The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

The lost cause: failed French ultimata and the restoration of papal rule in Rome in 1849

In one of history’s ironies, the republic that arose in Rome out of Europe’s revolutionary wave in 1848 was crushed by the new republic that had formed in France at the same time. In an additional irony, the destruction of the Roman Republic and the restoration of the papal theocracy were overseen by the internationally renowned champion of constitutional rights and freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville, then France’s foreign minister. This article sheds new light on this dramatic series of events through an examination of the French diplomatic correspondence, which reveals growing dismay at the direction in which events were unfolding. The correspondence also gives a sense of how close the French came to abandoning the pope, a decision that could have changed the course of Italian and French, as well as Church history.     

‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

Tragedy and Science

Tragic theater is a phenomenon both extremely rare and sadly ephemeral. Perusal of Nietzsche will lead to the proposal that tragic theater developed in periods marked by scientific revolutions, related here to sweeping and far-ranging changes in the social fabric and the myths — or world theories (condensed images of the world) — underlying it. Tragic theater expresses an insoluble conflict between a mythology (or world theory) in decline and a new form of culture, epitomized by a new world theory. True tragic theater therefore exhibits the same conditions that give rise to scientific revolutions. This “Tragedy — the Swan Song of Myth” thesis, outlined in Nietzsche's early studies of Greek tragedy, will be generalized and extended to the case of 17th century English tragedy and science, and the origins of the modern myth of Progress and Enlightenment.     

Transurban interconnectivities: an essay on the interpretation of the revolutions of 1848

This essay discusses the interpretation of the revolutionary situations of 1848 in light of recent debates on interconnectivity in history. The concept of transurban interconnectivities is proposed as the most precise concept to capture the nature of interconnectivity in 1848. It is argued that political models circulating on a European scale at the time provided the ‘knowledge resources’ that were appropriated by urban political activists across Europe. These circulating resources were appropriated by political activists as means of political mobilisation in their particular local urban context. It is argued that circulating political communication accounts for similarities with respect to political agenda, organisational form and political repertoire evident in urban settings across Europe. This argument is supported by a series of examples of local organisation and local appropriations of liberalism, radicalism and nationalism in 1848. In the concluding paragraph, the limitations of the notion of urban–rural interconnectivity are discussed in order to clarify the nature of transurban interconnectivity.     

Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

Territoriality, social justice and gendered revolutions in the speeches of Malcolm X

Geographers have, in recent years, attempted to develop an anti-racist research and teaching agenda. Critical to this endeavour has been an engagement directly with the theories and philosophies of key activists and scholars, such as W. E. B. DuBois and Richard Wright. Contributing to this effort, I provide a study of Malcolm X. As an activist and outspoken member of the African American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X re-articulated Black radical thought in significant ways. In particular, Malcolm X placed a territorial dimension at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement and in so doing re-conceptualized the theoretical and practical linkages between the African American movement and other 'Third World' movements. The immediate purpose of this paper therefore is to delineate the territorial dimensions of the revolutionary thought of Malcolm X. Heuristically, this paper is situated within four broad areas of inquiry: revolutions and social movements; the thinking of space; anti-racist geographies; and the imbrication of gender and revolutionary thought. More broadly, however, this paper reiterates the call for a more sustained engagement by geographers on the theories and philosophies of Black radical intellectuals.     

Nationalism and revolution: friends or foes?

Nationalism and revolution have generally been held to go together. Many nation‐states have had their origins in revolution, from the Americans in the 18th century to a host of Third World nation‐states in the 20th century. Generally, both modern revolutions and modern nationalism have the same origins, in 18th century Enlightenment thought. But this paper argues that, despite this common origin, the principles of revolution and nationalism are divergent, and can set one against the other. Revolutions emphasise freedom and equality; nationalism emphasises integration and unification. These principles can clash, though not inevitably and not always. The paper examines the 1789 French Revolution, the 1848 revolutions and the 1917 Russian revolution. It shows that in the first two cases, revolutionary aspirations came up against and were eventually displaced by nationalist aims. In the case of 1917, revolution paradoxically, and unintentionally, institutionalised nationalism. These examples show that, though linked at some high level of modern thought, revolution and nationalism express different and at times divergent strands of modernity.