Sphinx

In clinching proof that I am incapable of switching off the academic brain even when surrounded by beautiful countryside, unfeasible numbers of storks, fine food and excellent beer, I have been getting cross with an innocuous History of Croatia. The first 80% of the first chapter is more or less okay – the account of the Romans is unnecessarily confused by the fact that the author knows Octavian and Augustus are the same person but clearly isn’t sure why and certainly doesn’t see any need to explain it to the reader – but then we come to the arrival of the Croats. They came with other Slavs. Or not. Their language is Slavic, but other characteristics point to a different origin, according to some theories. They were a distinct group. Or perhaps they weren’t. Maybe they actually came from Iran. But we don’t actually have any evidence. It’s all a mystery.

The problem is the conventional ‘history as a load of facts’ approach, when there aren’t actually any facts – or at least not the ones the author wants. This account would all be so much clearer with just a sentence or two of deeper analysis: *how* do we know what (little) we think we know? “Written records appeared long after the events they claim to describe; they recorded a whole load of different and conflicting stories, which were concerned not with historical accuracy but with asserting claims about identity or territory or rights; perhaps some of them contain elements of truth, but in the absence of other sorts of evidence we can’t tell; the crucial point is that the people who wrote these early accounts didn’t know where the Croats came from either.”

It’s not untrue that we academic historians have a tendency to lapse into the old “actually it’s more complicated than that”. But in this case the complicated, historical answer is surely clearer and more intelligible than a miscellaneous ragbag of stories that amount to nothing without any explanation. It’s the reason why I find it hard to turn down the ‘academic consultant’ gigs I’m occasionally offered; it’s not about spotting egregious errors, it’s about coming up with formulations that convey information without misleading oversimplification – and sometimes that involves talking about why things are complex, or shifting the discussion to historical debates rather than just ‘facts’.

It is of course possible that I’ll get less cross as we move onto the subject of medieval Croatia, about which I know absolutely nothing…