True.
I meant Swiss-style as more of a general aesthetic, rather than specific heads, but fair point.
I'm not disagreeing on Italy being the best place for halberd and metal-working. But I think the Swiss were no amateurs or incompetents in that department.
The Swiss were not Amateurs no but at the same time they were relatively small presence in the big picture of the Medieval European arms and armor market. However as mercenaries they had a pretty big presence alongside the other famous mercenary groups of the era.
The Halberd gets kind of odd because it was so wide spread including the what you might call a Swiss Style. Mostly because records on origins of some of the arms are sketchy it is hard to tell where they came from originally. It could be the Swiss made a few easily mass produced styles and the design caught on and ended up produced in quantity in general but the Swiss wouldn't be the main suppliers. I think though it wasn't the Italians who turned out the most Halberds though they did a good bit of trade in the arms market as well. Spain had a surprisingly large chunk of the arms market my money is on the Spanish possibly turning out high quality steel arms in any quantity.
Ok did a bit more poking around. The Swiss took into the arms trade at tend of the 15th and early 16th century so right at the very end of the medieval era. A lot of the arms and armor trade appears to have shifted around that time period as well. Italy lost some prominence and other countries arms industries sprang up as major players in the arms market.
edited 30th Oct '15 6:20:57 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Cancer.
Watched the episode on the Dark Ages, and it is absolute shit.
Until this point, my opinion of the /lit/ meme that John Green is a pleb was that it was just their elitism. But no. John Green, supposed author, is a fucking pleb.
Chaucher
Song of Roland
Waltharius
Dante
Procopius
The Poetic Edda
The Orkneyinga Saga
Bede
The Brus
Thorsdrapa
The Exeter Book
And that's just off the top of my head.
His dismal performance here suggests to me that his other videos will be equally poor.
Went to find it on r/badhistory, and, whaddaya know, Tim O'Neill, the guy behind the terrific Armarium Magnum blog, has already had his say.
A walk on r/badhistory also found his video about Homer, which is again horrendous. He spends the whole thing complaining about Homer's gender politics, as though Homer should have had John Greens politics, thousands of years before those concepts were delineated. Congratulations John. You have discovered that people in the past did things that people in the modern era find objectionable. Truly you are an elite historian and literary critic. Upon reading the foundational text of an ancient civilization, your first impression was: 'Why don't they think like me? They should think like me'.
Brilliant.
—
Re: Metalworking
Milan was the centre of European armor technology for a fairly long time.
edited 31st Oct '15 10:29:58 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiYeah, I was referring to this. Still, I should've mentioned the specific period you mentioned here.
@Dark Ages: Why do people still use that term?
The phrase has been around for almost 700 years. Amending every textbook to state that it's called that today due to a comparative lack of written history on what happened then is going to be an uphill battle as well.
Well, it's been, what, 50 or 60 years ever since the term began to be discredited? You'd think changes would have already happened in a few places.
At least, changes have happened here. In my history books, there's no mention of 'Dark Ages' or similar terms.
It's sad to see the term is still en vogue, especially around the internet.
edited 31st Oct '15 9:01:36 AM by Quag15
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Petrarch named the Dark Ages.
The phrase has been useful to a tremendous number of people. The theorists of the Renaissance used it to try and discredit that which had come before. Enlightenment anti-clericalists used it to try and discredit the Church. Eurocentric Whig historians used it to explain a period where Europe was not the political centre of the worldnote . 21st century New Atheists find the idea of a period where the Church 'repressed science' to be extremely congenial.
edited 31st Oct '15 10:04:29 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiA similar point is made on the behaviors of various Greek philosophers who may not have engaged in certain behaviors as much as suggested. One part sometimes offered is that while catamites did exist, what might otherwise have been just a mildly intimate relationship between two men became full on sexual.
Hell, it's thought that at least part of what the Greek gods did is in part painted over by the Byzantines so they could convert people to a new religion - make the old gods seem like dicks, and make them more willing to join somebody much more loving.
"Did you expect somebody else?"Jesus Christ, how widely are these people defining "Dark Ages"? It's somewhat understandable to give the name to the post-Roman era through the Viking Age and the rise and partition of Charlemagne's empire, if you keep in mind that "Dark" means "somewhat under-documented" (and even then there were writers like Bede if you knew enough to look, not to mention lots of the great legends and epics).
Post-Charlemagne and into the Crusading Era, no way in hell. There was a genuine cultural flourishing that started around the turn of the millenium and went strong, and technological development advanced steadily. The Great Plague did put a damper on things and triggered some major social changes, and it's possible that Renaissance writers had that in mind when doing their contrast, but still, that's hundreds of years out of the Dark Ages.
edited 1st Nov '15 10:03:24 AM by SabresEdge
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Potentially a book to check out: James Holland focuses on what Nazi Germany did wrong logistically.
I can't vouch for it one way or another, but the conclusions sound similar to Tooze's in The Wages of Destruction, and the bit about the U-boats sounds very similar to Clay Blair's study of the U-boat war (wherein he concluded that even at the Germans' best and the Allies' worst, the U-boats were never close to shutting down the Atlantic convoys).
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.That also included trucks and other unarmoured vehicles. Of course, the German's huge captured/confiscated vehicle fleet, which possibly contained most of the world's car and truck types at the time, didn't help either.
As mentioned in another book I'm readingnote that was due to a manpower shortage, which was terminal by mid-1944.
edited 2nd Nov '15 11:44:16 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On

The Swiss are not actually known for their metal working so much as they are known for their mercenaries. Swiss style is frankly meaningless outside of it is the types of heads they commonly preferred to use and the 'style' includes a fairly wide variety of heads. All of which have a good chance of being purchased from elsewhere especially to arm mercenaries. Just like the bulk of the quality armor in Europe came from Italy. Just about everyone from mercenary companies, national forces, and even royalty purchased a good chunk of their quality armor from the Italians. There was plenty of lower quality to go around as well and you had a good chance of getting it from Germany or even some from Italy.
Who watches the watchmen?