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Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

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Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#21

Post by Manuel_D »

wjnc wrote: post #13
78124781 wrote: post #7

Amazing work from Bret as usual, but very sad that this kind of popular/actually useful history is completely unrewarded in academia. This is far more valuable than whatever top university press book most historians write.

It’s entertainment. Academia shouldn’t be entertainment, at least that is my opinion. I’ve seen more than a few erstwhile respected professors turn into talking heads without much substance by sudden media fame. One of the better stories was the one that started bringing in his own newspaper clippings to the universities media department in order to rank higher on the yearly media ranking. After that he rented an apa…

This is much more than entertainment. These posts have citations and the same academic rigor as a typical academic publication. They're just packaged in a more approachable and accessible format.

However, these posts are not doing original research which does distinguish them from the main activity of academics. They're essentially brief survey papers (works that summarize the existing publications on a given topic). This is not a knock against ACoUP. These posts are excellent and I enjoy them immensely. They're just not setting out to accomplish the objectives that most academics are trying to achieve.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#22

Post by Manuel_D »

_delirium wrote: post #17
jcranmer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bret actually has an entire thread on this in Twitter ( https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1513255197597966341 ), responding to someone calling him "the orc logistics guy". The tl;dr is basically that part of an academic's job is to educate not just the professionals but also the lay public. By using fantasy and other pop culture works, he's introducing pretty important military history and theory concepts to t…

> In general, I would say that academics all too commonly forget the need to engage with people outside of their narrow disciplines, and in doing so, you can cede the field to engaging writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond). Maybe I'm misunderstanding the Diamond example here, but I think of him as precisely a cautionary tale for academics, of what…

Diamond is pretty well regarded even in among academic historians. I strongly suspect believe that /r/anthropology is responsible for this perspective that Diamond is poorly regarded among historians. Almost any serious historian agrees with his thesis: larger arable land coupled with crops and animals more suitable for domestication led to greater population levels and social development in Eurasia than in the Americas, which is the main reason why the Columbian exchange was so one-sided. Diamonds ideas laid the foundations of many serious and well regarded historians, like Ian Morris.

I'm also seriously baffled by people who try to portray his views as racist of eurocentric. His preface explicitly spells out that Europe was a backwater until the early modern period. In fact, a large part of the motivation behind Guns, Germs, and steel was to debunk the idea of wester cultural or racial superiority, and provide a compelling counter narrative to those explanations of Eurasian-American divergence.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#23

Post by leto_ii »

jcranmer wrote: post #16
wjnc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s entertainment. Academia shouldn’t be entertainment, at least that is my opinion. I’ve seen more than a few erstwhile respected professors turn into talking heads without much substance by sudden media fame. One of the better stories was the one that started bringing in his own newspaper clippings to the universities media department in order to rank higher on the yearly media ranking. After that he rented an apa…

Bret actually has an entire thread on this in Twitter ( https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1513255197597966341 ), responding to someone calling him "the orc logistics guy". The tl;dr is basically that part of an academic's job is to educate not just the professionals but also the lay public. By using fantasy and other pop culture works, he's introducing pretty important military history and theory concepts to t…

> writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond).

Could you elaborate a bit?

Myself I found his books quite compelling. I'm of course not an anthropologist, historian etc. so I may be missing something big.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#24

Post by danielheath »

7373737373 wrote: post #5

I'd love to read something similar about how taxation and the management and securement of (moving or fixed) gold/money reserves worked back then in practice.

Recommend Scott’s “Against The Grain” for that! Chapter four specifically.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#25

Post by inglor_cz »

wjnc wrote: post #13
78124781 wrote: post #7

Amazing work from Bret as usual, but very sad that this kind of popular/actually useful history is completely unrewarded in academia. This is far more valuable than whatever top university press book most historians write.

It’s entertainment. Academia shouldn’t be entertainment, at least that is my opinion. I’ve seen more than a few erstwhile respected professors turn into talking heads without much substance by sudden media fame. One of the better stories was the one that started bringing in his own newspaper clippings to the universities media department in order to rank higher on the yearly media ranking. After that he rented an apa…

Academia has a serious problem with snobbery. Few other workplaces in the world have denser concentrations of people who think really highly of themselves, even though they wouldn't admit it openly and their preferred way of war is tons and tons of plausibly deniable passive aggression.

This snobbery problem opens a bigger chasm between the academics and the general public that would otherwise be necessary, and the political consequences down the line might be serious; if academics are perceived as out of touch, aloof and intentionally incomprehensible, the backlash won't be just anti-snobbish, but anti-intellectual, with possible dire consequences for the viability and vibrancy of Western civilization.

But the fact that popularizers like Bret Devereaux reap so much open disdain indicates that few activities are as unpopular among the gatekeepeers as building bridges across said chasm. A True Intellectual Must Be Dour At All Costs.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#26

Post by xapata »

Manuel_D wrote: post #22
_delirium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, I would say that academics all too commonly forget the need to engage with people outside of their narrow disciplines, and in doing so, you can cede the field to engaging writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond). Maybe I'm misunderstanding the Diamond example here, but I think of him as precisely a cautionary tale for academics, of what…

Diamond is pretty well regarded even in among academic historians. I strongly suspect believe that /r/anthropology is responsible for this perspective that Diamond is poorly regarded among historians. Almost any serious historian agrees with his thesis: larger arable land coupled with crops and animals more suitable for domestication led to greater population levels and social development in Eurasia than in the Ameri…

And he points out how China could have easily been "first" if it weren't for the whim of an emperor. He argues somewhat successfully that the geography of Europe made empires less successful, and therefore executive decisions had smaller "blast radii".

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#27

Post by inglor_cz »

Manuel_D wrote: post #22
_delirium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, I would say that academics all too commonly forget the need to engage with people outside of their narrow disciplines, and in doing so, you can cede the field to engaging writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond). Maybe I'm misunderstanding the Diamond example here, but I think of him as precisely a cautionary tale for academics, of what…

Diamond is pretty well regarded even in among academic historians. I strongly suspect believe that /r/anthropology is responsible for this perspective that Diamond is poorly regarded among historians. Almost any serious historian agrees with his thesis: larger arable land coupled with crops and animals more suitable for domestication led to greater population levels and social development in Eurasia than in the Ameri…

"Europe was a backwater"

This sort-of goes too far. The Roman empire at its height was very much not a backwater. What is pretty unique about Europe is the subsequent enormous loss of civilizational complexity in the Early Middle Ages combined with the fact that it could, albeit 1000 years later, drag itself out of the hole again.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#28

Post by Manuel_D »

inglor_cz wrote: post #27
Manuel_D wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamond is pretty well regarded even in among academic historians. I strongly suspect believe that /r/anthropology is responsible for this perspective that Diamond is poorly regarded among historians. Almost any serious historian agrees with his thesis: larger arable land coupled with crops and animals more suitable for domestication led to greater population levels and social development in Eurasia than in the Ameri…

"Europe was a backwater" This sort-of goes too far. The Roman empire at its height was very much not a backwater. What is pretty unique about Europe is the subsequent enormous loss of civilizational complexity in the Early Middle Ages combined with the fact that it could, albeit 1000 years later, drag itself out of the hole again.

Sure, but the British isles, which would eventually become a preeminent colonial power, still was a backwater even during the Roman Empire. France and Spain less so, but most of the Roman Empire's most developed regions were in the eastern Mediterranean. In his preface, he points out that from the span of human civilization from 2500BC to 2000 AD, Western Europe has been dominant for only a few centuries.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#29

Post by barry-cotter »

inglor_cz wrote: post #27
Manuel_D wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamond is pretty well regarded even in among academic historians. I strongly suspect believe that /r/anthropology is responsible for this perspective that Diamond is poorly regarded among historians. Almost any serious historian agrees with his thesis: larger arable land coupled with crops and animals more suitable for domestication led to greater population levels and social development in Eurasia than in the Ameri…

"Europe was a backwater" This sort-of goes too far. The Roman empire at its height was very much not a backwater. What is pretty unique about Europe is the subsequent enormous loss of civilizational complexity in the Early Middle Ages combined with the fact that it could, albeit 1000 years later, drag itself out of the hole again.

The Eastern Mediterranean was rich and civilised long before and after Rome was a backwater. At the earliest Northern Italy, Germany and the Low Countries were at the technological frontier in the 1300s. Pretty long gap, quite a distance. Europe outside the Mediterranean only really became important in a way anyone else noticed with the Age of Exploration.

Re: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the Move

#30

Post by jcranmer »

leto_ii wrote: post #23
jcranmer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bret actually has an entire thread on this in Twitter ( https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1513255197597966341 ), responding to someone calling him "the orc logistics guy". The tl;dr is basically that part of an academic's job is to educate not just the professionals but also the lay public. By using fantasy and other pop culture works, he's introducing pretty important military history and theory concepts to t…

> writers who are way out of their depths and horribly wrong about what they are writing (e.g., Jared Diamond). Could you elaborate a bit? Myself I found his books quite compelling. I'm of course not an anthropologist, historian etc. so I may be missing something big.

The biggest issue with Diamond is that he's just wrong a lot of the time. This is especially so in Collapse, where virtually every single case study he talks about is something where consensus opinion is that environmental degradation played at best a minor role.

As for Guns, Germs, and Steel itself, it's not quite as bad as Collapse, but it does have issues. The underlying thesis--of geographical determinism--just doesn't hold up to actual evidence that well: there's not a lot of evidence for Neolithic technology spread in the east-west axis of Eurasia, especially in comparison to the rather prolific spread you see in the Americas. In particular, cereal crops: you see very little spread of cereal domesticants between Mesopotamia/Mediterranean and East Asia, while maize spreads from Mesoamerica well into both North and South America, supplanting indigenous crops in both places.

The deeper issue with GGS, for anthropologists in particular, is that it has an underlying presumption of a unilinear model of civilization--essentially, the idea that something like the tech tree in Civilization games is a good model of how technology works. In anthropology, this model is deeply discredited, as it performs extremely poorly, especially when you look at cultures that straddle chiefdom/state societies.

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