Hey of us! 12 months is coming to an in depth, so as soon as once more I’m going to supply a little bit of an end-of-year reflection on the state of the mission, together with a short ‘what’s on the range’ protection of what could also be developing. Additionally, right here’s a cat image:
By way of the mission itself, 2024 was, when it comes to views and viewers, principally the identical as 2023 (technically a bit higher), however a bit lower than 2022 (however nonetheless wildly greater than any 12 months 2019-21). As I famous final 12 months, I are likely to benchmark my mission towards Eidolon (2015-2020)’s five-year run of c. 2m views as a bar for a profitable public scholarship mission. WordPress says we had 3.74m web page views this 12 months (up from 3.6m final 12 months); Google Analytics is a little more aggressive in filtering and says 3.42m year-to-date (cf. 3.34 final 12 months). So the viewers hasn’t grown a lot, however it’s fairly regular at what remains to be, for a public historical past mission, a fairly excessive degree. I’m particularly happy with that outcome on condition that we had been on hiatus for 2 full months.
The most well-liked put up sequence this 12 months was the Phalanx-Legion sequence (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, V) with a bit greater than a quarter-of-a-million views cut up over all of its varied elements. The Sci-Fi Physique Armor put up additionally was fairly widespread, as was the sequence on Alexander III of Macedon. Annoyingly, WordPress has modified the back-end analytics to make it annoyingly arduous to see what the least nicely performing posts had been, however it seems to be like of the Collections posts, it could have been the Imperator sequence (I, IIa, IIb, IIIa, IIIb). And but, my marketing campaign to bully Paradox into green-lighting Imperator II continues. A Philip II of Macedon as soon as stated, “We aren’t working away, solely backing up that, as a battering ram, we are able to hurl again and hit once more tougher” (Polyaenus, Strat. 2.38.2). Anticipate my eleven-part five-part sequence on Imperator subsequent 12 months (I’m kidding; I believe the following Instructing Paradox sequence ought to in all probability be Hearts of Iron IV, though I nonetheless haven’t fairly pulled my ideas collectively on it but).
As for traits within the metrics, Twitter remains to be a serious supply of readers, however its decline – which I famous final 12 months – continues. Twitter-based visitors is down by a few third from 2023, and in the previous couple of months Twitter, which was usually the strong second-place of my visitors sources (after Google) has been preventing with Bluesky, Reddit and Hacker Information for that high spot. Proper now, I’m nonetheless splitting my time over Twitter and Bluesky (and making an attempt to no less than get all new put up bulletins on Mastodon) however as Twitter turns into each a much less nice place and fewer helpful for locating readers, I could de-prioritize it additional. Total, the fragmentation of the social media house might be unhealthy for me; I’m not a full time ‘social media influencer’ who has time to ‘foster engagement’ over a number of channels. It’s lucky I established the core viewers I did once I did.
Talking of which, the ACOUP amici over on Patreon proceed to develop: we had 1,183 of us supporting the mission in January, 2023; 1,368 in January 2024 and proper now we’re at 1,502. That help has enabled me to each proceed this mission and proceed engaged on my scholarship. The e-book mission (Of Arms and Males), which you’ll recall we had simply gotten beneath contract this time final 12 months is now additional superior: I’ve the total manuscript very almost achieved (I’ll hit ‘function full’ within the subsequent week or two). I believe we’re hoping to have the e-book out someday in 2025 (in all probability late within the 12 months) and I’ll you’ll want to hold everybody posted. As well as, a while within the subsequent 12 months I’ll be placing up a kind of ‘roll of honor’ backer web page, itemizing everybody who supported the mission on Patreon over time that Of Arms and Males was within the works.
As you could have gathered, Of Arms and Males isn’t a small mission. I argue that Roman success was in additional than simply mobilizing males, however that as an alternative a Roman mobilization benefit seems throughout the opposite prices of warfare (provides, (very briefly) ships, non-battlefield package, arms and armor) suggesting a extra complete mobilization benefit which was because of Rome’s distinctive system for mobilizing the assets of Italy, in distinction to the standard explanations which foregrounded both uncooked Italian manpower or assumed distinctive Roman bellicosity. Making that argument stick requires overlaying what we all know of the logistics, gear, arms and armor and mobilization programs for not simply Rome, but additionally Carthage, the three Hellenistic nice powers (Antigonids, Seleucids, Ptolemies) and non-state peoples in pre-Roman Spain and Gaul. Ultimately rely, the working bibliography alone has greater than 700 works in it (and nonetheless feels woefully incomplete in some areas).
In any case, as famous the entire thing ought to seem in print in all probability late subsequent 12 months. As a good warning, whereas I’ve endeavored to make a e-book that’s broadly legible (no untranslated passages, all phrases outlined, dates for occasions listed, maps that will help you work out the place issues are, as little jargon as attainable), that is initially a analysis work fairly than a well-liked one and so is written a bit otherwise than the weblog. Nonetheless, I do know a good variety of you will have been ready on this one and you should wait a bit longer, however I’ll you’ll want to hold you knowledgeable as we get nearer.
Naturally, with all of that work going into the e-book mission, I had comparatively fewer works of word off the weblog. I wrote a evaluate of Gladiator II for Overseas Coverage, as nicely as one other piece on the disaster of educational historical past’s implications for nationwide safety. I additionally wrote a chunk for The Chronicle of Greater Training on cheap ways in which departments could possibly be much less merciless to their fixed-term/adjunct/visiting professors. Lastly, I wrote a grumpy piece in The Dispatch taking aside the Heritage Basis’s annual “Index of U.S. Army Power.”
For this coming 12 months, I’ve a couple of issues at the moment on the queue to do. I’ve a couple of particularly Roman historic subjects I’ve seen come up that I need to deal with: ‘On the Gracchi,’ a dialogue of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus taking a considerably (however not at all totally) adverse view of figures that I believe are sometimes handled a bit too uncritically in how they are typically taught in survey programs. I additionally need to deal with the query of if Roman emperors had been unusually more likely to be loopy or insane (spoilers: no). For the worldbuilders on the market, I need to put collectively a short summary on historic Mediterranean foreign money, within the hopes of giving of us a way of how a pre-modern foreign money would possibly work and simply possibly to get extra settings to maneuver away from assuming that day-to-day transactions occur in a unit referred to as ‘gold.’ I additionally suppose it could be enjoyable to have a look at among the armor kinds in DragonAge: Veilguard (which I haven’t fairly but completed), as a result of they’re an fascinating mixture of affordable and what I can solely describe as ‘terminal DeviantArt armor’ – a product of idea artwork whose solely referents are different idea artworks.
