Started placing historical place names on Google earth after I finished my work today. Got digital longitude and latitudes that I converted to DMS (degrees, minutes, and seconds) using an online conversion utility. Then I manually found the places. It would be better to just load a Google Earth KML file. I took a photo:

[Click for larger photo]

Next step, paths between placenames to show military expeditions from my recently published paper.

Commerce in Pegu

Previous Posts:
1. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) I
2. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) II
3. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) III

Federici assesses the prospects of trade in Pegu c. 1563 rather negatively: “In the Indies there is not any merchandise that is good to bring to Pegu, unlesse it be at some times by chance to bring Opium of Cambaia, and if hee bring money hee shall lose by it.” By “money” he must mean silver. (This should be verified in the original manuscript though, the limitations of translations becoming apparent here.)

Silver could not be used as money in Pegu in the early sixteenth century according to work of the Japanese scholar Shigeru. As I observed in an earlier blog posting:

“According to Polanyi the so-called triad of trade, money and markets must be pulled apart. This is the major theme of Shigeru Ikuta’s ‘Portuguese Trade Between Malacca and Pegu in the Early Sixteenth Century’ (Shiroku 10 (1977): 55-62), namely that in the early sixteenth century there was no money that all the trading nodes along the Bay of Bengal held in common.” (On Karl Polyani, Dec 13 2005)

Did this situation of an unmonetized maritime foreign trade economy still exist in Bayinnaung’s Pegu of the 1560’s as well? Federici goes on to enumerate which kinds of goods are traded from various locations on the Bay of Bengal:

“Now the commodities that come from S. Tome are the onely merchandise for that place, which is the great quantitie of cloth made there, which they use in Pegu; which cloth is made of Bombast woven and painted, so that the more that kinde of cloth is washed, the more lively they shew their colours, which is a rare thing, and there is made such account of this kinde of cloth which is of so great importance, that a small bale of it will cost a thousand or two thousand duckets. Also from S. Tome they layde great store of red yarne, of Bombast died with a root which they call Saia, as aforesaid, which colour will never out.”

Federici then launches into a long description of how a trade voyage has to be planned perfectly to coincide with seasonal weather changes. A description of the trade from different places on the Bay of Bengal follows:

“Also there goeth another great ship from Bengala every yeere, laden with fine cloth of Bombast of all sorts, which arriveth in the Harbour of Pegu, when the ship that commeth from S. Tome departeth. The Harbour where these two ships arrive is called Cosmin.

“From Malaca to Martavan, which is a Port in Pagu, there commeth many small ships, and great, laden with Pepper, Sandolo, Porcellan of China, Camfora, Bruneo, & other merchandice.

“The ships that come from Meca enter into the port of Pagu & Cirion, and those ships bring cloth of Wooll, Scarlets, Velvets, Opium, and Chickens, by the which they lose, and they bring them because they have no other thing that is good for Pegu: but they esteem not the losse of them, for that they make such great gaine of their commodities, that they carrie from thence out of that Kingdome.

“Also the King of Assi [Achen] his Shippes come thether into the same port laden with Peper;

[This must be Acheh in northern Sumatra]

“…from the coast of Saint Tome of Bengala out of the Sea of Bara to Pegu are three hundreth miles, and they goe it up the River in foure dayes, with the encreasing water, or with the floud, to a Citie called Cosmin, and there they discharge their ships,…”

“Saint Tome of Bengala” can’t be found on the maps of the Bay of Bengal that I found online previously, but another online source has a gazetteer entry:

“Sao Tomé de Meliapor: (13°00′N – 80°15′E)
1530: 40 “casados”, 1545: 100 “familias”, 1600: 600 “casados”, from 1610s. in decline.Subrahmanyam “Improvising Empire – Portuguese trade and settlements in the Bay of Bengal 1500 – 1700″ or “”Comercio e conflito – A presença Portuguesa no Golfo de Bengala 1500 – 1700″ 1537: 50 “casados”, Diffie-Winius “Foundation of the Portuguese Empire 1415-1580″

(from: http://www.colonialvoyage.com/population.html)

Given the longitudes and latitudes and Google Earth, a comprehensive trade map for the Bay of Bengal for the sixteenth century becomes a reasonable project.

Wikipedia has probably gone a long way towards popularizing the notion of “peer review” in Wikipedia’s own practice and making it a normal expected practice for the large numbers of people partcipating in Wikipedia’s project, particularly after Wikipedia’s reliability vis-a-vis Encyclopedia Britannica became an issue that was resolved in favor of Wikipedia in Nature magazine.

Peer review results in frequent revision. Wikipedia is continually improving because continual peer review is built into Wikipedia’s system of online publication: “Wikipedia articles are getting constantly better as people go back again and again to old articles to add to them, reword misleading statements, correct factual errors, etc. This means that the quality of Wikipedia articles is ever-improving.” (source). Some even advocate the Wikipedia peer review process for other more formal areas like medical research pointing out its benefits:

“For readers, Wikipedia is a win. In traditional publishing, readers must wade through many articles on a subject, each written by a few experts, published at 1 moment in time. In Wikipedia you read 1 living article written by many, continually updated by many. Who needs 50 articles on avian flu when 1 will do? And Wikipedia content is often the best on the Web, which means the best anywhere.

“For writers, Wikipedia offers neither authorship, recognition, reward, nor punishment. Articles aren’t indexed, but with Google and Yahoo!, who needs it? The motivation for writing is love of information and a desire to share it. I say a variant of Wikipedia for medicine is the future — and it’s good.”

Alternatives to Wikipedia with stronger authorial and editorial control by experts in different topics are appearing. Nupedia, the predecessor failed because of a peer review and citation process that was too rigorous. Only time will tell whether authorship and citation can be added to online encyclopedias like Wikipedia without losing the spririt of volunteerism that drives content creation.

Of what use is early modern Burmese history (c. 1350-1600) to contemporary problems in Burma?

Can early modern history help us understand the current military regime? Can generalizations be made that hold over hundreds of years about the inherent nature of Burmese culture and people?

Clifford Geertz points out the fallacious nature of Lucien Pye’s supposedly timeless generalizations regarding Burmese personality published in 1962:

“Professor Pye’s incisive, exciting, yet ultimately disappointing book is directed toward discovering why Burma, seemingly “objectively” so well endowed, has advanced so little politically and economically. But the question it raises even more insistently is why studies of national character, on the surface similarly well endowed, have advanced so little scientifically.”

A great danger is also posed when the currently important issue of military rule in Burma comes to dominate all historical scholarship related to Burma. There are other dimensions of Burmese history than the military dimension. Because the kingdom of Myanmar engaged in large-scale expansionary warfare that engulfed much of mainland Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century and once again in the eighteenth century, does this mean that Burmese culture is someone inherently bellicose? Or as Geertz aptly summarizes Pye’s judgements, “hyper-individualistic, distrustful, liable to violence, fond of empty social form, and prefer uncertainty to determinism” ? More primary source publishing and direct comparison, less judgement and generalization.

What about the long periods of history during which the Burmese state effectively retreated from the world, moving the capital north under Thalun in the 1630’s, choosing not to align themselves with NAM, the non-aligned movement in the Post-WWII era, and recently moving their capital to Pyinmana, reorienting the center of the country northwards towards China. Geographical isolation and diverse ethnicities might equally be the cause here.

Wikipedia on Presentism:

The fallacy of presentism is also known as “Whig history” or the logical fallacy of “nunc pro tunc”. It is often “teleological” or “triumphalist”.

“Presentism is a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past. Most modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter.

“…’Whig history’, in which certain eighteenth and nineteenth century British historians wrote history in a way that used the past to validate their own political beliefs.”

A greater emphasis on primary sources is a partial antidote because presentism often exhibits itself as the selective use of sources:

“…this kind of approach, which emphasizes the relevance of history to the present, things which do not seem relevant receive little attention, resulting in a misleading portrayal of the past.”

Could a serious academic article be published in pieces or installments over time?

Balzac provides some precedent for this in the nineteenth century when he published the first serialized novels [my Balzac site, Robb's biography] . It’s easy to see how narrative can be created in installments, but could an academic paper be written in this fashion?

There is another Balzac publishing innovation that is common in blogs and Wikipedia that might help keep blogs from degenerating in quality: frequent revision. Balzac used to scribble changes on the final publishing proofs even after his novels were typeset. As his novels ran through successive editions and printings he would change and improve the novel. Despite the succesive improvements in quality, this must have driven his publishers crazy.

How might various genres of academic publishing be transformed under serialization and frequent revision? If under peer review an author found themselves raising the wrong question, the thesis to be proved as well as the support (reasons and evidence) might change. Collaboration and joint authorship might become more common. Toulmin’s model could help to explicitly keep track of changes in the logical argument and support from installment to installment [another Toulmin link, Wikipedia].

Just because blogging software is used to publish academic papers does not mean that the content of the academic article has to generate to the level of the opinionated and highly personal blogs that flood the internet. A distinction also has to made between blogs, which are basically serialized diaries full of personal opinions, and blogging software, which allows serialized web publishing, a potential powerful tool for academic publishing.

This recent article from insidehighered.com is about the transition of academic journals from print to electronic versions. The problem is especially acute in humanities disciplines such as history. Blogs are recommended as one solution. There is some discussion of how blogs can be supplemented with peer review:

“A disconcerting number of nonprofit publishers, especially scholarly societies and university presses that have the greatest presence in the humanities and social sciences fields, have a particularly complicated transition to make. The university presses and scholarly societies have been traditionally strong allies of academic libraries…this same set of publishers is particularly vulnerable, because their strategic planning must take place in the absence of the working capital and the economies of scale on which larger publishers have relied. As a result, some humanities journals published by small societies are not yet even available electronically. The community has a need for collaborative solutions like Project Muse or HighWire, (initiatives that provide the infrastructure to create and distribute electronic journals) for the scholarly societies that publish the smaller journals in the humanities and social sciences. But if such solutions are not developed or cannot succeed in relatively short order on a broader scale, the alternative may be the replacement of many of these journals with blogs, repositories, or other less formal distribution models.

In the comments section someone calls blog publishing “unsubstantiated drivel”. Perhaps he is not aware of blogging in the science community. Citation checking and peer review could be even more intensive and thorough under a blogging regime of academic publishing. Blogging would also seem to be ideal for collaborative writing. Another poster counters the claim that blogs are necessarily drivel:

“Unsubstantiated drivel is not limited to blog formats. It can also be found on copier paper, on newsprint, and even on acid-free paper in university library archives.

“If I had no budget but had a burning desire to launch a new journal with a cadre of colleagues working in very narrow new subfield that did not require complex visual layout (thus probably in the humanities), I wouldn’t hesitate to launch a peer-reviewed blog. Blog software is relatively cheap (even free) and is designed to organize mostly textual databases that are augmented chronologically, in short, databases of periodicals.

“Peer review could take place on-line, using anonymous aliases, in the form of comments to unpublished articles, with access limited by logins and passwords controlled by the editorial board. When ready, the article could then be published (with real names) for search engines to index for free, and for anyone to read for free. Comments could either be disabled, or enabled for a restricted, registered membership, whose contributions can be moderated by editorial board members (just like these comments).

“Blogs might be a poor scholar’s solution, but they do offer several advantages: low cost; control over input (peer review, drivel reduction, flame prevention); and an organized, online, open-access, searchable database archive.”

[Note: I have an article I am working on for publication that I should attempt to use the blogging format for. The main Chinese primary source, the Ming Shi-lu, is online. The main Burmese primary source "The Burmese Chronicle" I have in my own manuscript translation that can be put online in increments.]

Several episodes of warfare with ethnic minorities in Yunnan are part of the classical Chinese novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” [San-guo Yan-yi] that is set in the Three Kingdoms period (220-265 AD) of Chinese history (see chapters 87, 88, 89, 90). It is not clear whether the ethnic minorities that the Chinese subdued in their military campaigns were Tibeto-Burman or Tai.

In the novel the character Zhuge Liang (Kong Ming) leads these military campaigns. The phrase “Kong Ming captured the chieftain Meng Huo seven times” has become well-known in Chinese folklore supposedly.

Although these events take place well before the period of this weblog’s focus (1350 1600), they provide good background to later events in the Ming dynasty and show how far back the history of Chinese in Yunnan goes. They may have even influenced Chinese policy.

(This information is from pages 144-45, and 179 in Liew, Foon Ming (2003) “The Aboriginal Tribes and Tribal Principalities in Yunnan as Presented in the Ming and Qing Historiography: A Preliminary Survey” pp. 144-186 in Yukio, Hayashi and Sayavongkhamdy, Thongsa (editors) (2003) Cultural Diversity and Conservation in the Making of Southeast Asia and Southwest China Regional Dynamics in the Past and Present, edited by Bangkok: Amarin.)

Previous Posts:
1. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) I
2. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) II
3. Cesar Federici’s “Account of Pegu” (1563) III

From the port of Martaban, Federici sailed to Bayinnaung’s capital at Pegu. Federici describes the Burmese king Bayinnaung’s capital, palace, elephants, and army in great detail. He also shows Bayinnaung at work with the daily administrative work of his kingdom.

Later in the travelogue, the commerce of Pegu is described in great detail. Federici notes that only colorful Indian cloth from San Tome is claimed to be profitable but quickly dives into details that will make your head spin. These details on commerce need to be related to the larger context of maritime trade on the Bay of Bengal. A lot of this work has probably already been done by previous historians. An annotated bibliography of secondary sources that use Federici might be a good idea.

Sea travel was faster and safer than overland travel, so Federici chose to travel to Pegu by sea which took three or four days. He describes what it was like to travel in various boats in great detail.

Bayinnaung’s Capital Pegu

Arriving in Pegu, Frederici found two cities, an old city and the new city built by king Bayinnaung:

“…in the old Citie are the Merchant straungers, and Merchants of the Countrie, for there are the greatest doings and the greatest trade. This Citie is not very great, but it hath very great suburbes. Their houses be made with canes, and covered with leaves, or with straw, but the merchants have all one house or Magason, which house they call Godon, which is made of brickes, and there they put all their goods of any value, to save them from the often mischances that there happen to houses made of such stuffe.

“In the new Citie is the Palace of the King, and his abiding place with all his Barons and Nobles, and other Gentlemen; and in the time that I was there, they finished the building of the new Citie: it is a great Citie, very plaine and flat, and foure square, walled round about, and with Ditches that compasse the Walls about with water, in which Ditches are many Crockadels. It hath no drawe-bridges, yet it hath twenty Gates, five for every square on the Walls, there are many places made for Centinels to watch, made of Wood and covered or gilt with Gold, the Streets thereof are the fairest that I have seene, they are as streight as a line from one Gate to another, and standing at the one Gate you may discover to the other, and they are as broad as ten or twelve men may ride a-breast in them: and those Streets that be thwart are faire and large, these Streets, both on the one side and the other, are planted at the doores of the Houses with Nut trees of India, which make a very commodious shadow, the Houses be made of wood, and covered with a kind of tiles in forme of Cups, very necessary for their use.

Federici describes the king’s palace in the new city. It is, “made in forme of a walled Castle, with ditches full of water round about it, the Lodgings within are made of wood all over gilded, with fine pynacles, and very costly worke, covered with plates of gold. Truly it may be a Kings house.”

He was forced to view the elephants and make a contribution to their keepers:

“…within the gate there is a faire large Court, from the one side to the other, wherein there are made places for the strongest and stoutest Eliphantes, hee hath foure that be white, a thing so rare, that a man shall hardly finde another King that hath any such, as if this King knowe any other that hath white Elephants, he sendeth for them as for a gift. The time that I was there, there were two brought out of a farre Countrie, and that cost me something the sight them, for that they command the Merchants to goe to see them, and then they must give somewhat to the men that bring them: the Brokers of the Merchants give for every man halfe a Ducket, which they call a Tansa, which amounteth to a great summe, for the number of Merchants that are in that Citie; and when they have payd the aforesaid Tansa, they may chuse whether they will see them at that time or no, because that when they are in the Kings stall, every man may see them that will: but at that time they must goe and see them, for it is the kings pleasure it should be so.

He describes where the elephants are kept:

“He esteemeth these white Elephants very deerely, and they are had in great regard, and kept with very meet service, every one of them is in a house, all gilded over, and they have their meate given them in vessels of silver and gold. There is one blacke Eliphant, the greatest that hath beene seene, and he is kept according to his bignesse; he is nine cubits high, which is a marvellous thing. It is reported that this King hath foure thousand Elephants of Warre, and all have their teeth, and theyuse to put on their two uppermost teeth sharpe pikes of Iron, and make them fast with rings, because these beasts fight and make battell with their teeth; hee hath also very many young Eliphantes that have not their teeth sprouted forth: also this King hath a brave devise in hunting to take these Eliphantes when he will, two miles from the Citie.”

Warfare

Frederici describes how the Burmese hunt and catch wild elephants and then goes on to describe the Bayinnaung’s armies and the role that elephants play in battle (p. 143):

”It is reported that the greatest strength that the King of Pegu hath is in these Eliphantes, for when they goe to battell, they set on their backes a Castle of wood bound thereto, with bands under his bellie: and in everie Castle foure men, verie commodiouslie sette to fight with Harqubuses, with Bowes and arrowes, with Dartes, with Pikes, and other launcing weapons: and they say that the skinne of this Eliphant is so hard, that an Harquebusse will not pierce it, unlesse it be in the eye, temples, or some other tender place of his body.

“And besides this, they are of great strength, and have a very excellent order in their battell, as I have seene at their Feasts which they make in the yeere, in which Feasts the King makes Triumphs, which is a rare thing and worthie memorie, that in so barbarous a People there should bee such goodly orders as they have in their Armies, which be distinct in squares of Eliphants, of Horsemen, of Harquebusers and Pikemen, that truly the number of them are infinite: but their armour and weapons are very naught and weake, as well the one as the other: they have very bad Pikes, their Swords are worse made, like long Knives without points,,

“…his Harquebusses are most excellent, and alwaies in his warres he hath eighty thousand Harquebusses, and the number of them encreaseth daily. Because the King will have them shoot every day at the Plancke, and so by continuall exercise they become most excellent shot: also he hath great Ordnance made of very good metall; to conclude, there is not a King on the Earth that hath more power or strength then this King of Pegu, because hee hath twenty and sixe crowned Kings at his command. Hee can make in his Campe a million and an halfe of men of warre in the field against his Enemies.”

“The state of his Kingdome, and maintenance of his Armie, is a thing incredible to consider, and the victuals that should maintayne such a number of people in the warres: but he that knoweth the nature and qualitie of that people, will easily beleeve it. I have seene with mine eyes, that those people and Souldiers have eaten of all sorts of wilde beasts that are on the earth, whether it be very filthie or otherwise all serveth for their mouthes: yea, I have seene them eate Scorpions and Serpents, also they feed of all kinde of herbes and grasse. So that if such a great Armie want not Water and Salt, they will maintayne themselves a long time in a bush with rootes, flowers, and leaves of trees, they carrie Rice with them for their Voyage, and that serveth them in stead of Comfits, it is so dainty unto them.”

Wealth of the Kingdom

Federici then goes on to describe the great wealth of Bayinnaung consisting of gold, silver, gem stones, and the treasury where it is all kept.

“And within this place or Court are foure gilded houses covered with Lead, and in every one of these are certaine heathenish Idols of a very great valure. In the first house there is a Statue of the image of a Man of gold very great, and on his head a Crowne of gold beset with most rare Rubies and Saphires, and round about him are foure litle children of gold. In the second house there is the Statue of a Man of silver, that is set as it were sitting on heapes of money: whose stature in height, as he sitteth, is so high, that his highnesse exceeds the height of any one roofe of an house; I measured his feet, and found that they were as long as all my body was in height, with a Crowne of his head like to the first. And in the third house there is a Statue of. brasse of the same bignesse, with a like Crowne on his head. In the fourth and last house, there is a Statue of a Man as big as the other, which is made of Gansa, which is the metall they make their money of, and this metall is made of Copper and Lead mingled together.

“This Statue also hath a Crowne on his head like the first: this treasure being of such a value as it is, standeth in an open place that every man at his pleasure may goe and see it: for the keepers thereof never forbid any man the sight thereof. I say as I have said before, that this King every yeere in his feasts triumpheth: and because it is worthie of the noting, I thinke it meet to write thereof, which is as followeth. The King rideth on a triumphant Cart or Wagon all gilded, which is drawne by sixteene goodly Horses: and this Cart is very high with a goodly Canopie over it, behind the Cart goe twenty of his Lords and Nobles, with every one a rope in his hand made fast to the Cart for to hold it upright that it fall not. The King sitteth in the middle of the Cart; and upon the same Cart about the King stand foure of his Nobles most favoured of him, and before this Cart wherein the King is, goeth all his Armie as aforesaid, and in the middle of his Armie goeth all his Nobilitie, round about the Cart, that are in his Dominions, a marvellous thing it is to see so many people, such riches and such good order in a People so barbarous as they bee. This King of Pegu hath one principall wife, which is kept in a Seralyo, hee hath three hundreth Concubines, of whom it is reported, that hee hath ninetie children.

Royal Administrative Work

Bayinnaung is described in his daily administrative work in the throne hall dispensing justice:

“This King sitteth every day in person to heare the suits of his Subjects, but he nor they never speake one to another, but by supplications made in this order. The King sitteth up aloft in a great Hall, on a Tribunall seate, and lower under him sit all his Barons round about, then those that demand audience enter into a great Court before the King, and there set them downe on the ground forty paces distant from the Kings person, and amongst those people there is no difference in matters of audience before the King, but all alike, and there..

He describes the legal documents written on palm leaf manuscripts:

“they sit with their supplications in their hands, which are made of long leaves of a tree, these leaves are three quarters of a yard long, and two fingers broad, which are written with a sharpe Iron made for the purpose, and in those leaves are their supplications written, and with their supplications, they have in their hands a present or gift, according to the weightinesse of their matter.

“Then come the Secretaries downe to reade these supplications, taking them and reading them before the King, and if the King thinke it good to doe to them that favour or justice that they demand, then hee commandeth to take the presents out of their hands: but if he thinke their demand be not just or according to right, he commandeth them away without taking of their gifts or presents.”

Federici describes the severe inheritance tax of one third of a deceased foreigner’s wealth (p. 146).

The “Hedgehog and the Fox” by Isaiah Berlin splits intellectual activity into two categories, unifiers and splitters:

“there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way….

“The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.”

Blogging is certainly very foxy; the use of an outliner making it more hedgehoggy. In writing history, if the search for facts and new sources is fox-like, then interpretation is hedgehog-like. Antiquarianism, collecting historical facts and objects as an end, in and of itself, without any further interpretation or attempt to fit them into a system, is the ultimate historiographical foxism. Historicism or the new historicism, the ultimate historiographical hedgehogism. Karl Popper was a heroic hedgehog critic. Foucault was a notorious hedgehog.

I try to balance the two extremes with primary source translation (fox) and studying results from world history valid across cultures (hedgehog).

Wikipedia’s list of blog types includes educational blogs (students and teachers talking about a course), but research and scholarship is another essential ingredient of higher education. There is no “research blog” category defined and it is difficult if impossible to find any historians or humanities scholars talking about their work in a blog, but this may change in the future.

The closest category to a general “research blog” is the “science blog” which is becoming increasingly popular in the science research community. There are issues though:

“…Individual scientists have received the idea of blogging with mixed feelings: while some see it as an excellent new way to disseminate and discuss data, others have expressed concern about potential damage to their credibility and plundering of their intellectual property. However, a number of scientific publishers have recently begun to embrace blogging as a means of promoting discussion.”

Lack of peer review is also an issue. As more history scholarship makes it into online repositories and journals, intellectual property theft of ideas will become less of an issue since a simple Google search will reveal the plagiarism.

I used to be a contributing editor at Lambda the Ultimate, a computer science blog devoted to discussion on programming language research run by a computer science professor in Israel. Most computer science research papers make it to the web, so it’s not difficult to keep his blog going. Since computer scientists have to be very focused in their research to make contributions they often lose touch with developments in nearby specialties that could be relevant to their own research. Blogs like Lambda the Ultimate help them broaden their perspective a little.

As important historical sources like the Ming Shi-lu make their way online or the Si Ku Quan Shu [Qing Imperial Library or "Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature" compiled between 1772-1787][Internet Public Library], the web will probably increase as a publishing platform for historical research also.