Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity, 1450-1600

by Yuval Noah Harari

Renaissance military memoirs studied for what they reveal of contemporary attitudes towards war, selfhood and identity.

This is a study of autobiographical writings of Renaissance soldiers. It outlines the ways in which they reflect Renaissance cultural, political and historical consciousness, with a particular focus on conceptions of war, history,selfhood and identity. A vivid picture of Renaissance military life and military mentality emerges, which sheds light on the attitude of Renaissance soldiers both towards contemporary historical developments such as the rise of the modern state, and towards such issues as comradeship, women, honor, violence, and death. Comparison with similar medieval and twentieth-century material highlights the differences in the Renaissance soldier's understanding of war and of human experience.

Genres: History, Military History, Military Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and philosopher. He is considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals working today.

Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002. He is currently a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Harari co-founded the social impact company Sapienship, focused on education and storytelling, with his husband, Itzik Yahav.

Reviews

[Anton Tomsinov · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful journey into minds of the Renaissance warrior elite. It left me awed by the distance between the modern men and the fighting noblemen of the sixteenth century. Reading their memoirs feels like an exploration of an alien planet. Theirs was the world where war is normal and peace is despised, where only honourable deeds form one's life-story and save a man from darkness of obscurity, where glory makes a warrior equal to the kings, but commoners don't get remembrance or compassion. This book left me thinking about history and identity, reliability of eye-witnesses and different moral systems. Alas, the book is dealing strictly with noble memoirs, though it would benefit from additional information on their authors. Some examples in the text clearly show the difference between written and actual emotions of the authors, so questions remain as to what was intentionally left out of the memoirs.

[Maud · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo leí sin ningún interés acerca del tema en cuestión y me llevé una grata sorpresa. Pese a lo específico del título, Harari logra que este estudio sobre un tema tan particular abra el camino a reflexiones que abarcan literatura, la evolución del papel del individuo e incluso cuestionamientos sobre lo que debería ser la historiografía. No esperen encontrar aquí al autor de Sapiens, y qué bueno.