Tag: history

In Our Time: Ashoka

Ashoka was the ruler of a vast empire in the 4th Century BC which included nearly all of India. He is known today from both archaeological evidence (a series of pillars & rocks inscribed with his edicts) and textual evidence (later Buddhist histories). The three experts who discussed him on In Our Time were Jessica Frazier (University of Kent and the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies), Naomi Appleton (University of Edinburgh) and Richard Gombrich (Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and University of Oxford).

Shortly before Ashoka’s time northern India in the Ganges valley was populated by a set of smallish but relatively sophisticated states. The experts made a comparison with pre-Socratic Greece or with the state of affairs in China at the time. The dynasty of which Ashoka is the third ruler changed this – they started to conquer the other nearby states and Ashoka himself greatly expanded the empire.

Not much is known for sure about Ashoka’s life. Both sorts of available evidence have obvious flaws & biases. The Buddhist histories are written significantly after Ashoka’s death, and follow a clear conversion narrative – so the early years are portrayed as Very Bad so that he can then convert and live the rest of his life as a Very Good Buddhist. Both bits of that narrative are obviously suspect and were likely exaggerated for effect. Gombrich was particularly keen to dismiss any evidence arising from this (he came across as somewhat of an Ashoka fanboy to be honest). Frazier and Appleton were more open to using these texts whilst being aware of their pitfalls as sources. The other evidence is the pillars and rocks with his edicts carved on them, and Gombrich was very keen to hold these up as Ashoka’s own words which were therefore innately trustworthy – I thought it more likely they were also biased as they were intended at the time as a propaganda tool.

His early life was probably quite violent – it seems that although he was of the ruling dynasty he wasn’t the designated heir, and he may have committed murder in order to take the throne. He then embarks on a series of military campaigns to consolidate the empire he has “inherited” and to expand it. By the time this phase of his career finishes he rules from Afghanistan to nearly the southern tip of India, an incredibly vast empire. And then he has some sort of epiphany, a road to Damascus moment. The edicts say that this was a response to the slaughter at one of his last battles at Kalinga where many many civilians were killed. The Buddhist histories say that he met a Buddhist monk and this monk taught him a better way to live. Regardless of what it was (the cynic in me wonders if he’d just run out of expansion room), after this he stopped fighting wars and concentrated on ruling his empire both peacefully and justly.

Having become a Buddhist and renounced violence he ruled for another 40 years. The edicts set out a moral code and say how Ashoka is going to rule. The very fact of their existence is testimony to one of the things that Ashoka did for India – he introduced writing to the region. This means that although these were set up throughout his empire the ordinary people and even the higher status people wouldn’t be able to read them. So there were also literate officials posted to the same place so that they could read them out and explain them to people. They set out the ways that people should behave, based in large part on Buddhist ethics & morality (although he didn’t follow any of the contemporary Buddhist texts exactly). There was an emphasis on the welfare of the people, and they promoted the idea that everyone should do good deeds now in order to benefit themselves in both this world and the next. Interestingly although he preached respect for all religions the edicts were also fairly anti-Brahmin (the forerunners of Hinduism) and against the caste system.

In the wrapping up stage of the programme the three experts discussed whether the edicts were a sincere representation of Ashoka’s plans, beliefs etc or whether they were a cynical piece of propaganda. All three thought it was sincere, but pointed out that this is a very modern Western way of framing the discussion. We tend to set those two things as a pair of opposed opposites, sincere vs. pragmatic, but at the time there would be no paradox in both sincerely believing in Buddhist ethics and also erecting the edicts as a pragmatic political act.

They finished by discussing Ashoka’s legacy. He was instrumental in making Buddhism a worldwide religion, spreading it outside its Indian birthplace throughout his empire and beyond. And in places like Sri Lanka he is remembered for this, and for bringing writing to these areas. However in India his legacy is slight, and is primarily through being rediscovered in the modern era when the edicts were translated. Gombrich discussed how as Hinduism rose to prominence in India Ashoka’s reign and empire were minimised & forgotten in histories of the country – due to his being Buddhist and to his anti-Brahmin, anti-caste stance. His legacy is most clearly seen as being the source of the ideas against which Hindu ideas about kingship and society were reacting.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 16)

Crime and Punishment

The last couple of chapters of this book before the conclusion feel like they don’t quite fit in the flow of the book, but Prestwich felt the subjects were important to cover. The first of these subjects is crime and punishment, and he begins by discussing how it’s difficult to be sure what the crime rates actually were in the 13th & 14th Centuries. There are several factors that complicate the ability of the historian to draw out statistics from the records that survive. One major one is that the population numbers aren’t known, for examples estimates of the population in “medieval London” vary from 37,500 through to 176,000 so expressing homicides as “% of population” is obviously problematic. Another issue is that we have no idea how much crime that was committed was actually reported to the authorities. And for those that are reported and go to court – do you count accusations of crime, or convictions? During this period there’s an 80% acquittal rate so that makes quite a large difference.

But even if accurate numbers are difficult to come by you can look at trends over the period. Civil war led to increases in crime, in part due to people taking advantage of the partial breakdown of government. Political disagreements could turn into outright criminal behaviour – in the 1310s the Earl of Lancaster was involved in what were effectively a couple of private wars both against another Earl and due to rebellion by one of his tenants. This resulted in killings and destruction of property, and a general increase in lawlessness. War in general also increased lawlessness because the administration was focussed on running the war rather than running the country. And wars also lead to an increase in lawlessness in another fashion – the army was often bulked up by releasing men from the county gaols to serve as soldiers. If the war was a foreign one then initially they would be overseas, but on their return crime would increase. Another factor affecting crime rates was the harvest – poor harvests led to increased crime. Almost certainly this was largely due to poor people needing to steal to survive, but contemporary chroniclers also blamed it on men turned out of noble households when money was too tight to pay them who didn’t know how to earn an honest living.

However, criminals during this era weren’t just thugs and desperate poor men. There were several notable gangs lead by members of the gentry – although Prestwich doesn’t mention it this section of the chapter brought the Robin Hood legend to mind. Members of the clergy were also involved in criminal activity. Although sometimes this isn’t so much that somebody actually was a cleric, instead it’s someone who has successfully claimed to be clergy so he’s tried in the church courts rather than the lay ones (punishments were less severe, see below). The senior clergy were also involved in the same sorts of crimes as the nobility – both the gentry gangs and the sorts of fraud and violence indulged in by the aristocracy. Women also committed crimes, but statistically speaking they were different sorts of crime – less violence and more things like receiving stolen goods. They were less often accused of crime in the first place – only about 10% of accusations recorded were of women. Prestwich doesn’t say, but I wonder if this is because women weren’t (entirely?) legally separate from their husbands or fathers.

Maintenance of public order was an important function of medieval government, and there were a variety of mechanisms to achieve this. I got a bit bogged down in the details when this section of the chapter and I’m not quite sure I’ve got a grasp on the big picture. I think Prestwich discusses country wide courts first. At the start of the period are courts called “eyres” which aren’t popular (I’m not sure why) and their use decreases over time – this was a regular visitation by royal justices to the whole country, which theoretically happened every 7 years. It appears you could pay a fine (collectively) to avoid having one sit in your town, and later kings were more interested in getting the fines than actually holding the courts. As they faded out of use other alternatives arose. One of these was that litigants could take civil cases to Westminster to the court of the Common Bench. The assizes circuits, which start from 1273, were another alternative for civil cases. Criminal case were passed to the justices of gaol delivery, or to specially commissioned oyer and terminer courts (“to hear and determine”). During this period there was also increasing use of Keepers of the Peace, a role that eventually developed into Justice of the Peace. These were local men, normally magnates or knights, who were employed to hold courts when the assizes justices weren’t able to complete their circuits (during times of war for instance when money would be diverted from domestic matters).

The courts were more effective in theory than in practice. Convictions did not often happen, wrongdoers might misuse the legal system to accuse their victims (frequently successfully to at least some extent). Although there is no widespread evidence for bribing or intimidating juries they often failed to convict people even when there appears to be much evidence for their crimes. Prestwich speculates that maybe in some cases they were put off by the harsh penalties that would be applied to a convicted criminal. Men could also escape severe punishment if they successfully claimed to be clerics, sometimes they had to take a reading test but more often they just had to have the bishop’s official agree with them. Which is obviously open to corruption! Clerics were tried in the episcopal courts which didn’t hand out as severe penalties as the secular ones. Some of the accused never appear in court, having fled before the case was heard – there’s generally a higher conviction rate in those cases.

Punishments varied. Hanging was the usual punishment for a felony. At the beginning of the period even minor thefts could end up with a hanging, but in 1279 a statute was passed setting a minimum value for imposing this felony. Pillorying was a common punishment for those sorts of minor crimes. If you refused to plead you could be punished by peine forte et dure, ie crushed by heavy rocks – which meant your family could inherit your property (unlike if you’d been convicted and hung). Imprisonment was also often used for minor crimes, or for when a fine could not be paid.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by noting that although the problem of crime & punishment during the period was great there was nonetheless no complete breakdown of law & order. He also relates an anecdote that hints at the romanticisation of crime that would lead to later legends like that of Robin Hood, or the concept of dashing highwaymen.

< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Art of China

Andrew Graham-Dixon has done several series for the BBC about the art of various places – one of the more recent was about China and we watched it earlier this year. He covered the art of this vast and long-lived culture in chronological order, so the series also provided an overview of the history of China. Even though it was chronological the three programmes also covered different themes – starting with the art of & for death (and religion), then art concerned with the natural world and finally art influenced by the world outside China.

The first programme started with prehistoric art – even pre-China art. The first objects Graham-Dixon looked at were a collection of bronze masks (of varying sizes) which had large staring eyes as their most prominent feature. These objects were buried in a way that suggests they were once used for ritual purposes but then were no longer necessary – as if the culture/religion/tradition that they were associated with had been superseded but they were still given respect for their previous significance. There doesn’t seem to be any continuity between this culture and what later became China as we know it.

The next objects were more bronzes, but these were associated with the cultures that lead up to China proper – the Shang and Zhou bronzes. These are mostly ritual vessels for food and drink that would be buried with people – perhaps also used in the burial rituals themselves. These vessels are highly decorated, with a distinctive style. Concurrent with the vessels is the development of the Chinese writing system, which is an influence on a lot of later Chinese art. Graham-Dixon showed us some of the actual oracle bones which have the first writing on them – annotations as to the question asked of the oracle, the answer given and the eventual outcome. This last makes them a critical historical resource for this period as the questions the kings asked tended to involve matters of state. I’ve read about these more than once, but never seen one so this was pretty cool to see 🙂

The programme then moved on to China proper with the First Emperor, who is the emperor who was buried with the terracotta army. This is a particularly extreme example of taking everything with you when you go, and Graham-Dixon also pointed out that this was the First Emperor planning to conquer the afterlife as he’d conquered the known world in this life! The following dynasty (the Han) also provisioned their tombs with all the items they needed for the next life, and this has lasted through to the modern day to some extent. Graham-Dixon visited a place that makes paper models of everyday objects for funerals, like computers and cars and so on – these are then burnt to transfer them to the afterlife for the deceased to use. The last section of the first programme looked at Buddhist art of the afterlife. This depicts a completely different class of thing. Instead of physical items and provisions the art is concerned with transcendence and joy, or with damnation.

The second programme looked at the period of history from the Song Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, which is in many ways a golden age of Chinese art. The two primary media of art in this era were ceramics and painting. Chinese painting is made using the same techniques as Chinese writing and the same tools. A scholar of the time was both writer and painter. Nature features heavily in the paintings, although the scholars rarely painted whilst in front of the thing they were painting. The natural scenes (whether real or imaginary) were intended to summon up a mood – often melancholy or isolation. The most iconic pieces often come from scholars who had retreated from court or official life – who felt disaffected or displaced by a change in regime for instance after the Mongol Yuan Dynasty conquered China. The Yuan to Ming transition also displaced many court officials who were loyal to the preceding dynasty.

The art style of this era was heavy on symbolism and meaning. To illustrate this theme Graham-Dixon talked about the last Yuan Emperor, who came to the throne unexpectedly after several preceding heirs had died. He’d been brought up as an aesthete not a ruler and as his empire began to crumble around him (due to his lack of administrative skill) he tried to reverse the situation by commissioning and painting pictures of good omens and good fortune. Unsurprisingly this didn’t work out so well, and more time spent on administration might’ve been a better bet 😉

The third and final programme covered the last dynasty of Chinese Emperors (the Qing) and modern China. The theme of this programme was that the art of the period was influenced by the outside world, primarily the West. In some ways this was a manifestation of the early Qing dynasty resting on their laurels – they “knew” they were the most sophisticated culture in the world, so looked to the outside world for trinkets and art. Forward momentum in the sciences was lost at just the time that the West was beginning to go through the Industrial Revolution. There were still obvious ways in which the Qing art was continuous with the previous traditions & Graham-Dixon spent a bit of time talking about the Forbidden Palace (first built in the Ming Dynasty) and also the way the ceramic art traditions continued & changed in the Qing era. For the latter he particularly pointed out how the elegant simplicity of Ming ceramics gave way to brightly coloured and decorated Qing ceramics which were often rather garish in comparison.

As the Qing dynasty continued their relationship with the European nations changed in character – from cultural exchange as equals to occupied nation. Graham-Dixon covered the history of the 19th Century with the Opium Wars, and the destruction of Chinese sites by British colonising armies. This rather shameful period of British empire building did lead to developments in Chinese art and not just destruction. In particular Shanghai was one of the towns where the British forcibly established a trading base, and the art produced in the town became a hybrid style between Chinese & Western. Instead of painting on scrolls or long wall hangings as was traditional artists began to paint pieces designed to be framed and hung on walls. The traditional pallet of blacks & greys (and perhaps red) began to be replaced by bright colours. The subject and the style, however, remained traditional.

By the end of the imperial period in the late 19th Century & early 20th Century some Chinese artists were training in Paris and using western techniques and styles in their paintings – but still painting Chinese subjects. Some of these artists embraced the “old-fashioned” traditional techniques of Western art and painted large representational oil paintings – for instance Graham-Dixon showed us one that depicts a key scene from a Chinese hero’s story, yet it wouldn’t look particularly out of place in a gallery of early 19th Century art. Other artists embraced the new modern art movements that were coming to life in 20th Century Paris.

The rise of Communism in China put an abrupt stop to this flirtation with Western styles and techniques. Mao’s suppression of intellectuals in general also had a particular focus on rejecting Western influences. Artists who had produced un-Chinese art were persecuted and sent to labour camps, their paintings and sculptures destroyed. Since the change from Maoist communism to the current pseudo-capitalist communism there has been a bit of a relaxation of that attitude. Graham-Dixon finished the programme by talking to current artists and looking at their work – most are consciously looking both to their roots as inheritors of a long artistic tradition, and to the modern globalised world.

I enjoyed this series – good to see both the sweep of Chinese history from another angle, and to learn more about the themes & purposes of the art of the country.

In Our Time: Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th Century BC, and is regarded as a “Father of History” alongside Herodotus – although I confess that before I listened to the In Our Time programme about him I had never heard of him. I think he’s been seen as more of a “historian’s historian”, whereas Herodotus is more of a “popular historian”. The programme also told me that Thucydides’s work is still important in the field of international relations. The experts who discussed him were Paul Cartledge (Cambridge University), Katherine Harloe (University of Reading) and Neville Morley (University of Bristol).

Thucydides was born around 460BC and a citizen of Athens, not much is known about his life. In fact the only details known about him at all are those found in his book on the Peleponnesian War – which includes that he was a general at a particular early point during the war, and he at least lived through the war. This gives a feel for his age as he must’ve been a mature adult at the beginning of the war yet still young enough to survive till the end. The Peleponnesian War was a conflict between Athens and Sparta, and their allies, which lasted for 27 years at the end of the 5th Century BC. Thucydides’s book clearly contains passages written after the end of the war (as he mentions who won – Sparta), but it was never finished. It also doesn’t really mention the role that the Persians played which was important later in the war, the experts speculated that if he’d finished the text he may’ve revised the existing parts to bring in that thread earlier.

Herodotus and Thucydides were writing very different sorts of history, with different purposes. I think they said that Thucydides was writing his history in reaction to the way that Herodotus wrote his – deliberating doing things the way he thought was “proper”. For instance Herodotus is the historian as a story-teller. He doesn’t necessarily believe all the stories he writes down, but he tells them because that’s what the people he’s writing about believe. Thucydides in his introductory section says that he is intending to set down the objective truth about what actually happened. This means that he also rejects supernatural explanations of events. Herodotus is also outward looking – partly by the circumstances of recent history but also because of his interests. The big war that Herodotus talks about is the Greek/Persian war of the early 5th Century BC, and his history is of the world outside Greece. By contrast Thucydides is interested in an intra-Greek conflict and in the history of the Greek world. Even, potentially, to the extent of ignoring the Persian role in the Peloponnesian War (although as I said above he may’ve revised that later if he’d finished the book).

Of course Thucydides isn’t as objective as he would like to present himself, and doesn’t stick strictly to the known facts either. In contrast to modern historians he doesn’t present his evidence, merely says he examined it and has come to the conclusion that what he writes is what happened. So his biases aren’t always clear, but in some cases they are obvious. In particular he generally approves of Pericles, and frequently editorialises about his greatness. He also editorialises about the poor decisions by “the mob” who vote for courses of action that Thucydides feels were wrong. There are also sections of the text that are clearly made up to show how something might have happened. The speeches are a good example of this – as well as Thucydides’s chronological dicussions of events there are also sections purporting to be speeches given by various people. Pericles is given many of these. In style they sound like Thucydides rather than different individuals, so they definitely aren’t accurate representations of actual speeches. Some might be paraphrases of things that Thucydides witnessed, but others are clearly invented out of whole cloth – accounts of secret meetings on the Spartan side for instance that Thucydides was obviously not present for.

In terms of his legacy and his status as a Father of History Thucydides has had a large impact in the past on how historians approach research and objectivity. But all three experts were in agreement that he wouldn’t quite fit in in a modern historical department. Modern history also has commonalities with Herodotus’s approach – looking at the history of a people as that people see it is an important aspect of approaching history. However in the field of internal relations and of war theory Thucydides is still hugely influential, and his work is still used in teaching at military academies like West Point. Which seems appropriate as that was his primary interest – how different states (cities, nations etc) interact, and what are the causes that lead to conflict between them. Not the causes they use to justify aggression but the underlying conflicts and tensions that get the relationship to the point where aggression is a next step.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 15)

Trade and Merchants

Trade, both locally and internationally, was an important part of the 13th & 14th Century English economy. Prestwich starts this chapter by talking about the types and volumes of trade during the period. The wool trade was the most significant – at its peak in the early 14th Century around 40,000 sacks of wool were exported per year, the equivalent of around 10 million sheep. This brought in large sums of money to the economy, in 1297 Edward I’s opponents were able to realistically claim that wool was half the country’s wealth. Wool was not the only commodity traded, the wine trade (of Gascony wines) was also important and other goods were traded too. These included cloth (mostly imports), dyes, timber, tin, lead, grain and many other foodstuffs. International trade was obviously affected by wars – not just because of breakdown in relations but also because the Channel crossing became more risky. Trade was also involved in causing wars, disputes between merchants (particularly at sea) could draw in governments.

Trade and the government were linked together in more than one way. Merchants could become prominent at court, and could influence politics. In part because the trade was important to the economy, so keeping merchants sweet was important. And in part because they could provide funds to the Crown, which was a role Italian merchants often filled. Trade was also subject to government regulation and interference, particularly the wool trade. At times the government would propose to seize wool and sell it themselves, so that the profit came to the Crown rather than the merchants – unsurprisingly not a popular move, and frequently the number of sacks successfully seized was far less than hoped for. Over this period customs duties became a more successful way to raise funds for the Crown, and in 1275 a permanent customs system was established. Taxing trade in this way meant that merchants were at times invited to parliament along with the knights and barons. Prestwich says that during Edward III’s reign there were attempts to negotiate customs with a separate assembly consisting just of the merchants – if these had proved successful then the shape of our government might look different today, with a third house to go along with the Lords & the Commons. However the merchant assemblies were an imposition from the King rather than a natural outgrowth of any sort of coherent merchant community. After a few experiments negotiation of customs duties was returned to Parliament.

The elite merchants of the era were Italians, they were in England primarily to trade in wool. As they could draw on the resources of their internationally trading companies they were able to take bigger risks than the English merchants. They were in a position to offer long term arrangements and even loans (often to monasteries) which would be paid back in wool over a long period of time – one such deal involved a monastery providing 140 sacks of wool over a 20 year period with the Italian company paying 20 marks per year (a good price from the Italian point of view). Although they couldn’t charge interest on loans (Christians were forbidden to do so by the Pope) they could accept “payments to cover costs incurred by making the loan”. They also profited from exchange rates – by making a loan in one currency and asking for repayments in another at a favourable rate to themselves. The larger Italian companies often got sucked into making huge loans to the Crown – these played an important role in financing the wars of the English throughout the period. And these loans played a big role in the bankruptcy of the companies who made the loans. Not always because the loans weren’t repaid in full, sometimes the changing political situation meant a company went out of favour (and lost business) because of close ties to hated previous regime.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by considering the English merchants of the time. Towards the end of this period the involvement of the English in large scale trade increased, although it’s not clear why this happened. Small scale trade is much harder to analyse historically – most of the records are about the wealthiest merchants, particularly those who lent money to the Crown. Tax returns can shed some light on smaller merchants in towns but even then it can be hard to tell the different between a manufacturer of goods and someone who is also selling the goods he makes. So overall not much is known about the English merchants of the time.

< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Magna Carta (In Our Time Special Series)

It’s the 800th anniversary of the first issuing of Magna Carta this year, and so there are currently a flurry of programmes about the document on the BBC on both radio and TV. We been listening to the Melvyn Bragg presented radio series that was on at the beginning of the year as our Sunday breakfast listening. This was a four part series that covered the context for the document, the thing itself, and its legacy.

The first episode was looking at the context for the original “signing” of Magna Carta (it wasn’t in fact signed, as was customary at the time it was validated using the signatories’ seals). The king of England in 1215 was King John, who is a notoriously bad king – think Robin Hood, John is generally the king in those legends. It’s not without its basis in fact – John was always looking out for his own interests rather than those of the realm. He wasn’t even loyal to those who might’ve thought they were his friends – he’d turn against them if it was convenient or if that got him more money or land or power. Unsurprisingly the leading nobles of the day, the barons, weren’t terribly fond of John. Their grievances were that he acted as if he was above the law, he started taking away lands without even a figleaf of legal right to them, and importantly he also lost wars. In particular John managed to lose the bulk of the Plantagenets’ lands in modern France, which was humiliating for the crown.

An earlier crisis around 1205 that turns out to be relevant to the conflict was the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. This was contested – John had a preferred candidate and the canons of the cathedral had a preferred candidate, and the two sides couldn’t come to agreement. Eventually the Pope intervened and appointed Stephen Langton (who was neither sides’ preference) but John refused to accept this. The Pope then placed England under interdict (which meant that priests would not perform the sacraments), a state of affairs that lasted until 1213 when John capitulated. He also sweetened the deal declaring that the Pope was now the feudal overlord of England (thus had secular power in England as well as religious). Archbishop Langton was to be the mediator in the 1215 conflict between John and the barons.

In the second episode Bragg covered the 1215 conflict, and the events surrounding the initial issuing of Magna Carta. At this time King John was still failing to do anything useful in a military sense – this is important as military prowess was an important virtue for a king to demonstrate in order to show himself a true king. Wars are also expensive, so a campaign in France that is lost is a great waste of money which will’ve been primarily raised via taxing the barons. Civil war actually broke out in the summer of 1215, and crucially the city of London joined in the conflict on the side of the barons. John was in an unwinnable situation, and was forced to meet with the barons and come to terms with them. The meeting were held in June 1215 at a place on the Thames called Runnymede – this was neutral territory that was regarded as safe by both sides as it would be difficult to set up an ambush there. The barons showed up in force, and camped there with their army. This was somewhat of a surprise to John who had expected a delegation, so instead of camping on Runnymede himself he stayed nearby and visited during the day to negotiate.

The treaty that was eventually negotiated and sealed at Runnymede is the first iteration of the Magna Carta (although it wasn’t called that at the time). It is both sweeping and curiously specific. So there are the well known clauses that place the king under the law and guarantee the right of no imprisonment save by trial by one’s peers or due course of law. And there are also many clauses about particular grievances, for instance prohibiting fishweirs on the Thames which was of paramount interest to the merchants of the City of London (as the fishweirs impeded progress of shipping on the Thames). John wasn’t actually happy with the treaty, in particular a crucial clause that appointed a council of 25 barons to oversee the King’s actions. However he signed it because there wasn’t much other option, and was even forced to start instituting it before the two sides left Runnymede.

The third episode of this series looked at the immediate aftermath of the issuing of Magna Carta. The first thing John did after the dust had settled was to try to overturn the treaty. As I said in the last paragraph he was particularly unhappy with the clauses granting a council of barons power to enforce the treaty, and the situation was not helped by them treating the King disrespectfully. There were clauses in Magna Carta that were intended to prevent John wriggling out of it, but he made use of his new good relations with the Pope. Having given the Pope feudal overlordship of England meant that the Pope had legal standing to declare the treaty invalid, which he did at John’s request.

Unsurprisingly this did not go down well with the barons – the political situation returned to how it had been before Runnymede, and civil war broke out again. The Pope was now firmly on John’s side and directed Langton to excommunicate the barons who are in rebellion. Langton, however, resisted this (and incurred the Pope’s displeasure) because if he was to be an effective mediator then he couldn’t been seen to be on one side or the other. The French got involved in the civil war, coming in on the side of the barons and by 1216 the south of England is mostly ruled by the son of the French King. If John had not died at this point then the history of England would’ve been quite different!

However John did die, and his 9 year old son Henry took the throne. One of the first things that Henry III’s regents did was to reissue Magna Carta. This was intended to woo the disaffected barons back to the side of the English monarchy, and it was successful. With the barons back on their side Henry III’s forces were able to retake the south of England and drive out the French prince.

This was only the first reissuing of the Magna Carta, the next time was when Henry came of age in 1225. This was in part a symbolic act intended to convey that he would (unlike his father) rule in accordance with the law. The version of Magna Carta issued at this point was partly rewritten (by Langton amongst others), taking out some of the unpalatable clauses (like the council of the barons). This version is the definitive one that is meant when we refer to Magna Carta, and it was reissued several times over the next 100 years.

In the fourth episode Bragg talked about how Magna Carta has become enshrined in global consciousness as a totemic symbol of democracy. Often by people who don’t know exactly what is in it, just that it guarantees the rights of the people to just treatment under the law. I was aware before of the sort of place it occupies in British culture, but I hadn’t realised just how important it is to US culture. Bragg talked to some US historians who explained that the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution is deliberately based on clauses from the Magna Carta. And it still has enormous importance as a precursor document for US democratic principles. The monument in Runnymede commemorating the signing of Magna Carta was erected by US lawyers.

The end of the programme was about whether or not Magna Carta still has relevance today – particularly as the actual clauses in the document are mostly no longer law (I believe there are only 2 left on the statute books out of the original 60-something). Bragg’s conclusion was that it’s not the details that are important, and it hasn’t been for several hundred years. But that Magna Carta is the start of a paradigm shift that we pretty much take for granted today. That people have the right to be dealt with in accordance with the law rather than at the whim of the ruler.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 14)

The Towns

Having covered the landowners and the rural populace in previous chapters Prestwich now moves on to the urban population of England at this time. He starts by considering how to define a town, which as with so many things in historical research isn’t as easy as it might sound. At first sight one might think it easiest to just use whatever designations the contemporary population used – only they weren’t particularly consistent and places are referred to differently in different documents and at different times. One possible criterion is which places sent representatives to parliament – but this varies from parliament to parliament. Or perhaps use taxation status – but then there’s the example of Boston in Lincolnshire which was still taxed as a village even when it was the fifth wealthiest place in England and the second largest port for wool exports. Legal definitions can include looking at the sort of tenure that the land was held by – but some places used burgage tenure when they weren’t actually towns by any other definition. A possible economic definition is that in a town most people should be involved in trade and manufacturing, rather than agriculture – again this works much better in theory than it does when you look at specific examples.

Taking the various criteria together and applying some judgement to the results Prestwich arrives at an approximation of 100-150 towns in England in this period, with a further 500 places that had some urban characteristics. This wasn’t a static figure, and in fact the 13th Century was a period where many new towns were established (not all of which were successful). Turning a village into a town, or starting one de novo, was good for a landlord as the revenue from a town in terms of tolls and taxes was much higher than for a rural community. New Salisbury is an example of a successful town foundation from this time. Later in the period this book covers there were fewer new town foundations – the potential urban population was already living in towns, so it was harder to attract settlers to a new one. The economy was also in a poorer state in the early 14th Century so there wasn’t as much fervour for new costly projects.

Prestwich moves on to discuss the townspeople themselves. If it’s hard to count towns, it’s even harder to count their population. The evidence for the people who lived in towns is even more scarce than for their rural contemporaries. By modern standards they were pretty small – London was the largest and the only one that was comparable to the great Continental cities of the time. It probably had a population of somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 in 1300, Prestwich says 70,000 seems a reasonable estimate. For reference and comparison the populations of some towns I’ve lived in are (according to wikipedia, in 2011): Oxford – 150,200; Cambridge – 122,700; Ipswich – 133,400. I don’t think of any of those as “all that big” and yet even the highest estimates for London in 1300 are far short of those three towns today.

The population of a town of the period probably wasn’t self-sustaining – conditions were less healthy than in the country, and people tended to die off more quickly. So towns effectively had a catchment area where new immigrants moved from, the size of which depended on the size and prestige of the town. The makeup of the urban population wasn’t the same as the rural population – the higher levels of society didn’t live in towns (although barons might have a town house in London). There were no villeins or unfree people in towns, either – in fact living in a town for a year and a day conferred freedom regardless of your previous status. The townspeople weren’t homogenous, however. They thought of themselves as divided into 3 sorts – the great men, those of middling status and the poor. The great men might be very wealthy merchants, trading internationally. The artisans and smaller traders would be the middling sort. There was a greater variety of occupations in a town than in a village, a lot of which were to do with production and sale of food and drink. Prior to their expulsion from the country in 1290 the Jews were also a significant feature of towns. They were among the wealthier inhabitants, due to their ability to lend money at interest (which was forbidden to Christians). And even prior to the worst persecution they were poorly treated by the rest of the community and kept themselves to themselves as not really a part of the town community.

Towns were frequently self-governing and separate from the county system. This was more likely to be the case if the landlord was the King – if the landlord was a lord he was more likely to want the increased prestige & authority that came with direct control. Relations between town (self-governing or not) and landlord weren’t always smooth with records of rebellions and of court cases. Conflict also occurred within the town community (unsurprisingly), sometimes arising from class conflicts and other times from more personal quarrels. Often the wealthy elite of the town would come into conflict with the rest of the townspeople by using their wealth and social/political status to ensure they got the best trading opportunities etc.

Towns were important in the medieval economy. In spite of being separate in some legal senses they were a critical part of the overall economy of the country. One way in which they were important for the rural economy was in consuming food. This need to feed the urban population had a significant effect on the viability of agriculture as a way for the rural population to support themselves (beyond subsistence). Towns also provided opportunities for people to specialise in particular manufacturing trades – providing a place to sell your goods as well as support yourself while doing so (like having more places to buy food etc). Towns also hosted markets and annual trading fairs, both of which made them into trading hubs for a wider area.

Guilds and fraternities were an important part of urban organisation & economy, but there’s not that much evidence left about them. They mostly appear to’ve been formed during the 13th Century (Prestwich says 14th but then contradicts himself so I think that was a mistake) – at the beginning of the 13th Century most towns had a guild merchant and a weaver’s guild, by the early 14th Century there are records of more diverse guilds. London guilds were formed earlier, and also suppressed at various times due to being a threat to the pre-existing power structure of the city. Guilds in general protected trades and crafts, while also providing a social focus.

Towns had lots of regulations and laws – due to being crowded places. Prestwich gives several examples of rules about sanitation and building regulations. Pest control also was important – although not always how you might think. For instance there were regulations against shooting pigeons in London in the 1320s, because the arrows and stones used tended to break windows or injure people. Public order needed to be maintained, too – including many attempts to drive out prostitutes, a particularly urban problem.

Religious life in towns was also important – with many parish churches, fraternities and friaries in towns. Friars were generally an urban phenomenon as basing themselves in towns meant they could preach to the greatest numbers of people.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by considering the impact of war on towns during this time period. For inland towns there’s not much effect but ports were more significantly impacted. Both by the requirements of the Crown for shipping, and by raids by the French.

< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty

Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty was a Channel 5 series about the Plantagenets, presented by Dan Jones. I’ve been vaguely aware of Jones as an author for a while and I’ve heard good things about him, but not read any of his books. So despite my dubiousness about a Channel 5 documentary series I took a chance on recording it – it did turn out to be a pretty fun watch, even if nothing earth shatteringly new. It was part Jones walking around significant sites, and part re-enactment. I rather liked the fact that they had the characters all speak French for most of it – as, after all, they would’ve. Of course, I suspect it wasn’t the right French, but I’ve no idea how that language has changed over the last 700 or so years to be able to tell. I’ve seen comment elsewhere that the clothing was also inaccurate, I’m not up enough on the details of fashion of that era to tell that either.

The four programmes of the series each covered a different Plantagenet monarch – Henry II, Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. This was very much history as soap opera, each programme covered the life of the king in question with an emphasis on personality, relationships and how he screwed things up (or had things screwed up for him). Whilst politics or war were touched on it was more in terms of the personal interactions involved rather than any nitty-gritty detail. The reasons for choosing each king seemed to be about who would give the best story – I imagine the only difficult choice was whether it should be John or Henry III. Henry II starts the dynasty, and has the most dysfunctional family ever with not only 4 sons but also his wife rebelling against him. Henry III has the crisis & civil war with Simon de Montfort – his brother-in-law and once his best mate. Edward II – well, you can’t miss out the “buggered with a red hot poker” murder story, even if it wasn’t true (and Jones was quite clear about that being untrue on the programme). And Richard II ends the dynasty with a headlong rush of a life from Golden Boy King to Tyrant Who Gets Deposed. Fun to watch, and without (as far as I could tell) playing fast and loose with the facts. The Henry III and Edward II programmes overlapped with the current non-fiction book I’m reading which is a much more sober look at the history of England between 1225 & 1360. So particularly with those episodes I could see the gaps where Jones had missed things out, but there wasn’t anything that made me wince and disagree with him.

I said in the last paragraph this was history as soap opera, I think it’s actually accurate to say that this was a direct response to the popularity of Games of Thrones. This was Jones showing us how real history can be as exciting, brutal and bloody as anything from GRRM’s series (which Jones pretty much says outright in the intro without naming the series). And so the programme did dwell a bit too gleefully on the torture scenes for my tastes. The thing that I found particularly irritating, however, was Jones’s script was heavily larded with Upworthy headline-esque phrasing. By that I mean lots of things like “and what happened next was incredible”. It came across as a bit too heavy handedly trying to be down with the kids. But who knows, perhaps I’m just not enough down with the kids to know that that’s how the kids speak these days? 😉

Overall, as I said at the start: a fun series, but if you already have an idea of the history of this dynasty you won’t learn anything new from it.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 13)

The Peasantry

The bulk of the population of England during the period this book covers were peasants, who are the subject of this chapter of the book. Peasants generally lived in small two-generation family households – i.e. a couple and their three or four children. They lived in villages, and as well as farming their own plots would either work for or make cash payments to the owner of the manor on which they worked. They worshipped at their local parish church. In some areas the village, manor and parish were the same thing but in other areas there might be multiple villages per manor or vice versa. The same could be true for the relationship between parishes & villages.

Peasants were not all the same. One important distinction was between free and unfree peasants. The latter, also known as villeins, were liable to perform labour services for a lord and had many restrictions on their lives – effectively they were their lord’s property or chattels. They had to pay fines to their lord on a variety of occasions (such as when inheriting their father’s land or marrying). Although in practice many of the restrictions were more theoretical than actual there was still a great social stigma attached to being unfree. The labour services owed varied by manor, and might be to do particular work or to do a particular number of days work. It didn’t necessarily have to be done personally – a wealthy villein might be obliged to provide so many men to do the work. Often, and increasingly over the period, these services were commuted to cash payments – it was better for all sides of the agreement for the lord to hire willing labourers rather than force the villeins to do the job themselves. The labour services weren’t without recompense – generally the lord was required to provide food for the days when the men were doing labour for him.

Peasant landholdings weren’t static. Inheritance was generally by primogeniture or ultimogeniture (first or last son inherits all respectively). So this meant that the other sons had to be provided for somehow – and this was often done by buying and selling land (even by villeins although technically this was forbidden to them). This was also profitable for the lord – they charged entry fines when someone took over a landholding whether by inheritance, buying it or leasing it.

Most of the records that survive about the peasantry concern those who have land. As such women are proportionally under-represented. It’s clear that widows and single women had more legal independence than married women. Some information about the lives of women can also be gleaned from records such as coroner’s rolls recording accidental deaths. Women tended to be more involved in domestic matters than men – ie more women died drawing water, more men were involved in carting accidents. Gender played a huge role in determining occupation – agricultural work was primarily for men, baking and butchering were also male jobs. Brewing, however, was dominated by women. Landless peasants also don’t show up in the records much and Prestwich says that the existence of such people is a matter of deduction by historians. One source of information is records kept by the nobility about almsgiving.

Over the 13th Century the economy expanded and so did the population. Prestwich poses the question of whether living standards went up for the peasantry over this time or not – and comes to the conclusion that there is no single answer. Some areas did well overall, some did not. And within an area there were winners & losers at the individual level. One trend is that there is increasing social differentiation between peasants during this period. In general, however, the peasantry didn’t do as well out of the economic boom as the aristocracy did. In the early 14th Century the economic good times came to an end – the weather got worse, there were more famines. The peasants bore the brunt of this.

There is surprisingly little organised or successful resistance to the demands of the aristocracy on the peasants. What there was was generally pursued through the courts – the peasants normally lost, but clearly they felt they had the right to justice from the courts rather than needing to take things into their own hands. The peasants also seem generally litigious – Prestwich discusses village life by drawing out several anecdotes from legal cases between villagers. Lots of petty neighbourhood disputes go to the courts, and causing problems and stirring up trouble in the village could eventually lead to expulsion from the village.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by thinking about the effects of the wider world on the peasants – in the form of war and politics. In a lot of cases the wider world had little impact on any given peasant’s life. But the demands for fighting men and for food to support the armies would have a significant impact. These lead to a degree of resentment against the Crown, but this still did not boil over into outright rebellion – Prestwich suggests this is through a lack of leadership.

< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Swallowed by the Sea: Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Lost City; Lost Kingdoms of Central America;Treasures Decoded

Swallowed by the Sea: Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Lost City was a one-off programme presented by Lucy Blue about the city of Heraclion which existed at one of the mouths of the Nile for around a thousand years. It vanished beneath the waves in the 2nd Century BC, and in modern times it was thought to be purely mythical. However at the beginning of the 21st Century a team of French underwater archaeologists discovered the site off the modern coast of Egypt and have been excavating it ever since. Towards the end of the programme they discussed why it might’ve sunk – the best hypothesis is liquefaction of the islands it was built on, due perhaps to an otherwise minor earthquake. This means that this region – several islands – would’ve suddenly subsided, and ended up under sea level. And this is pretty exciting from an archaeological point of view. The site is a snapshot of what a Ptolemaic era trading port looked like – there’s (obviously) been no rebuilding or demolition and no treasure hunting or retrieval of people’s possessions.

The bulk of the programme focussed on what they’ve learnt about the layout of the city, and the artifacts they’ve been able to bring up to the surface. The whole city covered an area of around 2km2, built across several islands. There were many temples as well as more mundane buildings (including homes, and the apparatus of a port town). The finds range from tiny to enormous (including some huge statues). One of the interesting classes of find are the many boats they’ve found. These include functional boats of course. More interestingly it includes the first example of a ceremonial barque of a type that’s been seen in many inscriptions, but never before discovered. There are also remnants of rituals carried out around this boat – bowls containing burnt offerings that had been carefully slid into the river under the boat. Other interesting finds are coins – particularly interesting as the Egyptians’ didn’t use coins in their own economy. These coins look like Greek coins, but were struck locally (they’ve found the moulds) and used to pay the mercenaries hired to protect the city.

I wasn’t very keen on the way the programme tried to make out that Heraclion was somehow a centrally important Egyptian city. I didn’t really follow the explanation for why Blue believed it to be linked to conferring kingship on the Pharaoh, and I didn’t think the programme needed a “it’s the bestest city ever” hook to make it interesting. Other than that I enjoyed the programme, worth watching.

Lost Kingdoms of Central America was a four part series presented by Jago Cooper about four different pre-Colombus civilisations in Central America. It was a follow up to his series about South American cultures (Lost Kingdoms of South America, post). The cultures presented in this series ranged from the earliest known civilisation in Central America (the Olmec people), through to the culture that Columbus met when he discovered the West Indies (the Taino). The other two were the people who lived in what is now Costa Rica at a time when this was an independent region between the empires of the Aztecs and the Incans. And lastly the people who built Teotihuacan – not the Aztecs, as I first thought it was going to be, but the people who lived there first. In fact when the Aztecs later came to Teotihuacan they thought it was the work of giants or gods.

An interesting and enjoyable series. I didn’t always come away from an episode thinking I’d learnt much about the culture in question – but I think that was because not much is known in many cases.

Treasures Decoded was a six-part Channel 4 series, that we missed the first episode of. The format of each episode was that they looked at a particular ancient object (or building) which has some sort of iconic status, and then discussed what’s known (via several expert talking heads) about it. There was also always some “Controversy?!” angle to the programme – of varying degrees of dubiousness – which I guess was there to provide drama. (Previous sentence needs to be read with an image in mind of me rolling my eyes 😉 )

We’d only originally intended to watch the second episode – about the Great Pyramid at Giza – but then the next one was about the bust of Nefertiti and after that our completist urges kicked in and we finished the series. The Great Pyramid one had quite a lot of info about how and why the Pyramid was built – what sort of stone and how it was worked and so on. The controversy was provided by an engineer who speculates that the Pyramid is in fact a shell filled with rubble – conventional wisdom is that it is fully built out of shaped blocks of stone. His angle was that it would be easier to build that way, but the egyptologists interviewed felt it was important not to impose our own cultural mindset on the Egyptians. I.e. they may well’ve done it the hard way because it mattered that much more to them.

The one about the bust of Nefertiti avoided the obvious controversy (did the archaeologist who found it smuggle it out of Egypt) in favour of a convicted fraudster’s opinion that it was clearly a fake. The conman was convincing enough whilst talking, but my belief in him was undermined somewhat by the fact that as a previously successful conman he was bound to be convincing. If it is a fake, then it was done to such a high standard that it would pass modern forensic tests on the pigments used which any forger of the early 20th Century wouldn’t even know he needed to avoid.

Next episode was Blackbeard’s ship – it has almost certainly been discovered off the coast of America where it is known to have sunk. At the very least there is a ship of the right era and type in the right sort of place which is being excavated. The controversy was a bit weak even by the standards of the series, hinging round disagreements about whether it had sunk accidentally or been deliberately run aground by Blackbeard.

The last couple of episodes were a bit cringemaking, to be honest – I think we rolled our eyes all the way through both to some degree or another. One was about the Ark of the Covenant and suffered from us watching it the same week that we had a talk about it at the EEG (post). The programme focussed heavily on the (controversial) idea that the Ark was nicked from the Temple by Solomon’s son’s priests who brought it to Ethiopia where it has remained every since. I wasn’t convinced. The last episode was Christ’s Holy Spear, which is in a museum case in Vienna. Now, about halfway through the programme they did admit that all the evidence suggests it was made about 8 centuries after Christ, so the real point of the programme was about how the actual object was made and came to gain its reputation. Which was actually interesting, but not only did they take far too long going “oh but could it be Roman and really be the lance that pierced His side on the cross”, but also there were random Nazi and Hitler references the whole way through because apparently Hitler was obsessed with it. And no, Hitler didn’t commit suicide the very same moment the Spear was captured by the Allies.

A bit of a mixed bag, the better episodes were both not religious relic based and were the ones where I knew enough about the subject in hand to navigate my way between solid opinion and flights of fancy. Not recommended.

Other TV watched last week:

Episode 2 of A History of Art in Three Colours – James Fox looking at the history of art through the lens of three different colours, gold, white and blue.

Episode 1 of Oh! You Pretty Things – series about the relationship between pop music and fashion in Britain from the 1960s onwards.