Backroom Errata

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What if it's a long quote? You'll notice all the quotes on that page are about a single sentence.

That's one of the primary usages of ellipsis in any context: to cite or present without full transcription. Is it possible for such a usage to be deceptive? Sure - bring evidence either from the material itself, or the author's record. If you can't, it's a baseless attack that undermines your own claims to decorum and authority.

If you sincerely believe that such a use of ellipsis should be presumptively suspect in all cases, then you deserve ridicule.

As an historian approaching secondary sources I have found that the best was to approach ellipsis is to ask "what has been omitted and why?" That is how you do source criticism, otherwise you're assuming that the source quoted with ellipsis is as the author presents it. If you want to criticise me for something you can criticise my for snobbishness over "popular history", which might be fair. On the other hand, even serious historians are guilty of "dumbing down" when writing popular history.

1. Telling me I deserve ridicule is insulting and unnecessary.

Your syllogism:

A. This reviewer thinks the book has limitations
B. The book is not entirely reliable
C. The author is misrepresenting primary source material

Absurd.

I said the way the source was quoted made it look suspect, then I quoted a professional review which suggested that the author has a tendency to make miss-representations in the book. I did at any point suggest that this misrepresentation undermined the thesis that US Army = Racist in the 1940's etc. I merely noted the incongruity, for which I criticised the historian, and I'm apparently not the only one, based on that review.

If it's long either quote it in full or quote part of it and paraphrase.

2. I clearly quoted the part of the review where the reviewer held up the author for misrepresenting the conclusions of a report. I am not being absurd and accusing me of such is just an insult.

Again, manipulating or cherry picking how? Looking at the subject matter, you yourself admit that the author would have no shortage of quotes denouncing integration. The author did in fact present multiple uncontestable examples. What do you think the rest of the abbreviated quote could possibly have said? "I support Negro equality because I want to see our honorable black servicemen talking to my wife"? Just wild. I can't get over the disparity between your self-regard and your cavilling dismissal of an entire person you've never previously heard of.

I might as well give my own example of a (self-formulated) elliptic quote apt to be misleading: "[T]he English are not a methodical or logical nation—they perceive and accept facts without anxiously inquiring into their reasons or meanings[...]"

Again, critiquing the historiography, not the point. Go back and look at what I originally said, i.e. that the way the quote is presented makes it look misleading. I have now, several times, noted that using such a quote in a misleading way is pointless in the context of this particular argument.

It's because you keep stirring up outrageous and poorly-considered contentions.

Sometimes a critique of poor historiography is just a critique of poor historiography.

Because it's a quick share and I didn't have a comment, nor thought I needed one.

You clearly felt it required you to breach the forum rules on profanity, without explaining your interpretation. That was always going to ellit and obtuse response.

*sigh*

It is possible that I may understand you and that you may be wrong. You are rarely able to acknowledge when I am arguing directly against the propositions you maintain, which rather conveys a misunderstanding on your part.

Indeed, it is possible - but I can't remember the last time you actually argued against my point directly. Remember the time you spent pages accusing me of being transphobic just because I said I could appreciate why some fathers are more worried about their daughters safety than being socially inclusive to complete strangers? Remember how you you interpreted my critique of Beskar's appeal to gender-fluidity as transphobic when my point was actually that trans people are rarely gender-fluid and are often actually very much gender-conforming, just not their physical gender?

Your combative style means you attack the other person on what you percieve their platform to be, rather than trying to understand that platform.

Trying out that conciliatory generosity. I guess it hasn't worked out. I'm always thinking of elaborations and complications in the subjects I choose to raise that I desperately wish someone would present or allude to so I could develop them. I don't want to post exhaustive essays on any given item following every conceivable strand, causing suffering for everyone. My hope is to introduce opportunities (for you or anyone) to eruditely expand the prompt. Too often I wind up in meritless and unproductive arguments, which I resent. Please tell me something interesting that I don't know or haven't considered, not what I already know to be bullshit or indefensible! The tension here isn't some autogenous eruption from me; we've had plenty of mundane disagreements in the past, and there are others whose offerings I have appreciated (yours as well sometimes).

So you expect others to raise certain arguments for you so that you can respond to them? See above about attacking percieved targets. I'm not you, I don't understand you, I don't know what you want.

If you want to discuss something raise it, if nobody argues against it then it may just be because we all agree with you and aren't interested in debating it.

*heavy sigh*

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For surplus, check the Online Dictionary of Old English. I can't access it.

I struggle to understand how you can have sourced all the above and written all of the following.

Frame it this way: Were there any groups between churls and theows (slaves)? If not, then logically as the only general class of free men above slaves the churls must be the lowest-status freemen.

The question is malformed, because as I said Anglo-Saxon society doesn't work like that.

A churl is simply anyone not a noble or a slave, the very idea that they are "lowest status" is anachronistic and a relic of the Normon Conquest when almost all English were reduced to the status of churls and legally disenfranchised.

Some thanes may have become knights, but even they would have lost the freehold to their lands and it's just as likely their lands were taken from them, they were made destitute and either emigrated to the Byzantine Empire (a well documented phenomenon) or became churlish serfs.

This is a point of generosity: OK.

If you want to go all thorn, ash and yew we can do that, but you're just creating a barrier to understanding and being pretentious. It's also a hassle to have to use all the keyboard codes.

3. Suggesting it's generous to condescend to use consistent orthography is just another insult. Talk about not being able to back down.

"...possessing the freedom of the upper classes but without the economic means to take advantage of it."

Right, and there's no evidence for this - it's a 19th Century invention.

I'm sure the demographic proportion of slaves in different parts of England at different times is a murky matter of controversy. I won't look for the source but in the readings on churls I came across an estimate that by the time of the Norman conquest 10% of the English population were still slaves, and in Cornwall 25%.

I believe I've heard those figures before - remember the people in Cornwall may not be considered "English". We really don't know, what we do know is that the Kings issued Law Codes aimed at preventing the sale of slaves, or the forcible enslavement of someone to pay a debt. The fact it was legislated against shows it was clearly relatively common whilst also considered to be, how to say, un-Christian.

Churls had to do and manage backbreaking labour in the fields and in common works. Could a churl fick off and decide to take it easy for the summer? Can you tell your administrators you're taking a year's sabbatical to travel the world, and fund it? This isn't enslavement - it's constraint. Economic constraint.

Really - here's some quote from your sources:

"The most prosperous ceorls may well have possessed more land and wealth than many young nobles striving for a place in a lord’s household. Ceorls as well as nobles fought in Alfred’s armies and attended his folk moots. Their main function in Alfred’s eyes, though, was to be the king’s ‘working men’, whose labours helped feed those who prayed and those who fought."

"The only thing which all ceorls had in common was that legally they were neither thegns nor slaves. It is for this reason that ceorl is better translated as ‘free man’ rather than as ‘peasant’, for not only has the latter acquired pejorative associations, but it is also clear that not all ceorlas personally worked the land; some were themselves landlords with dependants who worked it for them."

The ONLY thing all churls have in common is being free and not being noble and some of them DO NOT directly work the land. Do you not see how different that is to later Norman society, and how it is different to the plight of the modern American wage-slave?

Let's put this another way - you are a churl - but so is Warren Buffet.

Is Warren Buffet economically constrained?

I would add social control: A churl could (I venture) no more tell a thane how to relate to their lord than a line worker can tell their supervisor what company policy should be.

True and not true - as a couple of sources hint all churls, like all thanes, needed a liege lord but the lord didn't need to be the local thane. Consider the wealthy church whose liege is the king vs the less wealthy thane whose liege is another than or an Earl.

No, that it's superfluous. The insight into modern society is nothing we haven't heard before, but here I thought you would be gladdened by the Medieval reference. How poorly I can anticipate your feelings.

The insight into modern society is banal, the connection to Anglo-Saxon society is misconstrued. I simply pointed this out and now we're having a big fight about how I'm a bad historian?

You just like picking fights.

Anglo-Saxon society was a shithole. It's all relative.

I'd rather live there than modern American society.

You've seen our neo-Medieval movies.

Yeah - that's the wierd thing - they get kings better than you do in some cases.

I don't have the energy for that.

I numbered the insults above for you.

I'm saddened you feel that way, but I don't want to litigate it further.

I don't believe you, on either point. We've spent weeks litigating it and you seem unrepentant.

The title is enough to read, because it's relevant to something.

I just clicked the link and realised it was more screed, and you'd already accused me of supporting racism on my birthday. Yet, great present, more work.

Do you like lindybeige? If you don't like lindybeige then I am truly unable to learn how to relate to you.

He's amusing, but I'm much, much, less of a cynic.

A steelman does not characterize an actual argument from an interlocutor. It constructs what a good argument from that interlocutor might be. See, you don't get it.

No, I get it. You don't get the point I'm trying to make - so your supposedly "good argument" doesn't address itself to my thesis. So you've demonstrated that you either don't understand my argument or you want me to make a different one.

Like I said, if you don't like my contributions or value them (and you never do) why do you keep soliciting them?

I gave you may opinion in my fist most - banal point - completely misunderstands Anglo-Saxon society and here we are days later and you're trying to argue against my interpretation of the historiography making points that are directly contradicted by the sources you quote.

Between Roman and Norman rule.

Norman = Roman(n)! Isn't that fun?

Normanum non Romanorum est?

There were some elites in the past who had much wealth and political power in their realms. The churls as a group were not these elites. In that they did not share these characteristics with the elites they are similar to the contemporary middle class vis-a-vis the wealthy and politically connected. Kings can dispose of more than peasants. Billionaires can dispose of more than software engineers. (This is unaffected by a purely hypothetical ability of churls to assassinate kings or of software engineers to sabotage governments.)

You could say it is not a deep or insightful analogy, but it is a perfectly valid one.

You're still tangling up wealth, power, and class in a totally anachronistic way. The medieval King has wealth and power because of his class, his social status, he doesn't get that status because of his wealth and power.. You really need to accept what I'm telling you when I tell you that America doesn't really have an "Upper Class" as it is traditionally understood, otherwise you're going to keep making these anachronistic comparisons.

Trump is a churl.

Cautious academic language?

I meant "oppressed and immiserated". If I wrote that and sent it to my supervisor I'd get it back with the last word triple underlined and the word "miserable" above it with multiple question marks.

Sure. It got more so over time.

It got more clearly delineated in its sub-divisions but it was always a system with the King at the top and everyone else under him. As time progressed the "great monastic estates" developed as Kings bequeathed land in charters that the monasteries were able to hold onto - as opposed to land that automatically reverted to the King when someone died. Gradually this "book lnad" also came to be held by members of the laity and from this developed the concept of the freehold where a man held land freely - i.e. had been granted it and could keep it or sell the holding of it.

Note holding - not ownership. You can't actually own land if you're not the king, but you can own the use of it, and the property on it. This point, incidentally, has implications for appropriation of land and property (and its permissible limits) under English Common Law even today.

I do understand you. My amply supported position is that your understanding is deficient.

You've quoted sources that demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the most basic concepts we are discussing - you continue to hold to an American concept of class as being wealth-derived.

Wouldn't you say the ideas you communicate in your academic context are more restricted, refined, and specialized than those offered here? If you wanted to lecture me on the proper translation and interpretation of Beowulf in the context of linguistic and archaeological evidence, I wouldn't have anything to say to you; I would just respectfully listen.

I'm not actually an expert on Old English - and in fact I've never claimed to be an expert. Although that being said I suppose I would be considered "expert" in lay circles. If I were an actual Anglo-Saxonist, or I were to direct one here, I imagine you'd be buried under an avalanche of sources I would struggle to wade through.

The fact is you're making a rear-guard action over a point that's clearly no longer accepted - i.e. that churls were the "lower class" of Anglo-Saxon society when in reality they were not, some of them had not only legal but actual rights and privileges in Anglo-Saxon society, some did not. Some were economically constrained (geburs) but many were not. Despite which they constituted a single legal class in society.

In fact, the more appropriate interpretation of the churl with regards to modern American society (so much as it is applicable) is that all Americans are churls because all Americans are equal before the law. What you are trying to do is to compare wealthy Americans today to a legally distinct class that existed over a thousand year ago.

This is not quite the case in Europe, although the aristocracy have become less and less powerful over the last five decades in particular.

OK, you have a point. I didn't think of that. (I don't really celebrate birthdays.) Well, it's not your birthday anymore...

I do!

I wouldn't call your approach to me nice. Sometimes it feels like you're advancing something ridiculous deliberately to antagonize me. How about this: how would you rewrite something I had to say to you in a way that, aside from the disagreement at the heart of it, you would accept as nice and/or respectful?

I certainly wasn't nice to you yesterday, but then again you insinuated I was racist just because I critiqued a source on racism in the American Air Force, and it was my birthday.

Why don't you just avoid phrases like "deserve ridicule", especially when I've quoted a review of said book which indicates far more serious forms of misrepresentation in the work. Also, do you actually think I'm being ridiculous, if so why do you bother?

Have you considered just asking for clarification?

Also - have you considered that you hold beliefs that I consider patently ridiculous? Like the belief that it's possible to differentiate between right and wrong without appeal to any higher power? I could give you a long, well sourced, argument on how a conceptual "higher power" is necessary to be able to define something as "right" or "wrong" and the difference between the objectively right and human perception which is only "subjectively right".

Such an argument would, however, be utterly pointless between us because you would reject it on unprovable first principles - you would first dispute my definition of "right" and then you would argue that there is no discernible "higher power" and therefore I must be wrong. The only reason to have such a discussion would be to try to better understand each other's positions but given you have indicated you have no interest in exploring philosophical beliefs you reject. So - utterly pointless.

Like this discussion has become.