"Oman's History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages online" Topic

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I don't know if that link works without signing up for an Interner Archive account (free, like any public library).

As I observed in my review, this is a first edition (1898), not the more familiar 2 volume second edition. I found it interesting that he had a four volume history of the art of war planned, of which this was to form the second volume. Later he expanded the middle ages treatise to two volumes. I know Oman did a Renaissance art of war volume (which I have never seen a copy of anywhere). But did he ever complete his original project and finish up with the 19th century?…

The Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. The tome of tomes for this period. Excellent book – I have a hard back copy I picked up from a book club for £5.00 GBP I also have the middle ages volumes.

Currently collecting his history of the Peninsular War in 9? volumes of which the first 7 form the 'history of'. I have 1-5. This work took him 30 years to write and research.

Oman is King.

Some people think that Oman is rendered to a nullity by modern scholarship. I don't agree (see other thread bumped beside this one). It appears that his original plan of four volumes became too small for his ambitions!…

I've been reading it. Fantastic stuff. I need printed copies of his other works.

There is a set of the 9 volume Peninsula War series on Ebay at the moment:

auction

Oman only did the first 7 – interestingly, volume 9 was by Paddy Griffith, which name seems very familiar from wargaming circles…a modern printing, look at the asking price!

I don't agree that his work has been nullified. But it can stand some fact-checking when reading, with other modern works close at hand.

Allen

look at the asking price!

That's a bargain, on amazon

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First edition sets come in at a whacking £2,000.00 GBP to £3,000.00 GBP I know a man who has one – how I envy him that part of his bookcase.

Nullfied is perhaps a bit exaggerated but more uptodate and professioanl research has repeatedly shown that Oman was in error in more than a few his texts. Depending on the work he used only a very limited set of sources and/or was more than willign to let his biases influence his interpretations and conclusions. In several instances it's hard not to wonder if he deliberately distorted soruce material to fit his own theories rather than adapting the theories to fit the facts.

His works on the art of war in the middle ages and the 16th Centry are very readable but flawed and misleading as well. Good for enjoyment but not a good, solid fundation for serious research.

Allen's being more reasonable than Daniel :)

I say this because we always have other sources "close at hand" when we research. Who do you know who uses ONE source like some kind of bible?

And Oman is hardly in a special club by himself when you start criticizing the way historians enter a project with their mind already made up. I recently commented on a book about the Bayeux Tapestry where the writer does just exactly that. Many contemporary cases of the same could be multiplied. Including narrow interpretations of original sources….

Plenty of wargamers to judge by online comments

No Oman is hardly alone in the club, Delbrück went even farther with deliberate lies about the content of sources in order to squash works who did not agree with his theories. Because of his status and precived authority he got away with it. Plenty of bad historians today as well, just look at how Juliet Baker or Michael Hicks distort some events&sources to suit their own biases.

The problem is that because he wrote in English and is precived by some as a "Giant" he must not realy be questioned or criticised too closely. Basicly he's singled out for special treament which would not be given to others who commited the same level of errors, particularly if they were made deliberately. Isn't it more than a bit troubling that when historians start to look closely at events described by Oman, be it Pavia, line vs column at Maida or the French at Albuera they find a surprisingly diffrent reality in the content of the sources. Yet they often use the very same sources Oman used.

An exampel of the problems with Oman's is his supposed "Tome of tomes" for the 16th Century which is filled with gaps and errors, many which could have been avoided with proper research at the time of writing. Yet Oman seems to ignore the numerous continental works on the subject and instead relied on his own narrow selection of sources. Add in his biased view of for example the French and Germans and you get an even more distorted description of events. For example he frequently but not always downplays or leaves out actions & performance which would portray the German Landsknechts and Reiters in a positive way.

As I wrote earlier I enjoy reading "A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth century" but I would fairly large parts of it as a source for serious history nor as a fundation for a well researched wargames scenario. But it gets me inspired for the period in a way that few of the superior works that were written at the same time does. What ever his flaws as a historian Oman was a fine writer.

It seems that your main criticism of Oman is that he didn't use all the sources that he had at his disposal. Maybe he didn't agree with some of them? A study of Oman could be a very complex, time-consuming project. I don't intend to do that. But I am going to suggest that every historian with his/her biases goes into a research project with suspicions that some sources are not to be trusted, or at least not as much. Since conflicting information results in the writer having to select a favored line of reasoning, the alternatives (and their proponents) are going to show up that choice as inferior, incomplete, distorted, erroneous, and filled with gaps in research.

Oman's narrative, sequential style is certainly not the same as, say Anne Curry's in her treatment of Agincourt. But Curry is a specialist: Oman painted in sweeping strokes. His thesis was simple: the mounted knight ruled the battlefield for most of a thousand years, and was supplanted by professional infantry: and he gives the causes for that replacement of heavy cavalry. I've never found anything seriously amiss in the conclusion that Oman drew. Some details can be criticized and corrected with more modern scholarship. But the thesis as a whole that Oman presented remains true.

Oman's work was so huge that it forms a vast framework to which subsequent historians have added greater clarity in their specialized fields; often correcting Oman in detail, and adding much more specific detail than he did. But in the limited areas where my own experience adds detail to Oman's work, I have not found very much conflict with what he presented. I mentioned Anne Curry's work on Agincourt: even with all her specialized focus her conclusions do not jar harshly with Oman's much more spare narrative of the battle and the conclusions that he drew from it….

Oman himself revised his original assessment of Maida.

It seems that your main criticism of Oman is that he didn't use all the sources that he had at his disposal. Maybe he didn't agree with some of them?

I could not agree more. I have done scenarios in the past using several sources – in most cases not all of the sources agreed and this led to confused scenarios. I now read the sources I have and choose ONE to work from.

Some would say that the work of modern authors is, because it is modern, more truthful. This is not always the case, especially with regards to history. Some authors like to push a new slant just to make their books different – and gain notoriety in academic circles for it – but as a casual reader of history I am not always aware of this 'slanting'.

An example. I have read, in modernish works, that a Roman Republican consular army deployed its 300 Roman cavalry on the right and its 900 allied cavalry on the left. This is attested to by near contempory authors (such as Polybius – who I've read). In a more modern work I have read recently (but can't remember where – I've read about 6 in the last month or two) the author states that although the 300 Roman cavalry might have always deployed on the right they may have been bolstered by 300 allied cavalry (extraordinarii?) thus balancing the wings.

Now you tell me: If all of the historians since Livy (who I've also read) are using the same sources – is the more modern author just guessing? Is he just pushing a new 'slant'?

I actually agree with him, as there is no evidence to suggest that Hannibal used unbalanced cavalry wings Vs the Romans as a counter. But I have no idea if this new author ACTUALLY KNOWS SOMETHING the others didn't.

I won't start accepting one of these "new slants" unless the writer gives copious attribution to original sources. Usually this is lacking and all we have are new assertions – offered for the reasons that you suggest. Oman's conclusions don't topple unless very good research and original source quotation makes an error obvious.

I still go to Oman first when I want to read up on something or refresh my memory on subjects that I am not particularly well-read up on. He remains, after more than a century, the best general source on the history of warfare….

So basicly you apply a double standard? Since Oman certainly does not provide "copious attributions to original sources" in many cases. Not to mentioned those cases in which he has only used a small number of the available original sources. (For whatever reason, in a number of instances more recent research has unearthed documents unknown in Oman's day to make one example.)

As I said above, Oman did change his mind in the light of evidence which contradicted earlier writing.

Since we are discussing his Medieval Art of War, can you cite any examples where Oman knew of evidence which contradicted him but didn't use it?

So basicly you apply a double standard?

No, I take Oman as-is unless something later turns up original source evidence, well reasoned, to the contrary. Oman is in the unique position of being "the king" of military historians. He still wears his crown. And any "king" is automatically a target. Jealousy, consensus envy, simple pique will set a budding contemporary historian off on a quest to prove the "old masters" wrong: and Oman is the natural and biggest target.

As Swampster said, give us an example, please, from his middle ages 2 volume edition, of how Oman deliberately omitted known original sources and made assertions contradicted by those omitted sources. This would be interesting on two fronts: comparing the sources available back in Oman's time, and determining if there might have been a good reason why Oman didn't bother with the other sources (i.e. he distrusted them for some plausible reason).

"Unearthed documents unknown in Oman's day" would also be interesting while we are discussing assertions that Oman got it wrong. The most recent treatise I have compared to Oman is Philippe Contamine's. link I don't recall any blatant conflict with Oman's thesis or his claims about the efficiency of medieval infantry.

Oman's and Contamine's approaches to the subject have different foci. Oman's focus is almost exclusively mechanical/tactical, examining battles to show the evolution of cavalry and infantry, and the meeting of the various tactical systems on the battlefield (and thus more dear to the wargamer's heart, being more useful for rules and scenario design). Contamine has more specialized examination of the systems for raising, organizing and maintaining armies….

Oh Brother

Where art thou?

Please contribute something….

I guess, with no examples forth-coming, of Oman's asserted "biases, errors, limited sources, distortions and adaptations", Sir Charles Oman remains "The King" of medieval warfare historians (and perhaps king of military history generally, I don't know: I haven't read Oman in later periods)….

I don't think anybody really needs to discredit Oman on the net as a military historian of the medieval period, it has been done repeatedly in actual papers…or rather, as inevitably will happen, someone who wrote most of his books a hundred years ago has had his opinions examined and revised so often, there is really nothing left of them of any value to modern historians.

Here is a brief popular history overview article, over 15 years old:
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…that gives a brief and simple overview of some of the myths Oman and Delbrück peddled, highlighting Smail and Verbruggen as the early contributors to the road of turning medieval military history into a real academic discipline.

Not that medieval military history is always all that impressive today either. The mangled mess that was Osprey's two medieval scandinavian books would have been laughable if it hadn't been so sad that it was one of the few things one can find in english on the subject.

I think it depends on what you want from Oman. I expect there's a good deal of value in his work on the Peninsular war and elsewhere, on the other hand his accounts of conflict in Scotland are truly dreadful, Oman and Gardiner simply invented the Scottish shortbow and nobody really knows why.
His account of Bannockburn is particularly poor, but has formed the mainstay of poor(or lazy) accounts for a century.---Nusbacher's Bannockburn book is a case in point.