Russian logistics during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-5) were... fraught.

Port Arthur (now Lüshun) is 5,300 miles from Moscow, meaning Russia was effectively fighting a distant colonial war against Japan, which in turn could easily supply its soldiers by sea. /1 Everything depended on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a huge engineering achievement but one, nonetheless, done on the cheap.

Notably it was only a single line along most of its length. No sooner was it complete than a major improvements programme began. /2

The largest and heaviest armoured fighting vehicles in history have attracted surprisingly little popular or academic attention.

But don’t miss out on these land leviathans – ride with me into the world of ARMOURED TRAINS! 🧵 Part I: Dawn of the Armoured Train

Militaries were quick to realise the potential of the invention of the steam locomotive in the early 19th century: armies that once took weeks to lumber across the landscape could now move in days. /1

Byzantine civilisation is closely associated with fortifications. The mighty Theodosian Walls guarded Constantinople for a millennium. Cities, by definition, had circuits of walls; the countryside is littered with towers.

But what of Byzantine castles? 🧵 Certainly there were many Byzantine forts or citadels, guarding positions of critical military importance and were centres of local administration.

But these were public buildings, constructed by the state. Some Western castles, usually royal fortresses, are analogous to this.

The Battle of Ennakosia

In summer 1337 the first recorded incursion into Europe by the Ottoman Turks occurred. Flush from recent successes conquering Byzantine Anatolia, they believed the Empire of the Romans was now virtually defenceless. They were about to discover otherwise. Raids by various Turkish bands had become a plague along the coasts in the years since they overran Anatolia. Small, highly mobile groups would cross into Europe or the Aegean islands, often under cover of darkness.

The Medieval Machine

Contrary to enduring misconceptions, during the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries), Western Europe was already one of the most technologically advanced regions of the world.

Thread of extracts from Jean Gimpel’s classic study. The Cistercian order was especially interested in waterpower: a monastery would harness it for milling, sieving, fulling and tanning, as well as flushing the drains.

The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization [book 🧵]

This volume (first published in 2005) argues against the still-fashionable assertion that the 'dark ages' weren't really such and the fall of Rome was a process of gradual, even gentle, transformation. Rather than rehash qualitative arguments, or rely on elite experience, Ward-Perkins defines 'civilisation' as complexity and concentrates on archaeological evidence for the rapid simplification (collapse) of household and mass-consumption economies.

Some extracts follow.

Guns and Romans:
A brief history of Roman firearms

Such a history must be brief because the history of European firearms only begins in the 14th century and the Roman Empire wasn’t destined to be around much longer. Yet firearms were far from unknown in the Byzantine world! There is no direct evidence that the Romans built firearms themselves, although their principles of operation were understood well enough, as shown by the historian Doukas’ description of the Ottoman siege of Belgrade in 1440.