Population crash in Europe?

Fred Pearce has written a book called Peoplequake and also an article in the Guardian flogging its message of anxiety about Europe's lack of enthusiasm for reproduction. Some excerpts from a meaty article: On the windswept roof of the Lausitz Tower, the town's only...

Whose past? Whose present? More on my personal understanding of history

A while back I posted here about my personal understanding of religious traditions. I wrote about how any religious tradition that is big and important by necessity has to include a whole bunch of different and often contradictory elements. Thus, people who talk about "true X" where...

Visit to Wayne State University, Detroit

I should mention, in connection with my praise for the Detroit Institute of Art, that it is right next door to Wayne State University, which I visited yesterday for the very first time. The weather was arctic and there was a wind tunnel effect around the buildings to make it worse,...

Detroit Industry, a mural by Diego Rivera

Back when I was teaching introductory world history, I became aware that Diego Rivera -- the early 20th century artist and social critic, the man whose huge murals of the Spanish conquest of Mexico probably formed everybody's image of those events and especially what the Aztec looked...

No sympathy from Professor Dutch

Professor Steven Dutch, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin--Green Bay, has a web page where he has collected complaints he's got from student evaluations and replied to them. I suspect he actually has a rather small number of complainers who use up an inordinate amount of his patience. That's consistent with my experience. One clueless student can take up as much...

Unhappy; or, what's the matter with kids today?

A certain number of people in France think they are unhappy about Muslim immigrants and their children for not fitting in to the French way of life. I am not so sure that their self-diagnosis is correct.The issue that everyone is talking about is the government policy forbidding women -- Muslim women -- from wearing in many public places veils of various sorts and more concealing...

We can have pictures of winter

It's not very wintry in Windsor, Ont., but we can have pictures of ice and cold.Above you should see an ice scupture at the Ice Museum in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska, as featured on Jim Wright's Stonekettle Station, quite a nice blog.And following this link you can see "hair ice" which...

Farmers on the move, 8000 BCE

This blog is called Muhlberger's Early History for a good reason: I'm often making a connection between things that happened centuries ago and things that our neighbors are doing somewhere in the world today. In the classroom I love talking about remote origins. If I were teaching ancient history now, you'd bet this would be included ( exceerpt from the UK's Daily Mail):European...

Revised thoughts on two of Charny's questions

Those of you who were interested in this post and the conversation with Will McLean in the comments and on his blog may want to know that I've revised my position. Thanks to Will for pushing me to revise and rethink. A serious, engaged critic is extraordinarily valuable.As I once said of a very helpful senior scholar who looked over some of my unfinished material, "Even when...

Becoming Evil: How ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing, by James Waller

Over the years Phil Paine and I have occasionally sat down and talked about some book that we wished existed. One such book was "Famous Social Science Experiments You Should Know About." This is pretty much that book. It talks about the nature of human nature, from a social psychology...

Phil Ochs

One of the most distinctive voices of the protest folk music of the 1960s, Phil Ochs is pretty much forgotten now. The song I was talking about in the last post, "The War is Over," starts about 6:10....

I believe the war is over...

If you are old enough, name that tune. And the singer.Back to the present, sort of. Juan Cole argues in a post that the Iraq war is over, and that Obama's policy has worked, but we have not noticed it because media attention has been elsewhere. Bolding indicates my emphasis.The Iraqi military and police, over which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had largely gained control, proved...

Two Charny questions answered?

A provisional text hot off the screen:There was an entire lore surrounding the terminology of warfare, which was meant among other things to clarify what was honorable or at least expected behavior. One of the questions I would most like answered, were that possible, it is W37:Since I have heard it said that one is able to leave and retreat from a battle from the defeated side,...

Muhlberger speaks at the International Congress of Medieval Studies: Kalamazoo, May 15, 2010

I have been kindly asked to give this year's Journal of Medieval Military History Lecture, which I consider quite an honor. Its title, which I even think I can live up to, is Chivalry: Military Biographies and other Tales of the Later Middle Ages.It will take place in Fetzer 1010 at 3:30. This scheduling has a lot to be said for it, since I will undoubtedly work up a good thirst,...

A barrier fight in time of war, as told by the Chronicle of the Good Duke

This incident took place about 1363, and the writer's chief informant was the John de Chastelmorand mentioned as the standardbearer below. He told this story in the 1420s.Two days before the English came before Troyes, a gentleman named John de Nedonchel, captain of Plancy, spoke...

Wit and wisdom of the Hundred Years War

I am working on my translation of the Chronicle of the Good Duke and am at the part where the author's informant is remembering the Breton campaigns of the 1360s. Some memorable lines seem to have stuck in his mind.If we are to believe the Chronicle, Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable...

The changing of the guard

If you live long enough, you end up in this situation: you are now a member of the oldest living generation in your family. I lost my father, mother, and favorite aunt in 2009. My parents died within 5 weeks of each other.There are a lot of things I could say, but here is one...

Fun with ice in Switzerland

For once, this is not the Snow and Ice Festival in Harbin, China. See this and more at the Fire and Ice portfolio at the Big Pictu...

Ships in a wintry port

From the Vesseltracker bl...

Haiti's "national debt"

Haiti is still financially crippled by paying for the freedom of their slave ancestors. Foreign Policy's Annie Lowrey explains this appalling historical injustice, citing the long and detailed Alex von Tunzelmann article in the Times of London:Haiti, as a nation, has suffered violence, unrest, juntas, and natural disasters. One thing it need not suffer anymore, given the earthquake?...

University lectures, yesterday, today, and tomorrow

University lectures began in the 12th century, when the first European universities evolved in certain centers of learning. "Lectures" involved professors (called "masters") reading and commenting on key books which were often in that pre-printing era unavailable to students.Lectures...

Driftglass on Mark McGwire's steroid use

The blogger Driftglass is capable of drawing amazing, well-written insights out of any aspect of American life. Here he is on Mark McGwire's admission that he was using steroids when he racked up his amazing home run records (in Major League Baseball, for those who don't know)....

Real, odd 14th-century names

The Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval historical re-creation I have been part of for a long time -- a shockingly long time -- has as a pioneering role-playing environment, some contradictory elements. SCA culture encourages research and serious re-creation, especially...

Religious development is not just a matter of chronology

Kamal Al-Solaylee's Yemeni family is a lot more conservative now than it was in 1975, when the picture above was taken. Al-Solaylee talks about this in a Globe and Mail article.Isn't this about the time a teenaged Osama bin Laden was touring Sweden?Juan Cole has an interesting...

On Killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

I read this book in hopes of getting some insight into the war atrocities that routinely accompanied the sack of cities in pre-modern warfare. This book, however, was surprisingly weak on war crimes. It's much better on the psychological barriers to killing in warfare, how such...

Airport security

I was flying this week and had the opportunity to test out the new scanning system on my way home. Unfortunately I didn't get to see how I looked -- I just know it presumably confirmed that I wasn't carrying any dangerous items.On that trip my luggage contained some heavy pieces...

Hard-hitting quote

From the New York Times, on America's imperial overstretch affecting relations with Yemen:The administration doubled Yemen’s economic aid last year, but as Barbara K. Bodine, another former ambassador, pointed out, the amount “works out to $1.60 per Yemeni.”“That won’t even buy...

Defeat by 1000 cuts?

Mark LeVine in Al Jazeera:Indeed, far from heralding a more successful US effort to stamp out Islamist terrorism, the soon to be deepening footprint in Yemen is a sure sign of America's defeat in the war against violent extremism in the Muslim world... Think about it. One angry young man with about three ounces (around 80 grams) of explosive material, $2,000, and a pair of specially...

Simplicius Simplicissimus: a forgotten classic

I have taught my year-long course on early modern European history 1400-1800 maybe 10 different times. From the beginning I was aware that there was a classic novel of the 30 years war called Simplicius Simplicissimus, written in German not long after the events it describes. The...

Yemen and al-Qaeda

A discouraging report from an expert in the journal Foreign Policy. Desertification meets terrori...

Favorite posts, 2009

Will McLean, who has more good ideas than most people I know, has just inspired me to select my favorites among my own posts of 2009. Just click here.Image: a British gold quarter-sovereign from 20...

Medieval soldiers' experience

I am now listening to a podcast: The Soldier’s Experience of Battle in the Middle Ages by Clifford Rogers, Professor of History, United States Military Academy at West Point. I have heard Rogers speak in person several times and he is always good; this seems to be up to his usual...

Torture is still on the table

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few prominent commentators trying to roll back the easy approval of torture as a reasonable or even necessary tactic which of course the United States must use (bold indicates my emphasis):The Bush administration treated the shoe-bomber exactly as the Obama administration has treated the pantie-bomber - and convicted him the way no one has yet convicted...

More Buzkashi for the New Year

The Big Picture provides us with this great pic of the classic Afghan game, here being played near Kabul on December 9, 2009. Think William Marshal's 12th century melee tournamen...