Stirrups: A Brief History
Historian Lynn White, in his
investigations of stirrups, turned history upside down after WWII. He forced historians to admit
they'd been looking in the wrong place. He showed us that kings and queens
don't shape the world. Artisans, millwrights, and engineers do.
White's best-known work was Medieval Technology
and Social Change. It set out the remarkable idea that the
invention of stirrups created the feudal system. His first sentence
is classic:
The history of the use of the horse in battle is
divided into three periods: first, that of the charioteer; second, that
of the mounted warrior who clings to his steed by pressure of the knees;
and third, that of the rider equipped with stirrups.
From there on, White is relentless. He begins with a
Frankish King, Charles Martel. Around AD 732, Martel finally stopped the
advancing Moorish cavalry near Poitiers in central France. But Martel did another rather strange thing that same
year. He seized huge lands from the Church and set up horse farming on
them. So, it seemed, even though he'd beaten the Moorish cavalry, Martel
decided to copy it.
A Historical Detective Story
While White worked on the puzzle, historians redated
the Battle of Poitiers to 733. Martel, it seems, began horse farming
before the Battle. Now we really have to ask what he was up to. So White
began searching history. He found that toe stirrups appeared wherever the aristocracy went barefoot.
But they were never commonplace.
White carefully studied archaeological sites. He found
that the wide use of the full-foot stirrup began right in AD 732. Very
suddenly we find war lances, armor, and heavy saddles.
The most ghastly element in his dating was the
appearance of crossbars on lances. Stirrups put the full momentum of a
horse behind a lance. Crossbars kept lances from going all the way through
victims. You couldn't get your lance back without one.
So that's why Martel took up horse farming! Someone in
his court had figured out how to take the stirrup to war. The machinery of
feudalism -- fiefdoms, knights in armor, and finally horse-driven
agriculture -- all rode in on this little invention.
Lynn White tells a remarkable tale about the power of
even small technology to transform human life.
