Open-ended agreements were more frequently used in the Middle Ages to display submission by the vanquished side, as a substitution for released captives, and to ensure the loyalty of a ruler’s subordinates and even allies (p. ![]() In essence, regardless of the kinds of situation a hostage would be required in, the common thread was the existence of a promise, with or without a temporal deadline. The book lays out the varieties of medieval hostageship. Not limiting himself to legal history, Kosto is quick to emphasise the social and political history of hostageship, and that does wonders for our understanding of the notion as held in medieval society. This contextualization is necessary to understand a concept that is not only complex but also medieval to its core. And the contexts undoubtedly seep through, cementing the whole book together in an extraordinary fashion. The book’s concern, however, is to investigate the contexts of hostageship rather ‘than with tracing institutional genealogies’ (p. Kosto recognizes this, and also criticizes the common but mistaken conflation of hostageship with suretyship, and the confusing distinction between, yet simultaneous intertwinement of, hostages on the one hand and captives on the other. ![]() Many studies on hostages have used a much broader and extensive time frame, covering only briefly developments in the Middle Ages. It is indeed true that medieval hostageship has been – perhaps quite intentionally – overlooked. ![]() However, it is also interesting to discover that hostages were not only used in the context of armed conflict, but also in endless financial transactions. Nonetheless, the Middle Ages are selected as the main focus of this book, due to the practice of hostageship being at its peak in this period and, as the author puts it, featuring in ‘every major politico-military development or event between the fifth and fifteenth centuries’ (p. In first providing a general overview of the history of hostages, hostage precursors are revealed in Rome and Persia, and even pre-Islamic Arabia. And finally, despite the societal progress made in key areas such as law and governance, ‘physical control over people remained crucial’ in the politics of this time, though one also sees international law and economics coming to the fore. Secondly, as society changed, so did the nature of hostageship. The author is very clear in his claims: firstly, medieval hostageship was not only a guarantee as such, but was firmly embedded in contemporary politics. 5), although it also existed in an exceedingly multi-facetted way in the Middle Ages. Drawing on the work of Ascan Lutteroth, Kosto also identifies the modern distinction between hostages forcibly taken and hostages given as a result of negotiation, which has been seen as a product of modern international law (p. But essentially, this is a deeply historical investigation and the parts of the book where it deals with the modern period are not central to its thesis. ![]() Kosto somewhat understates the variety of modern hostageship and could have emphasized this further. 220–6), he seems to overlook the modern use of the term and only makes reference to it, briefly, in terms of the Hostage Convention of 1979, the US Lieber Code or the Nuremberg Trials. However, aside from a few pages at the end of the book (p. The pitfalls of linguistic interpretation in history are evident and Kosto is very good at putting the medieval usage of 'hostage' in context. This distinction between the modern sense of the term and the medieval one is something Kosto continually addresses in his bid to avoid the historian’s most cardinal sin, anachronism. In attempting to emphasise the distinction between the modern perception of hostageship and that of the medieval era, Kosto argues that in the past hostageship was seen as not simply a legal issue, but also as a political one. (2) However, the meaning of hostageship has undergone many transformations over time, some of which are brought under the microscope Professor Adam Kosto as he dissects the development of this phenomenon during the Middle Ages. The word ‘hostage’ might immediately bring to mind hostile situations: the entrapment of a wealthy businessman’s daughter in exchange for money, a terrorist incident (1) or a manifestation of domestic abuse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |