Tag: Customs

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles

This is the fifth and final part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) looking at the structures of life for pre-modern peasant farmers and showing how historical modeling can help us explore the experiences of people who rarely leave much evidence of their day-to-day personal lives. I've been stressing … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles →

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVe: The No-Rest Of It

This is the fifth dish of the fourth course of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) looking at the lives of pre-modern peasant farmers, who made up a majority of all of the humans who have ever lived. We are trying to grapple here with what has thus been the … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVe: The No-Rest Of It →

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVd: Spinning Plates

This is the fourth thread of the fourth part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) looking at the lives of pre-modern peasant farmers, who make up a majority of all of the humans who have ever lived. We're thus probing here was has been, in effect, the modal human … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVd: Spinning Plates →

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIa: Family Formation

This is the first part of the third part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) discussing the patterns of life of the pre-modern peasants who made up the great majority of all humans who lived in our agrarian past and indeed a majority of all humans who have ever … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IIIa: Family Formation →

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part II: Starting at the End

This is the second part of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd,IVe, V) discussing the basic contours of life - birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death - of pre-modern peasants and their families. As we've discussed, pre-modern peasant farmers make up the vast majority of human beings in in the past. Last … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part II: Starting at the End →

Collections: The American Civil-Military Relationship

As is traditional here, I am taking advantage of the Fourth of July this week to write something about the United States, this time a brief discussion of the nature of civil-military relations in the United States. Civil-military relations (typically shortened to 'civ-mil' or sometimes CMR) is, simply put, the relationship between the broader civil … Continue reading Collections: The American Civil-Military Relationship →

Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part III: Going To War With the Army You Have

This is the third and final part of our three-part (I, II, III) look at how some 'tribal' or more correctly, non-state agrarian peoples - particularly the Celtiberians, Gauls and also many Germanic-language speaking peoples on the Rhine and Danube- raised armies to fight the Romans (and anyone else who came knocking) in the third, … Continue reading Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part III: Going To War With the Army You Have →

Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States

This is the second part of our (planned) three part (I, II, III) look at how some 'tribal' or more correctly, non-state agrarian peoples raised armies to fight the Romans (and others) in the third through first centuries BC. Last time, we looked at the subsistence basis of these societies - they're agricultural - and … Continue reading Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States →

Collections: On the Reign of Alexander III of Macedon, the Great? Part II

This is the second and final part of our look at Alexander III of Macedon (Part I), who you almost certainly know as Alexander the Great. Last week, we looked at the sources for Alexander's life, the historiography (that is, the history-of-the-history) of his modern reception and then he abilities as a military commander, both … Continue reading Collections: On the Reign of Alexander III of Macedon, the Great? Part II →