Hey people! Yr is coming to a detailed, 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 venture, together with a short ‘what’s on the range’ protection of what could also be arising. Additionally, right here’s a cat image:
When it comes to the venture itself, 2024 was, when it comes to views and viewers, mainly the identical as 2023 (technically a bit higher), however a bit lower than 2022 (however nonetheless wildly greater than any yr 2019-21). As I famous final yr, I are likely to benchmark my venture in opposition to Eidolon (2015-2020)’s five-year run of c. 2m views as a bar for a profitable public scholarship venture. WordPress says we had 3.74m web page views this yr (up from 3.6m final yr); Google Analytics is a little more aggressive in filtering and says 3.42m year-to-date (cf. 3.34 final yr). So the viewers hasn’t grown a lot, however it’s fairly regular at what remains to be, for a public historical past venture, a fairly excessive stage. I’m particularly happy with that end result provided that we have been on hiatus for 2 full months.
The preferred put up sequence this yr 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 components. The Sci-Fi Body Armor put up additionally was fairly fashionable, 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 have been, however it appears 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 operating away, solely backing up that, as a battering ram, we are able to hurl again and hit once more more durable” (Polyaenus, Strat. 2.38.2). Anticipate my eleven-part five-part sequence on Imperator subsequent yr (I’m kidding; I feel the subsequent Educating Paradox sequence ought to most likely be Hearts of Iron IV, though I nonetheless haven’t fairly pulled my ideas collectively on it but).
As for developments within the metrics, Twitter remains to be a serious supply of readers, however its decline – which I famous final yr – continues. Twitter-based site visitors is down by a few third from 2023, and in the previous couple of months Twitter, which was sometimes the stable second-place of my site visitors sources (after Google) has been combating 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 at the very least 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’ll de-prioritize it additional. Total, the fragmentation of the social media area 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 continue to grow: we had 1,183 people supporting the venture in January, 2023; 1,368 in January 2024 and proper now we’re at 1,502. That assist has enabled me to each proceed this venture and proceed engaged on my scholarship. The e book venture (Of Arms and Males), which you’ll recall we had simply gotten underneath contract this time final yr is now additional superior: I’ve the complete manuscript very almost finished (I’ll hit ‘function full’ within the subsequent week or two). I feel we’re hoping to have the e book out someday in 2025 (most likely late within the yr) and I’ll make sure you maintain everybody posted. As well as, a while within the subsequent yr I’ll be placing up a form of ‘roll of honor’ backer web page, itemizing everybody who supported the venture on Patreon over time that Of Arms and Males was within the works.
As you could have gathered, Of Arms and Males just isn’t a small venture. I argue that Roman success was in additional than simply mobilizing males, however that as a substitute 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 as a consequence of Rome’s unique system for mobilizing the resources of Italy, in distinction to the standard explanations which foregrounded both uncooked Italian manpower or assumed distinctive Roman bellicosity. Making that argument stick requires masking 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. Eventually rely, the operating 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 most likely late subsequent yr. 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 determine the place issues are, as little jargon as attainable), that is at first a analysis work quite than a preferred one and so is written a bit otherwise than the weblog. However, I do know a good variety of you have got been ready on this one and you need to wait a bit longer, however I’ll make sure you maintain you knowledgeable as we get nearer.
Naturally, with all of that work going into the e book venture, I had comparatively fewer works of be aware off the weblog. I wrote a review of Gladiator II for International Coverage, as nicely as another piece on the crisis of academic history’s implications for national security. I additionally wrote a bit for The Chronicle of Increased Schooling on inexpensive ways that departments could be less cruel to their fixed-term/adjunct/visiting professors. Lastly, I wrote a grumpy piece in The Dispatch taking apart the Heritage Foundation’s annual “Index of U.S. Military Strength.”
For this coming yr, I’ve a number of issues at the moment on the queue to do. I’ve a number 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 certainly not totally) damaging view of figures that I feel 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 have 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 forex, within the hopes of giving people a way of how a pre-modern forex may work and simply possibly to get extra settings to maneuver away from assuming that day-to-day transactions occur in a unit known as ‘gold.’ I additionally suppose it could be enjoyable to take a look at a number of the armor types in DragonAge: Veilguard (which I haven’t fairly but completed), as a result of they’re an attention-grabbing mixture of cheap and what I can solely describe as ‘terminal DeviantArt armor’ – a product of idea artwork whose solely referents are different idea artworks.
