Historical Recreation:

U.K. vs U.S. ?

I have been doing historical recreation for more than fifty years in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Some years ago I had an online exchange with someone doing historical recreation in England, largely on the differences between how they do it and how we do it, concluded that their version and ours were quite different, posted about it on my blog and got a collection of comments.

I was wrong. Reading the comments it became clear that what I was observing was not a difference between historical recreation in the U.S. and in the U.K. but between two versions of historical recreation. My experience was with one version, my correspondent’s with the other, but both existed in both countries.

Both are educational; the difference is whom they are intended to educate. The version I am familiar with is mainly targeted at the participants. If there are classes at an SCA event — there are more than a thousand at the annual Pennsic War,^[1]¹ much smaller numbers at smaller events — they are by and for the participants. The audience at an SCA tournament is a medieval audience, dressed in some attempt at period clothing. A spectator at the tournament may be one of the people cooking the evening’s feast or, later in the evening, teaching renaissance dance.

The form of recreation my correspondent described is also educational, but educational mainly for the audience. In England, by his description, it is tied much more closely to the official educational system than are similar activities in the U.S., with performances to some degree designed to fit into the standard curriculum. At one point in the conversation he appeared to take fitting into the official curriculum as part of the definition of educational, although when pressed on the point he denied it. What was clear was that he thought of “educational” as meaning “educating the audience,” while I thought of the activity’s primary educational role as educating the participants or, perhaps more precisely, encouraging them to educate themselves. His version is (modestly) subsidized by the state; some of the customers for the performances are state schools. Participants are sometimes paid but not very much, with luck enough to cover their expenses and perhaps a beer after the performance is over.

The difference in educational target is not complete. SCA groups occasionally do demos for an audience, usually as a recruiting device, occasionally for a school. Participants in performing groups must educate themselves in order to perform. And one of the benefits, for a British group, of a performance at a historical site is the opportunity, after the performance is over, to enjoy the site for themselves.

So, what do we get out of it? The enjoyment of history for its own sake; the opportunity to rediscover lost skills and crafts; a chance to educate people (sometimes); oh and the biggest draw of all to the events at historic sites is the chance to be there after 5 o’clock when the public have gone away so we can live the life in a real place for a while. (A U.K. reenactor commenting on my blog.)

The British groups described to me had a high level of required physical authenticity. The SCA, in contrast, has a minimal level of required authenticity — some attempt at pre-17th century garb. But while physical authenticity is not required it is admired and there is a lot of it at a high standard. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that our best armorers or costumers are as good as theirs although our average is somewhat lower and our minimum much lower.

If an event is a performance to educate an audience it makes sense to require all participants to have consistent period garb. If we are educating ourselves participants will be at various levels of authenticity, may be, in the SCA are, recreating characters from different times and places. Civil War recreation in the U.S. is, like the SCA, primarily aimed at educating the participants but, unlike the SCA, maintains a high level of physical authenticity and, within a unit, consistency. That suggests a different distinction, between recreation tied to specific places and events and recreation of a broader period. Another difference is that a Civil War group, American or British, that is recreating a battle knows who is going to win it. In an SCA battle, at Pennsic with hundreds of fighters on each side, both sides are trying to win. It is in that respect more authentic, a contest, as a real battle was, not an act.

Civil War groups in the U.S. are recreating particular military units in particular battles. British groups recreating their civil war are, I gather, doing the same thing. British groups recreating earlier periods may not recreate a particular battle but are often tied to a particular place — they, unlike Americans doing medieval recreation, have real castles to do it in. All of that pushes in the direction of garb and gear from a specific time.

Some American groups recreating American history are similarly tied to a place and time — Old Sturbridge village, for example, recreates a Massachusetts village from the early 19^th century. It is a living museum with forty reconstructed buildings and more than two hundred acres of land, a very much more professional project than anything the SCA does. The staff is a mix of professionals and volunteers; the SCA has a few paid employees at the corporate level dealing with membership and the like but everything below that is volunteers. As best I can tell, Sturbridge and similar sites are the equivalent of the castles British recreators perform at — in a society richer in money than Britain, poorer in surviving structures.

There are other forms of historical recreation which I know much less about and which might tell us more about the reasons for the differences among different forms. It would be interesting to compare Europeans recreating the American wild west with Americans recreating the culture of medieval Europe.

Sent from Pennsic

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