S. Rose, Medieval Ships and Warfare (James P. Ward)
Susan Rose (ed.),
Medieval Ships and Warfare, Aldershot (Ashgate Publishing) 2008,
XX–448 p. (The International Library of Essays in Military
History), ISBN 978-0-7546-2485-1, GBP 115,00.
rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par
James P. Ward, Vlaardingen
This book, in a series entitled »The International Library of Essays on Military History«, brings together articles »selected from key journals that exhibit careful analysis of military history«, according to the publisher’s website. It is not a handbook on medieval ships and naval warfare. It was intended that the collection should reflect key chronological periods and global geographical areas. Selection of the articles is the editor’s responsibility, in this case Susan Rose, whose introduction opens the book, and two of whose articles are included. It is one thing to describe this book, now selling at 130 pounds sterling, but a nagging question intrudes, who is it intended for? The answer must surely be librarians. Specialists probably possess or have access to the original articles. Students may prefer to consult either the original articles or library copies of the book.
The twenty seven articles in the volume were published by specialists mainly for specialists. The earliest article dates from 1930, the most recent from 2003. Nine were published in the decades up to and including the 1970’s, the other eighteen subsequently. Appearing in facsimile, the original page numbers and apparatus have been retained. Literature references, therefore, are in the original footnotes and appendices to the individual chapters. However, for easy reference new consecutive page numbers have been added. Page references in this review are to the book, not the original articles. Serious omissions are that there is no subject index and no literature list appended to the book as a whole, only a name index. Most readers therefore will have to search for and collate any other information they seek.
The introduction by Susan Rose (p. XIII–XX) is a useful and indeed necessary overview of the book’s articles which are arranged not chronologically but geographically and thematically. They are distributed over two parts. Part I is entitled »North-Western Europe«, and part II »The Mediterranean«. But the Baltic and Scandinavia are not included in Part I, so that Viking ships and the fleets of the Hanseatic League are not included, nor are the Byzantines and their ships in Part II. Naval archaeology and the recovery of wrecked ships dating from antiquity to the present day are also not described.
Subtitles within the two parts indicate the themes: Ships and Boats; Issues of Technology and Evidence; Piracy and Pirates; Fleets and Warfare; The Islamic Powers; Iberia; and finally Genoa and Venice. The introduction closes with a short section entitled »References and Further Reading«, a feature which, for the general reader, could profitably have been extended to a fuller bibliography.
The topics in the book are very numerous: naval policies, campaigns and battles; naval strategies and tactics; piracy; discussions of sources which include financial accounts, customs records, legal and commercial documents; descriptions and specifications of ship types, their advantages and disadvantages, their physical sizes and speeds; inventories of crews, armaments, cargoes, shipbuilding and materials; international trade and commerce; the politics and exploits of kings and of their ships’ captains (alias usurpers and pirates in the eyes of some of their contemporaries); cartographic, geographic and climatic information on all the seas and coasts from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea; seasons, winds and currents. Despite this heterogeneity, a systematic reading of the book reveals a number of questions, themes and topics which can have the effect of knitting the articles together.
Much of the technical material relates to ships of the galley type; their designs, construction, materials, costs, crews, their provisioning and training. Almost everything, it seems, to do with galleys, from the forests and the wood needed to build them (p. 31) to the paints and colors used to conserve and decorate them (p. 48), is treated somewhere in the book. Other subjects of importance are the numbers of oarsmen, their seating arrangements, the arrangement of their oars in two tiers and when necessary in three, and more specific questions, e. g., why the third tier of oars had to be counter-weighted with lead billets. A glance at the line drawing on p. 372 will make the reason clear to the viewer. These and other topics are to be found in a somewhat random manner throughout the book. There is repetition in the introductory and background parts to the individual chapters, and in the sources cited.
For the non-specialist scholar the sections which may best be read first are the introductory ones by the editor, Susan Rose; p. XIII–XX, and p. 197–214. These reviews provide information about the main issues and discussions, and provide access to the literature. Among issues, questions and problems which are fought over by the authors of the articles there are the following. Early 15th century English pirates become the forerunners of Sir Francis Drake; cf. p. 97 and 106. The question why the Mamluks, an Islamic power, performed so badly at sea in contrast to their military prowess on land, is referred to in a number of chapters; p. 208 and p. 223; cf. P. 224 and p. 228. Was it because they lacked the necessary timber and metals to build efficient and durable ships, or was it because their ships’ designs were inferior? The Turks by their successes at sea would belie those ideas. In any case, for shipbuilding materials Muslim powers continued to trade with their Christian adversaries throughout the ages. Saladin bought timber for his ships in Italy (p. 217). The arguments, Susan Rose concludes therefore, are unconvincing (p. 208).
The source references are a valuable part of the book, as are especially the illustrations and drawings, providing information to the experts, and perhaps inspiration to new readers and scholars. The sources cited include documents of various kinds indicated above, together with medieval chronicles and books, both early modern and modern, in the following languages: Latin, Provençal, Catalan, Castilian, Italian, English, French, Arabic and Turkish. Included there are even some examples printed in Arabic (p. 227–229).
To conclude, there are three chapters in particular that every historian might read with profit. Fittingly, they are concerned with closer reading of the sources. Devries, p. 131–150, shows how Froissart (1333–1405) described the naval battle of Sluis (anno 1340) in three redactions aimed respectively at contemporary English, French and Flemish readers, taking account of the sensibilities of each group. Susan Rose, p. 381–385, compares and contrasts descriptions of naval battle tactics as revealed by chronicles and by near contemporary illustrations, in casu a fine woodcut of the battle of Zonchio (1499). William Sayers in Ch. 24, p. 387–402, referring to Muntaner’s »Crònica«, makes the point that documents translated (in this case from Catalan into English) by non-specialists are subject to misunderstandings, mistranslations and misrepresentations which can be more damaging than common errors.
