A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the third and final part (I, II, III) of our series tackling the complicated and still debated question of 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' In our first part, we looked at the question through the prism of 'words' - language, culture, religion and literature. There we found a … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things
This is the third part of our series (I, II, III, IV) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy computer game set in the early modern period, Europa Universalis IV (which is in turn the start of a yet larger series looking at several of Paradox's games and how they treat their historical … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Europa Universalis IV, Part III: Europa Provincalis
This post is also available in audio form, thanks to the efforts of our volunteer narrator. This is the second half of the fourth part of our four part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at the production of textiles, particularly wool and linen, in the pre-modern world. Last time, we looked at commercial textile … Continue reading Collections: Clothing, How Did They Make it? Part IVb: Cloth Money
This week, as an addendum to our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, we're going to look at two alternative regional processes, where they fit into the entire iron production process that we detailed already, how they worked and what kind of product they produced. In … Continue reading Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It, Addendum: Crucible Steel and Cast Iron
Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! As the fourth and final part (I, II, III) of our look at the basic structure of food production in the pre-modern world (particularly farming grain to make bread), this week we're going to look at how at … Continue reading Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part IV: Markets, Merchants and the Tax Man