The History Book

Time on the Battlefield

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: Military History
• Date: 2018/01/08

Recently I have been reading a book on the battle of Gettysburg by Craig l. Symonds. In it he made a very interesting point about time which set me thinking about how we see time and how it was seen by the protagonists of the many battlefield accounts we historians and wargamers read. Today we are use to highly accurate time pieces whether its your phone, a cheap digital watch, or an expensive mechanical marvel. We expect them to tell an accurate and a common time. That however was not always the case.

How Guilty were the Austro-Hungarian regime for the outbreak of the First World War?

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: Military History
• Date: 2015/05/22

Guilt is a difficult word to define, we tend to ascribe more guilt depending on the consequences of an action, rather than focus on the actual actions of the participates. The point of this article is to argue that Austro-Hungarian declaration and subsequent invasion of Serbia did not inevitably lead to the First World War, and their actions were constant with similar events which did and do not attract the burden of guilt that the events of July 1914 attract. The article will focus on the actions and intentions of the various participates and whether those actions could be considered reasonable at the time, rather than consider the catastrophic results of those actions.

My Personal views on Academic History and Research

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: General Views
• Date: 2015/05/22

After a career in the IT industry, I took redundancy/early retirement and started a full-time degree in my lifetime interest of Military History. I was surprised at the low level of understanding of how Information Technology can aid the understanding and exploration of the subject. The whole of the academic world seems stuck using 19^th century information technology in a 21^st century world. New ways to present and understand history through the use of modern technology is viewed with deep suspicion. The forefront of technology is considered the word-processor which is after all really just an upgrade of the 19^th century typewriter.

The use of the Web for research is coincided very much a no-no. This is worrying as the Web was invented to aid the publishing of academic research papers. The first web servers where at CERN near Geneva. The World Wide Web has developed and blossomed since then, however within the world of the professional historian the democratization of information, such as wikipedia and its susceptibility to inaccurate postings, has branded the internet in particular and information technology in general as unreliable. The reason this site exists is to explore how IT can support an exploration of History with an academically acceptable level of rigour.

I attended to a Conference on the Battle of the Atlantic. It was held in Liverpool to coincide with the 70th anniversary celebrations. Hosted by my old professor Eric Grove it lasted two days with some 28 speakers most professional academic historians. One theme that arose several times was the persistence of various myths that are held by the public which are simply wrong or at best gross exaggerations, and this got me thinking about this blog.

The Moon as ’The Truth’

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: General Views
• Date: 2015/05/22

I had the central idea for this article and wrote the core of it some years ago and have been developing the idea ever since. I find the idea useful when reading or listening to someone I disagree with, essentially it uses the physical moon as an analogy for the ’Truth’ and how different viewpoints while not necessarily changing my own position on an issue can provide a richer understanding of it.

All this may sound a bit meta-physical but my recent sojourn into academia has highlighted the variety of viewpoints on any subject. At University I took a module on Contemporary Security Studies. In Contemporary Security Studies, ’Truth’ is a even more ephemeral subject than in post-modernist history. Take for example, Terrorism versus Freedom-fighters, Weapons of Mass Destruction versus legitimate defences, one can see how the same issue can have different ’truths’ for different people. After some initial subject reading, this article is essentially written as a rant and to formalise my own thoughts.

The Myth about The Rifle Musket

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: Military History
• Date: 2015/05/21

The progress of firearms during the 19^th Century has been long understood and accepted. The short ranged, inaccurate, smooth bored musket gave way, first to the rifle musket then the breech-loader, before reaching the pinnacle of the magazine bolt actioned rifles, such as the Short Magazine Lee Enfield. This continuous development of range and accuracy forced the parallel development of field fortifications resulting in the ’hell on earth’ of the trench warfare in 1914-18. A seminal example of this development was the American Civil War, troops fighting with rifled weapons capable of ranges of over 1000 yards using Napoleonic tactics, more suited to the short ranges of the 18^th Century, which lead inevitably to massive casualties of Pickett’s Charge and the like. In a direct response to these losses, armies developed the field fortifications of the later war, cumulating in the siege of Petersburg. This article will discuss an alternative view first offered by Paddy Griffith in 1986, developed by Brent Nosworthy and a current assessment of this view point provided by Earl J. Hess.