Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Spelling, Quotations and Translations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Part I Memoirists as Eyewitnesses and Individuals
- Part II The Reality of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Part III Things Worthy of Remembrance
- 7 Commemoration
- 8 Causality
- 9 Effacing the Difference between History and Lifestory
- Part IV The Politics of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Were Renaissance Military Memoirs a Novel Phenomenon?
- Appendix B The Memoirists
- Works Cited
- Index
- Warfare in History
8 - Causality
from Part III - Things Worthy of Remembrance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Spelling, Quotations and Translations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Part I Memoirists as Eyewitnesses and Individuals
- Part II The Reality of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Part III Things Worthy of Remembrance
- 7 Commemoration
- 8 Causality
- 9 Effacing the Difference between History and Lifestory
- Part IV The Politics of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Were Renaissance Military Memoirs a Novel Phenomenon?
- Appendix B The Memoirists
- Works Cited
- Index
- Warfare in History
Summary
In late-modern histories and lifestories alike, the glue that holds facts together and gives them their meaning is causality. In histories causality is ultimately an abstract matter, reflecting various impersonal and abstract processes and developments (e.g. ‘Protestant ethics gave rise to Capitalism’). In lifestories causality is more often a psychic matter, reflecting various mental and emotional processes and developments. In both cases, particular facts are meaningful and worthy of remembrance only in the context of the larger causal process.
Renaissance military memoirs connect their facts in a very different way. Instead of forging causal links between facts, they merely list them. Unlike causality, the principle of listing leaves the listed items independent of each other and of any greater whole. Facts do not become memorable thanks to their place in the list. They have to be memorable in their own right, and this alone gains them a place in the list. In order to clarify this, I shall first discuss the absence of abstract ‘historical’ causality, and then the absence of psychic causality.
History is Not a Process
The flow of history in the twentieth century, for memoirists as well as for historians, consists above all of various causal processes. Woe to the history student who is asked to describe the course of the Italian Wars, and answers by narrating a list of brave deeds of arms such as the single combat between Bayard and Sotomayor, while ignoring geopolitical or socioeconomic developments.
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- Information
- Renaissance Military MemoirsWar, History and Identity, 1450–1600, pp. 121 - 151Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004