State of the military historioblogosphere, March 2008
It's time again for my six-monthly look at that portion of the blogosphere devoted to military history, as defined by the 'Wars and Warriors' section of Cliopatria's blogroll. So, let's begin.
Not a lot has changed since September, actually, and this plot shows why: the number of military history blogs has grown by only 13%, whereas between March and September 2007, it grew by more than 50%. Does this mean that fewer military history blogs are being started than before, or that instead Cliopatria is missing a significant portion of them? I'd be tempted to say the latter -- the Cliopatricians are only human, after all, and can only add those blogs which come to their attention -- but I can't think of any they've missed. Also, the rate of growth of the blogosphere may be slowing -- it's hard to say, as Technorati seem to have stopped publishing their quarterly state of the blogosphere reports.
Here's one change: the Australian share of the military historioblogosphere has doubled from, from 7% to 14%. This is almost entirely due to the Australian War Memorial's new group blog, which draws on a wide range of its staff. (I'm not sure if this means the AWM will abandon the practice of separate blogs for each of its exhibitions -- at the moment, the forthcoming Over the Front exhibition is the main focus.)
This growth has been at the expense of the Americans. Even taking into account the bloggers of unknown nationality -- who are mostly going to be Americans too, given their predominant interest in the American Civil War -- they're now closer to three-fifths of the military historioblogosphere than three-quarters, as before.
The number of women blogging about military history continues to slowly edge upwards. Much of the growth, and most of the bloggers, are in group blogs, mostly attached to an institution or research project, rather than individually.
Nothing to see here ...
... move along ...
... move along.
Finally, we come to the only bit that anybody ever looks at, the top 5 military history blogs by Technorati rank. And here there has in fact been quite a bit of movement. Two of the top 5 are new to the list, and there is also a new number 1. That's Civil War Memory, which has been threatening to become the most popular military history blog ever since I started doing these posts. Second is one of the new entrants, Kings of War. Though it's an excellent blog, and has impeccable academic credentials, it's only very rarely about military history: reflecting the interests of its maintainers, it's mostly about contemporary wars. But as it is in fact in Cliopatria's blogroll, and it has become very popular very quickly, King's of War has earned its place at number 2. At number three is the former number one, and still the doyen of military history blogs, Blog Them Out of the Stone Age. Fourth is the other newcomer, Rantings of a Civil War Historian. And bringing up the rear is Airminded (phew).
None of this prove anything, other than the fact that I enjoy plotting numbers in a half-arsed fashion (and really, who doesn't?) But what will happen next time? Will Australians take over the military historioblogosphere? Will Kevin Levin still have bragging rights over Mark Grimsley? Only time will tell ...