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Book Review: The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

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Hardcover: 784 pages

Publisher: W&N (28 Jan. 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0297852663
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Romanovs-1613-1918-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0297852663

This is quite easily one of the most spectacular looking books to be produced this year. Emerald dust jacket, shining gilt embellishments and two headed eagle, combined with white pseudo cyrillic writing evokes the winter palace in St Petersburg and the grandeur of the story you are about to read. It’s a hefty dynasty, 304 years of continuous autocracy means your wrist will be getting a workout. At just over 650 reading pages of fairly closely written text this is an outlay of at least two weeks normal paced reading, which somehow I managed to fit into about ten days. With three centuries of story comes a huge cast of characters, all of whom require a face to put with the description. Multiple image sections act as nice benchmarks full of rich paintings depicting Romanovs in all their glitz and in some cases malevolence. It’s funny I should refer to a cast, because Montefiore has organised his book into acts and scenes, rather than parts and chapters.

This is nothing if not a theatrical narrative, in many ways it is pure theatre, with plots that would not be out of place in an Italian opera, and already it has been described by more renowned pens as operatic. Yet it is the subject that brings the house down.
A more labyrinthine plot you’d never have invented, yet treated with a simplistic but rich narrative formula, with more anti heroes than Hemingway could nuance into being. Some unrepentant, some blinded by destiny, others solemnly bound, all the Romanovs, wether great or indifferent rulers carried that heady blend of monkish mysticism wrapped in tradition and spectacle, the swaggering assurance of military dictators down the ages, and the supreme faith of their own authority and stolidity within the unmoving structure of society.

Every monarchical nation in some way has to have created the environment for that institution to flourish. Every hereditary ruling house throughout history has been able to rule because the cultural and social climate required them. Out of chaos often comes the beacon of a strong, divinely appointed ruler, that is supported politically by the nobility and church. Before the ascension of the reluctant Michael I, the first Romanov Tsar, Russia was a barbaric, boorish backwater set beyond the fringes of a Europe that was increasingly leaving the dark ages and medieval era behind. As with any royal saga the story of a nation’s royal family is the story of the nation itself and the course it took. By the time of Alexander I, Russia was a power player and the most powerful country in mainland Europe, and would stay that way until the Crimean war when this glorious, gory and dazzling sunburst of autocratic glory slid slowly into the catastrophe that would end in a sordid execution in a lonely basement room in the Urals.

Montefiore presents the 3 Romanov centuries with a narrative that is rich in storytelling verve, relentless in pace, sharp in observation and exhaustive and determined in its conclusions. Although many of the Tsars and Tsarina’s were unfamiliar to me, I had some preconceptions and “spoiler alert” knowledge, that helped me when approaching this book, to gauge those parts I knew nothing about.
The bones of a work on the Romanovs will essentially be tentpoled on Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I and Nicholas II. This is inescapable, but in between I found myself transfixed by some of the lesser known Tsars, though I had hoped to find one of the other ruling Tsarinas more fascinating than the great Catherine, there is a reason why she carries that epithet. It is impossible not to admire Alexander II’s attempt at reform, which unfortunately sparked the real downward spiral into destruction which the dynasty never really recovered from. It is startling to think how different the Napoleonic wars might have turned out if Tsar Paul III had not been murdered. And to my surprise I truly found it impossible to be able to look upon Peter the Great, the great patriarch, who took Russia into the 18th century and paved the way for Catherine’s golden age, in the same light after reading of his despotic side.

This is not by any means a poster for autocracy. No gilded or rose coloured spectacles have been worn while writing this. Nowhere else in Europe could have supported such a monarchy but the long suffering and deeply orthodox Russians. Almost every single member of the dynasty until Catherine the Great displayed a glamorous appealing side and a tyrannical despotism and paranoia. Truly the two headed eagle was apt, for not only did the empire look east and west but it reflected the two faced statesmanship displayed by most of the Romanovs. This trend of paternal (or maternal) ruler and vicious despot, where a father would murder his son, and slaughter thousands in conquest, began to slow with Catherine, though it would never quite disappear.

The Romanov Tsars are seen as ruling at a distance, this distance being necessary to preserve the aura of Demi God like power that was associated with them. They issued orders and decrees often without he slightest care about what it could actually mean. Allowing them to claim victory and dismiss defeat, revel in glories and shrug off atrocities, while indulging themselves in a kind of extravagance that rivalled if not exceeded what went on at Versailles. They literally were Caesars, and as such their story is one of Roman splendour and excess, which is not really a surprise they thought themselves the successors to Byzantium. Their word was law until the sorry attempts to give their country a constitution highlighted how out of touch the dynasty had become.

It soon becomes apparent that Russia retained its supreme autocrats because it was slower that other places to adapt to change, and as much as this is a story of an emerging state, rising to its peak and then descending back to anarchy, this is also a story of autocracy. That Russia remained mired at least 50 years behind the rest of Europe, sprinting to catch up in times of crises. The country needed it’s all powerful Tsars to survive, Yet whenever a ruling house becomes so removed that it fails to recognise that it’s subjects no longer view them as parents but oppressors, Revolution is never far away. The lessons of the French Revolution were both ignored and learned from. The successions of Tsarist secret service bureaus testifies to their growing paranoia with an ingrown fear of assassination and an outward looking terror of coup and revolution.
Plot, denouncement and purge were not inventions of the communist era. They were alive an well from the earliest Romanovs to the last. The idea of packing off threats, enemies, troublemakers and anyone you didn’t like to Siberia wasn’t Stalin’s idea. There is indeed a surprising modernity to the constant reaction and instability, of coup and counter coup that can still be seen around the world today, most recently in Turkey. Yet Montefiore is quick to reassure us that the Tsarist purges were actually quite benign compared to their communist successors. It is morbidly ironic, or perhaps fitting, that the Romanovs themselves would be exterminated by a purge.

This is how Russia got from the 17th century to the 20th, how it changed from the most powerful autocracy in the western world to the communism most people associate it with. Narrative history is probably the only way you can fit this story into one volume, and with that must come the dreaded generalisations, and unbending judgments that are the bane of the academic world. In those parts I was most familiar with I found these to be happily lacking, indeed there is especial merit in the treatment of Alexander I. Though some of the modern labels that are tagged to some characters had my eyebrow arching a tad. Yes, I did note some curiosities, though muskets remained in use until the late 19th century, the author repeatedly uses the word rife. This is pedantic, my apologies. Then there is an about face as the Crimean Army is described as using flintlock muskets, which is and is not on the ball as most of the muskets were converted to percussion systems by 1854, yet remained smoothbore. Again pedantic, I can’t seem to turn this part of my brain off.

The skill of the writer cannot be faulted. Probably a more adept use of words to describe people cannot be found. The pug faced Emperor Paul dressed up like a tea cozy is right on the money. The cadaverous Pobedonostsev is a frightening description of a joyless vampire from a gothic nightmare. These ancillaries, beef out the “cast” with a slew of brilliant generals, wily politicians and over amorous courtesans. Each Tsar bar a handful, seemingly expected to ostentatiously poach good looking ladies as mistresses, like they might pilfer Balkan buffer States. These court nymphs often becoming as powerful as any of the ruling elite. Fascinating indeed was how open the upper echelons could become if you caught the right time. Anyone from former slave boys from Africa to the children of itinerate workers, or humble soldiers might be able to achieve a title, estate and serfs if fate decreed it. This dependency on fate is summed up by a story of Catherine the Great’s succession, when Potemkin’s horse refused to leave her side. Many unusual people would end up populating this glittering Galaxy by as I now like to put it, “Riding Potemkin’s Horse”.

Montefiore’s character sketches are superb. Little vignettes like these make this book highly engrossing, each paragraph revealing something new and curious. The ascension of Nicholas I during the Decembrist Revolt is made for motion picture, so well crafted was it that I felt I could see it happening as I read. Quotes from numerous sources are used as conversational blocks, to make it as if the protagonists are really talking.
A Russian view of things will win you few friends today, try explaining the Russian side of the Crimean war and you can expect a few frowns and yeah right’s around the table. And while it is unlikely that you will emerge with a favourable impression of this dynasty as a whole, some do come out of it deserving at least a patina of admiration, and it will be impossible not to sympathise with a few. I’m not just talking about Nicholas II, because one soon realises after reading of the other Tsars that got bumped off, that his disastrous reign was bound to pull him down either to exile or execution. From Bloody Sunday to the Russo Japanese War to the infatuation with Rasputin, (someone really should have taught him that royal favourites have been the downfall of many a king.) this was one damaging fiasco after another, and the damage already done to the dynasty meant that it was no longer strong enough (for a Tsar like Nicholas) to survive it. Yet this does not lessen the tragedy or infamy of his end, which was without doubt an unforgivable crime, brought horribly to life by the final act.

Russia was never small scale, and this book reflects that. The Romanovs is sensational & unrelenting. A glorious, gory set piece classical Ballet of a book full of Byzantine intrigue, Total war, unrestrained passion, and the fragile invincibility absolute power.

Josh.

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Book Review: The Gempei War by Stephen Turnbull.

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Paperback: 96 pages

Publisher: Osprey Publishing (28 July 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472813847

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gempei-War-1180-85-Samurai-Campaign/dp/1472813847

A ritual war, brutal and yet played by the rules in an ancient, secluded land. A power struggle between two families for the control of the ruler. Internecine strife within one of the factions for ultimate power. Cunning politicians, giant warrior monks and mighty warriors who can cut arrows in two, swim rivers under fire, and who die at their own hand rather than surrender. The ultimate personal goal is to be first into battle, to kill a worthy opponent and to die with honour. Buddhist Warrior Monks standing on the ribs of a demolished bridge. Horsemen riding across frozen plains. Frantic, primal duels amidst great battles on land and sea, where victory lies in cunning, and sure, why not throw in a herd of oxen with flaming torches tied to their horns?

Sounds like a mashup of the latest bestselling fantasy novel doesn’t it? Well who needs fantasy when you can just read about the Gempei war?

In Western terms the War was comparable properly to the power struggle of the Wars of the Roses with two principal families and their allies splitting and drawing in the larger population via their overlords in a fight for control. In cultural and political terms it had as great an affect on Japan as the Great Civil Wars of the 17th century in Britain. Fought on a scale that was roughly comparable to the American Civil war in the 19th.

Stephen Turnbull is a name synonymous amongst history students and enthusiasts alike with the age of the Samurai. Many of the “Samurai” books published by Osprey have been written by him and in the Gempei War he brings his formidable expertise to arguably the most critical period of pre Edo Japanese history. By the simple process that without the Gempei War the Tokogowa would have not been fighting to attain but to create the Shogunate.

The idea of the Shogun is fairly well understood, thanks to James Clavell’s novel and the Creative Assembly video game. What is more obscure is how the position was created. The Gempei War, the great civil war caused by the rivalry between the Minamoto and the Taira families over the control of the Emperor, was as Turnbull points out the root to which all later Japanese history traces. Whether it is the Shogun, or the code of Bushido, so much cultural significance is derived from this four year period from 1180 to 1184.

Stripping things back and basing his narrative around two primary sources, Turnbull hopes to present the most authoritative work in English on the Gempei War. This is a big statement to be found within the limited confines of an Osprey book. Nevertheless I was impressed by it. First of all setting the scene with the rise of the Taira, and then showing how Taira Kiyomori unwittingly began isolating himself and causing resentment, then sparking the whole thing by passing over the Imperial heir once too many times, prompting said heir to cast around for allies and finding a willing bow in the aged Minamoto Yarimosa, whose suicide at the first battle of Uji, inspired his young exiled kinsman Minamoto Yotitomo to rally the clan and make a bid to destroy the Taira.

Along the way Yotitomo proved himself to be a leader adept at utilising the talents of those nearest him, and then eliminating them when they had served their purpose or grew too powerful. By the end of the Gempei War, while the nobility of the Taira, and the young emperor rotted beneath the waters of the Shimonoseki straits, Yoritomo was the sole voice of law in the land and the Shogunate was born that would be the focus of Japanese power and ambition for the next 500 years until 1600 when one family would come to dominate the position until 1867 when the Emperor was restored to power.

Turnbull’s impressive array of carefully chosen images surround the three detailed two page spreads by Giuseppe Rava, which highlight the individualistic nature of the fighting, but in my opinion lack something that can be seen in other Samurai reconstructions, yet Osprey undoubtedly chose the right man for the job. I think the best is the death of Kizo Yoshinaka at Awazu, which superbly illustrates the role of the Samurai of this period as a horse archer. However it has been pointed out to me that in the scene depicting the battle of Ichinotani, there are some anachronisms in weaponry and haircuts. As usual with a campaign book we get 3D maps. The one showing the battle of Kurikara is very detailed and so is the one of Dannoura, that goes so far as to show the tides of the Shimonoseki Strait.

In this era the Samurai were men of the horse and the bow, and this created a very different dynamic to Japanese warfare, yet the events and stories of the Gempei War would be handed down to later generations of Samurai and indeed soldiers, as the epitome of how to behave in battle. No event until 1600 would have such profound effects on Japan and this book does a creditable job of showing us why.

Josh.

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Book Review: Milvian Bridge by Ross Cowan.

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Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (28 July 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472813812

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Milvian-Bridge-AD-312-Constantines/dp/1472813812

The Battle of Milvian Bridge is one of the unsung turning points of world history. A known but unknown moment, but a truly decisive encounter, at the very gates of Rome. It’s political and cultural ramifications were not so much the ripples of a stone dropped into a still pond but the beginnings of a tidal wave.
Look at a map of the Roman Empire in the 1st Century AD and then compare it to a map representing it in the early 4th century and you will notice allot has changed. Not so much in extent, although that is a given, but in organisation. For a start it is now split in two, and each one of those large provinces are now sectioned into districts.
The empire was now ruled by two emperors (Augusti) and their deputies, or successors (Caesars). The hallowed names of the last two men to truly change the course of world history, now being used as titles. In many ways the Romans were now living in a changing world, full of changing values, yet full of reminders of their ancient past, now legacies and traditions rather than actual modes of life.
Christianity was on the rise across the empire. This dangerous eastern religion was suppressed and persecuted throughout the provinces. Few could have thought at the turn of the century that in just over a decade the belief of a persecuted minority would have become the state religion of the most powerful empire in the western world. Indeed it is one of the great ironies of the battle that pagan soldiers emblazoned a mark that usually singled people out for persecution on their shields in the hope of gaining divine intervention.

God rewarded their blind devotion, or at least that of their leader who duly did the decent thing and was properly grateful. Another irony being the adoption of an originally pacifist ideology to win a battle. This basically let the door open for later warriors to wage war in the name of God at will. After all old Roman deities had no qualms about being used as excuses to kill, steal and destroy, to the Romans it just seemed natural. Of course after the rise of Constantine the spread of Roman Christianity was like the insertion of a food colouring to dough. It was mixed indelibly into society and adapted as needed. The tale of how a divinely inspired emperor saw the sign of God in a vision and took up the holy symbol on the shields of his as yet still pagan legionaries went into legend. But apart from that little nugget, what else do we know? Well, that’s the problem.

The Battle of Milvian Bridge is one of those vague ancient battles. One of the ones that is described in a sentence or two by contemporary writers. None of Constantine’s General’s (Duce) are known by name, few of his opponent, Maxentian’s are either. The course of the battle is a simple straightforward affair, the two sides meet and one runs away, yet the sources disagree on the choreography and are vague when it comes to the nitty gritty. It’s not a subject an analytical and dedicated historian will take up lightly. All well an good to insert it into a wider biography of Constantine or a history of the late Roman Empire, but in fact I would say that there are very few ancient battles that can be written about with any certainty in a stand alone study. Milvian Bridge is not one of them.

That is of course why Osprey Campaign is a perfect format to discuss this battle. Because the length is just under 100 pages author, Ross Cowan is given the ability to boil down military analysis, discussion, narrative and some background politics without needing to worry about bogging down a conventional biography or history. Even so it is notable that in the detailed “Opposing Armies” section, there is little discussion of arms and equipment of the opposing sides and instead leaves that to accompanying images and colour plates. The organisation of the much more convoluted later Roman armies are the main concern.

Title Artist Sean O’brogan must be quite at home with the Roman army by now. With almost 7 titles including this one, that I can think of dealing with subjects from the early, republican and late army. No one except Graham Turner is painting armour with such realism. His full colour plates are true to his style, and I should think the picture of the infantry clash most difficult given the geometrical challenge of perspective caused by the flying javelins and darts being thrown by Constantine’s legionaries. The influence of Angus McBride is I think evident in his Praetorians, and I very much liked his depiction of clibernii. Perhaps the troops could have been given some varied helmets and equipment, maybe that’s too picky, but I’m beginning to prefer my Romans a little more individualistic nowadays, especially the later ones. The scene of the rout over the Tiber is very good, an overview instead of a closeup is original. I noted only one riderless horse though, and although there are shields strewn around, dropped my men obviously dumping their kit in order to swim, there is a lack of other armour on the ground.

There is no lack of gaping holes in the contemporary narrative for an author to insert in some speculation into, and Cowan is forced to assume and suppose certain patterns where the sources are silent, especially when describing Constantine’s approach to Rome. These often frustrating sources are gone into with some detail. Nine separate ancient accounts of the battle and a discussion about the archeology of the likely battlefield are discussed in order to build up a firm footing for the author’s tentative, and he stresses that it is tentative, reconstruction of the action.
On the whole I am in favour of his assertions on this matter, he makes good logical sense and puts some flesh and bones onto the action.

When it comes to the campaign, Cowan ably illustrates the opposing strategies, from the confident, popular, downright dynamic Constantine, who fought in the front of his cavalry like Alexander had. And the cautious, inexperienced Maxentian who relied on a hitherto tried and true strategy of avoiding a pitched battle. Yet at the last moment he threw all that common sense out the window and ended up a waterlogged corpse, one of the last great pagan sacrifices to Rome, on the right bank of the Tiber alongside thousands of his men as a result.

Josh.

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Book Review: Roman Army Units in the Western Provinces (1).

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Paperback: 48 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (16 Jun. 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472815378
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roman-Army-Units-Western-Provinces/dp/1472815378
So apart from the catchy title what does this book offer the Roman Army enthusiast and student? Men-At-Arms books focus of organisation and equipment, so that’s a given. Yet one may ask do we not already know what Roman troops looked like in the 1st Century AD? The answer would be yes, basically, but the study of Roman military equipment is subject to changing perceptions as the result of exhaustive academic and archeological study.
It wasn’t so long ago that Peter Connelly’s depiction of ring mail clad Caesarean legionaries was viewed as radical. What has transpired over the last century of study is to present an archetypal legionary and auxiliary. But what many see as the last word is really the beginning. Since the early 2,000’s historians have been slowly introducing a non uniform Roman army that many find unpalatable to think about.
There is a gravitational pull from the upper end of the atmosphere of academia to the popular reading public. Years of work and research by scholars and archeologists takes years of critical analysis and peer review to make it into accepted thought, from where an author can feel secure enough to publish. Essentially it takes an extended time to sieve down to general readers and enthusiasts, through the academic colander, and that means there are large gaps, as serried chunks of information is passed down. It’s not just history, but it affects the field. Therefore right now people who grew up with a set image of a Roman soldier are being challenged to accept the new evidence that is now arriving to say, actually they looked like this.

Raffaele D’Amato fresh from giving us his excellent New Vanguard series on the Roman Navy brings his sharp eye, clear writing and eye for detail to the Roman army. Arguing that instead of looking for a uniform army of men wearing cloned armour, we should look at the appearance of the legionary in a much more complex, fluid and geo-cultural way. In a nutshell the Roman army, though indeed mass producing equipment to an extent, made allowances for regional and national variances, especially in locally raised troops and auxiliaries or in those units long stationed in a given place.
The concept of a uniform, the author notes, doesn’t factor into the logic of the Roman army any more than it did the Greeks. Men equipped alike and trained alike was enough, but that is only a guideline, as one helmet pattern was phased out over a decade for a better model, and so on with shields, swords and armour. If you think how in a 20 year period between 1798 to 1815 the British army went through two major changes of uniform and equipment change, while engaged in a major war (and to this day provokes debate about when and how), it doesn’t seem all to strange to think the Romans didn’t also work this way.
Accompanying the text are many illustrations to back up the text, which although making its point, boils down, due to space constraints on a huge subject, to a list of archeological artefacts divided by province and region to present the case. At the heart of the book is the illustrations, expertly rendered by Raffaele Ruggeri, and show a familiar but different Roman army than we are used to. I loved that they included a reconstruction of the Auxiliary officer statue from Vachéres, probably my all time favourite military carving from this period. However I was a little surprised to see that the plates themselves no longer include any identifier on the image page save for a number reference to correlate in the plate commentary at the back.

It is a subject that deserves more space, and the MAA format just about carries it without creaking. The two Raffaele’s have done an admirable job in showing a glimpse at an increasingly mature and complex Roman army, and I think it’s about time.

Josh.

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Book Review. Holocaust Landscapes by Tim Cole.

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Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum (5 May 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472906888
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Holocaust-Landscapes-Tim-Cole/dp/1472906888

Frankly I was unsure how to start this review. How does one begin to comment, far less even conceive of critiquing a work on this subject without some sort of deep knowledge base? The answer was given to me by a quote by victim Frtizie Weiss Fritzshall describing the ordeal of being transported via cattle car to a concentration camp. To give context these were dark windowless train compartments, full of screaming infants, unwashed bodies and overflowing buckets of human waste.

“These revisionists that don’t believe, I would like to take them all and put them into a compartment like that and show them what it feels like”

There is nothing quite so low as a holocaust denier. People have told me about them, now and again I’ve seen fringe indications of their presence on social media, (the bridge underneath which these people seem to live), thankfully, (for them) I’ve never actually ran across one. But their very presence in the world, and their activity across the world’s most effective communication networks should almost require everyone who also uses social media to have some knowledge on the subject.

This book offers such knowledge in an original and thought provoking way. Instead of viewing the holocaust as a giant single event it breaks the story down into experiences and places. A Geographical and situational study of the holocaust rooted in the landscapes it happened in. Each chapter describes a given place and situation, ghettoes of Belgium and Poland, Eastern forests, the varied camps, principally Auschwitz, Trains which move through landscapes but present their own dim vision of hell in the form of a cattle car and so on, delving into every conceivable place people might try to escape or hide, and also the places where they would be transported, in what and over what they would be transport in and where they might be killed and buried.

The themes that run through each chapter are essentially; causes & effects, life and death. Each section is seen through the eyes of multiple victims from often various walks of life, and illustrates many commonplace and horrendous episodes from Europe’s darkest hour. The doomed flight of hundreds of thousands of Jews between 1930-39, only to be snapped up and tossed into Ghettos after the Germans occupied new territory. Lucky were they who managed to get to Cuba or America. The progressively extreme measures taken to Aryanise Germany, by detainment, containment and indeed downright assassination by specified death squads. The dull, grey horror of the extermination camps. The image of smoking crematorium chimneys, rising over the inmates going about the day to day task of survival, the smoke carrying the smell of burned flesh to pollute the air, will stay with me I think, no less than the appalling thought of what it must have been like to endure those train journeys only to end up there.

It is a modest book, though I feel unqualified to say wether it brings anything new to the subject I do feel that it that puts a different perspective to the scope and scale of the atrocity. By finding the place and putting the story in it, this a book to make you think. As I write this the last German guard likely to be tried for war crimes in connection with Auschwitz faces 5 years in prison. During his hearing the man apologised for not having done anything to stop the murder, he regretted ever being a part of it. A survivor commented that he was glad he was sorry, he didn’t hate him, he didn’t want him to go to jail, but sorry wasn’t enough. The thought occur’s to me after reading this, what could be?

You will never know why he said this until you read something about the Holocaust. A dual theme threading through each chapter is “Where can I hide/escape?” And “How can I survive?” They occur Interchangeably, some escaping and surviving, some surviving and then escaping sometimes it’s just one or the other. The answers to these questions are oftentimes shocking in the extreme, as you read of people too tightly packed in a boxcar that they can’t sit down, and when they fall down they are trampled because there’s not enough room to avoid them, when two men fall they struggle with each other. The one who ends up on top will live to see the next day.

This is humanity, forced down by an inhuman system, to its most basic instincts. Enduring circumstances that no one should have to go through. Reading this, civilisation will not seem as stable as before. Landscape by landscape through ghetto and countryside, river and mountain story by story these are unpleasant truths, but as we get farther and farther away from the events described, they become necessary ones to learn.

Josh.

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Book Review: Spain by Robert Goodwin.

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Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (7 May 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1408830108

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spain-Centre-1519-1682-Robert-Goodwin/dp/1408830108

In 1813 French troops were fleeing Spain, defeated by the Duke of Wellington’s Anglo-Hispanic army at Vitoria, their fate seemed sealed, that is until the British pursuers encountered the French baggage train. In the days afterwards the Duke of Wellington visited his wrath on regiments that had participated in the looting. Parades were organised and small fortunes of valuables were retrieved. It wasn’t all coins and diamonds though, in the aftermath of the battle Wellington found himself in possession of one of the most complete art collections in Europe, some of which were totally unknown at the time outside Spain. Masterpieces by Velasquez and Murillo had been observed by the occupying French Marshals and taken back to France and displayed in private houses and the Louvre until 1815. The French had stumbled onto the legacy of a greater Spain than the one they had conquered. One that because Spain was not officially on the Grand Tour, few people in Central Europe knew about, thousands of priceless works of art were carted over the Pyrenees, some were captured like those at Vitoria, but because of this the word got out there was more to Spain than met the eye.

In the pantheon of empires Spain lies quite low down in people’s memory. Especially the British, who think everything begins and ends with their own imperial adventure.
True, on those endless documentaries about the Spanish Armada people get told about Spain being the greatest empire in the world, but this is really only to more highlight the greatness of England, the midget that defeated the giant. Boiled down, most countries in Europe have some nugget of Spanish history, whether it is the armada, or the wars over the Spanish Netherlands, or the rule of the Spaniards in Italy there are few nations in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and America that have not encountered this forgotten empire, and when you tie those pieces together you find a monumental story that puts Spain at the centre of the world.

Robert Goodwin’s book tells that story, not from the outside, showing Spain’s might to heighten the glory of the given nation fighting her, nor only focusing on the conquest of the Americas, but from the inside, as a history of Spain for Spain. In the 16th century the world was increasingly beginning to globalise, and though Portugal was narrowly the First Nation to properly explore and conquer globally, it was Spain that became the first global state, eclipsing its smaller neighbour in its wealth, reach and stature.

The concept of Spain becoming the centre of the world is indeed apt at this time, not just because to the insular thinking Spanish, (a common trait to all empires) all roads increasingly seemed to lead to Saville, and thence to Toledo and Madrid, but because in 1532 they literally conquered a place that was considered to be the centre of the world. Cuzco, the capitol of the Incas means navel in the native language, the place where the four Inca lands connected and it was from Peru where much of Spain’s future wealth derived. In ancient times all roads led to Rome, and to the British Greenwich was mathematically decided to be the place were time begins and ends, Until 1842 Qing emperors of China were convinced that the Mandate of Heaven meant they were the axis on which the world turned. So too did the Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries believe that the Hapsburg dynasty held the balance of the New and Old Wolds in the palm of their hands.

From Kings to great General’s to priests, cunning bureaucrats and brilliant writers and artists this is the story of Spain’s golden age. The age that the French, who had done their part to bring the golden age down in the 17th century, rediscovered when they invaded in 1808. Spain tells this huge story through the the lives of two dozen Spaniards and their monarchs. Some will be familiar, some not so, but the end result is an impressive and very enjoyable tour, through a catalogue of Spanish history.

Usually seen as a negative force, Goodwin does attempt a more positive view, looking from a renaissance Spanish mindset. The Spain he shows gives light and shade, and it’s true that because of the infamy of the inquisition and the conquista, it is hard to look past to positives. But that suggests that no other country in Europe practiced ill policy, subjugating other states and peoples, or persecuted heretics. This book is about an empire that for a time saw itself as the centre of the world. Opposed to the dour image of sinister Kings dressed in black, attended by sombre clerics presiding over the inquisition’s ghastly auto de fe’s amidst the splendour of majestic plazas, paid for by American gold. We see a culture and society alive and moving around this, often chaotic and troubled but striving always for greatness. Rich in art and literature which would by the 18th century begin influence the world outside Spain.

True, it is therefore not as harsh on colonial matters as some more critical works, but then again there is no shortage of ethical debate when it comes to the good and bad points of any empire. Yet in the first chapter when he aptly described Cortes’ presentation of Mexican wealth as the biggest bribe ever offered to a European monarch, he describes the “Totomac” Indians that accompanied that embassy as “ambassadors”. Seemingly forgetting that the state to which they might have represented had they been given that status, had been destroyed, and that they were not there so much to report back about Spain, but to show Spain what it had conquered.

What made the Spanish empire so great was in part good fortune that literally dropped the riches of Mexico and Peru into the lap of Charles V by a stream of cunning, opportunistic, adventurers. This stream of treasure essentially powered Spain through the 16th century and right up to the end of the 17th before it began to run out. Wasted on costly, dynastic European wars and also on art, for arts sake. This latter half of the book is essentially the world of Perez Reverte’s Alatriste. A character that Reverte invented because so little was being taught in Spanish schools about the golden age. An age of glorious decay, as opposed to the sudden and continuous rise afforded by the Conquistadors.

This is a book I have hoped to see appear for a long time, a clever, well written, accessible and enlightening tour of the Span’s “century of Gold”. A time of contrasts, between an emerging nation, rich, grasping, noble, cruel and unapologetically fervent, catapulted to a global stage, of greed and excess, of war and art. A world shaping story well worth reading.

Josh.

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Book Review: Amazons by Adrienne Mayor.

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Length : 536 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (9 Sept. 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691147205
ISBN-13: 978-0691147208
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10302.html

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazons-Legends-Warrior-across-Ancient/dp/0691147205

It’s a colourful book, yellow with orange arrows symmetrically shooting towards a little Amazon on a horse. In feel it has a sort of magazine consistency. It feels like many American Books I’ve owned, robust and floppy. It’s the type of book that can take punishment, a proper reference book in other words, you could curl its covers back when reading it, leave it splayed and do what you might I feel sure it would recover. Just as easily it can be cared for and will look attractive on a shelf. So much for the cover.

Diodorus wrote that after the Trojan War the great histories of the Amazons, the fierce warrior women of ancient legend, had become so storied as to become nothing but fictions. It is startling, some might say, that ancient historians would write something like this. Arguing as it does by extension that these clans of savage women from the dark fringes of the civilised world, and indeed factual scholarship, were actually real, and not just some invention to spice up heroic poetry and song.
But they did. To the ancient Greeks, and practically most everyone else, the Amazons were or had been real people, part of history to be recorded and passed down. That men such as Diodorus and Herodotus believed in their reality proves that it wasn’t just crackpot writers who thought that Amazons belonged to history as well as to literature and art.
That isn’t how we see them today though. To most people an Amazon is a sort of a feminine ideal, a figment or a creation, and as such the amount of actual scholarship regarding them in an historical or archeological sense is nonexistent. True there are many books about, or that mention the myth, just like Heracles, or Jason in terms of Historiography they are a real part of Ancient Greek and Roman culture. But no one has really taken them seriously enough to devote a proper study to them, which is a great injustice, as anyone who reads Adrienne Mayor’s book will soon realise.

Diodorus really hit the nail on the head. Today the Amazons are so enmeshed in legend and myth that whatever history there was needs to be surgically seperated in order to understand it. And that is where Mayor’s Encyclopaedia Amizonica comes in. A treasure trove of historical, legendary, archeological and historiographical information, a practical Rosetta Stone of Amazon fact and fiction. With the renewal of the Wonder Woman Brand I feel certain that more people will be asking, “So were Amazons Real?” And thankfully now, we have this book to tell us resoundingly, yes!

However the actual reality is more complicated than that. Because essentially amazons of mythic lore were a correlation of practically everything that was known about real warrior women who lived on the Steppes of ancient Scythia. A Greek geographical name tag for a great sweep of land stretching from the Balkans, across Ukraine and Southern Russia, down into the Caucuses and into Turkey and Iran. This Scythia was a land of nomads, horse people, scraping out an existence more ancient and mysterious than Greece civilisation itself. Indeed what Greeks would call Scythians formed part of a much wider, “Nomad Belt” that stretched from Europe to Mongolia and was composed of people and cultures that had adapted to survive in the endless grass prairies and deserts of the steppes, who knew the mountain paths and who were the terror of the civilised world for centuries.

It is no mistake that death rode a pale horse in the book of Revelation. The wild and warlike nomads would constantly strike terror into all the great empires of the lower, more fertile geographic sphere. The Persian empire, that vast melting pot was indeed formed out of a group of horse warriors. It was a collection of horse cultures that brought Rome to its knees, and it was the nomads of Mongolia that conquered the greatest continuous land empire ever seen.
Amazons tells us about these people, the women of Scythia, the real, the remains and the myths, all is examined. The author takes us right to the Hemp rich atmosphere of their campfires, were they share stories of raids, hunts and life with the men of their tribe, illustrating their stories with the tattoos that encircle their arms, that seem to dance in the firelight and come alive as more fermented mares milk is drunk.
Using the legends and the rich archeological evidence uncovered from their homeland Mayor gets to the roots of those legends and reveals some fascinating surprises. Not least of which is how Central the amazons were to Greek culture. They named cities after them, they propped up reputations on the strength of defeating them, they fantasised about them. But the difference between then and now is that the Greeks knew that they were real people, whereas today we don’t.

The real amazons Mayor tells us didn’t look like the scantily clad Greek Ideal, they wore long and beautifully decorated robes and distinctive pointed hats, they may well have invented trousers, and they fought and hunted alongside their men. I can’t actually even begin to say how great it is to have a book like this, because it’s exactly the kind of book I like. Not one that just dismisses old stories as being too tall or made up, but really gives them the benefit of the doubt and tries to correlate and reconcile them with hard evidence. This is brilliantly achieved in Amazons.

The format is encyclopaedic, but it is well written and not dry. There is a great emphasis put on highlighting the freedom, gender neutral role and apparent equality that these women enjoyed & as a result were endowed with by even Greek writers. True unless you are an archeologist or interested in the field, undoubtedly some will find the exhaustive examination of burial finds somewhat dragging. Also because a wide sweep of Amazon legends and stories are examined here, some will find some more interesting than others. By that I mean, those interested in Ancient Greece might not be so bothered with the Amazons of Asia. But to really get to grips with the subject it’s fascinating to read the parallels between the eastern and western Amazons. And it seems that every culture has their own versions, even if they don’t call them Amazons. Indeed the word Amazon here is used loosely to describe both the rigid mythological clans of savage women, and also to refer to any sort of woman warrior within a balanced society. Remember the Nomad belt stretched from the Black Sea to Mongolia, and women capable of fighting and defending themselves is just the most practical solution for a nomadic way of life, and would give such a clan or tribe a huge advantage over their enemies. Reading about the horsewomen of the Middle East and China was no less fascinating to me.

This in many ways is an exhaustive study, every facet that could be thought of has been included, and very little left out. From Ancient Greece right down to the Roman Mithradatic War, and across to ancient China, this is a photo collage of the place fighting women hold on our imaginations, and the truth behind the image. In movies and books today, audiences much prefer a strong, independent woman that can defend herself and pretty much kick ass, to the damsel in distress. That is a preference that goes right back to the Amazons. That the Amazons today are probably ranked up there in popular imagination with Cowboys and Pirates, speaks to the impact they had on the minds of the ancient world. Imagine the effect of seeing these raiders riding through your country, as a Greek used to demure matrons and maids, seeing that the barbarian horde was not just made up of male warriors, but perhaps up to a quarter or more of the fighting force were women, it was a culture shock that would not fade quickly. These women, who killed and hunted and rode, and who would look a man square in the eye without shame and talk to him as if he was just anyone else, held an endless fascination for the Greeks, just as they do today.

Josh.