Historical reenactment

• 1. Introduction

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  Historical reenactment draws people out of their ordinary lives and into the clothes, weapons, and daily habits of the dead. In 1674, King Charles II of England ordered the construction of an eighty-yard-wide fortress near Windsor Castle, complete with twelve-foot-thick walls and a moat, then sent seven hundred serving soldiers to storm it over five days, firing cannon and exploding mines, all to replay a siege that had happened just the year before. More than three centuries later, more than fifty thousand Union and Confederate veterans gathered at Gettysburg to do something similar: to walk again the ground where their comrades had fallen.

  What drives people to spend enormous effort recreating experiences they were not part of, or in some cases, that they desperately wished to leave behind? And how has a practice that started in Roman amphitheaters become one of the most debated forms of public history in the modern world? Those are the questions at the heart of what follows.

• 2. From Rome to Windsor

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  Romans staged naval battles inside flooded amphitheaters, spectacles known as naumachia, for the entertainment of city crowds. Medieval tournaments took up the same impulse, often staging mock combat that deliberately echoed Ancient Rome. By the seventeenth century in England, military displays and mock battles had become a recognizable form of public event.

  The first known reenactment on record came in 1638, attributed to Lord James Dunn of Coniston, featuring dozens of costumed performers in a staged battle in London. Just seven years later, Roundhead soldiers, fresh from actual victories in the Civil War, reenacted a recent battle at Blackheath in 1645, even as the real conflict continued around them.

  The 1674 Windsor recreation was the most elaborate of the era. The occasion was the siege of Maastricht the previous year, in which James, Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II, had been a commanding officer. The event featured raiders capturing prisoners, parleys between attackers and defenders, and crowds drawn from London and the surrounding towns. Among those who attended was the noted diarist Samuel Pepys, whose presence suggests this was regarded as a social event of genuine significance.

• 3. The Romantic Revival

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  By the nineteenth century, Romanticism had made the Middle Ages fashionable across Britain and Europe. The industrial age and the Enlightenment were seen by many as cold and mechanical, and medieval culture offered what felt like a warmer, more heroic alternative. Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe was so popular that in 1820 it was playing in six different theatrical productions in London at the same time.

  The Eglinton Tournament of 1839 became the defining moment of this revival. Organized by Archibald Montgomerie, the 13th Earl of Eglinton, and held on a meadow at a loop in the Lugton Water in Scotland, the event was a full reenactment of a medieval joust and revel. Eglinton declared the public welcome, asked for medieval fancy dress if possible, and made tickets free. One hundred thousand spectators attended. Thirteen medieval knights on horseback rode in the pageant.

  Eglinton himself later reflected on the event with characteristic ambivalence: "I am aware of the manifold deficiencies in its exhibition," he wrote, "I am aware that it was a very humble imitation of the scenes which my imagination had portrayed, but I have, at least, done something towards the revival of chivalry." The tournament's influence extended to a similar lavish event in Brussels in 1905. The Eglinton Tournament also directly inspired a German approach to reenactment built around Walter Benjamin's ideas about the spiritual trace and aura a monument can carry, an idea that would shape European living history into the present day.

• 4. Veterans, Survivors, and Cameras

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  Within a year of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, survivors of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment returned to the scene of their defeat and posed for the camera in a series of still photographs. The impulse was not pure spectacle; it was also testimony.

  In 1895, members of the Gloucestershire Engineer Volunteers traveled to the Cheltenham Winter Gardens to recreate their famous last stand at Rorke's Drift, eighteen years after the original battle. A force of twenty-five British soldiers replayed the defense against seventy-five Zulus at a Military Fete in front of an audience.

  American Civil War veterans used reenactment for a different purpose: to honor the dead and to pass on the experience of the war to those who had not lived it. The Great Reunion of 1913, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, brought more than fifty thousand Union and Confederate veterans together. Reenactments of elements of the battle, including Pickett's Charge, were part of the event. By this point, reenactment had traveled far from court spectacle. It had become a form of collective mourning.

  In Russia during the early twentieth century, reenactment took on a strongly political character. A 1920 recreation of the 1917 Storming of the Winter Palace, staged on the third anniversary of the event, so impressed filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein that it directly inspired scenes in his film October: Ten Days That Shook the World.

• 5. The Modern Hobby

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  Modern reenacting in the United States traces its origins to the Civil War Centennial commemorations held between 1961 and 1965. After more than six thousand reenactors gathered near the original Manassas battlefield for a 125th anniversary event, the hobby expanded rapidly through the late 1980s and 1990s. Today, more than a hundred Civil War reenactments are held across the country each year.

  Participants range from young children whose parents bring them along to elderly veterans of the hobby. The community has developed its own taxonomy, most of it originating in American Civil War reenactment circles. At one end are the "farbs," also called "polyester soldiers," who prioritize participation over accuracy and may show up with velcro fasteners, modern cigarettes, or anachronistic footwear. The word "farb" appeared around 1960 or 1961, and its exact origin is disputed. One theory traces it to the phrase "Far be it from authentic." Another connects it to the German word Farbe, meaning color, because inauthentic reenactors were seen as too colorful compared with the dull blues, grays, and browns of real Civil War uniforms. According to Burton K. Kummerow, a member of the Black Hats, CSA group in the early 1960s, he first used the term as a form of mock German to describe a fellow reenactor. George Gorman of the 2nd North Carolina picked up the word at the Centennial Manassas Reenactment in 1961, and it spread from there.

  At the opposite extreme are the "progressives," sometimes called "hardcore authentics" or, more derisively, "stitch counters." These reenactors research seam construction, eat only seasonally and regionally appropriate food, and stay in character throughout an event. Their desire for full immersion often leads them away from large public events toward smaller gatherings where the illusion is easier to maintain.

• 6. Hollywood and History

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  Films including Gettysburg, Glory, The Patriot, and Alatriste all drew on reenactment groups for support. Reenactors arrived on set already equipped with period-accurate uniforms, weapons, and knowledge of military procedures, camp life, and tactics.

  Actor Sam Elliott, who played Union General John Buford in Gettysburg, described the reenactors in a documentary about the film's making: "I think we're really fortunate to have those people involved. In fact, they couldn't be making this picture without them; there's no question about that. These guys come with their wardrobe, they come with their weaponry. They come with all the accoutrements, but they also come with the stuff in their head and the stuff in their heart."

  The relationship between commercial productions and the reenactment community runs in both directions. Many castles, museums, and historical tourist sites employ professional reenactors to animate exhibits. In 2008, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve and North Carolina's Tryon Palace provided the period backdrop for early 1800s life in the Mystery Mardi Gras Shipwreck documentary. Commercial reenactment shows are generally scripted and choreographed, a contrast to the immersive tactical events that serious hobbyists prefer, but both depend on the same deep reservoir of research and equipment that defines the community at its most committed.

• 7. Debates and Blind Spots

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  Historians are divided on the value of reenactment. Supporters argue it offers a form of "history from below," making the past accessible to people who would otherwise turn a blind eye to monuments and museums. Critics point to the impossibility of actually recovering the past. "We are not past but present people, with experience, knowledge, feelings, and aims previously unknown," writes the scholar Lowenthal, arguing that everything about reenactment is filtered through a modern lens, however authentic the costume.

  In American Civil War reenactment, a recurring worry is that obsessive attention to uniform accuracy can push questions about the war's causes, including the end of slavery, to the margins. One reenactor, defending his participation, put the problem plainly: "I do this because I believe in what they believed in... The real pure hobby is not just looking right; it's thinking right." An anthropologist quoted in the literature on the subject pushes back against this position: "Historical authenticity resides not in fidelity to an alleged past, but in being honest about how the present represents that past."

  The community has other documented blind spots. Reenactors are overwhelmingly white in the United States. At the 150th anniversary event at Gettysburg in 2013, five black reenactors constituted, by one account, "the largest bloc of black civilians anyone had ever seen at an event whose historical basis was full of black civilians." Jenny Thompson's book Wargames identifies a separate pattern: a tendency for reenactors to gravitate toward elite units, such as commandos, paratroopers, or Waffen-SS divisions, leaving the most common types of soldiers from any given period underrepresented. In Britain, a disproportionate number of Napoleonic War reenactors portray members of the 95th Rifles, a phenomenon the source attributes partly to the popularity of the fictional character Richard Sharpe.

  Some veterans have been sharply critical. A World War II veteran said in 1988: "If they knew what a war was like, they'd never play at it." A more recent controversy surrounded U.S. politician Rich Iott, whose participation in a World War II reenactment portraying the German 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking attracted significant media attention during his 2010 Congressional campaign. Similar concerns have attached to Igor Girkin, a Russian reenactor who later led Russian-aligned forces in the Russo-Ukrainian War. More recently, collaboration between academic historians and reenactment groups has grown. At the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, reenactment groups have led demonstration sessions, including iron-smelting and staged dueling events.