History Related
Subjects where the record is thin enough that how we know is part of the story. Each one told from origins to aftermath, with the evidence in view, what a contemporary wrote down, what a modern historian counted, and what somebody reconstructed all stay visible instead of smoothing into one confident voice.
Short Histories
One subject at a time, done properly. A book that grows by adding sections rather than by filling an outline, a subject earns one when its record is thin or contested enough that the provenance matters as much as the narrative.
The Hanseatic League
A trading network with no capital, no borders and no founding, from the towns that grew into it to the last diet of 1669, and the afterlife that ran on to 1853.
Start reading → ContentsThe book
All sections, with each part listed. More append here as they are written.
Open contents →Atlases
Episodes where the geography is the argument, a campaign narrated over the ground it was fought on, scene by scene.
Walkthroughs
Where the narrative stops and hands a dispute over. A Short History may say a question is open; a walkthrough is where it gets argued to a verdict.
The economics side
Much of this material is economic: the Hanseatic sections run on cargo, coinage and credit. History owns the narrative; economics owns the apparatus that evaluates it. Neither contains the other.