Comments on: Ormord Review: Immigrant England

By: Vincent Cervone

Vincent Cervone — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:32:19 +0000

Emily, I think that your review.summary of the book was effective and it brought up some points that I personally didn’t come away with. I believe that William Mark Ormrod, Bart Lambert, and Jonathan Mackman wrote the book with other people in the academic community in mind, some of the language that was used I believe isn’t suited for others who don’t specialize or have interest in this topic. I strongly believe that if the three authors stepped back and took a different approach, that this would be a great book for general readers. I loved the topic of this weeks book and I felt that your review covered everything of importance.

By: Anna Ciambotti

Anna Ciambotti — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 03:32:21 +0000

This book review effectively summarized the book, and offered some compliments to the authors. I slightly disagree with the statement that this book could have been read by a broad audience. I think the author wrote this more for people within the academic field interested in this specific topic. The author does a lot of assuming in terms of important names, regimes, wars, and political relations. This book could have been a really interesting topic for general readers if written differently.

By: Logan Skorupa

Logan Skorupa — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 02:40:20 +0000

Hi Emily,
I agree with the points you make in your review on the utility of “Immigrant England” and its associated website to those studying England in the late medieval/early modern period. While it seems I didn’t have as easy a time navigating the website as you did, I nevertheless think it is an interesting tool that, alongside the book, dispels many of the myths about immigration to England and the attitudes of the state and its officials towards ‘aliens’ at this point in history. I especially agree with the criticism that this book could have benefited from a chapter or two more directly addressing and collating some of the more universal experiences and realities for immigrants over the years, as I personally found it difficult to mentally organize all the changes in immigrant groups circumstances by the end of the book.

By: emeyers

emeyers — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 18:45:50 +0000

In reply to Dr. Otis. That is a great point. I think the point made in the book is general enough that is does still makes the data (or lack thereof), but extrapolating any further would need cleaner data. As for using "messy data" in the work and the field, I think it can create issues like hindsight and cherry picking (or argument of that). My complaint with the work as a whole falls into this a bit with the fact that the authors were vague enough to prove the point without too many "weeds" trapping them, and this is definitely where that issue could be seen as a hinderance to their research arguments.

By: Dr. Otis

Dr. Otis — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 18:18:35 +0000

SAMPLE COMMENT: I’m fascinated by the chart you pulled from the Immigrant England website, especially the part where 76% of the dataset doesn’t include nationality information. Do you think that matters for the analyses presented in the book? What do you think the larger implications of such “messy data” are for this kind of quantitative work?