Post by paranger on Apr 6, 2020 6:52:15 GMT -7
Let me begin by reiterating how much I love this forum and the high level of scholarship, knowledge, and dedication displayed by members of all experience levels herein. It is in that spirit that I approach what I have found can be a touchy subject, but one that is unavoidable if we truly seek historically accurate portrayals of period personas (yes, I know, that is not the only or even the primary goal of some folks in this "hobby," and that is fine, too).
It seems to me that the "HC/PC crowd" (me included) spends a lot of time and effort on what I would call "myth-busting." You know, primary source research to prove what we all should be pretty comfortable with, that is, that any statement which includes "always" or "never," or "throughout history" is doomed to be false. Challenging widely held misconceptions and flawed consensuses is admittedly an important, illuminating (and entertaining) thing to do. That said, if we stop there, we are stunting our personal and collective intellectual growth and in danger of forming (and thus presenting) an inaccurate picture of the material culture of our period of interest. In short, if we tilt the balance of effort and discussion too heavily toward exceptions, we quickly come to view them as rules unto themselves. As often said here, context (locale, time, persona) are key. Generalizing is always dangerous. That said, without a degree of generalization and reductionism, there can be no study of history, short of living it real time in all of its complexity.
So what am I suggesting? To get at many of the questions that we like to tackle here, it is necessary to investigate not just whether something existed or occurred, but how often and why? One tool that I have seen leveraged here is statistical analysis. Though it can be difficult with the gaps and biases of surviving primary sources, and is generally time consuming, I have found it useful in informing some thorny questions. If I may, let me offer an example from my own experience.
It came to pass over time in my F&I unit, that one of the most experienced and knowledgeable members diversified his periods of interest and was soon splitting his time between F&I, Jacobite, and Viking impressions. With events interspersed throughout the year, it became difficult to cultivate multiple impressions simultaneously. His Viking beard was not particularly deemed appropriate for a ca. 1756 provincial soldier. Obviously aware of this, he offered to dress as a civilian "sutler" to explain the uncharacteristic grooming standard. Other members of this progressive unit objected that facial hair for 18th century males was rare enough that even this compromise was unacceptable. What followed was a knock-down-drag-out that nearly tore the unit apart. What I found most useful in this experience was some focused research done by one member to shed some objective, quantitative, primary source based evidence as a foundation for deciding how to move forward given this dilemma. What he did was look at a decade of deserter and runaway descriptions in local period newspapers (mostly the Pennsylvania Gazette, in this instance) and create an excel spreadsheet looking principally to see how many descriptions included facial hair. The results? It turned out that for this 10 year period in Pennsylvania, about 3% of the descriptions contained mention of some form of facial hair.
Now, is this conclusive? Of course not. Is it informative? I think so. You see, In my view, beyond simply arguing whether something existed or happened, what we really needed to know to make an informed decision was how often something occurred in a particular bounded context. Now we could make a historically informed decision about the matter in question. Was 3% too much of an excursion for the unit to swallow? In the end we decided that keeping a valued member was important enough to make such an excursion, but I believe only because we were able to quantify and explain just how much of an excursion it was, since we had done the research.
The lesson here, to me, is not that we should all follow the most common period practices and accepted "rules" in presenting material culture. In fact, to do so in my view does an equal disservice. Quickly the "generic" impression overgeneralizes and overrepresents consensus, minimizing individuality to a degree that is equally distortive of historical accuracy. A minority choice here and there is what provides character to a persona and can be a great conversation starter, provided it is not overdone. For example, I am happy to explain why one of my favorite hats is brown, while everyone else in the unit wears black. And, based on extensive reading and study of period art (e.g., Hogarth), I can give a reasonable estimate that somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 hats were brown in my area / period of interest. The point is having the data to know just how much of a deviation you are making. Similarly, a persona made up only of such deviations from predominant trends ends up as the period example of a "whack job" or a candidate for Bedlam.
It seems to me that the "HC/PC crowd" (me included) spends a lot of time and effort on what I would call "myth-busting." You know, primary source research to prove what we all should be pretty comfortable with, that is, that any statement which includes "always" or "never," or "throughout history" is doomed to be false. Challenging widely held misconceptions and flawed consensuses is admittedly an important, illuminating (and entertaining) thing to do. That said, if we stop there, we are stunting our personal and collective intellectual growth and in danger of forming (and thus presenting) an inaccurate picture of the material culture of our period of interest. In short, if we tilt the balance of effort and discussion too heavily toward exceptions, we quickly come to view them as rules unto themselves. As often said here, context (locale, time, persona) are key. Generalizing is always dangerous. That said, without a degree of generalization and reductionism, there can be no study of history, short of living it real time in all of its complexity.
So what am I suggesting? To get at many of the questions that we like to tackle here, it is necessary to investigate not just whether something existed or occurred, but how often and why? One tool that I have seen leveraged here is statistical analysis. Though it can be difficult with the gaps and biases of surviving primary sources, and is generally time consuming, I have found it useful in informing some thorny questions. If I may, let me offer an example from my own experience.
It came to pass over time in my F&I unit, that one of the most experienced and knowledgeable members diversified his periods of interest and was soon splitting his time between F&I, Jacobite, and Viking impressions. With events interspersed throughout the year, it became difficult to cultivate multiple impressions simultaneously. His Viking beard was not particularly deemed appropriate for a ca. 1756 provincial soldier. Obviously aware of this, he offered to dress as a civilian "sutler" to explain the uncharacteristic grooming standard. Other members of this progressive unit objected that facial hair for 18th century males was rare enough that even this compromise was unacceptable. What followed was a knock-down-drag-out that nearly tore the unit apart. What I found most useful in this experience was some focused research done by one member to shed some objective, quantitative, primary source based evidence as a foundation for deciding how to move forward given this dilemma. What he did was look at a decade of deserter and runaway descriptions in local period newspapers (mostly the Pennsylvania Gazette, in this instance) and create an excel spreadsheet looking principally to see how many descriptions included facial hair. The results? It turned out that for this 10 year period in Pennsylvania, about 3% of the descriptions contained mention of some form of facial hair.
Now, is this conclusive? Of course not. Is it informative? I think so. You see, In my view, beyond simply arguing whether something existed or happened, what we really needed to know to make an informed decision was how often something occurred in a particular bounded context. Now we could make a historically informed decision about the matter in question. Was 3% too much of an excursion for the unit to swallow? In the end we decided that keeping a valued member was important enough to make such an excursion, but I believe only because we were able to quantify and explain just how much of an excursion it was, since we had done the research.
The lesson here, to me, is not that we should all follow the most common period practices and accepted "rules" in presenting material culture. In fact, to do so in my view does an equal disservice. Quickly the "generic" impression overgeneralizes and overrepresents consensus, minimizing individuality to a degree that is equally distortive of historical accuracy. A minority choice here and there is what provides character to a persona and can be a great conversation starter, provided it is not overdone. For example, I am happy to explain why one of my favorite hats is brown, while everyone else in the unit wears black. And, based on extensive reading and study of period art (e.g., Hogarth), I can give a reasonable estimate that somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 hats were brown in my area / period of interest. The point is having the data to know just how much of a deviation you are making. Similarly, a persona made up only of such deviations from predominant trends ends up as the period example of a "whack job" or a candidate for Bedlam.
