Thread by @medievalguy

MEDIEVAL WARFARE: A READER, from @utpress, is now available for pre-order wherever you buy fine books. Here’s the Amazon link:

amzn.to/2G9BJ5S

And you know, if you’ve got a minute, I’d like to talk about it. (Thread 1/x)

So this is a big book. They’re typesetting now — you can ignore that April release date — and I’m guessing it’ll be 400 pages when it’s done. The book may serve as protection against many medieval weapons of war, folks.

It’s HUGE. (2/x)

We knew it would be. When they approached me and Kelly DeVries to do a collection of primary sources, we insisted it have a certain scope. That scope is the reason for this thread, as it touches into some Big Issues in the field. (3/x)

You surely know that Medieval Studies has been undergoing an overdue reckoning in recent days. We’ve all been forced to wrestle with issues of privilege within the profession — within the current lifeblood of the academy and within its historical bones. (4/x)

Who controls what we study? What constitutes our field? Who controls what we study? How do we grapple with the sins of the past — not just our own, but those of our forebears and even the objects of our study? (5/x)

Most of us welcome this new awareness of complexity and complicity. We’d be fools indeed if we didn’t consider the underlying threads of racial, religious, social, and political relationships that course through the traditional definitions of the Middle Ages. (6/x)

While these issues are boiling in the field now, they (unfortunately) weren’t exactly on the front burners when we agreed on this book’s content and signed our contract for it.

They were simmering, though. (7/x)

That’s the main reason this book is big. When we sat down to put this together, we cast a wide net across the field. What sources did people want to see in this book? What voices? What subjects? More pressing, what sources would people want to see 5 years from now? 10? (8/x)

A book like this has an obvious value in classroom, so we knew we needed to cover the needs of *current* syllabi.

But we also knew that we had to be cognizant that those syllabi would (should) change. (9/x)

Indeed, Kelly and I felt we were in a position to nudge that change. In our choices of sources — and our presentation of them — we could in some small way open the eyes of colleagues current and future to a wider expanse of medieval realities. (10/x)

It’s fair to say, then, that we had a LOT of voices in our ears as we sat down to finalize our selections. And if you were one of the MANY people who lent us your time and thoughts, we thank you. Your voices were heard. We learned so much from you. (11/x)

When it came to finalizing the scope of this amazing volume, we had four strongly held positions that guided our actions.

In the interest of transparency, here they are: (12/x)

ONE, we’d NOT be putting together a book on the England-France axis of history. Sure, that axis is groovy and taught a lot, so of course we’ve got Agincourt and Joan of Arc in here. Current medical syllabi built on that axis (which is probably most of them) will be fine. (13/x)

But oh my goodness do we have so much more. We literally mapped the engagements of our sources, saw open spots in the map, and then talked to scholars in order to fill them. (14/x)

TWO, we would NOT be confining our readings to chronicles and the like. This would be a collection approaching warfare from as many angles as we could find. Poetic responses? Logistical operations? All that and more. (15/x)

THREE, we WOULD be taking an enormously broad definition of what constitutes the Middle Ages.

Spoiler alert: we run it from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. No matter how you define the ‘Middle Ages’, we hope we’ve got it covered. (16/x)

FOUR, we WOULD be looking at the fullness of the impacts of war. We weren’t going to focus on the battlefield alone, but upon the impacted citizenry around it, too. (17/x)

Speaking personally, this last element is the thing I might be most proud to have done in the volume. I’ve heard folks equate the study of warfare with a desire for war … as if we encourage conflict by studying conflict. (18/x)

This is hardly so. The study of warfare is about honestly appraising some of the most powerful forces shaping who we are: not just war, but peace, technology, terror, and how the human spirit survives against all odds. (19/x)

As folks will see, we built this sensibility into the actual structure of the volume. It begins not with laudatory celebrations of victory, but with horrifying accounts of pain and loss and suffering. (20/x)

It’s the voice of a woman whose world has been destroyed by warring men. It’s the voice of the veteran coming home from campaign to find the world changed, his jobs taken in his absence. It’s the harsh reality of battle on and off the field. (21/x)

It’s not fun stuff to read.

But it’s impactful. And it’s important.

It’s who we are. It’s everything. (22/x)

The volume won’t be perfect. We know that. No sourcebook can be. It’s not even out and we’re already thinking of things we might consider adding in a second edition.

(Our editor may have just fainted.) (23/x)

Readers will have a lot to say, too, when the time comes. I know Kelly and I are looking forward to those conversations. (24/x)

So, yeah. MEDIEVAL WARFARE. It’s coming. Pre-order now, if you’re so inclined.

Thanks for reading.

Now go love things. Donate to them. Be strong. Never stop fighting.

(25/end)