A few chums and I went to see The Return of the King — third film in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy — last week, and a good time was had by all.  Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Tamara and I got to see material from the The Two Towers (the second film) enhanced-edition DVD, whereupon we learned that the memorable folk known as the Rohirrim, the people of the kingdom of Rohan in the series, were conceptually developed by the filmmakers from ideas of “horsey Vikings” — people conceived of as basically like the Vikings but with a prevalent horse-and-plains, rather than longship-and-sea, orientation.

Rohan and the Rohirrim were very well done in Jackson's LOTR, in my view, including the latest released film, but while musing over the concept it occurred to me there are perhaps less artificial models from history, even European history, that could have been used in building the people of Rohan, than simply grafting the sea-oriented Vikings onto horseback.  No criticism of the approach the series actually took is intended (which I think is perfectly fine), but it is fascinating to take a look at some of the alternate historical analogues from whom the people of Rohan might have emerged.  I'll discuss one such — the historic Sarmatians — here, and in the future perhaps go over one or two other potential historical sources for a folk like the Rohirrim.

Originally an Iranian people and speaking an Indo-European tongue, the folk known to history as “Sarmatians” (Sarmatae in Latin) were nomadic horse warriors related to the Scythians of ancient fame, originating to the east of the latter and ultimately displacing them.  During the later Roman Republic and through most of the Empire period (and even later, in some regions), the Sarmatians occupied the area off the northeastern borderland of Empire known to the Romans, after them, as Sarmatia.  The Sarmatians' domain during much of this epoch extended east of Germania, occupied by the Germans, from approximately the line of the Vistula River in present-day Poland (“Sarmatia” is sometimes used today as a literary term for Poland) to points east through the Ukraine and southwestern Russia into the Caspian and Aral Sea regions of Central Asia.

The “Alans” (Alani) whom one runs into occasionally in the history of late and post-Roman times were a Sarmatian people.  Historian T. Peisker, writing in The Cambridge Medieval History, points out that for Scythians and Sarmatians, “both names covered the most medley conglomerations of nomads and peasants.” ¹

The Sarmatians' nomad empire was eventually eclipsed in the 3rd century AD by the Gothic eruption from Scandinavia across the Baltic Sea and thence into eastern Europe, whence many Sarmatians enlisted as associates of the new Gothic confederation.  A portion of the Sarmatian people, who became known as “free Sarmatians” (Sarmatae Liberi), continued for some time in what is approximately modern Hungary, independent of the Goths to their east in the Romania/Ukraine region. What remained of Sarmatia eventually succumbed, after about 370, to the Huns, though many Sarmatians escaped west to join other elements of the barbarian wanderings of late and post-Roman times, after which Sarmatians (and Alans) are no longer heard of.

It is the Sarmatians who must be credited with introduction of the armored horse warrior — i.e., the knight — to the medieval West!  As Arnold Toynbee explains, in his book Mankind and Mother Earth: ²

In the eleventh century the Roman military equipment which had been taken over by the West Roman Empire's barbarian conquerors was suddenly discarded in the West in favour of the more efficient Sarmatian equipment that the Alans had brought with them into Gaul in the fifth century.  The Norman knights depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry have their prototypes in paintings of Sarmatian-style cavalrymen in tombs of the first and second century A.D. in the Crimea and the Taman Peninsula, but the eleventh-century Westerners made one change (the first of many) in these borrowed accoutrements.  They replaced the small round Sarmatian shield with a kite-shaped shield that gave maximum cover with minimum surface-area and weight.  These eleventh-century ‘Knights’ (milites) were so conscious of their value that, about half way through the century, novices began to be inducted by older hands into a kind of secular fraternity.

Encyclopædia Britannica's article ”Sarmatian” describes Sarmatian religion, art, and culture: ³

When the Sarmatians penetrated into southeastern Europe, they were already accomplished horsemen.  They were nomadic, devoting themselves to hunting and to pastoral occupations.  Owing to their common nomadic and Central Asian heritage, Sarmatian society paralleled, at first, that of the Scythians, but there were many differences.  The Scythian gods were those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerated a god of fire to whom they offered horses in sacrifice.  In contrast to the reclusive, domestic role of Scythian women, unmarried Sarmatian females, especially in the society's early years, took arms alongside men.  Sarmatian female warriors may have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons.

An early matriarchal form of society was later replaced by a system of male chieftains and eventually by a male monarchy.  This transition may well have stemmed from the rapid development of horsemanship and a male cavalry corps, attributable to the invention of the metal stirrup and the spur.  These innovations contributed greatly to success in military campaigns and even influenced the Roman style of combat.

(Emphasis added to an interesting point.)  One correction to the foregoing:  Attributing spurs and stirrups to the Sarmatians, as the Britannica article claims to, appears incorrect, best I can make out.  Scholars seem to be basically in concurrence that the Sarmatians lacked the stirrup, and it was probably through the Avars — who we met in Impearls' article Crusades IV (permalink) — that this device was introduced somewhat later to the West.  Spurs too appear to have been already known to Gauls and Romans.  With that caution, we'll continue….

Evolving burial customs offer an insight into the progress of the Sarmatian social structure.  Early graves held only the remains of the deceased.  The somewhat later inclusion of personal objects with the body followed the emergence of class differences.  As society became more complex and affluent, more treasures were included with the corpse, until in the final period burial costumes and even jewelry were added to the ritual.  The Kuban region is the site of the most elaborate tombs, which in general resemble those of the Scythians, although they are less elaborate in form and decoration.  Horse trappings and weapons of the Sarmatians were also less elaborate than those of the Scythians, but they nonetheless evidenced great skill.  Sarmatian spears were longer, but knives and daggers were just as varied in style.  An outstanding specialty was the Sarmatian long sword, which featured a hilt of wood with gold lacing, topped with an agate or onyx knob.  Sarmatian art was strongly geometric, floral, and richly coloured.  Jewelry was a major craft, expressed in rings, bracelets, diadems, brooches, gold plaques, buckles, buttons, and mounts.  Exceptional metalwork was found in the tombs, including bronze bracelets, spears, swords, gold-handled knives, and gold jewelry and cups.

History is composed of real, not ideal, peoples, and many aspects of human cultures in history fail to meet modern-day egalitarian and human rights tests.  As with other past societies, this was so for the Sarmatians.  Horse nomads lived a pastoral (animal herding) existence, and as a result of their riding-the-whirlwind lifestyle, tended to be extraordinarily contemptuous of the farmer's settled way of life, seeing them basically as fit only for slaves.  Nomads created their empires by lording it over legions of conquered serfs and slaves, who were usually treated as inherently inferior.  During the Mongol conquest of northern China, as an extreme case, settled Chinese peasants were regarded by those nomad warriors as hardly worthy of life, and were massacred in large numbers; few nomads, however, were as senselessly destructive (by civilized standards) as the Mongols.  The Vikings — used by the makers of the LOTR films as models for their Rohirrim — weren't nomads but farmers; nevertheless they captured, kept, and sold hosts of captives and slaves.  Slavery, in fact, was pervasive in most societies, particularly commercially active ones, until quite recently.

This story from the remaining so-called “free Sarmatians,” decades after most of the rest of the extensive Sarmatian dominion had been overrun by the Goths, illuminates a moment in this age-old master-slave conflict (as related by historian Herwig Wolfram, in his History of the Goths): ⁴

The flight of the Sarmati Agaragantes, the “master” (domini) Sarmatians, to the Vandals-Victu(f)ali was the result of tribal conflicts that were to influence Gothic history nearly a quarter of a century later.  The Tisza Sarmatians could not long enjoy the victory they had gained [in AD 332] over the Goths with Roman help.  Threatened by the enemy, the ruling Sarmatae Agaragantes had armed the subject Limigantes.  Afterward the “master” Sarmatians were overwhelmed by their numerically superior slaves and defeated in a bloody civil war in the year 334.  Most of them were admittted into the empire by Constantine, while a minority sought refuge with the Vandals.

Accompanying the Vandals, Sarmatians eventually made their way to north Africa, where they became an honored part of the kingdom they and the Vandals carved out of Roman Africa.  The ex-slaves of the “free Sarmatians,” the Limigantes, a quarter-century following their liberation were exterminated by the Romans, when they treacherously attacked the Emperor after having been granted entry and the right to settle in the Empire. ⁵

History isn't a story book, and doesn't have to live up to our hopes and aspirations.
 
 

References

¹ T. Peisker (Ph.D., Privatdocent and Librarian, Graz), Chapter XII: “The Asiatic Background,” Volume I: The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms, edited by H. M. Gwatkin and J. P. Whitney, The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury, 1911, Cambridge at the University Press; p. 349.

² Arnold Toynbee, Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World, 1976, Oxford University Press, New York and London; p. 441.

³ “Sarmatian,” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

⁴ Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, Second Edition, 1988, University of California Press, Berkeley; p. 63.

⁵ Norman H. Baynes (M.A., Oxon., Barrister-at-Law), Chapter III: “Constantine's successors to Jovian: and the struggle with Persia,” Volume I: The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms, Op. cit.; p. 71.
 
 

UPDATE:  2003-12-29 18:00 UT.  Thanks to the University of Texas for its beautiful Sarmatian art images, linked to at this U.T. site (since it appears not to be fully operational, also check out this location).  Note that this page indicates the Sarmatians didn't advance into southeastern Europe until the 3rd century AD, which as far as I know is incorrect (correct date is 2nd century BC).

UPDATE:  2003-12-30 00:30 UT.  Lynn Sislo at Reflections in d minor has posted a link to this piece.

UPDATE:  2003-12-31 21:00 UT.  Prof. Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy has linked to the article, producing The Conspiracy's version of “instalanche.”  Thereafter, Prof. Stephen Bainbridge picked up the thread in a rebuttal called “Were the Rohirrim Sarmatians?  No.”  (More on that later [see Update below].)

Meanwhile, I've been taking a beating from e-mail (I got one) informing me that it's “Rohan” the nation (which I knew) but not “Rohan” the people: rather, in Tolkien's books, according to my correspondent, the people are called Rohirrim.  What can I say?  It was quite a few years ago that I read Tolkien!  (Actually, I was thinking the Rohirrim was the name of Rohan's cavalry corps, but then maybe I just wasn't thinking.)

Now, I'm about to surrender on this point (and I've modified the article accordingly), but I'll make a brief defense of not (necessarily) calling people by their own name!  We speak English; the “Rohirrim” spoke another language.  Professor Bainbridge maintains that, according to a note of Tolkien's, the “Rohirrim” spoke Old English!  Now, I disagree about that, which I'll explain elsewhere, but even if granted, Old English isn't (Modern) English.  Old English can't be understood by a modern English speaker (Middle English is hard enough to try to comprehend), and therefore they are different languages.  Different languages very often (usually!) use different terms to refer to the same things, including nations and peoples.  In English, for example, we refer to the Italian city of “Florence”; in Italian it's called Firenze.  It's not ”Ugly Americanism” to do this, it's what all languages do.  Spanish speakers call the United States “Estados Unidos” — are Americans to be offended by that?  Not at all.  Similarly, it's perfectly acceptable to call a people — who might call themselves, say, Rohirrim — in English something like “Rohanese” (by analogy with Japanese).

(Bleh!)  On second thought, let's just call them Rohirrim!  Fortunately for us, English is beautifully tolerant.
 

UPDATE:  2004-01-02 21:30 UT.  Several additional blogs have linked to this article or to those who've pointed to it.  “De Doc” at “De Doc's Doings” has linked to Eugene Volokh's post with a reply called “Sarmations, Norsemen, and Rohirrim, oh MY!,” commenting:

It tickles me no end to know that I share geekdom with the august Eugene Volokh, as this post demonstrates.  (I am so much a geek that I can follow the entire course of the argument laid out in the links.  Oh… dear.)  An added bonus:  As you read through the links, this essay is everything Professor Bainbridge says it is.

From a 15 yr old (at the time of writing).  There is hope for civilization… even if it's in the hands of us geeks.  Heh.

Mitch H. at Blogfonte discusses another aspect of mock criticism of The Lord of the Rings, then turns to this, what he calls, “kerfluffle about who the Rohirrim are supposed to be,” writing:

I'd go with Goths-with-stirrups, myself.  They're early-Germanic nomads living on plains that had once been occupied by the Fallen Empire, but now exist in political independence-but-culturally-influenced.  Maybe the Avars?  I don't think they were Germanic, though…

Both Goths and Avars are excellent candidates, in my estimation, in addition to the Sarmatians already noted.  Goths though as well as Sarmatians seem to precede the era when stirrups (which I regard as largely irrelevant to this contest) were known — Avars, however, definitely do not antedate stirrups, and are likely the origin of them.  Whether the candidate folk is Germanic in language or origin or not is also basically irrelevant, in my view.  As a result, Avars, as well as the Goths, must be rated highly as historical peoples rather like the Rohirrim.  More on this elsewhere.

Finally, Steve at The Modulator in a piece called “Rohan Sources,” compares Impearls' article with Bainbridge's response:

Impearls notes that Jackson modeled the Rohan on “horsey Vikings” and then writes a long and interesting article on the Samartians and suggests that they also could have been viewed as a model for the Rohan.  Impearls also suggests that in the future he will look at other possible historical models for the Rohan.

Professor Bainbridge disagrees a bit:

…offers up a thoughtful argument criticizing Peter Jackson's decision to model the Rohirrim after “horsey vikings,” and suggesting that the Sarmatians would have made a better model

Now in my reading of Impearls he seemed to say that not only was he not criticizing Jackson's approach but, rather, was quite happy with it and that his intent is simply to look at the Samartians as another historical analogue that might have served as a model for the Rohan.

Read Impearls and decide whether the Samartians would make a good model for the Rohan.  Bainbridge thinks not and provides a number of reasons.

I appreciate Steve's comments, and certainly agree with his interpretation.  As he notes, I plan to post more on other societal models for the Rohirrim shortly.

I can't close here, however, without gently pointing to Modulator's misspelling of Sarmatian (as “Samartian”), which I think is hilarious.  Now I hate spelling flames, and I'm not flaming; I'm sure it's just a typo, which everyone does (once I misspelt the name “Pelagius” the same way throughout an entire article devoted to same, and I've had to catch myself in this one to avoid spelling them as “Samaritans”!).  But it's funny thinking of the “Samartians” as horse warriors originating on the war-god planet Mars — perhaps from John Carter's Barsoom!
 

UPDATE:  2004-01-07 17:30 UT.  A follow-up piece, known as Horsey Vikings II (permalink) has been posted, responding to Professor Bainbridge's rebuttal called “Were the Rohirrim Sarmatians?  No.”  The new article discusses half a dozen likely models among “horsey” historic peoples for the Rohirrim.

UPDATE:  2004-01-09 14:00 UT.  Prof. Stephen Bainbridge has linked back to this series with a note titled “More on the Rohirrim,” calling it, in an e-mail, “Great stuff!”

UPDATE:  2004-01-16 14:15 UT.  Geitner Simmons in his Regions of Mind blog has enthusiastically linked to this ‘Rohirrim’ series of articles, commenting:

On another historical note, Michael McNeil of the blog Impearls has put together a terrific set of posts titled “‘Horsey’ Vikings — exploring origin of the ‘Rohirrim’ in The Lord of the Rings.”  The series looks at Saracens and other assorted horse-riding warriors.  I'm ill-equipped to debate points of arguments that Michael says have arisen over the Rohirrim.  The link, by the way, goes [to] a post that features exquisite graphics to complement Michael's text.

The discussion on a space science discussion list has continued concerning Impearls' earlier pieces on the BBC and the anniversary of flight (permalink) and BBC2 (permalink).  Our previous correspondent has proceeded as follows:

Hmmmmm…  So you saw the broadcast and was not aware of the article, while I read the article but didn't saw the broadcast.  That possibly accounts for our very different perceptions; perhaps, had I seen the thing in television, I would also notice some negative tone toward the Wright Brothers.  I have often seen (at work, for instance) trouble caused by people who misinterpret emotional undertones in e-mails, and that kind of thing applies to any situation involving voice versus written messages.

The difference in perception between broadcast vs. written media had occurred to me too.

Anyhow, welcome to the […] List.  Even though you arrived in a quasi-flame-war-ignition situation arranged by myself (sorry).  :-)

Thanks!  Glad to learn of the group, actually.  I'll try not to get into too much extraneous argumentation….

There's also a fictionalization of Alberto Santos-Dumont's life by Welsh novelist Richard Llewellyn, entitled A Night of Bright Stars (1979).

Interesting, I was not aware of that.  Is it a fiction with a good “suspension of disbelief” or is it some wacky fantasy a la “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”?  I can find almost nothing about this out-of-print book in the Internet…

I haven't read the book, just noted its existence in Britannica's short biography of Richard Llewellyn.  I did see that it's available for as little as about $2 on the Advanced Book Exchange (world's best used bookstore, IMHO).

I don't know the BBC in depth to know its political positions; I just assumed that, since it is British and (AFAIR) government-operated, it would be pro-American as the English government usually is.  If the actual situation is more complex than that and my assumption was naïve, then I apologize.

(Choke! gasp.)  Prime Minister Tony Blair wishes the BBC were pro-British, much less pro-American.  That's not much exaggerated, I'm afraid, as I suspect Blair would ruefully admit in a moment of candor.  The BBC is pretty much completely independent of government control, and shows it by attacking the government vigorously.  It used to be expected they would treat Conservative governments that way; now they do it to Labour too, more or less coming from the far left.  During the aftermath of the Iraq war the media furor reached such a crescendo in attempting to depose Blair as to resemble an attempted coup by this pseudo-governmental agency.

Why else run it on this particular day: the BBC didn't just discover the story last week!
(...)
Anybody who believes the BBC broadcast this piece exactly 100 years after 1903-12-17 just by accident, please raise your hand!

I don't think that it was an accident, but the date alone would not suffice for declaring the BBC “anti-Wrights.”

I agree with you on that.

For instance, during the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, there were several TV pieces from various sources remembering that America was in fact “discovered” several times by several kinds of explorers (Vikings, Chinese, etc).  But at the time I don't remember anyone saying that the mere mention of that at that specific occasion was casting a shadow on Columbus memory.  (But then, the Internet was not that popular in 1992.  Were the 500th anniversary in 2002, I am sure there would plenty of flame wars with offended Spanish and Italian internauts loudly complaining.  :-)

No doubt.  And you're right — in the case of a Columbus' discovery anniversary, for instance, just running an alternative discovery of America feature at the time wouldn't qualify that as being “anti-Columbus” at all.  (Let's continue the Columbus analogy a little longer, I think it's instructive.)  When one looks at recent Columbus-day anniversaries (not just the 500th, but annual), that's not what's happening.  I haven't tried to accumulate statistics, mind you, though I have tried keeping an eye on Columbus' media coverage during recent years, and what I recollect seeing is media piece after media piece — not showing alternatives who might have gotten to America before, that would be interesting — instead they typically rake Columbus over the coals: he's a slaver, he's a terrible administrator, he's held personally responsible for the large die-off of native Americans (mostly due to disease) following European contact (darling of the left Venezuelan president Chavez made that accusation recently), etc. etc.  It's even gotten to the point where Columbus is called a lousy navigator.

This is very different from what historians were saying only a few decades ago.  Renowned historian Samuel Eliot Morison, for example, wrote a fascinating two-volume history on the European Discovery of America, as well as another book on Columbus himself.  Besides being a respected historian, Morison was a deep-water sailor who followed Columbus' and some of the other New World explorers' routes in his own sailing ship.  Morison points out that Columbus was not only a master mariner but was personally responsible for discovery of more territory (miles of land and coastline explored) than any other explorer, including Magellan, in history.  As Morison wrote: ¹ 

A glance at a map of the Caribbean may remind you of what he accomplished: discovery of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola on the First Voyage; discovery of the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the south coast of Cuba on the Second, as well as founding a permanent European colony; discovery of Trinidad and the Spanish Main, on his Third; and on the Fourth Voyage, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia.  No navigator in history, not even Magellan, discovered so much territory hitherto unknown to Europeans.  None other so effectively translated his north-south experience under the Portuguese flag to the first east-west voyage, across the Atlantic.  None other started so many things from which stem the history of the United States, of Canada, and of a score of American republics.

And do not forget that sailing west to the Orient was his idea, pursued relentlessly for six years before he had the means to try it.  As a popular jingle of the 400th anniversary put it:

What if wise men as far back as Ptolemy
Judged that the earth like an orange was round,
None of them ever said, “Come along, follow me,
Sail to the West and the East will be found.”

Columbus had his faults, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great.  These were an unbreakable faith in God and his own destiny as the bearer of the Word to lands beyond the seas; an indomitable will and stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty, and ridicule.  But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities — seamanship.  As a master mariner and navigator, no one in the generation prior to Magellan could touch Columbus.  Never was a title more justly bestowed than the one which he most jealously guarded — Almirante del Mar Oceano — Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

You see what I'm talking about.  Coverage of Columbus in the last few decades has changed — almost like a bright light being turned off, and a dark light darkly illuminating him and his times turned on.  Is this new paradigm constantly being preached any more likely to be correct, or true, than the old?  Considering what I see as the change originating more or less in intellectual fashion (an anti-exploration fashion) rather than scientific historical results, I have severe doubts about that.

Getting back to the Wright brothers, had the BBC done a show on the pathos of Santos-Dumont as an aviation pioneer who did his work thinking (before the Wrights' flights had become widely known) that he was first to fly, then I could have had no complaint.  Had they shown how Alberto's aircraft compared with the Wrights' and how he solved the same problems as they but in a decidedly different way, that would have been fascinating.  (Correct me if I'm wrong somebody, I don't recall the BBC showing what Santos-Dumont's airplane even looked like; instead they displayed the box Alberto's heart is supposedly locked up in.)  More significantly, rather than showing him figuratively standing alongside, and a little behind, the Wrights' achievement, they explicitly tried to knock the Wright Brothers out of the way by claiming that their achievement was invalid, erroneous, for a couple of different (spurious) reasons — as if the Wrights ought to be disqualified like an athlete who'd cheated or used steroids.  And then the BBC showed nothing of the (convincing) other side of the story.

That's what, in my view, turns the BBC piece into an anti-Wright Brothers slam.  The “coincidence” of the date merely adds reason to believe it's no accident.
 
 

Reference

¹ Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (1492-1616), 1974, Oxford University Press, New York; p. 267.

A discussion on a space science discussion list has arisen concerning Impearls' earlier piece on the BBC and the anniversary of flight (permalink).  The thread, entitled “Beware Consensus Science,” began this way (links converted):

Case in point
and the analysis (permalink)

Thanks to the poster for the link to the BBC article, which I hadn't seen.  What I'd viewed was the BBC broadcast, and since I didn't tape it at the time, nor (since I hadn't initially planned to respond to it) did I think to take notes, reviewing the BBC written piece provides a good sanity check.  It's clear that the indicated article in Impearls was in essense correct (the Brazilians/BBC considered the Wrights' flight to be invalid for two reasons similar to what was described), with a minor difference:  Impearls' piece said they regarded the Wrights' flight as invalid in the second instance because the flight took place under “ideal conditions” (i.e., taking off into a headwind), whereas the BBC article actually said “favourable weather conditions” — not a significant distinction.

Having the BBC article allows its words to be considered in detail.  Here's the gist of their argument:

Others accept that the Wrights probably did fly in 1903.  But they say take-off was only possible because of favourable weather conditions.

“The Americans got off the ground because there were strong headwinds,” says Rodrigo Moura.  “Santos Dumont took off, flew and landed without any outside help.  His was the first truly autonomous flight.”

As mentioned before, it's true the Wrights' first flights in December 1903 took off into a headwind — just as all airplanes try to do today.  It's still flight.  (The Wrights did take off from a stationary start though; compare with the Smithsonian's funded attempt at flight: launching from a powerful catapult!)  Beyond that, however, as previously noted, during 1904 the Wright brothers performed 105 flights, including takeoffs into still air, and in one case flew 5 minutes 4 seconds over a circular course of 2.75 miles (or 4.43 km).  The Wrights performed further experiments in 1905.  During that same time period (up to 1905, according to Encyclopædia Britannica), Alberto Santos-Dumont worked in France on gasoline-powered airships. ¹  When he did migrate to heavier-than-air craft, his first flight (in October 1906) according to the BBC spanned a mere 60 meters, and while Britannica reports the next month he managed 220 meters in 21 seconds, that's still far short of the 2.75 miles in 5 minutes 4 seconds that the Wrights had already accomplished more than two years earlier.  It's no contest.

Here's what a follow-up poster had to say, in reply to the previous poster's “Case in point”:

The second article [i.e., Impearls'] seemed a bit ranty in the sense that I got no feeling whatsoever that the BBC Article was putting the Wright Brother's flight in doubt; actually, my feeling was that the article portrayed the Santos-Dumont cult as a kind of exotic phenomenon of mass delusion.

I quite disagree.  The BBC piece gave no indication of the slightest criticism or condescension towards Santos-Dumont or his modern-day Brazilian enthusiasts.  Rather it's the Wright brothers who are explicitly criticized for deigning to work in secret, as indeed the poster above buys into in his argument below.  This aspect of the development and demonstrated capabilities of the Wrights' aircraft is irrelevant to the question of who flew first?

In fact, the BBC article adds to the negative tone by even saying that Santos-Dumont was “disillusioned” by the Wright Brothers flights — something that I have never heard of and that smells of dramatization.

According to the BBC piece itself, in 1908 Wilbur Wright flew rings around Santos-Dumont, i.e.:  “He proceeded to break many of the Brazilian's aviation records.”  As Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith put it, writing in Britannica: ²

Wilbur made the first public flight of the new machines at a racecourse near Le Mans, France, on Aug. 8, 1908; he continued his exhibition flights at Auvours nearby, to the end of 1908.  In those five months Wilbur made more than 100 flights, was airborne for more than 25 hours, took passengers up on some 60 occasions, and made 7 flights exceeding an hour's duration, ending with a record flight of 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Such stunning achievements, plus the Wrights' clear priority in time, possibly did disconcert Alberto somewhat — but as Britannica notes, not so much as to prevent him from producing, in 1909, “his famous ‘Demoiselle’ or ‘Grasshopper’ monoplanes, the forerunners of the modern light plane.”

One discrepancy in the BBC's account:  Whatever were Santos-Dumont's reasons for going back to Brazil (whence he'd hardly lived his whole life), Encyclopædia Britannica indicates that his return to that country didn't occur until 1928, whereas the BBC report in question says he went back in 1914.  Doesn't look good for the BBC's accuracy in reporting!

Santos-Dumont was an “open source” guy — the blueprints of his inventions were published in technical magazines at the time with no worries about patents and secrecy —

Santos-Dumont was also, as the BBC article notes, “The flamboyant son of a coffee baron”; he was educated and lived in France nearly his whole life — while the Wrights were a pair of self-taught bicycle mechanics.  The kind of selfless, apparently magnanimous gesture “progressives” delight in is oh, so much easier when you're independently wealthy, and not trying to make a living (around the turn of the 20th century yet) along with trying to realize one of mankind's oldest dreams.

and was always described as a very reserved person a bit averse to all the prizes and celebrations in his honor, so there seems to be little reason for personal envy or commercial rivalry with the Wright.  Anyhow, maybe I am wrong about this last critique — I would better first read a serious biography about Santos-Dumont, preferably something written from some “neutral” (non-Brazilian) point of view, like “Wings of Madness”

There's also a fictionalization of Alberto Santos-Dumont's life by Welsh novelist Richard Llewellyn, entitled A Night of Bright Stars (1979).

The rant in the second link proceeds when Mr. McNeils writes “even if it took place” about the flight of the 14-Bis (Santos-Dumont's first plane — the one in the 1906 flight) — as if he were casting doubt about this well-documented, film-registered (link extracted from the article) fact.

It's true I wasn't familiar with Alberto Santos-Dumont, and lacking a reference then yes, there is initial room for doubt.  Now I realize he was an authentic aeronautical pioneer — just not yet, however, even in the heavier-than-air flight field during the years the Wrights were performing their critical experiments.  And that's why the wording the poster objects to above is still appropriate: because if Santos-Dumont's feat follows the Wrights' chronologically in time — as it evidently does; and if the Wrights' accomplishment is authentic — as it indubitably is; then it doesn't matter how real Alberto's results might be, he's not first!  Ultimately it's not even necessary to consider the reality of his flights, which is why I didn't look into that aspect of the matter further at the time.

More to the point, what would BBC gain by supposedly “casting shadows” over the Wright Brothers?  Mr. McNeil should provide a reason, like in any “good” conspiracy theory (“Aliens mutilate cattle because they want beef” or “Elvis simulated his own death because he did not want to be remembered as a fat middle-age guy,” and so on).

Oh ho, so we're “conspiracy theory” mongering here, are we?  Rather, it's the claim the Wrights weren't first and the real pioneer's story has somehow been covered up that's the conspiracy theory — which the BBC (by its own abdication of any journalistic investigation) is implicitly buying into.  As with many extant conspiracy theories, this one's disprovable, at least to the mind of intelligent observers, merely by examination (as demonstrated before), no big investigation required.

As for the BBC's reason for buying into the story, or at least pretending they did, that too isn't difficult in the answering.  The orgy of anti-Americanism the leftist-dominated European and British media, including especially the BBC, have indulged in since the run-up to the Iraq war has been noted by many observers, European as well as American.  It fits perfectly into this syndrome for them to try and stick it to American admirerers of the Wright brothers on the one hundredth anniversary of the Wrights' famous first flight.  Why else run it on this particular day: the BBC didn't just discover the story last week!  Brazilians celebrate Santos-Dumont's birthday on July 20; Alberto's first flight took place sometime in October, and since this is very old news, either of the foregoing would have been appropriate dates, on the merits of the case, to broadcast such a story.  Anybody who believes the BBC broadcast this piece exactly 100 years after 1903-12-17 just by accident, please raise your hand!

Beyond that, the story wonderfully illuminates leftists like the BBC's multicultural, postmodern paradigm:  “Everything's relative, every culture has its own ‘truth’ (don't forget the scare quotes), each of which has its own validity independent of any factual or historical verification.  You silly Americans, you just think your Wright brothers were the first to fly.  Brazilians have their own idea, and their hero has as much right and ‘truth’ behind him as your myth.”  Add to this mix the modern leftist's distain for all technological developments since the stone age (no matter that flight's been a dream of humanity since long before Daedalus and Icarus), plus their hatred of everything military — the Wrights built planes for the United States Army; Santos-Dumont apparently committed suicide over military use of aircraft (though being disheartened during the long run-up to World War II makes a certain sense) — and you arrive at the contemporary leftist myopic fantasy world.  How could the BBC resist?

As I say, broadcasting such a story on the centennial of flight is offensive (as it was intended to be, I believe), but nicely illustrates the BBC's ideological proclivities.

Think I'm reading too much into it?  I don't.
 
 

References

¹ “Airship,” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

² Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith (Research Fellow, Science Museum, London, 1976-81; Keeper, Public Relations and Education Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1947-71; author of The Wright Brothers and others), “Wright, Orville and Wilbur,” Op. cit.
 

UPDATE:  2003-12-24 20:20 UT.  The discussion on a space science discussion list has continued concerning Impearls' earlier articles on the BBC and the anniversary of flight (permalink) and this one.  Here's my reply (perma).

The left continued its “Bah, humbug!” response to the great events of the age when BBC World broadcast an amazingly insulting (to Americans) and bizarre “tribute” to the hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight last night by questioning its authenticity.  They unearthed an old, spurious claim that a Brazilian, not the Wright Brothers, was the first to fly — not in 1903 or sometime before, but 1906!

How can a flight — even if it took place — happening in 1906 possibly beat out a first flight occurring in 1903?  Why, the Wrights' claim is supposedly spurious, because:  1) The Wrights did much of their work in secret.  (To which an appropriate response might be, what in the blazes does that have to do with the Wrights having actually accomplished the mission?  It just shows the brothers were serious about protecting patentability of their invention.  Besides, their flights were thoroughly witnessed.)  And 2), the Brazilians also claim that, supposedly, the Wrights' first flight in 1903 took place under “ideal conditions,” by which I presume they mean that the Wrights' flight initially took off into a headwind (just as all airplanes do today, if they can).  The BBC reporter and their interviewees went on and on about how the flight in 1903 was invalid because of these conditions.

It's astonishing (or perhaps not, considering that this is the BBC) that no one interjected at any point, “What about the years 1904 and 1905?”  Even if the Brazilians' (and the BBC's, by defection of journalistic responsibility) second critique of the Wrights' 1903 flight were admitted to have validity, during 1904 the brothers accomplished much more, as Professor James E. Vance, Jr., describes, writing in Encyclopædia Britannica: ¹

Wilbur and Orville Wright in the course of their experiments came increasingly to consider Cayley's diagram of how a wing works, particularly the role played by the speed of the wind passing over the top of the wing.  This led them to seek a site with a strong and persistent ambient wind (the Vogels Mountain where the 1781 ornithopter may have flown has just such a high ambient wind, as do the hills near Elmira, N.Y., and Fremont, Calif., classic gliding courses).  From the U.S. Weather Bureau the Wrights secured a list of windy sites in the United States, from which they chose the Outer Banks of North Carolina, specifically Kitty Hawk.  On Kill Devil Hill on Dec. 17, 1903, Orville Wright became the first man ever to fly in an aeroplane (as they were at first known), initially using as a frame a biplane of 40-foot 4-inch wingspan and equipped with the 12-horsepower engine (see Figure 18).  He lifted off the ground in a 20-27-mile/h wind and flew a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds.  Having a strong wind certainly aided in that accomplishment, but the brothers soon demonstrated that such a wind was not absolutely essential.

After further experiments at Kitty Hawk they returned to Dayton to build a second plane, Flyer No. 2.  Neither the balloons and dirigibles nor the earlier ornithopter and glider experiments had produced flight: what they had done was to harness the dynamics of the atmosphere to lift a craft off the ground, using what power (if any) they supplied primarily to steer.  The Wrights initially used atmospheric dynamics to help in lifting the plane, but they subsequently demonstrated that they were able to lift a plane off the ground in still air.

In the long run their most significant invention was a way to steer the plane.  After carefully watching a great number of birds, they became convinced that birds directed their flight by internally warping their wings, distorting them in one fashion or another.  To do this in their plane, the Wrights constructed a ridged but distorted wing that might, through the use of wires fixed to the edge of the wing, be flexed to pass through the air in changing directions.  This distortable wing was relatively misunderstood by other early plane experimenters.

During the summer of 1904 the Wrights made 105 takeoffs and managed to fly on a circular course up to 2.75 miles for a sustained flight that lasted 5 minutes 4 seconds.  Because they took a proprietary view of their invention, publicity about their work was minimal.  After further trials in 1905 they stopped their experiments, using the time to obtain patents on their contribution.  Only in 1908 did they break their secrecy when Wilbur Wright went to France to promote their latest plane.

That should dispose of any illusions that powered flight wasn't invented until 1906!

A remarkable characteristic of the Wright Brothers' fabulous achievement is the quality science they performed in making their dream a reality.  In approaching the critical problem of designing an efficient propeller, for example, they discerned that a cross-sectional slice of the propeller is actually equivalent to a piece of wing.  They developed and built a new, much lighter engine to power the craft — weight also being of vital concern.  The Wrights realized that control of the plane in flight was essential, both for success and pilot survivability, and came up with means (described above) to maneuver the craft along all three axial dimensions.  Attempts by others toward attaining powered flight during this same time frame were notably deficient in any number of these areas — and as a result they failed.

For the BBC to step into this centennial occasion — celebration of realization of one of mankind's oldest dreams — broadcasting their usual supercilious sneer is quite offensive.  But good going BBC in confirming my previous estimations of them!
 
 

Reference

¹ James E. Vance, Jr. (Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley), “Transportation: … Aviation: … The Wright brothers,” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
 

UPDATE:  2003-12-18 16:00 UT.  Rand Simberg posted a link to this piece in his Transterrestrial Musings.  Thanks Rand, and to Mike Daley who passed this along to him.  I certainly agree with Simberg in one of his postings earlier that a major factor in the Wrights' success is their having taken an incremental approach to testing and solving problems piecemeal, rather than jumping straight towards a total perceived “solution.”

UPDATE:  2003-12-21 23:00 UT.  A discussion on a space science discussion list has arisen concerning this article.  I've posted a follow-up piece in Impearls here (permalink) with my reply.

Geitner Simmons, writing in his blog Regions of Mind, has followed-up on Donald Sensing's and my earlier Crusader articles (after linking to them) with a piece called “The first crusader.”  Geitner points out that the crusades could properly be said to commence early in the 7th century, with the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius and the Persian invasion of the empire — and thus began neither with the Spanish Reconquista nor the Western numbered Crusades starting in the late 11th cent.  This is quite a reasonable point of view historically, and the story Simmons refers to is indeed terrific: total victory over the Persians (and Avars) by Emperor Heraclius after the former had initially conquered almost all the Roman Empire's Asian and African territories, at the same time that the barbarian nomadic Avars occupied and threatened most of Byzantium's remaining European possessions.

The book review that Geitner quotes from, however, is unfortunately quite unsatisfactory (no fault of Simmons, he pointed to what he had) in communicating the enormous scale of Heraclius' astonishing achievement, which without hyperbole can be said to rival the exploits of Alexander.  Here's what historians Donald MacGillivray Nicol and John L. Teall, writing in Encyclopædia Britannica (we'll give folks a break from The Cambridge Medieval History), had to say in this regard: ¹

When Heraclius “went out into the lands of the themes” in 622, thereby undertaking a struggle of seven years' duration against the Persians, he utilized the third of his sources of strength: religion.  The warfare that ensued was nothing less than a holy war: it was partly financed by the treasure placed by the church at the disposal of the state; the Emperor's soldiers called upon God to aid them as they charged into battle; and they took comfort in the miraculous image of Christ that preceded them in their line of march.  A brief summary of the campaign unfortunately gives no idea of the difficulties Heraclius encountered as he liberated Asia Minor (622); fought in Armenia with allies found among the Christian Caucasian peoples, the Lazi, the Abasgi, and the Iberians (624); and struggled in far-distant Lazica while Constantinople withstood a combined siege of Avars and Persians (626).  An alliance with the Khazars, a Turkic people from north of the Caucasus, proved of material assistance in those years and of lasting import in Byzantine diplomacy.  Heraclius finally destroyed the main Persian host at Nineveh in 627 and, after occupying Dastagird in 628, savoured the full flavour of triumph when his enemy, Khosrow, was deposed and murdered.  The Byzantine emperor might well have believed that, if the earlier success of the Persians signalized the resurrection of the Achaemenid Empire, his own successes had realized the dreams of Caesar, Augustus, and Trajan.

Yet this was a war fought by medieval Byzantium and not by ancient Rome.  Its spirit was manifest in 630, when Heraclius triumphantly restored the True Cross to Jerusalem, whence the Persians had stolen it, and — even more — when Constantinople resisted the Avar-Persian assault of 626.  During the attack, the patriarch Sergius maintained the morale of the valiant garrison by proceeding about the walls, bearing the image of Christ to ward off fire, and by painting upon the gates of the western walls images of the Virgin and child to ward off attacks launched by the Avars — the “breed of darkness.”  The Avars withdrew when Byzantine ships defeated the canoes manned by Slavs, upon whom the nomad Avars depended for their naval strength.  The latter never recovered from their defeat.  As their empire crumbled, new peoples from the Black Sea to the Balkans emerged to seize power: the Bulgars of Kuvrat, the Slavs under Samo, and the Serbs and Croats whom Heraclius permitted to settle in the northwest Balkans once they had accepted Christianity.

As for the Byzantine defenders of Constantinople, they celebrated their victory by singing Romanos' great hymn “Akathistos,” with choir and crowd alternating in the chant of the “Alleluia.”  The hymn, still sung in a Lenten service, commemorates those days when Constantinople survived as a fortress under ecclesiastical leadership, its defenders protected by the icons and united by their liturgy.  This they sang in Greek, as befitted a people whose culture was now Greek and no longer Latin.

Heraclius accomplished all this not only by superb generalship, but with also a great dash of personal valor.  As historian Enno Franzius writes in his biography of Heraclius in Britannica: ²

In 622, clad as a penitent and bearing a sacred image of the Virgin, he left Constantinople, as prayers rose from its many sanctuaries for victory over the Persian Zoroastrians, the recovery of the Cross, and the reconquest of Jerusalem.  He was, in effect, leading the first crusade.  Indeed, in the ensuing hostilities, a pious poet contrasted the dancing girls in the Persian general's tent with the psalm singers in the Emperor's.  In a brilliant campaign, he manoeuvred the Persians out of Anatolia and suggested a truce to the Persian monarch.  This offer Khosrow II contemptuously rejected, referring to himself as beloved by the gods and master of the world, to Heraclius as his abject and imbecilic slave, and to Christ as incapable of saving the empire.  Mindful of the propagandistic value of Khosrow's response, Heraclius made it public.

The next two years he devoted to campaigns in Armenia, the manpower of which was vital to the empire, and to a devastating invasion of Persia.  In 625 Heraclius retired to Anatolia.  He had encamped on the west bank of the Sarus River when the Persian forces appeared on the opposite bank.  Many of his men rushed impetuously across the bridge and were ambushed and annihilated by the enemy.

Emerging from his tent, Heraclius saw the triumphant Persians crossing the bridge.  The fate of the empire hung in the balance.  Seizing his sword, he ran to the bridge and struck down the Persian leader.  His soldiers closed rank behind him and beat back the foe.

In 626 the Persians advanced to the Bosporus, hoping to join the Avars in an assault on the land walls of Constantinople.  But the Romans sank the primitive Avar fleet that was to transport Persian units across the Bosporus and repelled the unsupported Avar assault.  Heraclius again invaded Persia and in December 627, after a march across the Armenian highlands into the Tigris plain, met the Persians near the ruins of Nineveh.  There, astride his renowned war-horse, he killed three Persian generals in single combat, charged into enemy ranks at the head of his troops, killed the Persian commander, and scattered the Persian host.

A month later, Heraclius entered Dastagird with its stupendous treasure.  Khosrow was overthrown by his son, with whom Heraclius made peace, demanding only the return of the Cross, the captives, and conquered Roman territory.  Returning to Constantinople in triumph, he was hailed as a Moses, an Alexander, a Scipio.  In 630 he personally restored the Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Heraclius fought his “crusade” very differently from the sort of general mayhem and massacre which later western European-organized crusades acquired a reputation (not entirely warranted) for.  As Franzius wrote:

[E]ven though he fostered the crusading spirit, [Heraclius] waged war in a less inhumane manner than most of his contemporaries.  He did not enslave or massacre the inhabitants of conquered towns and he treated his prisoners of war well, releasing them rather than butchering them when he could not feed them.  His mercy contrasted sharply with Khosrow's acerbity and probably hastened his victory in Persia.

Heraclius' more humane treatment of helpless prisoners and captured cities may reflect yet more of the supreme qualitative chasm in education and culture separating the medieval East Romans from the western European states and their knights (as Impearls' earlier piece Crusades II attests).  In this regard, it's worth looking at application of the death penalty in medieval Byzantium, which is quite at variance from ordinary perceptions of the brutality of the Middle Ages.  J. B. Bury writes: ³

From Augustus to Justinian penalties were ever becoming severer and new crimes being invented.  After Justinian the movement was in the direction of mildness.  In the eighth century only two or three crimes were punishable by death.  One of these was murder and in this case the extreme penalty might be avoided if the murderer sought refuge in a church.  On the other hand penalties of multilation were extended and systematised.  This kind of punishment had been inflicted in much earlier times and authorised in one or two cases by Justinian.  In the eighth century we find amputations of the tongue, hand, and nose part of the criminal system, and particularly applied in dealing with sexual offences.  If such punishments strike us to-day as barbaric (though in England, for instance, mutilation was inflicted little more than two centuries ago), they were then considered as a humane substitute for death, and the Church approved them because a tongue-less or nose-less sinner had time to repent.  In the same way, it was a common practice to blind, instead of killing, rebels or unsuccessful candidates for the throne.  The tendency to avoid capital punishment is illustrated by the credible record that during the reign of John Comnenus there were no executions.

Revisit that last bit again: in a cosmopolitan, sophisticated state whose capital city incorporated hundreds of thousands of residents — empire as a whole, millions — over a reign (Emperor John II Comnenus) of 25 years, there were no executions.  However one feels about applicability of capital punishment in the present day, such a record cannot but convey a certain culturally-based merciful attitude by medieval Byzantium towards offenders that ought to give us pause today.  Are we really so sure, for example, that locking up criminals for years or decades of time — or executing them — is more humane than just cutting off a nose?  If deterring crime is the goal, loss of a nose (with more to follow if one persists in one's crimes) might be a greater deterrent for many a potential criminal (as well as pragmatically solving the problem of “community notification”) than vague prospects of prison.  While not seriously entertaining such punishments for the present day, I do emphasize that our own conventions of what's humane and what's not aren't unchallengeable.  In my view, East Rome has a decent claim to having been, in reality, basically a moral as well as cultured civilization, and very far indeed from what some might propose as the necessary character of such a Christian theocracy: a kind of Christian Taliban — that's manifestly not medieval Byzantium.

One other thing: we've focused here (as does Geitner) on the crusade of Heraclius in the early 7th century, and what that tells us about the medieval Byzantine world — however, there's plenty else in the history of the East Roman state warranting the appellation of “crusade.”  After the Muslim irruption from Arabia, commencing near the end of Heraclius' life, for many decades the Byzantines were forced into a struggle merely to survive; a large part of their territory was stripped from them, and central Anatolia became the residual core of the empire.  Throughout the 10th and much of the 11th centuries, however, East Rome rebounded to the extent of undertaking quite a Reconquista of her own, recovering from Muslim rule the pirate-nest islands of Crete and Cyprus, most of eastern and southeastern Anatolia, the important city of Antioch in Syria, even threatening Jerusalem — all this, though, is a tale for another day.  It was only after the empire's defeat and even more disastrous aftermath of the epochal battle of Manzikert in 1071 (caused, as Bury notes, by the execrable judgment of the emperor in command) that the Byzantines were driven to the desperate and dangerous expedient of appealing to the West for aid.  The rest, as they say, is history.

¹ Donald MacGillivray Nicol (Koraës Professor Emeritus of Byzantine and Modern Greek History, Language, and Literature, King's College, University of London) and John L. Teall (Professor of History, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts), “The History of the Byzantine Empire: The Heraclians and the Challenge of Islam,” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

² Enno Franzius (author of History of the Byzantine Empire), “Heraclius,” Op. cit.

³ J. B. Bury (M.A., F.B.A.), “Introduction” to Volume IV: The Eastern Roman Empire, edited by J. R. Tanner, C. W. Previté-Orton, and Z. N. Brooke, The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury, Cambridge at the University Press, London, 1923; p. xiii.

UPDATE:  2005-07-29 10:00 UT:  An article The Arab Admiralty – and an Arab naval view of the Crusades by Ibn Khaldûn has been posted.  See also the associated piece Ibn Khaldûn – Master Historian of the Arabs.

UPDATE:  2003-12-14 12:30 UT:  Geitner Simmons responded to Impearls' article above with a link and some very kind words:  “What worthwhile examinations of history Michael McNeil provides at Impearls.  […]  Now a new post at Impearls delves deep into the story of Heraclius' “First Crusade,” yielding many great historical nuggets.  […]  The post shows the fine work that the history-blog universe, at its best, is capable of.”

Eric Scheie also commented in an e-mail:  “That is a wonderfully written, thoughtful, well-researched piece.”

UPDATE:  2003-12-15 19:20 UT:  Eric Scheie linked to this article from his blog Classical Values, calling it “a real gem!” and some other praise that I blush to repeat except say that I'm not “a genuine scholar of the Byzantine period” — or of much else actually — just a guy who's read some books, and remembered oh-too-tiny a bit of what I've read.  (Keeping a big, fat tome or two in the bathroom does wonders, I find: a page or couple at a sitting out of a history book eventually covers a lot of temporal-spatial territory!)  I do appreciate the compliments, though, and they make nice decoration for these updates!  (In response to Eric's question, I do have something to post on that, but I'm not quite ready to do so — have to look up some stuff then think about it — and in the meantime the link his reader dropped off seems to provide more than a good start, much of that material I'll also have to absorb, so let's keep the topic in mind as an article idea for the future.)

Labels: crusades, East Roman Empire, medieval history

A quote from Encyclopædia Britannica tells it all: ¹

The climate of the entire Pacific Coast is milder and more uniform in temperature than that of the states in corresponding latitudes east of the mountains.  A mean annual temperature as low as that of Halifax, N.S. (latitude 44° 39′ N), is not found at any Pacific Coast point south of Sitka, Alaska (latitude 57° N), while the mean at San Diego is 6° to 7° F (3.3° to 3.9° C) less than that at Vicksburg, Miss., and Charleston, S.C., in roughly the same latitude.  The means of winter and summer are very near the yearly mean.  This condition is not so marked inward from the coast; yet everywhere, save in the high mountains, the winters are comparatively mild.

Halifax, Nova Scotia's latitude of 44° 39′ N crosses the eastern U.S. some miles south of Bangor, Maine, and on the west coast passes just north of Albany, Oregon — about 20 miles south of Salem, and way way south (more than 850 miles or 1,370 km in latitudinal north-south distance) from Sitka.
 

¹ “The United States of America: The Pacific Coast,” Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica CD 1997, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Jeff Jarvis, writing in Buzz Machine, has a piece “A non story, overplayed, eh?” concerning news from the New York Times that Canada and the U.S. are different.  As Jeff says:

Robertson Davies, the essential Canadian author, always said that Canada had less in common with American than with Scandinavia and I agreed with him.  The story is thus way overplayed.  But what's most disturbing is that it continues this media meme: Europe v. America, Europe as a touchpoint for social sensibility:  “A more distinctive Canadian identity — one far more in line with European sensibilities — is emerging and generating new frictions with the United States.”  Europe is being presented, even in the pinnacle of American media, as the new norm.

American leftists' concept of Sweden and some other European nations as epitomes of socialist perfection has always mystified and astounded me.  A perfect comeback to this conceit (bringing Canada into the relative mix as well as Sweden) was offered, not by a conservative, or a “capitalist,” but by one of the most respected of American socialists, Michael Harrington, via an interview broadcast shortly after his death, in 1989, on the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour.  Here's what Harrington had to say (I'll include his whole interview for context; it's not very long): ¹

Robert MacNeil:  Finally, tonight, we remember political activist Michael Harrington, who died yesterday; he was 61 years old.  Harrington began his career as a leftist political organizer, author, lecturer, and teacher in the early 50s.  He became co-chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America in 1983.  Among his books was The Other America: Poverty in the United States, published in 1962; it was widely viewed as helping set the scene for the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty.  I spoke with Harrington a year ago, when he was already suffering from the cancer that led to his death.  I asked why he thought socialism had never caught on in the United States.

Michael Harrington:  I think that's very complicated, but to just tick off a number of the reasons:

Number one, we're a presidential country, not a parliamentary country.  In Canada, so much like us, there's a socialist party which in the polls right now is at about 28-29 percent, which has been 20 percent or better for years.  In part that's because in Canada you can vote for your socialist candidate for Parliament, and he or she can then affect the Executive in the Parliament.

Number two:  Because the United States in the period when most European workers were becoming socialist, which was the period roughly from 1880 to 1914, in the United States that was the period in which it was more important that you were Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, white or black, Italian, Irish, etc.  That is to say, our race, our ethnicity, all of those complexities made it difficult to develop a class consciousness when people were much more ethnically and religiously and racially conscious.

Finally, the most complex of all, in my opinion.  There's a sense in which I think America is the most socialist country on the face of the earth right now — which is one of the reasons we don't have a socialist movement.  By that I mean that the United States I think has always been one of the most egalitarian, open, non-deferential societies.  We've never had any real Tories — any real conservatives — in America.  One of the reasons that Canada has a socialist movement is that our Tories went to Canada after the Revolution, and sat around and told the workers that they were human refuse: that they were no good!  And one of the things that generates socialist consciousness is having a bunch of upper-class snobs trying to push people down — we've never had it.  And, I think, in a crazy way — socially — I've always thought that America is really much more socialist than Sweden!

MacNeil:  You have been an influential commentator on the state of America from the time your first book The Other America, dealing with American poverty, was published.  These thirty years later, how do you see the condition of America now?

Harrington:  Oh, I think it's better.  That is to say, I find that the 80s under Reagan were nowhere near as bad as the 50s with Joe McCarthy and the 50s under Eisenhower.  The students have not been totally cowed.  We have not forgotten the poor.  I think the media have done a good job; I think the media have really… everybody knows about homelessness!  You don't need a book about the “invisible poor,” I mean you can't miss the homeless any more.

So, I think that the consciousness of America is in fairly good shape, and the conscience of America is in fairly good shape, that's why I'm optimistic.  I think we have gone through an interregnum, with a President who was enormously popular as an individual, but not as a thinker — if you can call Reagan a thinker in any way, shape, or form.  And I think that now there's a sense that let's get on with it, let's begin to deal with these problems.  We just can't have these people lying out on the streets.  And that means we have to deal with the problem of housing; that means we have to deal with the problem of the working poor.  Many, many of the homeless are working poor people, they're not welfare poor people.

So, I … I happen to be an almost sentimental patriot.  I love this country very, very much.  I think this country has got a very decent heart.  Sometimes its head upsets me, but not its heart.  And I think we're about to enter a period where its head might get halfway as good as its heart.

So, American leftists and socialists, when one of America's best respected socialists declares that from his point of view, “I think America is the most socialist country on the face of the earth right now […]; in a crazy way — socially — I've always thought that America is really much more socialist than Sweden!”, what then does this imply for those European (and Canadian) socialist wonderlands?  As for Canada latching more strongly onto those European models, from Michael Harrington's viewpoint this merely means Canada is getting back to its inegalitarian roots.
 

¹ Robert MacNeil interview with Michael Harrington, PBS MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, broadcast 1989-08-02.
 

UPDATE:  2003-12-11 20:30 UT:  Mark Steyn had a reader inquire of him concerning the very same New York Times article that Michael Harrington's words were turned into responding to above.  It's interesting, I think, how Steyn's reply extends and amplifies Harrington's, even though Michael's an American socialist, speaking a decade and a half ago, whereas Mark is a modern-day Canadian conservative. 

Steyn doesn't provide permanent archival links to his articles (tsk tsk), so for context I'll include the full text of his piece, which is called “The Great Divide” (love that title!).

Mark's reader asked him:  “I know what all the manifest differences are [between Canada and the Europeans versus the United States] (the nanny state, PC, foreign policy, etc) but what is really at the heart of this fundamental (and historic) split in the Western world?  I realize that the same split also divides the USA itself in many ways.  If you had to sum it up in a paragraph, what would it be?”

In reply, Steyn wrote:

If you look at it objectively, the two countries are bound to have diverged somewhat and to diverge further.  This continent was originally settled by men and women of similar stock some of whom had a falling out with the Crown, some of whom stayed loyal.  But that aside, the two halves of North America had much in common.  What's happened in the last 40 years is that the Liberal Party reinvented the old Britannic Dominion of Canada as an explicitly un-American project: mere political policies — socialized health care, gun control, peacekeeping — were elevated to indispensable components of Canadian identity, as if they date back to the 18th century rather than the 1960s.

Furthermore, since Quebec separatism established itself as a permanent component in Canadian politics, what old-time Brit military types still call “the senior Dominion” has ceased to be an effective part of the Anglosphere.  Britain and Australia fought alongside the US in Iraq, but Canada, being semi-French, is a semi-detached member of the Anglosphere.  The disproportionate influence of Quebec in Canadian life means that its particular characteristics — post-Christian secularism, pacifism, anti-Americanism — are amplified nationally.  Take Quebec out of the equation, and anglophone Canadians were comparatively supportive of American policy in Iraq.

But even that's changing.  Canadian immigration policy is designed to shore up the Liberals' re-invention of Canada: the principal sources of US immigration (Latin America) and Canadian immigration (the Islamic world, Eastern Europe) widen the differences still further.  During the last three decades, as Americans have become more conservative, Canadians have moved closer to a European Union social democracy that somehow wound up on the wrong continent.

The Cause of the Crusades (to be specific, the cause of the First Crusade) was explored in an earlier article, as was the civilizational relationship between the East Roman Empire and the states of the medieval West.  Once the Crusades were launched, they continued intermittently in progress for centuries.  It turns out that the original cause of the (First) Crusade differs from the reasons why they continued on for so long, and why they came to an end is for a different reason yet.  What were those causes?

Since we've been using The Cambridge Medieval History as a major reference to the Middle Ages, it's worth noting that one can take an overall view of the whole of the medieval period by simply reviewing the titles of the (originally) eight volumes in the set, which summarize in a nutshell the (its) story of the Middle Ages in the West, to wit:

I.  The Christian Roman Empire and the Foundation of the Teutonic Kingdoms
II.  The Rise of the Saracens and the Foundation of the Western [Holy Roman] Empire
III.  Germany and the Western Empire
IV.  The Eastern Roman Empire
V.  Contest of [Western] Empire and Papacy
VI.  Victory of the Papacy
VII.  Decline of Empire and Papacy
VIII.  The Close of the Middle Ages

Notice that the overall story of the later medieval period, revealed by the names of the volumes of The Cambridge Medieval History, is a long-drawn-out contest between the Papacy and the Western (or Holy Roman) Empire, in which the Papacy was for a time victorious, but after which both Papacy and Empire declined.

Recall the questions of why, once launched, the Crusades became a movement which continued for centuries, and why they ultimately came to an end.  While for the Eastern Empire, as previously noted, the Crusades were “simply a series of barbarian invasions of a particularly embarrassing kind,” for the West the Crusades served as a key instrument in the great play during the Middle Ages by the Papacy for ultimate power.  The Crusades thus continued so long as they proved to be a source of increased power and influence for the Papacy; they came to an end when the “sacred office” became so corrupted in view of the public by secularizing influences resulting from its acquired Imperial role that that power base evaporated.

Here's how historian E. J. Passant, writing in The Cambridge Medieval History, described the matter: ¹

The Crusades were initiated by the Papacy, and from the moment of Urban II's appeal to the Council of Clermont down to the fall of Acre — and indeed for long after — they remained one of the first preoccupations of every Pope.  Describing the policy of the Curia of so late a date as the middle of the fourteenth century, Viollet remarks that “Rome ne cessait guère, dans l'intérêt général de la chrétienté, d'entretenir de grands mais stériles projets de Croisade; c'est pour elle un impérissable honneur.”  And what was true of the French Papacy of Avignon was far more true of the Popes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the height of their power.  It were strange if this continuous direction for two hundred years of the armed forces of Europe in the campaign against the infidel should have left no mark upon the Papacy itself.  When Nicholas II, in 1059, issued the decree regulating the election of future Popes, the great effort of the Church to emancipate itself from the secularisation involved in its acceptance of a feudal constitution began.  The long struggle with the Empire, which opens between Hildebrand and Henry IV, and which continued relentlessly throughout the period of the Crusades, was an attempt — successful in the main — to organise the Church as a “societas perfecta,” to use a phrase of later controversy, independent of the secular power within its own sphere, and only dependent upon that power in so far as it needed the sword of material force to carry out the sentences of spiritual judgment.  In all other respects the Divine Society was to be as superior to the secular as its very nature demanded.  The attempt to attain this ideal, with all its tremendous implications, involved the Popes not only in continual warfare with successive Emperors but also in decisive conflict with the Kings of England and France, and, in an increasing degree, it involved the secularisation of the Papacy itself.  To be successful its occupants must be statesmen first and men of God second; to carry on war they must raise men and money, and resort to shifts of all kinds to do so; to seize every advantage, to shape policy to fit every change of circumstance, they must be prepared to use diplomatic dissimulation and, if necessary, to lie with hardihood.  That this process of degradation, from the lofty heights of spiritual control to the lowest levels of political expediency, set in, is not difficult of proof; it suffices to compare Gregory VII with Innocent IV, or the enthusiastic response with which the call to the First Crusade was met, with the indifference and even hostility which greeted such appeals in the later thirteenth century.  The wheel had gone full circle, and the attempt to free the members of the Church from secular control ended in a more subtle secularisation of its very heart — the Papacy itself.

In that process the Crusades played an important part.  They were one of the main sources of papal strength throughout the twelfth century, for they provided the Popes with the moral support of Europe, and placed the Papacy in a position of acknowledged leadership which was one of the greatest value in the struggle with the secular powers.  The literal mind of the Middle Ages found it more easy to understand the task of succouring the earthly Jerusalem by the force of arms than that of gaining the heavenly Jerusalem by the practice of the Christian virtues, and in this case the natural man could at once find an outlet for his martial energies and also, by virtue of the indulgence attached to the Crusade, make certain of attaining the heavenly reward.  Every motive of self-sacrifice or self-interest, every desire for glory or for gain, was appealed to by the call to the Crusade.  The noble could hope to carve out a principality in the East; the merchant to make gain by transporting the crusading armies and supplying their necessities; the peasant to escape from the crushing burdens of his servile status.  But foremost in the minds of all, at least in the early days, was the unselfish desire to regain for Christ the city made sacred by His life and death, and, inspired by this common aim, men of every class and country of Europe flocked to take the Cross at the instigation of the one authority acknowledged by them all — Christ's earthly Vicar.  Here for the first time Christian Europe gave expression to a common mind and will, and it is of the highest significance that this mind and will had been formed and educated by the Church and was now placed at the service of the Church's head.

There can be little doubt that this moral enthusiasm of Europe proved in the twelfth century an almost incalculable assistance to the Papacy in its struggle with the Empire.  To this force of a united Christendom behind them the successors of that Gregory VII who died in exile owed much of the great advance which they were able to make in the century after his death.  For the Crusades were a living parable of the doctrine of the superiority of the spiritual sword.  They were organised by the Popes and directed by their legates, and, what was more, all those who took the Cross became by that act the subjects of the Papacy in a new and special sense.  Their goods during their absence, themselves before they departed and until they returned with their vows fulfilled, were removed from secular and placed under ecclesiastical jurisdiction.  The Kings of France or England, of Hungary or Naples, the very Emperors themselves were, as crusaders, at the orders of the Pope, and the value of the moral compulsion of public opinion upon which the Popes could rely in forcing reluctant monarchs to take the Cross is clearly evidenced by the example of Henry II in his extreme old age, or of Philip Augustus, or of Frederick II.  It is difficult indeed, except by this explanation, to account for the amazing difference between the position of the Papacy at the accession of Urban II, staggering under the defeat of Gregory VII and the schism which followed, faced too with a Church as yet but half-hearted in support of the reforming policy, and the position of almost undisputed supremacy occupied by Innocent III.  After making all allowances for the ability of Alexander III and the persistence with which the “Hildebrandine” policy was pursued, after taking into account all the circumstances which were favourable to Innocent III's own assertion of his claims — the folly of John, the death of Henry VI, and the youth of Frederick II — there remains the fact that in an age when emotional religion was becoming steadily more powerful, the Pope, as leader of the conflict with the infidel, was enabled to command to an unprecedented degree the devotion of the faithful.

Yet, in the thirteenth century, much of this prestige and much of this popular devotion were lost.  It was not merely that the Holy Land little by little fell into the hands of the Saracen and that the respect given to success was withdrawn when failure followed.  The Papacy might have retained undiminished reverence had it failed, as St Louis failed, with clean hands and for no lack of high courage.  But the very success which had attended the crusading appeal proved too strong a temptation to the Popes, and the appeal to take the Cross not only ceased to attract but definitely alienated the faithful when it was used as a weapon in the struggle against the Hohenstaufen.  The list of so-called crusades in the thirteenth century, not directed against the Saracen, makes sad reading.  No good Christian, indeed, was likely to be shocked by an appeal to take the Cross against the infidels of Provence, though a full Holy Land indulgence for forty days' service might seem almost too easily won when “the greater part of the faithful returned home after the forty days were over”; but since the expedition of Prince Louis against the English king was announced as a crusade, since the papal feud with the Hohenstaufen, so obviously maintained to safeguard the Papal States from danger, was provided with religious sanctions, it is not improbable that Matthew Paris represents a genuine popular reaction, and not merely his own opinion, when he writes of the “crusade” of 1255:  “When the faithful heard this, they marvelled that he should promise them reward for shedding the blood of Christian men that was in former time promised for the shedding of infidel blood.”

But, apart from the direct effect upon public opinion of this misuse of the Crusade for party ends, there emerged from the crusading movement two financial weapons of lasting importance to the papal armoury — the indulgence and the tithe.  […]

¹ E. J. Passant (M.A., Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), Chapter IX: “The Effects of the Crusades upon Western Europe,” Volume V: Contest of Empire and Papacy, edited by J. R. Tanner, C. W. Previté-Orton, and Z. N. Brooke, The Cambridge Medieval History, planned by J. B. Bury, Cambridge at the University Press, London, 1926; pp. 320-323.

UPDATE:  2003-12-13 12:00 UT:  A supplemental article Crusades IV – the Byzantine Crusades, concerning crusades undertaken by the Eastern Empire itself, has been posted.

Labels: crusades, Holy Roman Empire, medieval history, Papacy