Reviews for The nightmare of history

The average rating for The nightmare of history based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-06-21 00:00:00 Chris Malicek Lords of Battle by Stephen Evans, 1997, 140 pages plus appendix This is a fairly narrow social and cultural history where the emphasis is on the warband, or comitatus if you prefer that term. It runs, loosely, from the end of the 5th century to the end of the 8th as Evans sees this as not only the 'Heroic Age' but that towards the latter years there was a change in relationships, where land became significant at the expense of the personal ties found in the warband. Personally I'd say that some aspects of the 'heroic age' lasted this long and even longer, but other aspects perhaps changed before then. The comitatus is taken as those warriors who lived and feasted with their lord and had that personal relationship to him and not wider society whose relationship to their lord was indirect. This book does read like an expanded thesis where in some places Evans is almost trying to prove a point instead of just allowing his points to speak for themselves, but that is only in certain places. It is a nice read and there is a lot that can be picked up from it. Evans doesn't just concentrate on the Anglo-Saxons, but instead discusses the Britons as well. He uses evidence from them both, which isn't possible in many books on this period. He is perfectly justified in this, as their socio-economic positions were similar enough for the warband to become a central feature to both societies (an aspect that he fully makes out). The main sources are Aneurin, Taliesin, Beowulf, the Life of Guthlac and Bede. This does give a Northumbrian feel to the work. However, the use of poetry does rely on it being an accurate representation of the period it is alleged to be describing and there is the trap of looking for evidence to specifically support the poetry which can become a circular argument. There are some very useful footnotes to this work, which are always very welcome to see. There are also some excellent chapters, in particular that on duties and obligations, although I did think that in another he laboured the point a bit over treasure giving. It almost felt like he was mentioning every relevant source that he'd found. Other chapters include military organisation, social structure, poets, the hall and the economic supports. I found his comments about the use of horses by Heroic Age Anglo-Saxons (as opposed to later) interesting. He suggests that the Britons used horses in war during this period, but the Anglo-Saxons didn't. He backs this up by pointing out the lack of riding related finds in graves and that the small size of horses during this period would make their use in war questionable. This isn't totally convincing as the size of the horses would cut both ways and the lack of archaeological finds could be for a number of reasons. In addition to this, there are mentions of horses being raced and also hunting being a popular warband activity, both of which would suggest the horses being fairly rugged and in the Gododdin Gwawrddur is recorded as giving out horses from his herd which suggests that there may have been a royal stud and it's hard to see why the Anglo-Saxons who occupied much richer lands didn't. Evans sees the heroic age Anglo-Saxons as being more egalitarian than the Britons with folkmoots, a flattened social structure (deduced from the lack of elite finds in early archaeology) and Edwin consulting his nobles over conversion. However, this probably should be pushed too far. By the time of Edwin, graves had been demonstrating a hierarchical social structure for a while and whilst I can't think of any evidence for folkmoots being significant in this period, a show of consultation with those who matter is a time honoured prudent course of action. These are fairly minor quibbles, though, being things that I picked up on and aren't truly representative of just how much I enjoyed this book. It's quite focussed on the early warbands, so perhaps isn't for everyone, but it's certainly worth a read and if you are interested in the topic, it's one not to miss.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-06-06 00:00:00 John Holt There's not much evidence for this topic that survives from the period in question. Evans has gathered almost all of it in one book, which is an acheivement in itself and should be of interest to anyone who wants to know what the evidence is. He is also very good at squeezing that evidence for information. Admittedly this means there's a lot of repetition, not in the argument but in what's being used to support it. The book's main strength may be its insistence on the small size of these units in this period. A 'war band' may have been as few as ten to twenty armed men, and Mynyddog's three hundred, celebrated in the Gododdin if not poetic exaggeration, would have seemed an enormous army by comparison. The weakness is the reliance on the poetry. As an Historical source, Beowulf probably reveals more about the way the audience imagined the past, than how the past was. And there is a definite loop....Beowulf tells us about the history so the history confirms Beowulf. The weakest chapter is probably the one on the poets. Welsh tradition preserves praise poetry and attributes it to named poets. Leaving aside the arguments about dates, there's enough to substantiate the claim that the poet was a significant figure in Welsh 'heroic' society. But is there any evidence outside a couple of 'poems' that 'poet' was a recognisable category for the Anglo-Saxons in the way it was for the Welsh. Are there any surviving poems from this period, in Old English, which are about historical characters or events? Is there any evidence outside the poetry, for an English tradition comparable to that which surrounds Taliesn and Aeneirin. I think arguments about the role of the scop in building and maintaining the ethos of the germanic war band might need to be handled with care and qualified by more recent work such as Emily Thornbury's 'Becoming a poet in Anglo-Saxon England'. With that qualification this is probably an essential resource for anyone who is interested in this topic and period.