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Edward N. Luttwak is a  senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.  He is an expert on present day military and strategic issues, and has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and a number of allied governments as well as international corporations and financial institutions.

In 1976 he wrote The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which examined questions about the Roman army and its defense of the Roman frontier.  He has now written The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, which has garnered much attention and strong sales.

We interviewed Dr. Luttwak by email:

Your academic work has been mostly geared towards writing about present-day military strategy. But you have now written two books that looks about the military strategy of two historical empires, with your first book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third, and with this new book, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. Why did you want to examine these historical periods and write these books?

For very different reasons . The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third , is merely my Johns Hopkins PhD dissertation. At the time, I was already working part-time as a Pentagon consultant but I chose the subject because no theme in contemporary strategy was anywhere as interesting as the simple question of how Rome defended its territories (and added to them, now and then). Also, I did not want to waste my days reading the stultified & chaotically duplicative literature of “political science” in which Strategy is imprisoned, when I could read instead in the often elegant, multi-lingual literature of Roman imperial studies.

By contrast, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire is the ultimate result of crass ignorance: when I started out thirty years ago, I foolishly thought I could quickly add a Vol II to the well-received Roman book. I soon discovered that the worthwhile literature –even on the general history of the empire –was downright sparse, and that in the strategic realm the most important texts remained unpublished. Second, I discovered that instead of the great edifice of Roman imperial archeology and epigraphy with its wealth of material evidence, one had to rely perilously on narrative sources, few of them well-edited. As I pursued my much-interrupted research over the years, Byzantine studies emerged from near-nullity to make great advances which allowed me to continue –by then I was far too fascinated by the great epic of Byzantine strategic success to give up. Also, in contrast to the Roman book in which I inferred the strategy from conduct, the Byzantines had written it all down in guidebooks and field manuals, in a series of writings especially fascinating in themselves for one who has participated in the writing of modern field manuals

The traditional perception of the Byzantine empire was that they were not particularly effective in military matters. Many readers will probably be able to recall some of their significant defeats, such as the fall of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (1204) and its later, more permanent fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. But your work wants us to focus on how the Byzantines were able to develop a military strategy that allowed it to fend off “successive waves of invaders for more than eight hundred years.” Could you tell us how do you believe the Byzantines were so successful for such a long period?

The traditional perception is flat wrong — it derives from the Enlightment’s “black legend” of Byzantine decadence (Gibbon, Voltaire et al hated their religiosity) . The eastern empire reacted to the unprecedented threat of Attila’s Huns by inventing a new strategy that saved it in the immediate crisis of the fifth century, and then (after Justinian’s short-lived reversal) and gradually evolved into an entire corpus of concepts, rules & techniques based on a single, paradoxical, principle: do everything possible to raise, equip and train (above all) the best possible army and navy, and then… do everything possible to use them as little as possible. Instead of seeking the battle of attrtition and annihilation in the classic Roman manner, every alternative was to be tried to avoid , or at least minimize the destructive “attrition” combat of main forces. Instead, potential enemies were to be dissuaded, bribed, subverted, weakened by getting others to attack them, sidetracked into other ventures; if enemy forces attacked nonetheless, they were to be contained and delayed by skirmishing, feints and demostrations while the search went on for other powers near or far willing to attack or at least threaten the enemy power; if enemy attacks persisted nonetheless, they were to be met by countering maneuvers designed to exhaust them rather that the destructive combat of main forces, the very last resort. It was not only the precious trained manpower of the empire that this strategy wanted to conserve, but also the enemy’s …because today’s enemy could become tomorrow’s ally.

Two of the most important factors for the success of the Byzantine empire was their ability to use diplomacy and intelligence. Were the way the Byzantines understood these terms or practiced them different from the way the modern world makes use of them?

Not different at all, but their importance was very different, as compared to contemporary practice , not only in the United States.  Intelligence was deemed all important as the only basis of…intelligent action; the Byzantines could not have survived for long with our mix of competent diplomacy, very competent armed forces, and very mediocre Intelligence –even plain language skills are lacking–as well as outrightly incompetent spies and covert operators (I have seen them in inaction, a sad spectacle) . As for diplomacy, for the Byzantines it was the first instrument of statecraft; in addition to other sticks and carrots, it was often powered by bribes–the Byzantines would have ridiculed Robert Goodloe Harper’s 1798 slogan “Millions for defense but not one penny for tribute” , given that there are so many pennies in a million.

Your work suggests that we should take a look a closer look at the long term military strategy of states. Should other medieval historians look into doing this, for example the strategic methods of the Abbasids or the Venetians, and if so, how would you suggest they approach this topic?

For the Abbasids there is much of great interest (they are of course encountered in my book), but the sources are very poor. For Venice the sources are splendid, the general historiography that would provide the context is highly developed, and if anyone will fund the project (incl. a sunny suite on the Grand Canal) , I am prepared to sail tomorrow to study in situ the archival evidence of how strategy was made in memoranda , correspondence, official papers (generous grantors take note: I do know Veneto..) . Seriously, there is much to be studied, including the evolution of the Venetians from insignificant Byzantine subjects to auxiliaries, then allies, then enemies, from defenders of Constantinople to its looters of 1204 (St. Mark’s has aptly been described as a beached pirate ship in stone), and there are great changes of strategic direction that are eminently worth studying.

Finally, you also wrote an article in the journal Foreign Policy entitled “Take Me Back to Constantinople: How Byzantium, not Rome, can help preserve Pax Americana” where you go on to show what lessons from Byzantine statecraft would be useful for the United States. Why did you want to write this article, and how would you respond to the criticism that the world of Byzantium is too far removed from modern day America to make such lessons valid?

I cannot refute that criticism– I can only confess: yes, I sinned against Clio who must be served, not exploited by facile historical analogies (they are all facile). I was seduced into sin by a devilishly persuasive editor, who reacted over-enthusiastically to the book and actually wrote the heading and opening paragraph…. But having confessed most humbly, I must nevertheless recognize that in extreme cases something can perhaps be learned from the Byzantines after all. For example, instead of keeping tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan at a cost of roughly one million per soldier per year, for an annual expenditure of more than forty billion dollars to fight perhaps 25,000 Taliban, the Byzantines would have sent a couple of Pashtu-speaking eunuchs to the Khyber Pass border with bags of gold to buy out and relocate Taliban leaders and followers–and they would have run out of Talibs to purchase long before spending four billion, let alone forty…

We thank Dr. Luttwak for answering our questions.

The Reconquest Kings of Portugal: Political and Cultural Reorientation on the Medieval Frontier, by Stephen Lay examines how Portugal emerged as an independent kingdom between the late Tenth and the mid Thirteenth centuries. This political development took place against the backdrop of a struggle between Christendom and the Islamic world for control over the Iberian Peninsula, but also decisive in the formation of Portugal was a growing European influence being felt throughout the peninsula during these centuries.

Dr Stephen Lay works in the Graduate Studies Office of the Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages at Oxford University.  We interviewed him by email:

How did you become interested in the history of Medieval Portugal?

I came to Portuguese Studies via an unusual route. While a number of English-language historians have given their attention to the Portuguese Age of Discovery and Empire, my interest in Medieval Portugal developed out of my earlier work on the Crusades. I had been examining the several interventions by passing crusaders at critical points in Portuguese history, most notably at Lisbon in 1147, hoping to trace in these encounters some of the fundamental motivations behind the crusade itself. Before long though, my focus began to widen to take in the attitudes of the local people toward the strange foreigners in their midst. The unique character of the Portuguese began to impress itself on me and, perhaps like the crusaders themselves, I was drawn to the singular mix of the familiar and the exotic Portugal presents to the newcomer.

Many scholars will be more familiar with the Reconquest from the Castilian and Aragonese perspectives. What do you think can be learned from examining the Portuguese experience of the Reconquest?

The reality, and sometimes the very existence, of the Reconquest have become the subject of quite intense debate. Certainly the medieval period saw a complex pattern of coexistence and conflict between Christian and Muslim peoples in Iberia, and historians have sometimes drawn rather selectively on this complex reality to clarify or even to justify their own contemporary attitudes. The Portuguese experience during this period can provide a useful alternative view to the Castilian and Aragonese perspectives. What characterised the Portuguese Reconquest was, I believe, a higher level of international involvement along with a healthy dose of local pragmatism. Visiting crusaders took part in several Portuguese campaigns, sometimes with decisive results. Just as significant though, were the wider political implications of the reconquest for the Portuguese leadership. The first Portuguese kings made quite conscious use of their status as military leaders defending Christendom against Islam, particularly to mediate with European powers. This shrewd use of political capital was ultimately fundamental in their greatest achievement: securing independence from the kings of León-Castile.

You explain that one of the aims of your book is to examine the influence of other Latin Christians/Europeans during the 12th and 13th centuries. Why do you want to explore this issue?

Cultural misunderstanding can sometimes provide a greater insight than those things people consciously choose to reveal. At the beginning of the eleventh century Portuguese society was, in common with the neighbouring Spanish kingdoms, characterised by a fluidity in political, social and cultural forms. Identity tended to be constructed on local foundations and as a result there was an unusual degree of tolerance toward religious and cultural differences. By the end of the eleventh century, however, this pragmatic tolerance had been challenged by a growing engagement with the Latin Christian culture of Europe. Political and ecclesiastical changes were the most obvious signs of a deeper cultural realignment; more subtle still was a shifting sense of identity as the Portuguese began to see themselves not simply in local terms, but increasingly as defenders of the frontier of Europe as a whole. This was, I believe, a decisive period in the subsequent development of Portugal, with wide implications for later history. Moreover this gradual social transformation also provides a unique insight into the process that created Europe as a whole.

The primary sources for the history of Portugal are strong for the 12th century, but less so for the 13th century. What might you suggest to be some of the potential research topics for scholars interested in examining the Portuguese reconquest?

Certainly the nature of primary source material changes during the thirteenth century. The writing of narrative history tapers off – and indeed the reason for this might in itself provide an interesting focus of research. However the production of other types of source material continued unabated. Rich collections of grants and title deeds, town charters, and official letters and treaties have survived. These sources would all bear a closer scrutiny than they have yet received. Moreover the story such sources tell extends beyond the reconquest in its narrowest sense to reveal something quite unexpected. For in fact in Portugal there was not one reconquest but two. The first was a purely territorial struggle between Christian and Muslim Portuguese for control of the land. A second, more pervasive, struggle was waged for the cultural orientation of the resulting society. A consideration of Portuguese society during this transitional phase has its own intrinsic interest as well as reflecting in often highly revealing ways fundamental developments in the wider medieval world.

We thank Dr. Lay for answering our questions.

Dr. Michael Bratchel is a Lecturer in History at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa.  He works on Italian Renaissance History and focuses on the city of Lucca during the Later Middle Ages.  His latest book Medieval Lucca: And the Evolution of the Renaissance State, which is the first scholarly study to cover the history of the entire region from classical antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century.  We interviewed him by email:

This is your second book on medieval Lucca. What are the differences between Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State and your earlier work Lucca 1430-1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic?

The earlier book was a general history of Lucca from the restoration of the republic in 1430 to the first French invasion of Italy in 1494. Although the events set in motion by the first French expedition impacted rather less decisively on Lucca than on some other parts of the Italian peninsula, the period 1430-1494 seems to me to constitute a coherent chapter in the political history of Lucca – perhaps the last period when Lucca was truly able to pursue independent political and foreign policy initiatives. The earlier book offered a political narrative of a neglected period in the history of Lucca (against a background of debates around urban party formation that were then current in Italian historiography). It attempted a structural analysis of Lucchese politics, whilst also exploring the economic history of Lucca as an important manufacturing and banking centre, investment by the Lucchese patriciate in the countryside, and the role of the Lucchese Church. The first book probably attracted most attention for its chapter on relations between the hegemonic city and its subject communities. It is this theme that has been taken up in the second book. The new book is concerned with the evolution of the Lucchese state and the nature of Lucca’s rule over its subject territories. This project required a much broader perspective. The first book treats a few decades in the socio-political and socio-economic history of Lucca; the second book looks at the creation and organization of a city territory over one and a half millennia – from the foundation myths to the end of the fifteenth century.

Most scholarship on the development of Italian city-states has focused on some of the larger cities such as Florence and Venice. Why do you think it is important to look at a city like Lucca?

Certainly there is a deeply rooted assumption in Anglo-Saxon circles that Italianists must be working on Florence – or else that they should be. There is no doubt that in fifteenth-century Italy the future was to lie with a small number of regional powers: Milan, Venice, Florence; less fashionably with Genoa and Siena. An abiding Whiggism dictates that future success stories should determine those areas of the past most worthy of historical study. The preoccupation with Florence and Venice is legitimized in the recent profusion of studies on the emergence and defining qualities of the regional – or territorial – state (which Lucca was not). An infatuation with the elite culture of the Renaissance has not unreasonably focused attention on Florence (though too often at the expense of the minor princely courts, of Rome, and of the kingdom of Naples).

It is difficult to respond to the question why it is important “to look at a city like Lucca” – in part because there were very few Italian cities like Lucca. In Lucca the city-republic (characteristic of the medieval Italian political scene) survived until 1799 (and lingered on, radically transformed, until 1805); Lucca became part of the grand duchy of Tuscany only in 1847. For this reason alone, Lucca was a very distinctive – if not unique – political entity. I would feel more comfortable explaining why the Lucchese case-study was ideally suited to the purposes of the present study.

First, Lucca was a city of very considerable importance during the early middle ages – the period covered in the initial chapters of the book. Its archival sources for the early middle ages, and the weight of scholarship (Italian, Anglo-American, German) built on these resources, are very largely unrivalled. Without the foundations provided by early medievalists working on Lucca over more than a century the crafting of the book (in the shape that I wanted) would have been impossible. Secondly, Lucca survived as an independent city-republic into, and beyond, the period (from the fourteenth century) when Italian archival records become overwhelmingly, bewilderingly, dense. No other state would have enabled me to study in such depth a functioning, old-style, Italian city-republic – or to draw the distinctions that I have attempted between the traditional communal experience and the new regional states of the future. Thirdly, medieval Lucca controlled a relatively large city-territory; the later Lucchese state was small (though not insignificant) in comparison with later state formations. Working within a reasonably restricted geographical compass, I have been able to explore (under the microscope, so to speak) a whole range of issues relating to village structures and to relationships with the ruling city in ways that would have been difficult to execute on a larger canvas.

One theme I came across in reading your book is the role of the contado - the countryside ruled by Lucca. What are the kind of questions that historians should examine when looking at the relationship between city-states and the rural areas that surround them?

Medieval Lucca might be seen as a view of Lucchese history from the countryside. The approach has its dangers. In Lucca, as elsewhere, policies towards the countryside were affected by the great political upheavals of urban life. I have given attention – though perhaps insufficient prominence – to the impact of changing regimes (consular, podestral, popular), and to citizen responses to external challenges and threats. The balance has been determined by my own interest in rural life, and by the conviction that rivalries, conflicts, and initiatives within the countryside were often as important in shaping the course of events as were interventions from the city.

Studies of state-building have been much preoccupied by the measure and apparatus of control exercised from the centre. Regional differences in this regard explain the interest and importance of local studies like Medieval Lucca. Lucca by the fifteenth century was a very weak state, and typifies the mosaic of local autonomies and fiscal entities that historians have found elsewhere in Italy. At the same time, city-republics – ruled from a single urban centre – aimed at a degree of centralization, uniformity, and control much more pronounced than that attained by larger and later political formations. Historians might ask how far Lucca was typical of other medieval city-republics. Insofar as the new territorial states were amalgamations of city-republics, historians might well ask how far and in what ways the constituent units were transformed through subordination to an overweaning central power.

The subsequent characteristics of Italian city-states have been often associated with the existence, power, or fragility of a rural nobility. Lucca’s distinctiveness has been attributed to the urbanity of the Lucchese nobility and to the weakness of private seigneurial power within all parts of the Lucchese state. In Medieval Lucca I have explored the alleged urban base of Lucca’s great families, and a range of issues normally treated under the label “the conquest of the contado“. I am not an early medievalist and hope that the conclusions that I have reached will prove a fruitful starting-point for future studies. Similarly with regard to the typology. The contrast between a lesser urban-based and a greater country-based aristocracy seems generally unhelpful in the case of Lucca; in other regions it arguably provides a sharper reflection of reality. But recently scholars have begun to question the intrinsic differences in aristocratic landed power traditionally posited – even within Tuscany between Florence, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo. Future studies of the relationship between cities and their subject territories will continue to clarify and refine the differences and the similarities.

I have tried to devote as much attention to the economy and society as to the governance and administration of the Lucchese state – though the two themes are only pursued in separate chapters for the fifteenth century (the area of my own expertise, and the period towards which the whole book is directed). I look (as I have done on other occasions) at citizen investment in the countryside – intense within the Lucchese plain and in the region of low hills surrounding the city; disappearing almost completely in the more distant vicariates. More generally I ask questions about market integration, and how far the Lucchese state constituted an economically functional region (which it did not). Throughout the book my main focus is on Lucca, and on the history of a city-territory that is of interest in its own right. But in treating relations between city and subordinate countryside (economically, politically, administratively), I have tried always to ask questions that place the Lucchese case-study within the current historiography of northern and central Italy.

Your extensive research has taken you into several archives in Lucca. Would you have any suggestions for other historians who want to work on medieval Lucca about what they might find in the city’s archives?

Lucca’s archives are immensely rich in political, administrative, court, and notarial records, particularly from the fourteenth century. They are less well endowed with mercantile records (excluding those of the court of merchants, but most definitely including merchant account books) and family diaries (memorie e note). In most fields of study the Lucchese archives would challenge the most determined and diligent of scholars – though they remain less deterring than the larger of the Italian state archives.

Students of Lucca are advantaged by the excellent inventory published by Salvatore Bongi (Inventario del Regio Archivio di Stato in Lucca, 4 vols. (Lucca, 1872-88) – reprinted in 1999 with the additions and corrections of Giorgio Tori). Manuscript inventories provide details of individual volumes within the various archival series. Further published inventories – relating primarily to acquired family archives (archivi gentilizi) – have appeared regularly since 1946. Perhaps more unique to Lucca are the labours of Claudio Ferri. In 1991 Ferri published an index of notarial acts relating to communes within the Lucchese state, the administrative divisions of Lucca itself, and to hospitals, monasteries, and churches of the entire territory between 1245 and 1499 (L’Archivio dei Notari di Lucca – Istituto Storico Lucchese, Strumenti per la ricerca ii). In 2004 Ferri published an index of notarial acts relating to artisanal, mercantile, financial, and professional activities in Lucca and throughout its territories, 1245-1499 (L’Archivio dei Notari di Lucca – Istituto Storico Lucchese, Strumenti per la ricerca vi). Anyone wishing to work on the communities, institutions, trades, crafts, or professions of medieval Lucca and its territories have at their disposal an index of the massive notarial archives that would be difficult to parallel in any other major state archive.

As important as the state archives is the Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca, most famous internationally for its collection of more than 1600 parchments that predate the year 1000 (almost 300 of which are pre-800). The parchments obviously become more plentiful for later centuries, but the earliest ones constitute an essential source for the study of the Lombard and Carolingian periods, not only in the histories of the diocese of Lucca itself but more generally for the history of the whole of northern and central Italy. The Archivio Storico Diocesano contains court records relating to the independent administrative and judicial powers of the Lucchese Church (both with regard to ecclesiastical discipline and to the governance of those parts of the Lucchese territory over which the Church exercised secular authority). It also houses notarial registers that significantly predate the earliest records preserved in the Archivio di Stato, and that provide an important source for anyone working on the social, political, economic, and ecclesiastical history of Tuscany in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The third major repository within the city of Lucca itself is the Biblioteca Statale in Lucca, which has a rich collection of geneological material for anyone wishing to pursue the history of individual Lucchese families. The Biblioteca Statale also contains numerous copies of Lucchese chronicles (mostly unpublished). Beyond the city borders there are significant communal archives in Camaiore, Gallicano, and Pietrasanta (useful largely for the deliberations of local councils). And, of course, a great deal of material is preserved in neighbouring state archives – particularly relating to areas of the Lucchese state that passed out of Lucchese political control and fell under the rule of an adjoining state – notably Florence and Genoa.

Finally, what new research topics are you now working on?

I have been approached by an Italian publisher with a view to producing an Italian translation of Lucca 1430-1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic. That book is now fifteen years old (if we exclude the reprint of 2004). I would not want it to reappear without the correction of (relatively few) mistakes, and without some significant rewriting to take account of publications and scholarship since the early 1990s. I have spent a considerable amount of time working on a revised edition – that now exists on my computer and in manuscript. The project has been delayed (perhaps even shelved) in the current economic climate. But a fully revised manuscript of Lucca 1430-1494 now exists – when and if it should be called for.

I have just completed an article requested for a Festschrift: an article entitled “The Countryside and Rural Life in the Fifteenth-Century Lucchesia”. The article, less tied to the theme of state-building, explores the direction of rural change in the decades after 1400 hinted at in Medieval Lucca. At the end of this year (2009) I will be returning to Lucca to work on a couple of villages situated in the eastern margins of the Lucchese plain. And I have continuing (though often thwarted) ambitions to prepare for publication work completed many years ago on Lucchese merchants in Constantinople and on fifteenth-century Lucchese silk manufacture.

We thank Dr. Bratchel for answering our questions.

Ian Mortimer is a well-known historian who focuses on English political history. An Honorary Fellow of the University of Exeter and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Dr. Mortimer is well known for challenging conservative views about history and the writing of history.  One of his most important articles is ‘The Death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’, The English Historical Review, 120 (2005), where he argues that Edward was not killed in 1327.

Dr. Mortimer’s recent book The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, has been an international bestseller.  We interviewed him via email about this book as well as his upcoming work 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory.

One of the questions you tackle in this book is “How does a vision of medieval England as a living community differ from one in which it is described as dead?” Most historians have a kind of standard way of writing history, but your work here asks us to take a look at the subject in a much different way. Why do you think this is important and what were the advantages for you in approaching this method in your book?

There are lots of questions wrapped up in this. Basically you are asking me about my philosophy of history and how it relates to traditional academic history. Yes, most historians do have a set way of writing history but I would argue that that is because most of them are paid to write in that set way. The majority of highly qualified historians in the English speaking world are employed by universities and their employment is primarily either to teach a specific syllabus or conduct research for a particular purpose, and the two functions are closely linked, so that the research connects with and extends the teaching. The majority of historians who fall outside this bracket are either employed for a specific role (e.g. heritage/public history, archives, etc) or write for the general public on a freelance basis. The freelances tend to mimic the academic approach for two reasons: (a) their readers expect it and (b) a traditional approach more clearly aligns them with other professional historians. As a result there are very, very few people in the English-speaking world who are keen to challenge the forms in which history is written.

As I see it, the traditional pseudo-objective stance of the academic – the study of evidence whether on an empirical or a theoretical basis – is a very narrow slice of a very large historical pie. There are simply thousands of ways of writing history. In The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England I designed the whole book around the interests of a theoretical reader, prioritising his/her questions over the evidence. In 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory I designed the book to be a day-by-day account of Henry V in that year. This approach is radical, and no academic would employ it; yet it avoids many of the criticisms that postmodernists level at historians: for example, that historians ’select their evidence’ and neglect conflicting evidence, or ‘arrange their evidence to suit their argument’. In 1415 I laid out every detail of every event I could find in relation to Henry V on the calendar day on which it took place. So in these two books, Time Traveller’s and 1415, you have two very different ways of writing history, both of which are heavily referenced and connected to their source material yet which are both aimed at a mass readership. And there are many, many other ways of doing this. Traditional academia is enormously restrictive and – to the general public’s mind – hugely difficult to understand or enjoy.

As soon as one realises that one can adopt any one of an infinite number of approaches to the past, the limits are taken away from history. It becomes a much more versatile subject. It may still have pin-point accuracy – for example, in the employment of statistical methods, or information and archaeological sciences, to answer specific questions; and yet it assumes many more dimensions. We can ask more questions and we can provide more answers; and the quality of those answers is often greater than a pure right or wrong, yes or no.

To my mind, the fundamental advantage of a multi-dimensional approach is that it allows the historian to draw into his work elements of a common understanding of the nature of humanity. That might be the calendar and its seasons or it might be a common understanding of the physical and psychological needs of human beings. There are, of course, those who argue that this is not properly history – that we cannot presume that people in the past were anything like us. But such a line of argument is both self-defeating and false. It is false because, if we deny the humanity of the past, then we cease to study history, for history is specifically the history of our species – the past of uninhabited islands and other species belongs to other areas of enquiry. It is self-defeating because as soon as one starts to deny that a common understanding is possible, or worth pursuing, then one renders oneself an entity unto oneself and incapable of understanding anything about other members of humanity, in the present as well as the past. However, if the historian does adopt a humanistic approach, then he or she hugely enhances the possibility of writing something meaningful to a large number of readers, and discovering something important about the human condition.

How did you go about developing the idea for and researching The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England?

I have always been interested in breaking up traditional forms of history. As I wrote in my ‘Point of Departure’ article in the magazine History Today (October 2008 issue), I have come to think of this awareness as beginning with a visit to Grosmont Castle at about the age of ten, and wanting to see the place not as ruins but as a living castle in circa 1310, complete with a pregnant mother of Henry of Grosmont, the future first duke of Lancaster, surrounded by servants, priests, retainers. In subsequent years I simply could not understand how I could be so interested in the history of my own country and yet so bored by the syllabus. It seemed as if someone had designed teaching methods to be as unattractive as possible – almost as if they wanted to put people off studying the most wonderful subject in the world.

The idea that became Time Traveller’s came to me in 1993. It was to write a history book that not only appealed to the reader but also directly prioritised their interests. Being a fan of the Douglas Adams books, my first idea was a ‘hitchhiker’s guide to history’. I planned to include all the extraordinary facts I knew about the English past, from Henry VIII passing legislation requiring those guilty of mass poisoning to be boiled alive (it was enacted twice), to nineteenth-century wife sales, reactions to public executions, great escapes, secret treaties, etc. In seeking a publisher, John Hale wrote back to me and said that he thought my idea would work if I concentrated on one period. At that moment, a light bulb went on above my head. John Hale recommended that I try Elizabethan England but the light bulb flashed colours that were distinctly late medieval… Although another ten years passed before I acted on the idea and wrote the book, the idea was developed instantly, in the combination of the ‘hitchiker’s guide’ with a specific country and time. Various publishers over the years tried to ‘develop’ the idea further but I remained close to my inspiration – and I am very glad that I did.

As for research, by the time I wrote the book I did not need to do very much. So many visits to medieval castles and houses over the decades meant I just had to refer to personal knowledge or my collection of guidebooks, or the research library that had grown in my study. Over the years I had written three medieval biographies, and in two of those (on Edward III and Henry IV) I had made extensive use of royal household accounts, including Henry IV’s accounts as earl of Derby, which are hugely informative. I had devoured superb textbooks like Christopher Dyer’s Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge 1989; revised ed., 1998), Chris Woolgar’s The Great Household in Late Medieval England (Yale, 1999), Carol Rawcliffe’s Medicine and Society In Later Medieval England (Sutton, 1995), and Barbara Harvey’s Living and Dying in England, 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (OUP, 1993). I had also read a fair bit of archaeological research too, and some archaeological textbooks, which hugely helped. New books – such as Chris Woolgar’s The Senses in Late Medieval England (Yale, 2006) only added to the growing possibilities in my mind. In fact, having spent so many years of my life picking up details, I was in serious danger of over-researching the book by the time I came to write it. This would have been fatal for I could easily have lost the imaginative power to bring the subject to life. For this reason I deliberately didn’t do much research but only referred to volumes, articles and photographed documents as and when I felt that I needed to check a detail or point a doubtful reader towards my source or a reliable authority.

There was one moment that stands outside all of the above. I drove into town alone late one night to watch the film ‘Atonement’. On my way back it struck me that, if a fiction writer can derive so much power from a historical setting, then a non-fiction writer ought to be able to too. In fact, a historian ought to be able to develop an even greater an emotional impact – for his/her characters were real human beings, not fictional entities. Thus, as I drove back down the hill, looking at the lights of the village ahead of me, I had the germ of the idea for the ‘Envoi’, which concludes the book.

You are able to use many sources to cover a wide range of topics – from measuring time to dancing. Were there any topics that you wanted to cover but could not (at least to your satisfaction) because of a lack of sources/research?

I’m really glad you asked this question because one of the key aspects of my Time Traveller’s Guide is that no area of research or enquiry is impossible. A few reviewers, including some very erudite ones, completely missed this point. They declared that the present tense approach of the guidebook is less revolutionary than I claim because I am still using the same evidence as every other scholar. Their mistake lies in their assumptions about ‘use’ of evidence – that it is always the same. The traditional approach to evidence is to ‘use’ evidence in the sense of exploiting it for what it can tell us about the past. Therefore the research questions that arise are evidence-based. In the Time Traveller’s approach, no regard is paid to the evidence in forming the research questions. The ‘use’ of evidence in this book is secondary, only employed after the research question has been formed, and often used in conjunction with other, perhaps disparate pieces of evidence to answer that research question. Travellers want to know about personal hygiene – so I’ll tell them about personal hygiene. Travellers want to know about comfortable beds and costs of accommodation – so I’ll tell them about these things. I might have to scout around a bit for suitable evidence, and I might even have to use fifteenth century evidence for the late fourteenth century, or thirteenth-century evidence for the pre-Black Death period, but I will come up with an answer. A succinct way of illustrating the difference is to say that I am studying humanity over time (then and now) whereas traditional academics study evidence from the past.

Your question is thus interesting because it is not wholly appropriate. What you are driving at is really a matter of accuracy. If I claim that one can answer every research question that could occur to a modern-day traveller by using the best available evidence, then certain inaccuracies are likely to arise. How vulnerable is this book to charges of inaccuracy? There are bound to be points that certain specialists will regard as wrong – and things like the medical identity of the Great Plague remain debateable and very contentious to this day – but I have done the best I can, and cited my sources whenever it seemed necessary. Therefore my work is probably no more inaccurate than most scholarly studies of social life the fourteenth century. Indeed, as many scholarly studies are concerned with research questions that would have had no meaning at the time – no one in the fourteenth century would have understood you if you had argued about the Black Death, the Hundred Years War or Bastard Feudalism, for example – one might say that my book is as near to a sympathetic portrait of the reality of the period as one can get.

Having said all that, yes, there obviously are questions that one cannot answer. But they tend to be the same questions that no one at the time could answer either. The medical nature of the Black Death is a good example: I cannot answer that with any degree of certainty as rodent-carried plague cannot spread as far or as fast as the Great Plague of 1348-9. But nor could anyone else in 14th century England. So the answer to that question is to explain their understanding of the nature of the Black Death.

Now that you have written the book on travel in 14th century England, where (and when) would be the place you would most want to be in if you had the opportunity?

As I am interested in all historical ages, not just the medieval period, the honest answer to that question is Elizabethan England. My PhD was on the social history of medicine in the period 1570-1720, so I feel quite at home discussing the social history of a later period. And my publisher has recently contracted a Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England, which I should finish in 2011 for publication that in the autumn of that year or the following spring.

If you want me to give a medieval answer then you’re asking a question of my political-historical interests. My favourite subject and area of greatest specialisation is the supposed death of Edward II, his secret imprisonment in the years 1327-1330, and his reputed subsequent afterlife on the Continent. So the medieval answer to your question is actually Corfe Castle in Dorset in the year 1328. I want to know whether the ex-king of England was actually confined in what was described as the Prison Tower in 1331: a room with no doors or windows, in the middle gatehouse, entered by a trapdoor from the room above. I don’t suppose for a moment we will ever know where in Corfe the ex-king was held – even though we can be confident he was held there for a time – but the thought of a man falling from regal dignity and royal power to sightless and soundless solitary confinement for perhaps as long as two and a half years (from late 1327 to early 1330) is cause for us to pause for thought. Many people opposed to my line of thinking have declared that Edward II would have done this or that if he had been set free in Ireland after Lord Mortimer’s fall in late 1330 (as the Fieschi letter suggests). But I cannot help but think that a long period of solitary confinement must have a profound effect on a man, and especially a king.

I also would like to see Edward III on the battlefield: at Halidon Hill (1333), Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346) and Winchelsea (1350). I would like to see the king leading his troops to victories which no Englishmen would have believed possible in 1330. How did he inspire such loyalty – in the face of the better-equipped and more numerous French forces? There’s only so far I could go in The Perfect King: but Edward III (like his grandfather, Edward I) is a man who inspires the imagination to wonder what he was really like. 5.

Finally, you have two more medieval books coming out over the next few months. Could you tell us a little about them?

1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (The Bodley Head, due for publication on 24 September 2009). This book is both an experiment in historical form as well as a historical micro-biography. I’ve touched on the radical form above but basically it’s an account of Henry over the course of the year, day by day, including events of importance to his rivals, friends and enemies – so including things like the progress of the Council of Constance and the French civil war. Writing about the year 1399 in my book The Fears of Henry IV, I found myself wanting to focus on one year and explore an inter-related series of events in closely-measured time. 1415 was an obvious choice – not just because there was so much going on but also because I wanted to write about Henry V without covering the same ground as all the many books that already exist on him and the battle of Agincourt. Also I wanted to get away from traditional history and do something which addressed the criticisms made by postmodernists and critical theorists like Hayden White, such as selection of evidence, arrangement of evidence, etc, as mentioned above. So everything about Henry V is mentioned, and everything is arranged by date. It was a real literary challenge – but the result is an interesting series of juxtapositions and a new way of stripping away the propaganda of the time. Henry V does not come out of the exercise well. He comes across as truly remarkable, and astoundingly brave; but what he did in France he did for the sake of God’s approval, not England, and his regard for his common men was low. And as for his misogyny – I leave you to discover that for yourself. In case you’re interested, the prologue is now freely available on my website, http://www.ianmortimer.com/histbiogs/1415/1415.htm

Medieval Intrigue and the Nature of Historical Evidence (working title, forthcoming, Hambledon Continuum, 2010) When I first published a view that Edward II did not die in 1327, in my first book, The Greatest Traitor, I was treated almost with hostility by many members of the history-writing community. This was not unexpected: extreme revisionism has always worried what is fundamentally a very conservative profession and their (sometimes, even-more-conservative) readers. So I went back to the drawing board and wrote an article, later published in EHR, that shows why we can be confident that Edward II did not die in Berkeley Castle in 1327 and was still alive in 1330. To my ever-increasing astonishment, even some serious academics have completely misunderstood and misrepresented my arguments in their own attempts to counter my work. As a result I intend in this book – a series of essays – to present the basic information science I am using in a methodological essay entitled ‘Objectivity and Information’ and to show how that underpins a number of arguments that, on the face of things are quite contentious, including the origins of the accusations of sodomy against Edward II and the origins of the idea of the pretender, as well as my original EHR essay. As readers will note, this is a far cry from the spirit of Time Traveller’s. While the social guidebook is perhaps the most general approach possible to medieval England, aimed at encouraging wider understanding of life in other ages, Medieval Intrigue is the sharp end of the stick – how we can prove (yes, I said the word ‘prove’) things about specific individuals in the past. But history can accommodate both ends of the spectrum – the most detailed arguments about a single event and the general understanding of the development of history over time. That is why it is all-consuming as an intellectual discipline.

We thank Dr.Mortimer for answering our questions.

Click here for his online article : A Note on the Deaths of Edward II

Click here for his article History beyond the facts How true originality in history has fallen foul of postmodernism, research targets and commercial pressure

Rodney Stark,  Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University is a well-known scholar of religious history who has published over two dozen books. In his latest work, God’s Battalions, Professor Stark puts forth a controversial argument that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression.

According to its publisher, “Stark reviews the history of the seven major Crusades from 1095 to 1291, demonstrating that the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations, centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and sudden attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, Stark argues that this had nothing to do with any elaborate design of the Christian world to convert all Muslims to Christianity by force of arms. Given current tensions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks around the world, Stark’s views are a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding and are sure to spark debate.”

We interviewed Professor Stark by email:

The Crusades is a topic that generates a lot of books each year.  Why did you want to write God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades and what makes this book different from others?

Since my teens I have read a great deal of military history, but until now I had not written any myself. Along the way I read many books about the Crusades and in the past few years I have been greatly impressed by the work of historians such as Jonathan Riley-Smith and others including Thomas Madden. Unfortunately, these wonderful new studies have not reached the intelligent reading public. Nonsense about Crusaders as greedy, colonizing, brutal barbarians still prevails in the public sphere. So, I wrote a chapter on the matter as part of a proposal for a book on anti-Catholic historiography. My publishers responded that they wanted that chapter expanded into a book. So I did it.  What makes my book different is, first, that it pulls together the scholarly literature (all of it carefully acknowledged) in one volume written for the general reader in hopes of setting the record straight. Secondly, my book begins in the seventh not the eleventh century, since I regard the Crusades as part of  many centuries of conflict between Christendom and Islam. Thus far there have been four major book club pre-publication adoptions, so maybe God’s Battalions can have some corrective effects.

In recent years, there has been a lot of changes in the popular view about the Crusades – for example there are movies like Kingdom of Heaven which negatively portray the religious fervor of the Crusaders, and we have also seen various Christian groups ‘apologize’ for the acts done in the Middle Ages.  Meanwhile, in Islamic world, a notion has recently emerged within popular culture that sees the Crusades as a key part of the downfall of classical Islamic civilization and as part of West’s continuing attempts to suppress Muslims in general.  Why do you think that these views about the Crusades have become so prevalent in recent years?

It would take a long essay to explain why Western intellectuals have promulgated so many fraudulent charges against the Crusades and, indeed, against the legitimacy of  Western civilization in general. Anti-Catholicism played a role, having shaped so much false history by British and American historians in past generations. Certainly anti-religion has played an important role too. The false, but plausible seeming, assumption that the Crusades were an instance of colonialism was critical, both as a source of  Western guilt and as an excuse for Muslim “backwardness.”

One of the premises of your book is that the Crusades were a reaction to what you describe as “Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places.”  As a scholar of the Crusades, I disagree with this idea – for the most part Islamic expansion had ended by the middle of the eight century, and for the next three hundred years, warfare between Christian and Muslim states was motivated by political relations and not necessarily religious reasons.  It was not even uncommon for Muslim and Christian kingdoms to be allies and co-exist peacefully with each other.  Moreover, the bulk of the people who took part in the First Crusade seem to have little or no knowledge of who they were actually fighting, and simply saw them as random pagans. With this in mind, I was wondering how you came to your conclusions that somehow the Crusades were “a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression”?

The conflict with Islam surely had not ended by the eighth century-although the conquest of the Middle East and North Africa was over by then. Warfare continued in Spain, often quite intensively, until the end of the fifteenth century. A war of reconquest raged in Sicily and Southern Italy until only a few years before the start of the First Crusade. And the initial call from Emperor Comnenus for a Crusade was prompted by an invasion of  Seljuk Turks who had driven to within 100 miles of Constantinople. It is all well and good to say these later wars were motivated by “political relations and not necessarily religious reasons.” No doubt all of the Muslim conquests had political aspects, but wars across the Christian/Muslim divide always had religious implications that usually did not apply to wars within each faith. To say that the bulk of those who took part in the First Crusade “seem to have little or no knowledge of who they were actually fighting” might apply to those who followed Peter the Hermit. But the real Crusaders knew rather a lot about whom they were fighting.  Many had relatives who had suffered or even died at the hands of Muslims while making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a few had themselves been on a pilgrimage and had encountered Muslims at first hand. In addition, the Normans had recently beaten Muslims in Sicily and, even more recently, Bohemond had fought Muslim mercenaries hired by Byzantium.

The focus of your academic research is the sociology of religion and the rise of Christianity. I was wondering what you perspective might be on the religious revival that seems to have taken hold in Western Europe during the latter half of the eleventh century, which produced the mass movement of people known as the First Crusade, but also led to increased persecution and violence towards Jewish minorties and non-Catholic Christians?

I don’t see a religious revival as having taken hold in the latter half of the eleventh century. I have written at length several times about the many centuries (beginning in about 500 CE) of peaceful relations between Christians and Jews in Europe and the Church’s lack of concern about heresy during this same era. Both ended at the start of the Crusades, and I argue that the outbreak of anti-Semitism and heresy-hunting were a fallout of the conflict with Islam which magnified concerns about religious nonconformity on both sides! There were similar outbursts of attacks on Jews within Muslim societies. See my: One True God (2001).

We thank Professor Stark for answering our questions.

William Ian Miller is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He has written on a wide variety of subjects, including about human concepts and emotions such as courage and revenge. In 1990 he wrote the groundbreaking book Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. He has continued his work on Icelandic sagas, and in 2008 released a new book entitled Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business. We interviewed Professor Miller by email:

1. The story of Audun and the Polar Bear is not as well known as other Icelandic sagas such as Njal’s Saga or Egil’s Saga. Why did you want to write a book about it?

It is a perfect jewel of a story. I had taught it for years in my class on Bloodfeuds in the Law School because it appeared in the Penguin collection along with Hrafnkel’s saga. Each year it seemed I had a harder time getting through all the issues the story raised: the strategic brilliance of the action, the intelligence of the actors, the insights in gives into their theories of economic value, the poetic narrative economy of the tale, within the time limits I allowed myself for an 8 page story. It began to fill two lectures, then three, then four, so I figured, why not a book? It really is among the best of any short stories in world lit.

2. The premise of the story in Audun and the Polar Bear – where a poor Icelander buys a polar bear in Greenland then goes on a journey to give it to the King of Denmark – might sound far-fetched to modern readers, but you explain the author has made sure that the story would be at least historically plausible. Why would this have been important for the author and his medieval audience?

The story wants to play it both ways: it wants to suggest that it is fairy-tale-like, but really without any magic or otherworldly interventions at all. It is a story about the sophistication of the actors (all of whom make the best of the opportunities the others provide them). The people in this story made their own luck. There is a lot of bunkum out there about the brooding ominipresence of Fate in the sagas. It is there, to be sure, but what stands out in the sagas is the practical decision making of the characters. The story makes sure the good luck Audun experiences is earned. I am reminded of the way Beowulf puts it when he is talking about his 7-day swimming match with Breca, during which he killed 9 niceras, sea serpents, who I must admit I have always had a soft spot for: “Wyrd oft nereð unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah. (vv. 572-3) (Wyrd often saves the unfated to die man, when his courage avails him). We have the same sentiment: Wyrd helps those who help themselves. Or you make your own luck. The story writer makes sure to embed all the action in his world. Ships need crews, mothers need to be funded for three years before you can leave Iceland, polar bears will exhaust your funds feeding and transporting them, pious pilgrimages to Rome are as likely to destroy your health as help your spirit. Audun doesn’t buy a ticket for a lottery and sit back and wait for the drawing. He buys a polar bear with everything he has, and manages to brave the most dangerous man in their world to give it to that man’s arch enemy. But the story is brutally honest about where Audun really stands: he is a minor side show for the kings of Norway and Denmark. They make good use of this Icelander on a mission, to compete with each other as to who is the most generous.

3. Luck is an important theme, not just in the story of Audun and the Polar Bear, but in many other works of medieval Icelandic literature. is their difference in how medieval Icelanders perceived what it meant to be lucky than how we might see it today?

This is not easy to answer briefly but I will just note a few matters. Much of what I said in the previous question applies here. Audun is said by the narrator and a couple of characters in the story to be lucky. The word they use for luck is a form of our word “give” which makes for a nice richness in a tale that is about the complex ins and outs of gift exchange. I would say that our sense of luck and luckiness bears enough points of resemblance with theirs that there would be nothing counterintuitive in their notions. In many ways invoking it is a kind of boilerplate, a way of talking, but it also works its own magic. When some calls you a lucky man or an unlucky man in a saga those declarations bear some uncanny causal force with ensuring the truth of the description.

Luck means winning in the face of long odds (or a continued run of little wins, with the probability of the length of the run being remote), but it need not mean that it is just random. We only hear of this one adventure of Audun’s. After the story he retires from taking longshots, and opts for a life of more predictable returns on his investment. I bet the true sign of him being a lucky man is he knew exactly when NOT to press his luck. The luckiest thing that happens in this story is that Audun survives his encounter with Harald Hardradi. He lucked out by catching the ruthless man on a good day, but Audun mostly made Harald’s day by showing guts, determination, and charm.

4. You have already written several important books on medieval Iceland and its literature, including Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. How did you become interested in working in this field?

Pure accident. I went to grad school in modern French history. I was so miserable in my first year of grad school that I blamed it on French history. I shifted to the English department. Old English was a requirement, and 15 lines into the Battle of Maldon my life changed, to say nothing of the effect the Wanderer, and Wulf and Eadwacer had on me. Good-bye Wordsworth, Stevens, though not Frost. I was knocked off my feet. There was an Icelander in the class, an undergrad; he says to me (because I was by far the person most into the class): ‘you think this is good? Try Njal’s saga.’ I had never heard of it. I took him up on it, bought a copy of the Magnusson/Pálsson translation and no sooner had Skarpheðinn appeared than I felt like Paul knocked off his horse. I signed up for Old Norse the next term. I still have never lost my passion for that saga in particular, but for the whole genre. The sagas, especially given my special interests in the social, and in the politics of face-to-face encounter, are considerably smarter sociologically and psychologically than academic work in these areas. The strategic intelligence that imbues the best of them matches up with Thucydides.

5. Finally, now that you have completed this book, what new areas of research are you working on now?

As you might know I take extended journeys away from the sagas, though to my mind it is the sagas are what sent me off on these wild goose chases. They figure at some level in everything I write, whether that be on various emotions, or on courage, or on pretense, and surely when on the lex talionis. I presently am just beginning a collection of essays on the theme of “losing it.” It is too early to tell whether it will amount to anything, because, well, I fear I am losing it. It will deal with aspects of mental decline of getting older, and the elusiveness of wisdom that is supposed to make up for the fact you can no longer remember any names, or come up with the mot juste. It will deal with taking oneself out of the game, or being pushed out of the game. One essay will directly treat of the saga ritual of old men taking to bed when they can no longer take revenge. I would still like to get out two saga books before I slump in a chair in front of reruns of old Packer games, one on Hrafnkel’s saga, and one on Njála.

We thank Professor Miller for answering our questions.

INTERVIEW WITH CASTLE WALL PRODUCTIONS

Castle Wall Productions is a theatrical troupe based in Colorado.  They specialize in delivering performances set in the Middle Ages, and can be seen at medieval and renaissance fairs, weddings and shows.  Several dozen performers are available for these shows, some of whom have are experienced in medieval combat, and others in designing historical looking dress and equipment.  We spoke with the members of Castle Wall Productions about their company:

Could you tell us how Castle Wall Productions began?

Castle Wall Productions originally started when Samantha Cone in 1992 watched a living chess match in Florida, and thought to herself we could do that but with a story. She then co started a group there eventually moving here to Colorado.

Your show takes the audience into the legendary story of Robin Hood. Why did you find that particular story to be a good fit for the kind of show you are performing?

The legend of Robin Hood is universally known and the cast of characters which is large, are more widely identifiable then say King Arthur or Beowulf. The story is pretty set as to who is a good and who is the bad which allows us to tell a pretty concise story with our show times.

Could you tell us about the way you went about doing the research and planning into not only the story, but developing the medieval look to your costumes and equipment? Where do you set the line between being historically accurate and the constraints of putting on a show for a modern day audience?

The problem is two fold since we are dealing with a legendary story set in a historical period we have to marry the two. A lot of research went into historically being as accurate as possible with costumes, armor and the look of the show. We make considerations for safety; the best example of this is chain mail mittens which for the time frame were common attire for knights, we use gloves (all members do as a measure of protection). Our weapons are another example they are spring steel so they have that <ring> to them that people are used to hearing in movies. “Real” carbon steel swords <clack> and ironically most people think that those swords are more fake.

Your website mentioned that some of the members have knowledge in chain weaving, leather working and several sewing techniques; how did they learn these kind of skills?

When someone joins CWP we find out if they have any special knowledge and are willing to teach those interested in that skill. We have teams that handle building and maintaining their particular areas, such as Weapons Team, Armor Team and Props Team and the teams have meetings where that specialty is taught and used to produce items for the group.

The people involved in Castle Wall Productions are there on a volunteer basis – does that make it easier or harder to develop your shows?

Probably harder, as it requires a lot of commitment and a love for this sort of thing, and when you are not paying someone sometimes its harder to get those people to stick to their commitment.

What sets your group apart from other re-enactment groups?

Castle Wall Productions is actually not a re enactment group we are a Theatrical Combat Troupe. We are a very period accurate theater troop, but we are entertainers first re-enactors second, and always educators.

Finally, where do you see your company going forward in the next few years (or more broadly, how the medieval and renaissance fair and reenactment industry will develop in the United States)?

CWP has a pretty far reaching goal, which is eventually opening up two other CWP in other states, when I took over in 2004 we had 16 individuals now we have nearly 50. As far as the US there are may factors foremost the economy it takes a lot to put fares on and if that money is not there…

We thank Ky Seibert for arranging this interview.  To learn more about Castle Wall Productions, go to http://www.castlewallprod.com/