Random Facts #2: The Fury of the Sacred Chickens

I love ancient Roman history. It comes in a close second behind medieval history for my all-time favorite subjects. It's one of those few periods where everything to study fascinates me; social systems, politics, military science, economics, and religion. Roman history is full of the weird and wonderful, and I'm going to share with you today my personal favorite story.

Sacred Chicken and his pet priests

Strangely, when a lot of people think about the Romans, they neglect to remember Roman religion. But for this story to make sense, you have to remember that the Romans were a deeply religious people; gladiatorial games originated as religious festivals, the Pantheon was a temple, and there is a reason that they got upset when various groups refused to acknowledge dead emperors as gods.

That or the Romans built the largest free-standing dome in the world because they just really liked circles!

Our story takes place in 249 BCE in the middle of the First Punic War. This was a war fought between the Roman Republic and her rival Carthage for supremacy of Sicily and the wider Mediterranean world. The more famous Second Punic War would take place a few decades later; that was the one with Hannibal and elephants marching over the Alps. The first war was largely a naval affair, with several battles between navies being fought for control of Mediterranean waters. Early on, the Romans did extremely poorly in these contests. The Carthaginians were descendants of the Phoenicians who were the greatest sailors and explorers of the ancient world.

This did not end well...

Finally however, the Romans invented a weapon called the Corvus which allowed them to latch onto the more maneuverable enemy ships so that Roman infantry could slaughter the crews. I won't get into specifics here, but Roman naval tactics were really neat and I encourage you to read more about them if you're interested. The war went back and forth, but Rome racked up enough naval victories to make them fairly confident, and in 249 BCE they launched an expedition towards the Sicilian city of Lilybaeum, and that's where our story really gets going.

The commander of this expedition was the senior Roman Consul for that year, Publius Claudius Pulcher. The Romans elected two Consuls every year, and they served as sort of co-presidents of the Roman Republic. One of their main responsibilities were leading major Roman armies, hence Pulcher being involved here. Pulcher decided to attack the harbor of Drepana, where a Carthaginian fleet was anchored; both fleets consisted of about 120 ships, and the Romans were confident.

Now here is where the sacred chickens came in. Sacred Chickens were birds raised by Roman priests and used to predict the future. The early Senate rarely made decisions without consulting these birds, and some of them accompanied Roman field armies. Essentially feed would be spread before the chickens, and the way they ate the feed was used to determine the outcome of a future event. I'm not sure exactly how this was determined, but that's besides the point.

Still more dependable than a TV Psychic...

So as Pulcher lined his fleet up for battle, the sacred chickens were brought onto the deck of his flagship and the major officers and crewman of the fleet gathered around to watch the divination take place. The sacred feed was spread and... nothing. The chickens refused to eat. This was unheard of, and immediately taken as an extremely bad omen, with some of the officers believing that it was a sign that a retreat should immediately be called. Pulcher could see that his men were terrified, and decided to make a joke to keep up morale. It did not go well.

Seriously this story is so weird...

Pulcher plucked (ahem) up the chickens and carried them to the edge of his ship. He then proclaimed "Since they do not wish to eat, then let them drink!" and proceeded to chuck the chickens overboard, where they drowned. We aren't sure of his men's reaction to this, but the battle happened anyway and I bet you can guess how it turned out.

The fuck you say?

Of 120 ships, the Romans lost 93 and most of their men. The Carthaginians lost no ships and only a handful of their men were killed. The battle was a crushing defeat for the Romans, who instantly lost their dominance of the sea. Pulcher survived the battle, but was immediately recalled to Rome. The battle had been such a disaster that the Senate commanded Pulcher to nominate a man as dictator; a person given supreme authority and answerable to nobody during national emergencies. However, the Senate disliked his choice, and decided they'd had enough of Pulcher. He was tried for incompetence, treason and, perhaps equally as bad, sacrilege. According to ancient historians including Cicero and Suetonius, the main piece of evidence against him was his abuse of the sacred chickens. Soon after Pulcher was dead; we aren't sure how, but it is extremely likely that he committed suicide in shame.


And that, boys and girls, is why you don't mess with the sacred chickens. And yeah, I know most of these pictures are of Roosters and not chickens, but bite me.

Random Facts #1: The Red Baron and the Silk Road

In the last couple of weeks I have started to put posts together that, when done, were too short or otherwise unsuited for full-length pieces. However, I am always coming up with interesting tidbits of information while reading or working on projects, and I thought a series would be a great way to share these with everyone. I am going to toy around with the exact format for this new "Random Facts" series of posts, but for now I am hoping they will each be relatively short posts with a minimum of personal opinion interjected in. I am aiming to avoid facts that I feel are are relatively common knowledge (Napoleon wasn't actually short, the vikings didn't have horned helmets, etc.) and I am hoping to focus on areas that are semi-obscure, but we will see! So onto the first post!

What do the Red Baron and the Silk Road have in common? A little background. The Silk Road is a term commonly used to describe a network of trade routes between Asia and Europe in the pre-modern period, which fell into decline for a variety of reasons I won't get into here. Today, the term "Silk Road" is actually a bit controversial within the field of history, if you can believe that as I am sure that many of you, like myself, were taught about this trade route during school and possibly even in survey-level history courses you may have had in college. Why is it controversial?

The Traditional Route of the Silk Road, courtesy of Wikipedia

Trade routes have existed between Asia and Europe and the Middle East basically since complex civilizations developed in the regions, but things really picked up with the building of the Royal Road by the Persians, increased contact with Europe brought on by Alexander's conquests, and then especially with the establishment of the Han Dynasty in China. In addition to silk, a wide variety of trade goods were exchanged, as were cultural and religious ideas, scientific knowledge, etc.

Y'all got any more of those sweet sweet Asian empires? Alexander the Great

The problem with the name "Silk Road" and the traditional image of the route (shown above) is that they are really overly-simplistic. There were a large number of routes, and they connected more than the eastern Mediterranean and China. India, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Arabian peninsula were all important areas along these routes of trade. Perhaps the thing that most shocks many people today though is that the term Silk Road itself is that it wasn't used in the ancient or medieval world. It's a modern invention.

The really crazy thing is that this extremely well-known and widely used term was coined by a single man, He wasn't, as you might expect, a historian, or an economist, or anything like that. He was a German geographer and (what we would call today) travel writer. And he single handedly coined the term "Silk Road" in... 1877. Just to put that in perspective, that's 12 years AFTER the end of the American Civil War, one year after the first successful telephone call, and only 26 years before the first aircraft took off. That is extremely recent!

Don't quote me on this, but I believe the 1870's were also the decade that inspired the song "Baby Got Back". 

And now to the point of this post. What was this well-traveled geographer's name? Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. Richthofen led an interesting life; he traveled widely, including several major expeditions around Asia. He spent year in America, where he used his geographical knowledge to help locate gold fields in California, having a major impact on the California Gold Rush. In addition to his coining of the "Silk Road" name, he pioneered several important geographical concepts. He taught a number of students who went on to have major impacts in the scientific and geographical communities, including Swedish explorer Sven Hedin who was the first European to accurately map Central Asia, and Wilhelm Sievers whose work in South America formed the basis for the modern study of South American geography. His works were considered must-reads in various fields for decades after his death and geographical features were named after him, including one of the highest mountains in the American Rockies.

Ferdinand Richthofen

Pertinent to this post though is that Ferdinand came from a very prominent family. One of Ferdinand's brothers founded the Denver chamber of Commerce and is sometimes considered a founding father of Colorado. One of his cousins was Freida Lawrence, the wife of famed novelist DH Lawrence; her sister Else von Richthofen was one of the first female sociologists in the world. The Richthofens produced scientists, diplomats, academics, and socialites, and even a few military men.

Else von Richthofen

And we finally come to the point. Ferdinand had another brother, Major Albrecht Philipp Karl Julius Freiherr (Freiherr being a German noble title usually translated as "Baron) von Richthofen, who, despite his impressive name was not particularly notable. However, in 1892 Albrecht had a son, whom he named Manfred.

Manfred von Richthofen

You probably know him better by his World War I nickname, the Red Baron. So there you go, The Red Baron's uncle created the "Silk Road", at least in a round about way. For such an interesting family, there is surprisingly little information available about them, at least in English. My sources for this little post were mostly German pieces found online. Despite my best efforts to stay in-practice my German remains rusty, so if any of the information found here is erroneous please let me know! I should note that Manfred's brother also became an Ace, as did his distant cousin Field Marshall Wolfram von Richthofen. Many members of the family immigrated to the United States, including a branch to right here in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area.

I love that history has all of these hidden little connections; it's one of the coolest thing about studying it! This post ran a little longer than i expected, but hopefully you still found it interesting. Let me know if you'd like to see more of these!

Woot!

Just a short blog today about a couple of personal items.

Firstly, I received a very nice gift in the mail yesterday from an anonymous reader. They somehow managed to track down my Amazon Wishlist and ordered me an item from it!

Bully!

I have misplaced the gift note that came with it sometime in the last 24 hours, but it essentially said something along the lines of "From a fan of the blog, keep up the good work." If it was you, please let me know so I can thank you personally! I've added a wishlist link to the sidebar; not that I want or expect anything else! I do this blog purely for fun and to keep up on my own writing, but thank you all the same! Mostly I'm hoping that it'll give you good ideas for books to look into yourself; I add to it pretty regularly just in case you're looking for something to read up on yourself. As you might expect, it's mostly history books, but I do occasionally add non-fiction and a handful of other items as well.


The second thing is that the blog is doing surprisingly well. As of the time of writing I am getting pretty close to 1000 page views. Some of those are me looking at posts to make sure formatting went through correctly, but either way that's way more views than I had expected! Again, thank you so much for your support, it really means a lot to me. I haven't been posting as frequently as I would like (I am trying to shoot for a decent history-related post every few days at least) but I am going to redouble my efforts. If you have any suggestions for posts, please let me know!

Thirdly, As of the time that the bank opens tomorrow and transfers my payment, I have officially paid off my undergraduate loans! I'm still buried in ones from grad school, but regardless I feel extremely relieved not to have those payments to make anymore each month.

Anyway, that is it! See you next time!

Flailing About

Today's post was written at the request of a former professor of mine, and is response to this article. In it, the writer essentially ascertains that the flail either did not exist and was a creation of imaginative medieval artists, or did exist and was an extremely rare experimental weapon solely of late Medieval Europe. The piece is interesting, but unfortunately, I don't believe any of it.

Just to start, a flail was a weapon made of a weight (or weights), sometimes spiked, attached to a short chain which was then attached to a handle. You probably know it better as a morning star or ball and chain, both of which are technically incorrect names but this isn't really the place to get into that discussion. They have historically been used for harvesting grain plants, and were relatively common in one form or another across most of Eurasia since at least Roman times.

A Threshing Flail

At various points in history, these were turned into weapons. This was a pretty common practice in pre-modern warfare; militias, conscripted levies, and the like often used whatever items they had laying around as weapons as pre-modern states rarely had the case or surplus equipment to outfit these levies properly. Over time, many of these improvised weapons were improved upon and modified to become dedicated weapons. My favorite example is the bill.

Not that kind

The bill was a weapon mostly used by the medieval English. It was adopted from the billhook, a type of implement used in forestry and agriculture, used especially for hacking through grapevines, tree branches, and similar tough plant matter. Military bills were adapted from these by being mounted on poles. This produced a highly effective weapon that could be used as a spear or as a long-handled axe, and had the bonus of including a hook which was useful for dismounting cavalrymen, hamstringing horses, and pulling shields or pikes out of the way leaving the bill user's friends an opening to exploit.

That's more like it! A group of reenactors holding bills during an event at Cardiff Castle, Wales.

So, we have some background on adapted weapons and their use. Let's dig into the article a little more, shall we?


The article first cites two books, one stating that the weapon existed but was probably rare, the other stating that they were made up. The first book probably has the right of it; a flail offers few advantages over the much simpler to manufacture and use  mace (basically a highly-specialized club). The second book, from 1968, claims that they never existed, but the author goes into no more detail. 

The criticisms of the flail as a weapon which follow are equally ridiculous. The author states that the weapon was too unwieldy to be used safely, but I am not sure he is actually familiar with melee weapons. Some of the best attested, more common medieval weapons were extremely unwieldy. Two of my personal favorites are the German zweihander (a large, two-handed sword most likely used to batter enemy pikes down) and the viking daneaxe, a massive axe used to hack apart enemy shields in the early middle ages and famously carried by the Byzantine Varangian Guard. These weapons had to be swung in wide arcs to be effective. 

Actual medieval combat probably didn't look quite like the formations you see in film, and they were rarely especially dense as this could spell disaster on the field as men were squeezed together, unable to defend themselves as allegedly happened to the Romans surrounded by Hannibal at Cannae. Additionally, we know that these weapons are completely functional in combat; numerous modern western martial arts and HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) groups practice with the weapon, and using German sources (more on that below) have recreated fighting techniques to figure out how they would have been used in combat situations. Just google "HEMA Flail", there are a ton of YouTube videos showing HEMA members practicing, and some of them are pretty good! We also know that trench weapons were made during the First World War in the shape of flails and the like. We have multiple examples that were used by storm troopers and trench raiders during the war that have survived. 

German WWI Trench Flail, Ca. 1917

The rebound of the weapon is noted, but this was also unlikely to be an issue; as shown chained items were used commonly in agriculture without serious risk of injury. He notes that the chains would be liable to break in battle, which sounds like a good argument, until you consider that literally the most common weapon in human history is this:

Japanese Yari, a type of Spear

And guess what? Spear shafts, broke, a lot. Men carried more than one weapon into battle. So I am not convinced that breakage is an argument against the flail. 

So to the meat of his argument. The fact that most flails in museums today are reproductions (he uses the loaded word "fake", which in the museum world carries its own definition and usually refers to an item made specifically to trick people into thinking they're real). So what? One of my favorite pieces at the art museum in Cincinnati, Ohio is this: 

The item in the foreground is a a crossbow which was produced as a show or exhibition piece. Many art museums have similar pieces. Does this mean that crossbows weren't real? Just because museum items weren't combat effective doesn't mean that they were never used. Combat items were used, broken, and discarded or recycled. Logically most of what would survive would have been artistic or ceremonial pieces. If you played baseball as a kid, you probably didn't keep most of the balls you played with, but you MIGHT still have that game-winning ball around, right? Same thing here. Even weapons which were historically very common exist today only rarely. Take the Roman Gladius; only a few hundred examples have ever been found (in all the ruins of Pompeii, only four were discovered) despite the fact that, at one time or another, they would have been produced in the tens or hundreds of thousands. If time has been that unkind to steel and iron weapons, imagine what happened to weapons primarily made of wood? No medieval English or Welsh Longbows have ever been discovered, and we only even have a couple hundred from the Renaissance when they ceased to be a common war weapon. We do have surviving examples though, but I'll get to that in a minute.

The article then uses similar poor reasoning by pointing out that the few artistic representations of flails from the period have other fantastical elements, but again, this is ridiculous. Each of the representations shown also show chainmail, spears, swords, etc. Did these weapons never exist? He closes out the article by stating that the weapons were either rare or non-existent, and then talks about why they are so persistent in pop culture, but I'm not here to discuss the latter point. 

So what evidence do we have that flails were used as combat weapons? Plenty!

The first piece of evidence is literary. Flails are commonly attested to in German Fechtbuch or "fighting books." These books were produced during the German Renaissance, and were essentially fighting manuals that were widely circulated throughout Europe. These were not, for the most part, written by amatuers. Many were produced by men who made their lives as fencing masters; they would travel throughout Europe serving as mercenaries or training the nobility in the medieval European martial arts for war and things like trials by combat. 

Text on the military use of the flail on folio 210 r of Paulus Hector Mair's Opus Amplissimum de Arte Athletica, written in the 1540s in Augsburg, Germany. 

The use of flails, folio 60rv, from Hans Talhoffer's untitled manual.

These manual's are awesome by the way. Original images of the folios can be found here and here. The site, which has been put together by a group of people interested in medieval martial arts, has numerous other fechtbuch examples, and translations are widely available online. 

We do have surviving examples, by the way, They are found in museums throughout Europe, and are far simpler than those shown off at the Met, which, again, were art or ceremonial pieces, not unlike the highly ornate swords carried by some military officers today while in dress uniform. 

Late German Examples, which have been authenticated as originals

We also know that these weapons were in use not just in medieval Europe, but throughout Eurasia and extending their use until a relatively late date. Numerous sources verify that flails were used by peasants during the Hussite Wars of the early 15th Century, as an example.

And they weren't just seen in Europe, oh no! In Japan, a type of flail known as the Chigiriki was used. In addition to examples from the Edo and Early Meiji periods which survive, their use continues to be taught by several Japanese martial arts schools such as the Araki-ryu school, which has existed continuously since the end of the Japanese warring states period and is at least several hundred years old. 

Chigiriki

Similar weapons were also use in China and Korea. In China they used one of my favorite weapons ever, simply for the pure factor of its ridiculousness. It was similar in many ways to a flail, but nothing I can say will do it justice so I will let the video speak for itself. I give you, the Chinese liúxīng chuí, or "Meteor Hammer". 

Examples have also been found in India. They were sometimes used by as late as the 19th Century, both as ceremonial weapons, weapons in the use of Indian martial arts styles, and even in the field against British soldiers. 

A selection of weapons from Lahore, India at the Royal Armouries, Leeds

And this brings me to my last point. Many kinds of pre-modern weapons were developed independently across Europe and Asia (and many other parts of the world), assuming that various cultures and localities had both the need and the resources to produce them. Most pre-modern cultures had some version of the spear, the sword, the axe, the mace or club, the bow, etc. If chain weapons were being used in East and South Asia, their use in Europe, while not confirmed, seems much more realistic. Just because a weapon was rare, doesn't mean that it didn't exist at all. 

If there is a topic you'd like me to dig into, please let me know! 

Book Review: "Sicily"

Partially to help me get back into the habit of writing regularly, I've decided to include book reviews on here. Today I'll be reviewing "Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History" by John Julius Norwich.

The book was released in July 2015 and was published by Random House. You can get it on Amazon Here . The hardback edition which I am basing this review on is 332 pages long, not counting the preface, introduction, and a brief bibliography and index.

The author, whose full name is John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, reminds me of those history authors you sometimes read who were writing in the early 20th Century. Members of the British aristocracy who sometimes had little or no training in historiography, they were a group who were usually writing about famous ancestors, military affairs, or the places they had traveled and were often extremely prominent public figures. Examples would include people like Winston Churchill (who wrote numerous political and military histories and biographies), Captain B.H. Liddell Hart (a military history author whose strategic and tactical theories continue to influence military doctrine today), and Lady Elizabeth Longford (a biographer primarily of the British Monarchy and Victorian personalities). Norwich comes from an equally prominent background; his family was founded by one of the illegitimate children of King William IV, his father was a famous diplomat and politician from the British Conservative Party, and his mother was a famous actress, socialite, and author. Norwich himself has led an interesting life; in addition to his work as a prominent diplomat, he is a member of the House of Lords, has appeared on numerous television programs, and has a bibliography that covers a dizzying number of topics ranging from the history of the Byzantine empire to British architecture.

"Sicily" attempts to tell the history of the Italian island of Sicily, beginning with the Ancient Greek colonies located there and ending at the close of the Second World War. Obviously covering more than 2,600 years of history in less than 350 pages is quite ambitious, but as as a very basic overview I think the book is a success. It primarily covers the "big" history of the Island, particularly it's various monarchs and other notable figures. Strangely, he seems to focus most heavily on the Norman period, a couple of 19th century monarchs, and the island's role in Italian unification. The entire Roman, Sub-Roman, Byzantine, and Arab periods are covered in a single chapter, while the Norman Kingdom gets two full chapters and parts of two others. As one might expect the later on in history we get, the more Norwich covers, but I would have liked to have read more about the period between the Greeks and and early modern era!

The book's greatest failing is it's emphasis on top-down history, an issue encountered in many histories written today. Especially in later chapters, Norwich focuses almost exclusively on royal families, diplomats, generals, clergymen, and a handful of "lovable rogues" like mafiosos. The female perspectives we get are all foreign-born aristocrats, and of lower class peoples we read very little, except about their suffering and exploitation at the hands of those in power. While it's understandable in that these groups, especially the rural poor, left behind little to no literary evidence, I would have liked to see a little more information pulled form archaeology and even folk history.

The narrative is well-written and, from what I can tell, well researched despite the relatively sparse bibliography. I found it difficult to put down, and in parts it read as much like an excellent novel as it did like a history. The only quibble I have here is Norwich's tendency to go off on tangents throughout, but I easily forgave these as they were usually short and always entertaining.

 I found the book fascinating. I picked it up solely on a whim a few months ago but just got around to finishing it. If you are looking for a brief introduction to the history of the island of Sicily, I think you will be hard-pressed to find a better work. Apart from its history under the Greeks and Romans and its role in World War II, I knew very little about the island but now feel that I have a solid, if not expansive, grounding in its history. It's a great jumping off point if you want to get deeper into the subject of Italian history, a subject I'd never really thought much about (apart from, as always, the Romans). If you plan on visiting southern Italy anytime in your life, I'd also recommend the book to just about anyone. Despite its size it is a quick read, and it frequently describes the history of some of the region's primary tourist sites in enough detail to impress and annoy the people on your tour group. While not perfect, the book is interesting, and as a popular history and a very brief summary, I consider it a smashing success.

Let me know if you like this format, if you'd prefer more in-depth reviews for shorter snippets. Thanks!

Politics in History

I'm writing today's post based on a recent op-ed in the New York Times titled "A Confession of Liberal Intolerance". I'd like to preface this by laying out my own biases here: for the most part I lean left-of-center and am a registered Democrat. With that said, I agree with the article 100%.

Long-Haired College Brandon, Wearing a "Free Tibet" T-Shirt. I was THAT guy...

In the piece, Nicholas Kristof, a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, discusses the bias, sometimes turning into outright discrimination, against political conservatives in academia today, and in the liberal arts and humanities in particular. The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html .

Within history, the growth of liberal bias was largely a result of the counterculture movement in the 60s and 70s. In the early 20th century history was primarily the preserve of elderly, largely conservative males, discussing high-level political, military, religious, and architectural and art history. The explosion in the number of liberal historians was at least in part a response to these earlier historians. However, in the past decade or two the pendulum swung right past the center and far to the left.

"A Famous Historian" From Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The type of historians the left rebelled against beginning in the 1960s. 

I think this is probably this is one of the largest issues in the field of History today,. History should be the unbiased analysis and interpretation of past events, and the teaching of the results of that work. What it should not be is a platform for political or social movements, whether liberal or conservative. The very first thing that any college undergraduate learns in their first upper-level history courses is about the idea of academic bias, why it is bad, and how it should be avoided to the best of one's ability.  I have time and again seen teachers and professors teach a class on bias, then spend the very next meeting of that same class delivering a lecture full of those overt biases. The problem extends into the field of Public History as well, and I've seen it pop up time and again at museums I've worked for or at.

In addition to the ethical problems this brings up, I believe it is a contributing factor to more concrete problems within our field. Funding for history departments and museums is down across the country, and while there are a number of factors involved in this, I believe the public perception of history institutions as self-congratulatory echo chambers certainly isn't helping us. Our objectivity has been compromised; why would I trust a historian's interpretation of any subject if I was aware that they had an overt political bias or agenda, particularly one counter to my own? I think this is part of the reason art museums routinely eat history institutions alive when it comes to fundraising; it is often far more difficult to politicize the interpretation of an art work than it is to do so with a historical event. A political painting can easily be presented as "the painter believed..." which leaves the controversial topic up to interpretation, while it is far more difficult to do so with "x happened because of y". In my capacity as a museum curator I have been told dozens of times that a group or visitor was worried about going to a museum because they worried about the "preachiness" that some people think museums have begun to adopt.

This is an issue that has far reaching implications. Entire fields of history, including ones with much still to contribute, have been left to wither because of the belief that they are dens of conservative thought. When telling people that I am a military historian, peers are often surprised that I am in fact a liberal. More than once have I been accused of being a conservative simply because of my field of study: as big of a problem as this is, the fact that "conservative" is used as an accusation at all is far more troubling.

A History Field

In many cases this has had negative consequences on the study of history itself. Military history, my forte, has become the preserve largely of armatures with only a small core of academics keeping things on the straight and narrow. While there have been many worthy contributions by hobbyist historians, many others do not maintain rigorous academic standards in their studies either because of want or will. It has led to an explosion of misinformation, and has created a self-sustaining loop that the field is finding difficult to escape. Military history was seen as a "conservative" topic and sidelined, and its study was therefore picked up by amateurs, which in turn began to give the perception that the field was one suited only by amateurs, despite that not being the case at all. I have mentioned extremely prominent academic military historians to non-military historian colleagues, only to have them stare blankly.

As an example of this sidelining, I will use Japanese history. I've been listening to a series of lectures on the subject recently, so it happens to be on my mind. While not an expert in this field, I have had conversations with those who are and this is what I have been more or less told. The Sengoku, or warring states, period of Japanese history that led up to the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate has in the last 40 or so years been almost totally ignored by English-speaking academic historians. I have seen this in popular histories on the subject, which sometimes go as far as summing up the period, which lasted nearly 150 years, in a few sentences so that they can move onto the social, political, and economic changes of the Edo Period which followed. This is despite the fact that the battles and wars of the Sengoku had a major impact on the thinking of the first Tokugawa Shoguns, on Japanese art, culture, and mythology, and continued to be a major influencing force on the Japanese psyche and even Japanese government policy at least through the end of the Second World War. The period remains prominent in Japan, but the later Edo Period receives the lion's share of study in the west. Outside of academia though, it is perhaps the best known period of Japanese history in the west, aside from the Second World War. It remains a period popular in video games, films, cartoons, and in popular histories of japan.

Also, The Seven Samurai Kicks Ass

This leads me momentarily to the issue of basic economics. The most visited history museum in the world is the National Air and Space Museum in DC; in addition to scientific history there is a heavy focus on military aviation history. As of the time of writing more than a quarter of the top 20 best selling popular histories on Amazon are on military subjects, while in the Academic arena military historians still continue to battle for a place on the stage. It is possible to include more varying perspectives and topics in historical study without taking focus away from others. While I personally have little interest in say, the history of fashion, that does not mean that I discount it as a field of study. I am aware that many others are interested in it, that fashion has an important role to play in history, and is worthy of study, but for some reason many others do not provide other fields the same level of professional respect.We can adapt to what the general public is interested in, or be left behind.

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum

This bias against thought believed to be coming from a conservative has led to a stifling of ideas in the field as well. On numerous occasions I have received emails from students around the country asking how to get a job in history. Many are extremely eager to study history, but have been routinely discouraged from doing so because they prefer fields that are not currently in fashion. When they do write on topics that interest them, they receive criticism.  We, as historians, should be encouraging young historians to study the fields that interest them, and not discouraging those that are interested in fields that give off the "wrong image". New ideas are what make an academic field thrive, but I feel as if they are being snuffed out in favor of a comfortable narrative which increasingly seems to try to paint a black and white, good vs. evil narrative of the past.

My point in all of this is this; being political on your own time is great, as I certainly am. But being political within the field is detrimental both to the study of history and to our potential sustainability as an area of serious scholarly study. I argue that only two political stances should be taken by historians; expansion of funding for our study, and expansion and improvement of the historical curriculum in schools. Above all, a historians personal politics should be removed from their study as much as possible. This will never be done perfectly; my liberal leanings sometimes bleed through in the exhibits I've done or the papers and articles I've written, but I strive to keep my work as objective as possible. Working with veterans, especially elderly ones, I frequently find myself talking to a deeply conservative crowd. So far none has called me out for being biased, but a few have thanked me for helping to present a narrative they felt was balanced, even if they didn't agree with all of it.

 The fact that a specific, fairly narrow political belief is not only tolerated, but encouraged openly has made even me begin to question if it is worth staying in the field. You also shouldn't take this as me bashing liberal ideology; I would be making the same arguments if the situation were reversed.