Howard Wiseman's Hobby: History
History has been a passion of mine since I discovered how much we do
know about the past. I particularly remember being astonished to find
out,
in my early teens, that the barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire was
not a time of complete chaos with no historical record, but rather that
we know pretty well what happened and when. Despite enjoying and doing
well in history in junior school (age 15) I did not continue it in
senior,
opting for science subjects instead. I don't regret this, because I
think history is more accessible to an interested amateur than is science.
My current level of activity in my history hobby dates from c.1993
when
I
bought the book King Arthur - The True Story by Phillips and
Keatman.
Although in hindsight I don't think much of the book's arguments, its
importance
was again that it revealed to me that this period of British history
does
have historical records, however meagre, and not just legends. The
meagreness
of the records meant I was eventually able to become familiar with
pretty much all
of them, and to create my first history website, The Ruin and Conquest
of Britain, in 1997. Also as a
consequence, I managed to publish a (minor) research
paper in this area in 2000.
The
Ruin and Conquest of Britain (1997-2009)
The transition from Roman Britain to early-mediaeval England and Wales
is, to me, one of the most fascinating periods in history. The struggle
and ultimate failure of one society to defend itself against decline
and replacement by another is bound to be interesting. It is of course
the
time
of the real "King Arthur", if there ever was such a person. It has
become
a hobby for me to try to reconstruct the history of the 5th and 6th
centuries
in Britain. I first put this website up c.1997, and it has been
evolving
ever since. This site also contains
the hitherto unpublished historical novel Albion:
The Lame Dancer by
Patrick McCormack.
From an interest in the survival of Roman institutions in Britain in
the 5th and 6th centuries grew an interest in the mixed fortunes of the
Empire itself in that time: the end of the Western Empire and the
flowering
of the Eastern Empire. This in turn led to finding out about the
ups and downs of the Roman Empire over its entire (but especially its
later)
history, which I began studying in c.1998. This website charts
the history of the Roman Empire from 338 BC to 1453 AD. Here "charts"
is used advisedly, as maps form the core of this
site.
I have been drawing historical maps of all sorts ever since my
mid-teens, but computers and the internet have given a new life to this hobby.
One Page Wonders --- A bref regard at the Longue Durée of Countries, Nations, or States.
Having
charted the
history of the Roman Empire, I next tried a similar exercise in my
original region of interest, Britain. Here
the emphasis was not on the continuity of a state, but rather the rise
of different Empires within the one country. This has led to a series
of similar studies (some still in preparation). Some will focus on the
history of a country, others on that of a nation (e.g. the Nordic
peoples), others on the history of states. Since each consists of just
a single-page, I have grouped them together to avoid cluttering this
page.
Twenty
Centuries of
"British"
"Empires" (2003-2006): From the over-kingdom of Cunobelinus,
through
the Empires of the Romano-British, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans,
Plantagenets,
Tudors, and the world-straddling British Empire.
Thirteen Centuries of the Nordic Peoples (2009): From
the age of Vikings, Varangians, and Normans, to the present Nordic
nations (Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Icelanders)
Between France and Germany --- 16 centuries of Europe's Middle Kingdoms (2011?): A
quirky analysis of the geo-political evolution of France, Germany and the
nearby states, in particular how Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg,
and Italy can all trace their origins to the Kingdom of the
Burgundians.
Return to
Howard Wiseman's Home Page