%% analysis for: [[2021-10-20 Eavesdrop (MF)]] %% I almost went on a long rant about how feminist history is real history and it's irresponsible to ignore the role of general's wives and queens and patrician women throughout history, but I hope I'd be preaching to the choir on that and instead, I bring you a brief history of burning ships. "Burn the ships behind you" as an idiom has come to be synonymous with the idea of commitment. Unlike "burning bridges" it's not about "torching" your relationships with other people when you leave, but rather ensuring that there's "no way out but forward." It began as military advice but has metastasized into the corporate world so thoroughly that I'm not even sure where I first heard it. So after I finished writing _Eavesdrop_ I decided to track down the origins of the phrase and see if the pop culture methodology has any basis in reality. Sun Tzu advocated for armies burn their boats and destroy the bridges behind them as they advanced into new territory. Since nobody is really sure if Sun Tzu really existed, it's hard to say whether he ever had the opportunity to follow his own advice. Well-known examples of people known for burning their ships behind them as an invasion strategy include [Alexander III of Macedon and Hernan Cortes](http://blenheimpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Burn-the-Boats.pdf). A lesser-known example is Tariq bin Ziyad, who according to Wikipedia ordered his ships burned during the 711 CE invasion of Spain. But in the interests of [tracking claims back to reliable sources](https://eleanorkonik.com/evaluating-references/), %% [[How to Evaluate References]] %% I decided to try and confirm whether anyone ever really did burn their ships. The Wikipedia page on Tariq bin Ziyad literally says that scholars think him burning his ships during the invasion was a myth first recorded hundreds of years after the relevant battles. I didn't have to go very far to cast doubt on that example. My second clue that this phenomenon might be more myth than reality was reading [The Golden Thread by Kassia St. Clair](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494802) %% [[The Golden Thread by Kassia St Clair]]%%, where she talked about how expensive and important Viking ships were. It turns out that Vikings probably did [burn their ships](https://scandinaviafacts.com/myth-or-fact-did-the-vikings-really-burn-their-ships/) as one of their funerary practices %% [[funerary practices]] %% for elites — along with [brutally sacrificing "volunteer" slave women](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/sacrifice/). %% [[2021-09-27 Sacrifice]] %%. It was rare and probably happened on land, not at sea, despite the pop culture image of firing flaming arrows onto boats that had been sent out to sea. Then, when I was writing the analysis for [liminal](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/liminal/) %% [[2021.09.29a Cows, thunder & how ancients exploited ceremonial roles]] %%, I realized that all the sources I was finding to say Alexander III of Macedon burned his ships were... [executive consultants & motivational speakers](https://mannerofspeaking.org/2015/01/03/burning-the-ships-and-sailing-away). %% [[Burning the Ships and Sailing Away by John Zimmer]] %% I started to get suspicious. Once I started digging, I came across more stories of "the ships you came aconquering on got burned" than "conquerors burned their own ships." Apparently %% link to the tweet %% there's [an oral history in Borneo](https://twitter.com/RoamFm/status/1443018746369482756) that the Mongols landed ships on the island, went off to fight, and then when they got back to the ships, found them burned... so they married into the local populations. %% related to [[2021-09-15 Vulpine (MF)]] storyline %% According to the sources I found, [Cortes probably didn't burn his ships](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/archaeologists-search-yucatan-coast-for-hernan-cortes-lost-ships/) (burning an entire ocean-going vessel is actually really hard) but almost definitely did destroy them. Cortes' conquest was not only [blatantly in defiance of his orders](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21hoe1/did_cortes_really_order_his_own_ships_burnt_did/), the regional governor was working to remove him from command of his ship. The sailors he was contracted with were were not eager to be pressed into service as foot soldiers. Perhaps in a later story we'll find out whether the general in _Eavesdrop_ has gotten himself into a similarly situation.