[SCA-AS] [Fwd: TMR 07.11.05 France, Medieval Warfare (Hosler)]

Wed Nov 7 18:24:13 CST 2007

FYI:

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: TMR 07.11.05 France, Medieval Warfare (Hosler)
From:    "The Medieval Review" <tmrl at indiana.edu>
Date:    Tue, November 6, 2007 4:46 pm
To:      tmr-l at indiana.edu
         bmr-l at brynmawr.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

France, John, ed. Medieval Warfare, 1000-1300. International
Library of Essays on Military History. London: Ashgate, 2006. Pp.
644. $250.00. ISBN: 075462515X.

    Reviewed by John D. Hosler
         Morgan State University
         jhosler at jewel.morgan.edu

John France has assembled a remarkable collection of articles for this
volume in Ashgate's International Library of Essays on Military
History series. It helps to complete the chronology of the Middle
Ages by accompanying existing and forthcoming Ashgate volumes on
Byzantium, medieval warfare between 1300 and 1450, and so-called "Dark
Age" warfare of the post-Roman period (a volume co-edited by France
and Kelly DeVries). Included essays do not have to abide by any
preconceived thematic notions, and the assortment collected here
ranges from battle studies to questions of defensive architecture and
even gender. Given that France selected thirty-one articles for
inclusion and provided a useful review essay in the Introduction, it
would be tedious to review each and every item here. Instead, I'd
like to review the contents and comment on their representation of
warfare in the High Middle Ages.

In the general preface, series editor Jeremy Black remarks that each
volume contains, "the editor's selection of the most seminal recent
essays on military history in their particular area of expertise"
(ix).  This suggests a widely-cast net that nonetheless allows for
thematic repetition based on pure quality of research.  Many subjects
are thus treated in multiple essays, with a general breakdown as
follows: the Crusades (12); castles, fortifications, and siege-craft
(6); obligation, army composition, and knighthood/cavalry (5); finance
and logistics (4); campaigns, generalship, and strategy (4); England
(4); individual commanders (3); mercenaries (2); horses (2); and the
Low Countries (2).  Five articles center on individual battles,
demonstrating the past and present fascination with field actions and
what they reveal about generalship and tactics.

The bulk of the essays cover warfare in two broadly construed
geographical areas.  The first of these is the Anglo-Norman world.
Included are some very influential essays indeed, such as Stephen
Brown's noteworthy inquiry on the role of mercenaries, Charles
Coulson's important corrective to castle studies that emphasizes other
elements of fortification beyond the architecturally defensive, and a
trio of articles by Matthew Bennett, Michael Prestwich, and John
Gillingham that have remained serious revisions on traditional views
of the supremacy of cavalry and the uses of medieval battle.  Other
essays on Normandy, Flanders, Anjou, and England round out a
reasonably full consideration of military operations in the Isles and
French provinces (though Scottish, Irish, and Welsh warfare is notably
absent).

The second geographical focus of the book is warfare in the Latin
east.  Given that military study of the Crusades has become
fashionable again in the past two decades a range of essays on the
subject seems justifiable.  Fully twelve of the thirty-one articles
center on dimensions of crusading efforts.  Fortifications and
logistics figure heavily in France's selections: two studies of
crusader castles, a third by A.J. Forey on the siege of Damascus in
1148, the maintenance of Western armies (Alan V. Murray), the
transportation of horses by ship (John H. Prior), and the excellent
and useful 1963 study by John W. Nesbitt on crusading armies' rates of
march.  France's own expertise is on display here, for the selections
are remarkable for their insight and coverage.

Acknowledging the book's geographical breakdown does not imply that
one or multiple areas of inquiry are needlessly neglected; indeed, the
essays are notable for their overall relevance and application across
the wars of the period.  However, there remains a certain lack of
coverage.  English military history both prior to the Battle of
Hastings and after 1200 is absent, as are any explicitly French
operations in the west (there is only one reference to Bouvines in the
index, for example).  Claude Gaier's essay on Liege and Looz is an
important study of troop types, numbers, and regional conflicts in
Brabant and points around the northern Rhine, but that is as far east
as it gets: there is little coverage of the Empire and/or Italy unless
it is connected to crusading ventures (such as H.E.J. Cowdrey's
article on the 1087 Mahdia campaign).  One wishes for expanded
treatments of central Europe and also more peripheral areas such as
Spain, an increasingly fertile area for military scholars, but there
is only the older (1966) but useful study by Elena Lourie on its
obligations and military institutions.  France's collection does not
seem to be intended as comprehensive, so complaints about scope and
coverage are less a criticism than a regret that more space was
unavailable.

Physically, this is a formidable book at 644 pages with a semi-
problematic layout. Each article is reprinted in its initial format
and retains its original page numbers and font. This is very useful
for reference purposes, and Ashgate has thoughtfully provided a
separate pagination that runs through the entire volume (references to
page numbers in this review refer to the latter). One unfortunate
consequence of the reprinting, however, rears its head in the
notations of the older articles. Many of the references are in
abbreviated form because the original journal in which they appeared
contained a list of common works and their shorthand forms. This
becomes apparent in the very first article, John Prestwich's
distinguished study on war and finance, which contains incomplete
citations to the Dialogus de Scaccario (only one of three
editors is listed and no publication date) and two separate references
to Obligations of Society in the XII and XIII centuries and
English Society in the Eleventh Century that lack either
authors or any publication attribution (1-2). It appears that the
more recent essays are essentially self-contained and do not suffer
from such problems. The book's index is a rather large and useful,
listing of both historical and modern names, but there are regrettably
no entries for places or events. There are no maps, figures, or
genealogical tables besides those provided in the original essays
themselves, but these are generally sufficient for comprehension and
of a high quality.

The principal drawback of this volume, as is the case with every
volume in the series, is its hefty price tag of 250 U.S. dollars, a
cost that has often stayed my hand and wallet at conference book
sales.  Ashgate has planned thirty-four volumes in the series, and
each volume published so far ranges in price between $195.00 and
$250.00.  The cost is thus prohibitive, even for those looking to
purchase just the four projected volumes on the medieval Europe and
Byzantium.  I suspect most copies will be purchased by research
libraries, for which such edited collections are good bargains,
especially given the ubiquitous decline of institutional journal
subscriptions.

Is there a perfect method of collecting and publishing academic
essays?  One could complain about this or that subject being neglected
or perhaps argue for a different thematic focus, but France's
collection is undoubtedly one of prime importance that effectively
highlights both older and newer trends in medieval military history.
Every essay is valuable in its own right, and scholars of warfare
would do well to add this book to their collections--or, perhaps,
borrow a copy from their library.

-- 
-- Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net