On the ways of historians
I've been reading some of the volumes of the new Penguin History of Britain (ed. David Cannadine). I've now read the first five volumes which cover the Roman occupation to the end of Elizabeth's reign. I'm struck by what seems to me a massive disconnect between the first two volumes and the three subsequent ones. David Mattingly's Roman Britain: 100-409 and Robin Fleming's Anglo-Saxon Britain: 410-1066 struck me as distinctly innovative. Both used evidence from epigraphy and, especially, rather specialized archaeological techniques (isotope analysis of human remains, pollen analysis, paleo medical evidence etc) to produce new answers to interesting questions about ethic origins and health status of the populations under consideration. They also used inter-disciplinary techniques to explore issues of imperialism and colonialism and the formation of national identity. The subsequent volumes; David Carpenter's The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284, Miri Rubin's The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages and Susan Brigden's Lost Worlds, New Worlds: Britain 1485-1603* just don't. I'm sure they incorporate new scholarship but they read like the sort of top down history that could have been written any time in the last fifty or even one hundred years. This surprises me because it seems that there are many questions about the middle ages that the sort of techniques used by Mattingly and Fleming would be handy for. For example, in the wake of the Black Death did geographic mobility really increase? Or, what were the impacts on the health status of the population of the population growth of the 13th century and its subsequent drastic decline?
So, historians, especially medievalists, out there; Is this a typical methodological difference between historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages versus those of later periods or is it just an artefact of odd commissioning decisions by David Cannadine?
*This is a misnomer. Brigden's Britain appears not to include Scotland. Another odd weakness in the series. ETA: Nor does Rubin's. Unforgivable really.
This entry was originally posted at http://chickenfeet.dreamwidth.org/968657.html. You can comment here or there as you choose.
So, historians, especially medievalists, out there; Is this a typical methodological difference between historians of late antiquity and the early middle ages versus those of later periods or is it just an artefact of odd commissioning decisions by David Cannadine?
*This is a misnomer. Brigden's Britain appears not to include Scotland. Another odd weakness in the series. ETA: Nor does Rubin's. Unforgivable really.
This entry was originally posted at http://chickenfeet.dreamwidth.org/968657.html. You can comment here or there as you choose.