Blogs > Cliopatria > A Cliopatria Chronology ...

Aug 19, 2005

A Cliopatria Chronology ...


by Cliopatria


Happy first birthday to Sharon Howard's Early Modern Notes! In only a year, Sharon has fostered both Carnivalesque, the carnival for ancient and early modern history, and History Carnival, the twice monthly festival of all history blogging. Given all that, it is remarkable that EMN is only a year old, but it underscores how young history blogging is.

In"Were There Blog Enough and Time," I identified Kevin Murphy's Ghost in the Machine as the first history blog. Kevin's archives go back to 15 November 1999. Ancient history, indeed. I can't include all history blogs in the following table, because there are over 150 of us now, but here's what a chronology of the launching of some history blogs looks like:

November 1999 Ghost in the Machine
November 2000 Regions of Mind, Talking Points Memo, wood s lot
March 2001 Sherman Dorn
September 2001 Baraita

January 2002 Break of Day in the Trenches
April 2002 Informed Comment, Travelling Shoes
July 2002 Blogenspiel
September 2002 Abu Aardvark, Ancient World Web
November 2002 Cranky Professor, Cronaca, Easily Distracted, RoBoTNiK.

January 2003 Munnin
Feb 2003-August 2004 Invisible Adjunct
May 2003 Welcome To My World
July 2003 Historiological Notes, Little Professor, Renaissance Weblog
September 2003 Barista, Brian's Study Breaks

December 2003 Cliopatria, Far Outliers, Liberty & Power, Scott McLemee, War Historian, World History Blog

April 2004 Chapati Mystery
May 2004 Horizon, Rhine River
June 2004 Early Modern Notes, Siris
July 2004 Mode for Caleb
August 2004 Frog in a Well, Historiblogography
September 2004 History Talk, Hugo Schwyzer, Roblog

The chronology gives a sense of who the pioneers were: Kevin Murphy, Geitner Simmons, Josh Marshall, Mark Woods, Sherman Dorn, Naomi Chana, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Juan Cole, H. D. Miller, Another Damned Medievalist, Marc Lynch, Michael Tinkler, and David Nishimura were all on the net before we were.

Looking back at the archives of several of these blogs reminded me also that, in some interesting ways, Cliopatria had its birth in KC Johnson's struggle for tenure at Brooklyn College. He had the support of very prominent historians outside the college, but Tim Burke and I used our access on the net to support KC's struggle against his tenured" colleagues" there. Go back and read Tim's"The Shame of Brooklyn." [Scroll down. We didn't yet have permalinks.] It's Tim at his eloquent and thoughtful best. The idea for it was also nurtured in the wonderful discussions that took place at Invisible Adjunct. In KC's battle and IA's frustrated search for a tenure-track position, we shared a love of history and a devotion to our students. More than that, in his struggle and her travail, we knew that in some sense we were all up against it and that there was courage for tomorrow in our shared commitments. A lot of us are having first birthdays this year. Happy birthday to us all!

Finally, Chris Bray's farewell post above reminds me that our domestic sense of"being up against it" can be a very comfortable one. I'm grateful for his contributions to Cliopatria and hope that he can post with us from abroad. I think it's fair to say that his friend, Linus Kafka, speaks for all of us:"Good luck, Chris, and in all earnestness, God Bless."


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More Comments:

Stephen Tootle - 6/21/2005

I don't remember the nameless predecessor lasting that long but I will take your word for it. I thought Big Tent started in the spring of 2003. As the French say, "who cares?"

Tom Bruscino - 6/21/2005

The predecessor to Big Tent started in April 2003. To protect the innocent (and not so innocent) it shall remain nameless. Big Tent took over in January 2004. Rebunk started in May 2004.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/19/2005

Rob, Thanks for this note. Do you have a link to your livejournal archives on your current mainpage? I was pretty sure that I was missing some things from some bloggers' prior lives. I think that Cranky Professor, for example, lost an archive of earlier stuff when he made a change of servers; and I think that Horizon emerged from on earlier on-line chat format.

Rob MacDougall - 6/19/2005

That's a great chronology, Ralph, and lots of good reading.

I won't claim it's full-time history blogging, but I can immodestly point out history blogging on my pseudonymous LiveJournal from as early as November and December 2002 (http://www.livejournal.com/users/robotnik/1330.html ; http://www.livejournal.com/users/robotnik/3923.html ).

Of course I join everyone in wishing Chris health and safety and a swift return.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/19/2005

You know that the life of the mind never ceases at Cliopatria.

Sharon Howard - 6/19/2005

Ha! More evidence for the theory that Ralph never sleeps! (I thought it was bad enough that I woke up at 8am BST on a Sunday morning...)

Ralph E. Luker - 6/19/2005

Thanks for the correction. I knew that there would be errors. Will fix.

Sharon Howard - 6/19/2005

I knew that date for Historiological Notes couldn't be right, because it was around when I started reading blogs in April 2004 (it was one of the very first blogs I read, and gave me the idea for EMN's name). I don't know why the list in the sidebar only goes back to Sept 2004, but I followed the navigation links on archive pages and it actually started in early July 2003.