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When you cite a book to support a claim, don’t do this https://twitter.com/hitchcockian/status/1350098711934885892
Specifically: don’t make a specific quantitative claim and then cite a whole book (which may or may not make the claim) instead of a specific page reference.
Ftr, the claim is on p.136
There's a lesson in source criticism here. The BIG claim that "72,000" vagrants were executed under Henry VIII appears in Federici's Caliban and the Witch, where it's stated (p.136) as fact. Where did Federici get it?
From another secondary source, W.G. Hoskins's Age of Plunder.
From another secondary source, W.G. Hoskins's Age of Plunder.
But Hoskins doesn't present it as fact -- though he hedges a bit on its plausibility, he is careful to say that it would be huge if true and that it is impossible to verify. Importantly, he also tells us where it came from: William Harrison, a Tudor writer, quoting someone else.
So this "fact" looks shaky: 3-4 links of the chain in (Hickel-Federici-Hoskins-Harrison) and we still have no idea of its empirical basis. The object of the figure itself has also shifted: "vagrants" in Hickel, but "great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues" for Harrison (1577):
The question of whether Harrison was himself faithful to the earlier source (Cardano) he was quoting hasn't even been addressed, either -- nor where Cardano (if it was he) was getting his numbers.
In other words, it's a mess.
In other words, it's a mess.
Now it's not great that Federici took what Hoskins presented as dubious estimate and re-presented it as flat fact. But then it's not much better that Hickel turned 72,000 "people" (Federici) into 72,000 "vagrants".
But what's WORSE...
But what's WORSE...
...is that this figure of 72,000 executed under Henry VIII was ALREADY exposed as a myth, in print, in NINETEEN FIFTY-NINE.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/205135227.pdf
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/205135227.pdf
Which I found by doing a Google.
So much for the information age.
So much for the information age.
PS. THIS. Whenever possible, quote the source -- not someone else who read the source too, maybe https://twitter.com/hyperplanes/status/1350304371943350272?s=20
And for the love of History PLEASE don't quote your "primary" sources from snippets in secondary sources, you are asking for trouble
