|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 click pic for a full-sized view Our 2008 Catalog is online at this time ... Click right here to download the PDF (download size is 1.12MB), and take as read your permission to copy, print, forward, and generally pass it along. (If anyone gives you grief, send them here!) Drop us an email to request a catalog for a friend who doesn't have internet (or computer) access. We can mail direct to your friend, or mail to you, and you forward. (If you'd like a block of catalogs to send along to multiple friends, let us know how many to send ... and many thanks for helping us 'get the word out' that MK is back, and better than ever!) |
BOOKS > Books in Print > Fortunes of War
|
 Sign me up! Unsubscribe me! |
|
RESEARCH TALES: THE ROAD TO PALESTINE, or, JOURNEYS INTO AN ASTONISHINGLY ALIEN WORLD As I wrote in my Foreword to the 2005 edition of WHITE ROSE, the world of a millennium ago is a thoroughly alien place, where the rationalizations for war look as absurd, to people of our generation, as the social forces way back in the 1920s and 30s, which made WWII a foregone conclusion. The more one digs back into the historical reality, the more cynical one becomes. On the surface, the Crusades look like a series of holy wars, but look closer. The Mid-east was one end of the Silk Road, and the powers from the west were fairly drooling as they saw the wealth there for the taking ... if only you could raise an army big enough to overpower a people as vigorous as the Saracens, Turks and Kurds. I have absolutely no doubt that the ordinary soldier in the field, beneath the banners of England or Normandy, thought he was fighting for the safety of Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem: the best way to recruit an army is to ignite their zeal; and it's true, the great cities *were* being re-taken by the Turks! And why not? Constantinople (aka Istanbul and Byzantium) was, and is, in Turkish lands; it was improbably optimistic to hope that a Christian force could maintain control there in the Eleven-hundreds, with supply lines stretched back to Normandy and Germany. As purely holy wars, the Crusades are very difficult to rationalize. They were a series of calamities for both sides; but out of the blood-soaked tangle of their history comes one fact that's inescapable: it was all about politics! The power struggles between England and Normandy were endless and expensive. The First of these Crusades took place in the 1090s, not even 40 years after the Norman Conquest of England ... and the country was actually still reeling after a war which had decades-long ramifications. The Normans themselves were hardly what you'd call nice neighbors. About a century before Duke William conquered England, part of France had been carved off and handed on a plate to a clan of Vikings in exchange for peace ... ie., 'If we give you Normandy, will you leave the rest of us alone?' It worked, more or less, but if these Vikings, who were now known as Normans, were going to leave France alone, who were they going to raid instead? The best target was England ... and sure enough, in 1066 it came to a monstrous war. A direct descendant of the Viking to whom Normandy had been given (his name was Rollo) commanded a vast fleet which landed at Hastings; and the rest is history. Meanwhile, out east, the Empire of Islam was on the move, and by the 1080s they had taken control of enough land to have the Christians sweating. The population of Europe was, even then, starting to blow out, and the petty wars being fought between this and that area were expensive. The Crusades were much more about expansionism, global doimination and old-fashioned treasure hunting than they were about holy war. These were the social forces driving the times of WHITE ROSE OF NIGHT, which is set at the time of the Third Crusade. This third war was in part an attempt to win back territories which had been lost to the armies of Islam ... but Richard the Lionheart was also one of your archetypical Tomb Raiders. He was out east looking for booty. The story of what was happening back at home during these years has become a Hollywood legend: Robin Hood, Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Prince John is made the villain, and King Richard returns in the nick of time to banish him and rescue the people from his tyranny. Alas, the facts of history are a tad bit different! But the one inescapbale truth still comes out of all this: it's all about politics.  So much for the social forces driving the world of Paul and Edward! But what was their world like? This is where David Howarth's book really hit the spot. A good encyclopaedia will quickly fill in the details of what happened when, and to whom (and might even give you an analysis of why), but researching the every-day, mundane life of people in the street or on the farm, is not so easy.
It's not only a world without steam or electrical power, without educational and medical resources as we understand them, and without any vestige of democracy ... it's also a world still governed by the 'manorial' system, where labourers were bonded to land owners and women were chattels; and if you were not Christian, you were toast. Literally. (In a thimble, the 'manorial' system was a pecking order with God at the top, followed by the King one rung lower, and ending up with the serf, the man on the land, at the very bottom, who was property; he couldn't quit, not travel, nor even choose who he was going to marry without his lord's nod of approval. He was supposed to get many perks in return. In theory it works; in practise, it's too easy to abuse and life at the bottom of the ladder sucked, unless you were lucky enough to have a really good overhead infrastructure ... you wouldn't gamble on it). One of the most difficult things in writing WHITE ROSE was to first *do* the research, then dump it, unload it, leave it behing and write about ordinary people doing sometimes extraordinary things. Readers are not interested in the kings and bishops, popes and political forces! So once a writer has put the jigsaw together, laid the foundations on which the story is to be built, the next step is to ditch the research, get to grips with the humanity of the characters and just tell the story. |
|