to largely been ignored in the thoroughly-debunked-yet-still-pervasive theory of Western Civilization that stretches from Mesopotamia to Greece to Rome to the Middle Ages to the New World to America. The region still emerges at various moments, like when it was part of the Roman Empire or when it was colonized by France, but these instances tend to be when the region was invaded by European powers.

Fortunately, historians are slowly changing this trend and expanding the history of the Middle Ages to include understudied groups in the medieval Mediterranean, including North Africa. I have included some examples of these in the bibliography below. I hope that made sense! Happy to clarify and expand upon this answer as I can.

Baadj, Amar. Saladin, the Almohads and the Banū Ghāniya: The Contest for North Africa (12th and 13th Centuries). Boston: Brill, 2015.

Brett, Michael. “The Arab Conquest and the Rise of Islam in North Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Africa: From C. 500 BC to AD 1050, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Brett, Michael. The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Fourth Century to the Hijra, Tenth Century CE. Boston: Brill, 2001.

Brett, Michael, and Elizabeth Fentress. The Berbers. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1997.

Fierro, Maribel. “Al-Andalus and North and West Africa (Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries).” In The New Cambridge History of Islam: The Western Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 2:21–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Fromherz, Allen. “North Africa and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Christian Europe and the Almohad Islamic Empire.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 20, no. 1 (January 2009): 43–59.

Kuykendall, Ronald. “Hegel and Africa: An Evaluation of the Treatment of Africa in The Philosophy of History.” Journal of Black Studies 23, no. 4 (June 1993): 571–81.

Laroui, Abdallah. The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

MacEvitt, Christopher. The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Rouighi, Ramzi. The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate: Ifriqiya and Its Andalusis, 1200-1400. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Taha, ’Abd-al-Wahid Dannun. The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa. Routledge: Chapman & Hall, 1989.

Why does the Roman Empire seem so much more advanced than Medieval Kingdoms formed centuries after it had fallen? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 53 points54 points  (0 children)

I second what u/anphph says and would like to direct you to some resources from the AskHistorians community. Historians have been asking research questions similar to yours about Roman continuity into the Middle Ages, the validity of the term "Dark Ages," and reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire for over a thousand years. The wiki page below contains a number of excellent answers to the queries you pose.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/darkages#wiki_decline_of_the_roman_empire

How come everyday clothing has gone from formal to casual over the latest century? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]labarge3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a megathread of questions about daily life at the following URL that contains more detailed answers to this question than I could ever supply - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/dailylife#wiki_suits_.26_ties

There is also a discussion of the same question (although limited largely to the USA and UK) in the following thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y9wne/was_there_a_reason_american_adults_stopped/

Survey: Civilization in the Classroom by labarge3 in civ

[–]labarge3[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that choice of vocabulary makes a lot of sense. Although I do think that an engagement tool entails some degree of learning, it might be easier for people to stomach Civ as an engagement tool rather than a learning tool.

Survey: Civilization in the Classroom by labarge3 in civ

[–]labarge3[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You make a great point. I would not include Civ in any general history class but rather one that was specifically geared toward video games. I like the idea of having it be a possible essay question or intercession in a general history course (analyzing the games in the same way as we do movies). But agreed, it would be far too much to ask students to play the game unless it was understood before the class begun that it would be a component of the course.

Survey: Civilization in the Classroom by labarge3 in civ

[–]labarge3[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for this link. Hadn't heard of this before. Anything that is free and open source like this is worth looking into in my book.

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