I haven't had this much fun reading a history book in many years. It is chatty, witty, often laugh out loud funny, but with vivid and engaging prose tI haven't had this much fun reading a history book in many years. It is chatty, witty, often laugh out loud funny, but with vivid and engaging prose that has a real desire on the part of the writer for the readers to understand,/i> the subject, and in an in-depth and multilayered way. Motivated in part by several very simplistic journaist think pieces during the pandemic that went from "the Renaissance was triggered by the Black Death" to "so maybe we are about to see a new Renaissance", Palmer takes the reader through the very modern and recent origins of the concept of "the Renaissance" and shows it is, in many ways, something of a myth. She then spends most of the rest of her substantial book deconstructing what the term attempts to encompass and to examine what was happening in the periods (plural) and cultures (also plural) it generally refers to that made it both similar to and also distinct from what went before.
In the process she debunks a lot of pop history concepts and common understandings, such as the Middle Ages as "a dark age" or the Renassaince (however you delineate and define it) as "a golden age" - explaining why those terms are not accurate and not even very useful. How secular the Renaissance was and how much it led to secularism, whether it saw a rise in individualism, whether it was the birth of capitalism and whether any of the other posited "x factors" that supposedly definte the Renaissance are valid are also explored at length and in enjoyable detail.
And this is fundamentally an enjoyable book; I imagine Dr Palmer's university classes are a lot of fun. The author peppers her analysis with vivid anecdotes, amusing trivia and running jokes, several of which serve as ways to remind the reader later in what is a fairly long book of something explained at the beginning. So the parrot that speaks Latin, the man with three testicles and Battle Popes One and Two are funny, but also useful to that understanding that the author seeks to instill.
This is a great book and an remarkable debut as a popular history writer by a vigorous scholar who is clearly a superb teacher. I look forward to her next book. Highly recommended....more
A while ago I was reading a nineteenth century work on medieval history that was very quaint in style to a modern reader. This was substantially becauA while ago I was reading a nineteenth century work on medieval history that was very quaint in style to a modern reader. This was substantially because of its constant moralising; with asides to the reader about the naughty behaviour of many of the people described and mini-sermons on how such wickedness, usually of a sexual nature, should be avoided by all good, right-thinking and pious persons.
This all seems very odd to us, but I wonder if sometime in the future a lot of our current historical writing will seem similarly quaint and moralistic. I began Caroline Dodds Pennock's book after reading interviews with the author and seeing some good reviews. The idea of turning the whole historical narrative of the "discovery of the New World" around and looking at it from the opposite perspective, from the point of view of indigenous people who travelled to Europe, seemed very interesting.
And in most respects this is a very interesting book. There are fascinating characters, interesting and often-ignored sources and plenty of novel perspectives to had from it. The problem, for me, was the way the writer seemed to see her project as an exercise in penitence for the sins of colonialism. After several chapters, the constant reminders that colonism was bad and wrong and that the Europeans who engaged in it were, from our perspective, ignorant, wicked and cruel got wearying.
I should be clear that I definitely DO think colonialism and its attendant consequences was very much a terrible thing and can definitely see this with the benefit of several centuries of hindsight. But when the writer moves beyond assuming the reader understands this to having to reinforce it with almost every sentence, the work begins to feel a lot like that nineteenth century moralism mentioned above.
It is one thing for us to empathise with the fate of an indigenous person who was enslaved and also to find it hard to understand their enslaver. But it's another when the tone and language used to describe these things casts aside any objectivity at all and gets emotionally invested, sometimes to the point of being melodramatic. The chapter on Slavery is heavy with this kind of thing. But it is light on other elements that may have been good to explore. The indigenous traditions of slavery are barely mentioned. How did they differ to European slavery practices? We aren't told. Would they have informed how enslaved indigenous people understood their predicament? This isn't examined. It seems that kind of analysis would get in the way of the strong undertone of "Europeans bad/Indigenous good" that pervades this book.
The chapter on the part played by indigenous people in the "Columbian Exhange" of goods and new plant products and treasure continues this moralising theme. After a long paen to the mystical connection of indigenous people to the land and its bounty, an indigenous academic is quoted cautioning that this sort of thing tends to be silly. As though noting this somehow makes the fact Dodds Pennock has just done the very thing the academic warns against okay. European exploitation of reseouces and the terrible consequences of capitalism and commerce are noted at some length. Yet when the author notes that native peoples engaged in these activities with some enthusiasm, we are suddenly told that this is good and should be admired. No explanation is given as to why this is bad when Europeans did it but good when natives took it up.
I rarely give up on a book without finishing it, even when I'm not enjoying it. I gave up on this one. The hectoring moralism and emotive tone became, after four long chapters, too high a price for the nuggets of genuine insight the book provided. History is not meant to be a sermon. And even when you agree with the faith (as, here, I do), sermons are usually boring. This book got boring....more
An excellent overview of the history and development of Australia's most notorious penal station. In places this book can be a bit of a catalogue of cAn excellent overview of the history and development of Australia's most notorious penal station. In places this book can be a bit of a catalogue of construction projects and development of existing buildings, but this does serve to explain how the site changed over time. This in turn reflects changes in attitudes to the punishment and/or reform of criminals over the period of the station at Port Arthur. In the early years it seems to have reflected the extreme brutality of the penal colonies on Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbour, both of which were closed, with their remaining inmates sent to Port Arthur. In the middle years there appears to have been a turn from physical punishments - floggings and heavy irons etc. - to the experiment with the "model prison" system. By the end it was recognised that this approach was even more cruel than the early brutality, with long sensory deprivation and solitary confinement sending multiple prisoners insane.
In the end this is a very sad book, though one with a few lighter moments (such as a few of the more creative if less successful escape attempts). The sheer scale and expense of what we would regard as a inhuman system is remarkable. Anyone who has visited Port Arthur - now a site for picnics and outdoor weddings - will get a real understanding of the place from this book....more
The difficulty with a book that covers a huge topic across over 2500 years of history is the author has to master a lot of historical material and finThe difficulty with a book that covers a huge topic across over 2500 years of history is the author has to master a lot of historical material and find a way to pull it together into their theme. Mchangama does a good job, overall, with the second element. He sets up a general contrast, with suitable caveats, between the Greek ideal of free speech (free speech for all) and the Roman one (free speech for those deemed worthy). He is then able to return to these contrasting ideals throughout his survey of the history of the struggle between those who want to speak freely and those who seek to silence them. This survey is worth working through with care, as it lays a well-founded basis for the plea for generally unrestricted speech that forms the book's final chapter. In a period where authoritarians are harnessing technology to control speech in ways never before seen and where righteous zealots of all stripes are succumbing to "Milton's Curse" (high sensitivity to threats to their own speech, while being oblivious to their own censoriousness of others), this history and its conclusion is worth reading and pondering.
Mchangama has to cover a lot of historical ground to achieve this and he does so competently. It's good to see, for example, that rather than parroting cliches about the Middle Ages as a period of repression and illiberal suppression, he details it as a one of contrasts. The remarkable freedom of inquiry and expression in medieval universities is presented alongside the rise of the process of inquisitorio and the suppression of heretics, real and imagined. A lazier author would have presented a far less nuanced picture of a much misunderstood period.
Unfortunately, specialists who have detailed knowledge of some of the complex episodes that Mchangama is forced to summarise in a couple of paragraphs or a few sentences will likely find some clear problems. In his account of the Roman Inquisition, for example, he assures his readers that the maverick mystic, Giordano Bruno, was executed as a heretic in part because he accepted heliocentrism. Mchangama says this was "heretical, since it questioned the Bible itself". But Bruno was executed in 1599 and the Catholic Church made no theological ruling on heliocentrism until 1616, and even then only ruled it to be a lesser degree of error to full heresy. Bruno's poor grasp of astronomy meant his half-baked heliocentrism was just a small part of a mystical grab bad of views and not one that would have been of major concern to the inquisitors that tried him, who were generally not bothered by heliocentrism at this point. Similarly, Mchangama notes Bruno's belief in an infinite universe, but fails to realize that Bruno states clearly that he got this "radical idea" from Nicholas of Cusa - a Catholic cardinal.
Mchangama's account of Galileo has similar misunderstandings. He notes correctly that the Church did make a theological ruling on heliocentrism in 1616, declaring it "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical". But he doesn't appear to understand this ruling and so doesn't realise that "philosophy" here means what we would call "science". So the ruling is actually noting the overwhelming scientific consensus of the time - that heliocentrism was riddled with scientific problems and most likely wrong. This consensus was something everyone at the time acknowledged, including Galileo, even though the latter still thought those problems could eventually be overcome. Mchangama then says "Galileo was not convinced by dogma" and went on to publish his Dialogue in 1632. But Mchangama seems unaware that this book was written at the request of the Pope to explain the scientific grounding of the 1616 ruling, and so was not some brave defiance of dogma at all.
Mchangama also repeats the tale that the Pope was offended by his arguments being put in the mouth of Galileo's character Simplicio, because this could be read as "the Simpleton" and so the trial of Galileo was triggered by this slight. This is a nice story, but there is no basis for it in any of the letters or other documentation associated with the charges against Galileo. The "Simpleton" story doesn't appear until three years after the trial and seems to be simply a bit of delicious later court gossip, not something that actually happened. He also says "Galileo escaped the death sentence", but he was only accused of the lesser charge of being "vehemently suspect of heresy", which did not carry a death sentence. Galileo was actually given about the heaviest sentence that charge could bring: life imprisonment, though it was commuted to house arrest.
These errors are relatively unimportant to Mchangama's main arguments, but they show the dangers of trying to cover so much history in one book. I found several more examples and I imagine specialists in other periods and topics will find many more. This doesn't detract from the overall utility of the book's wider themes, however, and the later chapters in particular are both topical and pertinent as freedom of speech and its enemies become pressing concerns for us all....more
Critics loved Nixey's first book, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017), but it was panned by actual Critics loved Nixey's first book, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017), but it was panned by actual historians, who noted its arguments were slanted, tendentious and polemical and relied on selective evidence and distortions. Leading expert on the Late Roman world, Dame Averil Cameron, called it "a travesty".
But it sold well, so it's not surprising Nixey was keen to produce another piece of pop history. She seems to have learned some lessions from the critiques of her first book, since this one is more careful to present nuance and multiple views on complex topics. Unfortunately, Nixey's biases still come through, though the misrepresentations are more through what she chooses to emphasise rather than outright errors or selective evidence. She hedges some key points with caveats, but they are often quite weak compared to the heavy stress she places on the main thrust of her arguments.
Essentially this is a very light and usually light-hearted survey of a topic that other popular history writers have covered before. She details the large number of saviour and wonder-worker figures in Jesus' time, notes the variety of Jesus stories in the non-canonical texts that circulated in the centuries after his death, emphasises the range of different Christianities that arose from them and then argues this variety was trimmed - often violently - by orthodoxy to the tame Christianity of today.
Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels and many others have told this story in more detail and with more care and understanding long before Nixey. That is not to say another popular retelling of it is totally unecessary. Though her claims in her Introduction that what she is doing in this book is "unusual" are pretty dubious given how well-trodden this topic is even in books for a popular audience.
The problems arise when Nixey can't resist getting back on her Darkening Age hobby horse and insists, again, that Christians not only suppressed what they considered to be "heretical" forms of their faith, but also Classical learning as well. That is mostly wrong. There is also a central incoherence in the book.
Nixey’s overarching argument is that Christianity had a great variety of forms in its early centuries, but most of this was suppressed or even wiped out by its more intolerant, orthodox strain. But much or even most of this variety died out well before that intolerant orthodoxy got the capacity to actively suppress anything. That did not happen until the fourth century, but most of these variant Christianities were minor things or even vague memories or literary ghosts by then. Nixey admits that at least some of these variants were so weird they were of limited appeal and it is actually likely that many of the rest were never large or influential. So was it intolerance that suppressed them or simply that they lost out in competetion with more appealling, more intellectual and less esoteric forms of the faith?
Nixey also never bothers to note that there was a good reason the canonical gospels found their way into the New Testament and the other variant Jesus stories didn't - those gospels were by far the earliest and so not only the most widely read but also the ones known to be closest to the earliest followers of Jesus (as modern critical scholars confirm) and so seen as most authoritative. A better writer would have examined this and explored it as the basis for the rejection of the later variants. She doesn't. In Nixey's telling, these gospels were arbitarily selected over the others and the oppressive orthodoxy she details had no genuine basis at all. But this is not what happened. You don't have to be a believer or think the canonical gospels are wholly historical in their depcition of Jesus (I'm definitely not and I definitely don't) to realise they had a particular status by merit of their earlier date and so the rejection of the later variants and their theologies were based on that foundation. Nixey never bothers to tell her readers any of this.
So this is an entertaining and often amusing book, but as history it's pretty flimsy stuff at best and not exactly an accurate telling at worst. Which means this is not really a very good book. See my full critical reivew of the UK edition Heresy � Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God (Picador, 2024) ...more
It's interesting that this is the first scholarly historical biography of Theodoric in many decades, given that he is such a significant figure. By thIt's interesting that this is the first scholarly historical biography of Theodoric in many decades, given that he is such a significant figure. By the end of Wiemer's book few readers could begrudge the Ostrogothic king the traditional (at least in Germany) epiphet of "the Great". In a period of war and chaos, Theodoric brought 30 years of peace and relative prosperity to a kingdom that stretched from Serbia to Spain and from southern France to Sicily. While this polity did not survive long after his death, during his long reign it was stable, highly functional and - for the time - relatively free and tolerant. His division of his kingdom into an elite landed warrior class of Goths who handled military affairs and a civil governing class to stabilise and maintain civilian affairs proved remarkably effective and, even in its eventual failure in decades of external assualt by Justinian, actually fairly robust.
The real gems in the book lie in Wiemer's analysis of previous historiographic perspectives and overviews of more recent scholarly work, resulting in very useful synthesis. So his survey of older views of the "Age of Migrations" and "the Germanic people and his analysis of more recent work on these ideas will stand on its own for future students and researchers. Similarly, his final chapter's survey of the changing way Theodoric has been remembered, portrayed and mythologised is a superb detailed summary.
While the battles and movements of armiess and migrating communities are given in detail, this book also does excellent service in its careful analysis of the mechanics of administration in Ostrogothic Italy. These chapters may not be as exciting as the ones on wars and campaigns, but - again - they will be a resource for years to come. This is a superb because because of the care, detail and comprehensive approach of its author - scholarship at its finest. ...more
After years of intending to read this classic piece of ground-breaking scholarly synthesis, I've finally had the pleasure of finishing this revised teAfter years of intending to read this classic piece of ground-breaking scholarly synthesis, I've finally had the pleasure of finishing this revised tenth anniversary edition. It's a sign of a great book when you find that things you've thought for many years need to be rethought thanks to the convincing arguments presented. It's also great to discover where ideas that I knew were accepted in the field had actually been first presented in this book by Brown. But I think the best sign of a fine book is when you find you're near its end and don't want it to finish. I felt all three with this book.
I don't need to add much to what other readers have already said in their reviews here. Except perhaps to note this revised edition includes an extensive new Introduction, which engages with recent developments in the field in a careful and generous manner. This brings the original 1996 work up to date and is a testament to how greatly Brown contributed to the study of this period and defined the parameters of its study nearly 30 years ago. Given he is now 88 years old, this edition is a fitting coda for the brilliant career of one of our greatest scholars....more
This is an exhaustive (and somewhat exhausting), dense and detailed account of the reactions and responses to the Galileo Affair, from 1633 to 1992. AThis is an exhaustive (and somewhat exhausting), dense and detailed account of the reactions and responses to the Galileo Affair, from 1633 to 1992. Anyone who wants to understand how the popular misconceptions and myths around Galileo arose and developed can see this laid out in meticulous detail by Finocchiario, who is undoubtedly the leading Galileo scholar working today. Here we find the origins of the myths that Galileo was tortured or was "shown the instruments of torture", with the latter common claim actually deriving from Berholt Brecht's 1947 play The Life of Galileo. We also find the first mentions of the idea that the whole trial was because Galileo put the words of Pope Urban in the mouth of character in his Dialogo called "Simplicio", which offended the pope - something Finocchiario shows is a later story. But overall we get a remarkable and highly detailed account of how views of the Galileo Affair changed over time due to the currents of politics, both secular and religious.
The book ends in 1992 with Pope John Paul II's interesting but widely misunderstood speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that attempted to complete a rehabilitation of Galileo that had been going on for centuries. Finocchiario provides a commentary on a large number of key documents, many of which are translated here for the first time. And he concludes by noting potential opportunities for future research and analysis of the material he has generously provided to future generations of scholars. This is a superb piece of scholarship and a must read for anyone who studies the Galileo affair to help them peel back the layers of misunderstanding and myths that inevitably overlay this culturally pivotal set of events....more
The study of history needs writers like Tom Holland. There is, unfortunately, a type of academic historian who looks askance at writers of popular, naThe study of history needs writers like Tom Holland. There is, unfortunately, a type of academic historian who looks askance at writers of popular, narrative history; seeing it as inferior to the technical analysis and synthesis of sources that occupies most professional experts in the field. There are, even more unfortunately, a few of these who are actively scornful and hostile toward those who write for a broader, non-specialist audience; partly because they are seen as dabblers who oversimplify or distort complex subjects and (I suspect) at least partly out of resentment at the popular writers' higher profiles and larger book sales. Some of this sniffy gate-keeping of the guild is certainly justified, as there is a lot of by-the-numbers, formulaic, misleading and badly written pop history out there. But Holland has the right combination of understanding of the source material, grasp of the scholarship, an engaging and elegant writing style and just enough of a dash of sensation and fun.
The latter has been honed, in no small part, by Holland's popular podcast "The Rest is History", which he presents with his modern history specialist co-host Dominic Sandbrook. Listeners to Holland the podcaster will be familiar with some of the content of Pax: Nero and his unfortunate concubine Sporus, Hadrian's Wall, Pompeii etc. But Pax is Holland in his more serious mode, so these stories are told without the podcast's banter, though with some hints at its in-jokes. His previous works on Roman history, which with Pax form a trilogy, are the obvious background to this new work. But the book which sits behind Pax in many respects is Holland's last work, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019). While the main focus of that book - the importance of Christianity in shaping later western ideas and attitudes - is not, in itself, relevant to Pax (Christianity is only mentioned briefly in a final chapter), the strangeness of the pre-Christian world of the Romans is made even more clear in this new work.
So Holland does his best to help us understand a world that is, in many respects, alien to us. Slaves are an unquestioned fact of society. The enslaved and even non-citizens can be used sexually without consequences. Public displays of grotesque violence are normal and popular. Imperial might is expected to be imposed by brutal force. Holland explains these stranger and (to us) uglier aspects of the ancient world without trying to make them palatable or relatable to the modern reader. The weirdness is part of the point.
This also means that this is a not a bright and pretty, romantic or idealised version of the period of the Pax Romana. The fact that this pax was imposed and maintained by violence is made abundantly clear. Tacitus' wry observation, put in the mouth of a British chieftain, that the Romans "make a wilderness and call it peace" is the underlying theme of Holland's account. The book may be titled "Peace" but a lot of it details war and violence: the civil wars of 69 AD, the Jewish Wars, uprisings on the Rhine and in Caledonia and a hell of a lot of grisly executions.
The difficulty with writing popular narrative history of pre-modern times is our sources are fragmentary, scattered, biased and often unclear or contradictory. Specialists may have quibbles about the choices Holland is forced to make, but he's a judicious writer who picks his way through these problems with care. Most readers, however, will simply enjoy an elegantly written tour of the Roman world from Nero to Antoninus Pius, with side trips into the obscure and plenty of lively detail. The popularity of Indian pepper in second century Rome is detailed, along with the trade across the Indian Ocean from Roman ports on the Red Sea. But the vivid detail that the sacks of peppercorns were stamped with a tiger's head design is the kind of thing that makes this book a pleasure to read.
I read Pax as a palate cleanser between other, less easy and pleasurable fare: some of those dense academic historical monographs and a very stupid pseudo historical conspiracy theory. It was always a relief to turn from them to Tom Holland telling me a carefully researched and beautifully written story of a lost world. And this is why we need books like Pax....more
Attempts at retrieving female perspectives from historical periods where they are often silent in our available sources vary widely in their success. Attempts at retrieving female perspectives from historical periods where they are often silent in our available sources vary widely in their success. Sometimes a single female figure for whom we have at least some source material can be elevated by a modern writer to the point where the attempt to use them to make up for silence elsewhere borders on modern hagiography. We can see this in some of the sillier, mainly popular, accounts of, say, Hypatia of Alexandria which can veer off into fantasy. BUt better efforts take what little we do know about a woman in pre-modern history and what we can know about women like them and their society generally and then build a reasonable picture.
In this case Cooper has done the latter with great effectiveness. She has mined the work of Augustine, particularly his autobiographical Confessions, and paid careful and close attention to what he says about the women in his life: his mother, the woman he almost married, the woman he didn't marry and the Imperial mother who played a key role in the politics of his time. The fact that we don't even know the name of two of these women indicates how much sifting of the evidence Cooper has to do to build a picture of them. The other two - Augustine's mother Monnica and the empress Justina, mother of Valentinian II- we have reasonable information about. But Cooper uses what we can know about all four and women like them to bring to life their world; one in which even influential women are often silent and almost invisible in our sources.
By taking these four women as her points of focus, Cooper is able to explore the roles of women in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Childhood for girls was very different to their male siblings. Ditto education, status and expectations. Cooper examines marriage, childbirth, family politics and motherhood through the lens of her four subjects, using what Augustine says (and, often, doesn't day) and a range of other sources to build a picture of the world of Late Antiquity from the female perspective. The usurpers, civil wars, court politics and barbarian incursions that usually dominate historians of this period are found at the periphery of Cooper's examination. Dangers and threats of another kind plagued women in this period.
The result is a fascinating and different perspective and a fresh and useful contribution to our understanding of Late Antiquity. ...more
Orme's book does a great service in pulling together a vast amount of information on a subject often referred to but rarely focused on: actual religioOrme's book does a great service in pulling together a vast amount of information on a subject often referred to but rarely focused on: actual religious practice in Medieval England. The result is a one of the most useful types of historical study - a book that is rewarding to read through but also one that will repay that reading by being a reference on points of detail for years to come. Things which I kind of knew before were made more clear by Orme, such as the difference between the liturgies of the "Use of Sarum" and the "Use of York". Other things which I didn't know were also explained, such as why it's the "Use of Sarum" and not, as you might expect, the "Use of Canterbury". Familiar terms are made more clear by detailed examinations of how churches were used and how they evolved over time, so the reader will definitely know their chancel from their chantry or their choir by the end of this work. Other more obscure terms and practices are made explicable, such as "chapel of ease".
Orme details the variety of practice and the range of devotion in the period, from those who attended a church or chapel almost daily to those who preferred to stay in bed on Sunday mornings. The rarity with which the laity took communion and the way the Mass increasingly became a rarefied act to be observed was interesting. Then again, the fact that parts of the Mass were in English and the way key elements of the Latin were explained is contrary to a lot of post-Reformation myth making. Other surprising elements were the importance of the distribution of (unconsecrated) "holy bread" after Mass or the fact some attendants on the priest in the sacrament were girls rather than just boys or young men were also interesting.
The final chapter on the Reformation was useful in showing just how quickly and dramatically the traditions and practices whose evolution was painstakingly traced in the rest of the book were overturned and changed or abolished. This makes the resistance to and resentment of these changes by many more understandable.
This is a useful and entertaining as well as a detailed and careful contribution to the understanding of Medieval Christianity and possibly one that's rather overdue for modern readers. Highly recommended....more
A figure as important in Australian history as Truganini needed an up to date account of her life and this is a very readable work that parses the oftA figure as important in Australian history as Truganini needed an up to date account of her life and this is a very readable work that parses the often scanty information available and puts her into both a colonial and indigenous context, as far as this can be done. But I suppose the problem with writing a narrative history when the source material is often ambiguous is a lot of interpretation is being done off-screen. To be fair, a casual reader (who seems to be the main intended audience here)will likely be happy enough to trust the researcher and accept the interpretations. After all, this book's prose is vivid and evocative and the story is remarkable. Those more familiar with the sources, particularly George Augustus Robinson's journal, will often raise an eyebrow and wonder at choices of what was included and what was not.
For example, on p. 142 we get a paragraph about how bull kelp on the rocks of the west coast of Tasmania formed an environment rich in food for the Tasmanian aborigines. We get poetic descriptions of the kelp's "amber-coloured tentacles that undulated in the surge of the ocean" and the "cawing conspiracies of glossy black ravens" that fed on the kelp. Then we're told about the "traps baited with tiny fish" used to catch these ravens and how ducks "were trapped in a similar fashion, Truganini explained, except the ducks were lured with worms."
If we turn to Robinson's journal and to the period in the west coast expedition Pybus is detailing here, we do find a description of these traps used to catch "crows" which fed on the kelp, with a small sketch of a dome-shaped construction. Robinson says they were used to "catch ducks, crows etc." (NJP Plomley, Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 2nd ed. 2008, p.759), but no mention of small fish or worms as bait. And certainly no mention of Truganini explaining anything about these traps to Robinson. Did she? Perhaps, but saying she did so is supposition at best and a bit of authorial embroidery. Is the detail about the bait for these traps from some other source? We don't know. Plomley's endnote on this passage talks about a couple of other brief mentions of Tasmanian aborigines using snares and trip ropes for trapping game, but says "no type of trap is known to have been made by the Tasmanians except this crow trap" (n. 64. p. 845) and this seems to be the only reference to these traps. So maybe the information about the bait that Truganini "explains" to Robinson is also embroidery.
And this is just one small example, chosen at random, where what Pybus' source says and what she tells us differ markedly. A historian who chooses to write narrative history will certainly have to pick and choose what to include - after all, Robinson's journal runs to over 1000 pages in small type in Plomley's edition and there is no possible way any author could include every detail it recounts or even want to. But the question about how much in this book is soundly based on source material, how much is reasonable supposition and how much is wholly imagined kept arising as I read it. Those questions became sharper every time I stopped to compare Pybus' account to Robinson's.
Again, a general reader probably doesn't care about any of this, and others will be aware that this is the nature of this kind of account when dealing with this subject. But its a question worth keeping in mind while reading this still very engaging book. ...more
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