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{ "a_id": [ "d9goe5n" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "The United States did institute a draft during WWII; of the roughly 16 million men who served from 1940-1946, roughly 10 million were drafted; \n\nYear|Men inducted\n:--|:--\n1940|18,633\n1941|923,842\n1942|3,033,361 \n1943|3,323,970\n1944|1,591,942 \n1945|945,862\n1946|183,383\n\nDue to the length, this comment will be split into a couple parts. Due to the commonality of the situation, I focus on the journey of the drafted infantry replacement. They journey of the voluntary enlistee was essentially the same; just substitute going to your local recruiting station and signing up versus being drafted.\n\n**The Draftee's Journey**\n\nRobert S. Rush’s book *GI: The US Infantryman in World War II* gives a very nice overview of the US infantryman’s experience in WWII, by using four vignettes, each of a fictional soldier in;\n\n* Pacific Ocean Area (a “Michael O’Brien”, of the 165th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. Michael voluntarily enlisted pre-war into the New York National Guard)\n\n* North Africa and the Mediterranean (a “John Smith”, of the 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division. John voluntarily enlists and is assigned as a replacement to the 76th Infantry Division, but is later transferred to the 34th Infantry Division after one of their companies suffers heavy losses at Kef al Ahmar Pass in March 1943)\n\n* Europe (a “Joseph Stein”, of the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. Joseph is drafted, and later receives a field commission as an officer)\n\n* Southwest Pacific (a “Gordon Cockrell”, of the 2nd Battalion, 382nd Infantry Regiment, 96th Infantry Division. Gordon is drafted, and initially assigned to the 89th Infantry Division, but is eligible for and attends Officer Candidate School and is later assigned to the 96th Infantry Division)\n\nFirst, the seven draft registrations and draft classifications:\n\n**Draft Registrations:**\n\nRegistration|Date|Criteria for Registration\n:--|:--|:--\n1|October 16, 1940|Men who were 21-36 years old\n2|July 1, 1941|Men who had turned 21 since October 16, 1940\n3|February 14-16, 1942|Men who had turned 20 on or before December 31, 1941, and were not older than 45 by February 16, 1942\n4|April 25-27, 1942|Men who were at least 45 on or before February 16, 1942 and not older than 65 on or before April 27, 1942 (not liable for military service)\n5|June 30, 1942|Men born after January 1, 1922 and before June 30, 1924\n6 (I)|December 10-31, 1942|Men born from July 1-December 31, 1924\n6 (II)|January 1, 1943-March 31, 1947|Men born from January 1, 1925-March 31, 1929 (Men registered on their 18th birthdays)\n7|November 16-December 31, 1943|Men living abroad aged 18-45\n\n**Draft Classifications 1940-1947:**\n\nClassification|Info\n:--|:--\n**I**|**Available for service**\nI-A|Available for military service\nI-A-O|Conscientious objectors eligible in a noncombatant role\nI-B|Available for limited military service\nI-B-O|Conscientious objectors available for limited service [not used after Aug. 18, 1942]\nI-C|Members of land or naval forces of the United States\nI-D|Students fit for military service; available not later than July 1, 1941\nI-E|Students fit for limited military service; available not later than July 1, 1941\nI-H|Men deferred by reason of age [not in effect]\n**II**|**Deferred because of occupation**\nII-A|Men necessary in their civilian activity\nII-B|Men necessary to national defense\nII-C|Men necessary to farm labor\n**III**|**Deferred because of dependents**\nIII-A|Men with dependents not engaged in work essential to national defense [eliminated Oct. 1, 1943]\nIII-B|Men with dependents engaged in work essential to national defense\n**IV**|**Deferred by law or because unfit**\nIV-A|Men who had completed service [not considered in war]\nIV-B|Officials deferred by law\nIV-C|Non-declarant aliens\nIV-D|Ministers of religion or divinity students\nIV-E|Conscientious objectors available for civilian work of national importance\nIV-E-LS|Conscientious objectors available for limited civilian work of national importance\nIV-E-H|Men formerly classified in IV-E or IV-E-LS, deferred by reason of age\nIV-F|Men physically, mentally or morally unfit\n\nIn the first through third registrations, draft order numbers were randomly assigned to registrants' cards, to be pulled from a glass bowl. In the fifth, sixth, and seventh registrations, order numbers were consecutively assigned based on birth date; the last order number of the third registration was advanced by one to give the first order number of the fifth registration, and the last number of the fifth registration was advanced by one for the first number of the sixth registration (the fourth registration, as it was simply a tally, was skipped)\n\n**Selective Training and Service Act of 1940:**\n\nThe Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 provided for compulsory military service of some men aged 21-36 for one year; they could only be deployed in the western hemisphere or on US-held lands. It also stipulated that not more than 900,000 men were to be in training at any one time. To organize the peacetime draft registration, and other registrations after that, the Selective Service set up 6,443 draft boards nationwide. Each board covered a small area, usually a county; large cities such as New York had many boards, one for every 30,000 people. The board administered an eight-page questionnaire (DDS Form 40) and a basic physical and mental examination that assisted them in classifying men in their district. Each of the registrants who were eligible received a draft order number (in the case of the first draft call, 1 through 7,836) on the DDS Form 2, or draft registration card, that also had relevant personal information. \n\nThe very first draft call in October 1940 was symbolic; In Washington D.C., the numbers were placed into capsules and then into a large glass bowl. The bowl was stirred by Secretary of War Henry Stimson using a rod made from a beam of Philadelphia's Independence Hall. He then drew a number from the bowl and opened it. President Roosevelt announced the number; 158. Across the country, 6,175 men had that number on their cards. More numbers were drawn from the bowl until a reasonable number of men were inducted for military service. A full 50 percent of the men called to serve in October 1940 were rejected, 20 percent of these because they were illiterate by Army standards. In order to be preliminarily classified I-A by their local board during the peacetime draft in October 1940, a man needed to;\n\n* Be between five and six and a half feet tall and weigh at least 105 pounds\n\n* Have at least 12 teeth (6 incisors and 6 chewing teeth)\n\n* Not have venereal disease, hernia, or flat feet\n\n* Have vision correctable with glasses\n\n* Be functionally literate and able to write\n\n* Not have been convicted of a crime\n\nStarting on July 1, 1941, men who were 28 and older were released from service and were also deferred from being drafted. The term of service of the October draftees was unpopularly extended for eighteen more months on August 18, 1941. With US entry into WWII, the term of service was extended again, for the duration of the war plus six months.\n\n**Draft Modifications:**\n\nOn December 5, 1942, through Executive Order 9279, President Roosevelt adjusted the draftable age from 21-36 to 18-37, and eliminated most voluntary enlistment to avoid disrupting war production and to control the number of men the military received at a time. Men who were 17 and those who were 38-45 could still voluntarily enlist provided they met the military's qualifications. The order became effective on January 1, 1943 and expired on September 7, 1945.\n\nThe Selective Service drafted under a quota of 200,000 eligible men per month. After a request was made by the armed forces through Selective Service headquarters, the Selective Service assigned a proportioned quota to each state. Based upon the pre-selected draft order numbers for that period, local draft boards notified the registrants who had been selected, and ordered them to report for induction. The basic medical standards listed above held true for the majority of WWII. Beginning in 1943, many minor felons (100,000 eventually were drafted) that were previously classified IV-F were administratively pardoned by draft boards in co-operation with local police departments, making them liable for induction. In October 1943, fathers whose children were born before December 7, 1941 began to be drafted. By April 1944, the Army further relaxed the induction criteria as they proved to be too disqualifying in some cases. Men could now be completely toothless, be missing one or both external ears, or be missing a thumb or three fingers (but not both) on one hand only. Mild cases of certain venereal diseases were also acceptable, to be treated with the new drug penicillin after induction.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ffrbvya" ], "score": [ 23 ], "text": [ "There are contemporary sources for these things, but of course we should remember that this was a huge catastrophe from the Greek/Christian perspective, and the way people wrote about it afterwards usually reflected that. They were looking for signs, prophecies, anything at all to help them understand what happened and why. So it might not be the case that all of these things \\*really\\* happened, just that people interpreted what they saw (or what they thought they saw) in ways that allowed them to deal with the loss.\n\nThe eclipse is the easiest to verify. There definitely was a lunar eclipse on May 22, 1453 (Saros cycle 102), the week before the city fell - some sources might misremember the date by a couple of days, but the fun thing about eclipses is that the moon and the Earth and the Sun don’t really change so we can extrapolate the date of eclipses going back thousands of years. Both sides saw the eclipse, but the Greeks interpreted it as a bad omen, and the Turks as a good omen. \n\nSome sources do describe a light coming out of the dome of Hagia Sophia. For some this was interpreted as the Holy Spirit or the “light of heaven” abandoning the city. Some also recorded that there was darkness throughout the city afterwards. As for what this really was:\n\n > “This fire may well have been what is today identified as St. Elmo's fire, caused by unusual atmospheric conditions, perhaps an accumulation of debris particles, smoke from the cannons, and weather phenomena, and giving off discharges of atmospheric electricity.” (Philippides and Hanak, p. 223, note 93)\n\nThe Greeks panicked about this but the Ottomans don't seem to have noticed it. I haven’t seen the show so I don’t know what else it talks about, but there are a lot of weird things that people saw at the time. It was a catastrophic, almost apocalyptic event for the people living there, so they tended to look for signs in nature and looked to Biblical prophecies to explain things. \n\nSources:\n\nJonathan Harris, *The End of Byzantium* (Yale University Press, 2012)\n\nMarios Philippides and Walter K. Hanak, *The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: Historiography, Topography, and Military Studies* (Ashgate, 2011)\n\nSteven Runciman, *The Fall of Constantinople, 1453* (Cambridge University Press, 1965)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "drwtn7r" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Specifically Messianic? As in the Jewish messiah?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dbit7da", "dbixtb9" ], "score": [ 15, 4 ], "text": [ "In general, the Mediterranean religions were open to accepting foreign gods. There were two types of acceptance: as a translation of an existing god, and as a foreign cult. A translation was when one civilization had a god that had similar characteristics as a god in a different culture. When someone wanted to refer to the other culture’s god, they would use the name of their own god. For example, the Carthaginians worshipped the god Baal Hammon. Whenever the Romans wanted to refer to the god the Carthaginians worshipped, they referred to him as Saturn because of the similarities between Saturn and Baal Hammon (eating children). Some cultures had stronger similarities than others, which is why we call it the Greco-Roman pantheon, even though the Greeks and Romans had different names for the gods – it was an act of translation. The other type of acceptance was as a foreign cult, which did have specific rules surrounding whether it was accepted or not. Both the Romans and Carthaginians accepted foreign cults, and they acknowledged these gods for worship- but fully understood their foreignness. The Carthaginians began to worship Demeter and Kore in 396 BCE and made sure to use Greek priestesses so they would be worshipped correctly. The Romans were famous for accepting foreign cults, such as Magna Mater and the cult of the Persian Mithras. While I can’t say much about the Celts, the main Mediterranean civilizations were very accepting of other polytheistic religions. \n\nSources:\n\nArchaic Roman Religion by Dumezil\n\nForeign cults in Rome by Orlin\n\nCarthage: A History by Lancel\n\n", "I asked a somewhat [similar question](_URL_1_) last week that /u/Astrogator gave an [exceptionally comprehensive answer to](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5h1rav/in_the_bronze_and_iron_ages_would_a_normal_person/dax1fr9/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5h1rav/in_the_bronze_and_iron_ages_would_a_normal_person/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cimv9nt" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "I think you've overestimated the power the Pope had to command Catholic nations, and underestimated how close the two churches actually got during Byzantium's final century. The emperors of Byzantium were literally *begging* Catholic nations to help stem the tide of the Turks (John V Palaiologos even went so far as to offer submission to the Catholic church in the 14th century). But, who could come fight, even if the Pope commanded then to? England and France were still on the road to recovery from the 100 Years War. The Holy Roman Empire was dealing with internal upheavals. The Battle of Varna in 1444 utterly destroyed Hungary's ability to wage war, and killed off any Crusading desires in the west.\n\nHowever, Byzantium's calls did not go completely unanswered. Genoa and Venice, both, contributed to Constantinople's defense, and several thousand foreign mercenaries from across Europe volunteered to fight as the bulk of the city's defense. The sad truth, though, was that most of Western Europe simply did not care no matter how much the pope demanded, and Byzantium was already in a state of downward spiral since the Fourth Crusade, which it could never recover from. It's defeat was genuinely inevitable, and the fact that it lived as long as it did and defended Constantinople against the final assault in 1453 as well as it did was nothing short of miraculous.\n\nSource: J. J. Norwich, \"History of Byzantium.\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c50cpvl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Most likely depends on what branch they have been serving in, also in part determines what formations they command. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ejpzdl5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There isn't a singular event that can be cited in what modernized manufacturing, so much as a series of gradual improvements over the course of centuries, starting well before the industrial revolution and continuing directly through it. That's something that makes it an fascinating topic of study, since it tends to intersect with so many other technological history topics.\n\nIn antiquity, the expectation of anything manufactured was that it was either primarily a labor achievement(e.g. the pyramids, the Great Wall) or the work of a skilled artisan(pottery, metals, etc.). Machines existed, but they were simple, and a combination of limited access to resources and limited theoretical knowledge made it hard to develop more sophisticated machines. If you know how to properly train a technique, gaining proficiency in it is mostly a matter of getting the materials and putting in the hours. But the great artisans of antiquity lacked viable opportunities to train their ability to automate things and do manufacturing in the way we do it today. Everything was done bespoke, with some exceptions(e.g. reusable molds), and the training likewise tended towards making luxuries. With limited supplies of many materials, there wasn't enough of anything to waste, and there wasn't a great deal of academic theory that could be applied to your trade.\n\nRegardless, over the course of lifetimes gradual changes took place: available goods would change according to knowledge and economic conditions. In general, the world has grown more knowledgable with time, though cases of burned libraries and lost secrets certainly exist. Technical advances often threaten power balances, making them a flashpoint for political struggle. But the application of knowledge is primarily limited not by a specific decree, but by access to resources and markets. Where trade routes opened up, more complex goods often followed, but if the trade disappeared a regression was likely. Changing factors like an excess of one resource and diminishing of another often lead towards finding a viable substitution, sometimes one that is more effective than the original formula - and so the cycles of the market itself have some impact on the growth of knowledge. It isn't as linear or hierarchical as a game's \"technology tree\" might suggest.\n\nMany of the interesting specifics about manufacturing can be described in terms of developments in related fields, such as these examples:\n\n* Improvements in materials and metalworking techniques. Lathes are often cited as a critical part of this puzzle: Early lathes were for woodworking, and the progression to working metal came much later.\n\n* The development of smaller machines with fine metalwork - clocks, watches, jewelry and other relatively small objects. Having literal \"nuts and bolts\" available is a major prerequisite for a lot of machine concepts, and watches and jewelry motivate higher precision.\n\n* New energy and energy transmission ideas - steam power, electricity, etc. Many machine concepts involve relatively simple ideas with a lot of energy applied to them, like the machine press.\n\n* More engineering knowledge available in a consumable form. Basic theories from physics, even after their discovery, take time to proliferate, be used in experimental research, and their results summarized. All of these aspects of knowledge became much more accessible to the masses both before the industrial revolution(through Gutenberg's printing press) and after(with industrial technologies that supercharged the press).\n\nWhen discussing a new automation process - and this remains true today - a tradeoff of cost, flexibility, quality, and speed comes into play. If you have no quality bar, you can get the wrong result instantly; if you need customization, you have to either use more humans or automate in a much more complex way. And a lot of automation developments are towards quality first, because guaranteed high quality is the thing that is hardest to achieve by throwing human labor at the problem, and therefore the most valuable thing you could leverage in a trade. Speed and cost are what we tend to think of first since fast moving assembly lines are visually impressive, and the ability to manufacture cheaply *en masse* is the most immediately noticable \"revolution\" of industrialization. But those kinds of developments tend to run in tandem with processes that improve precision and reduce defect rates. The products we build today are lighter and cheaper on average than similar examples from 50 years ago in large part because we have that additional precision available, and we can apply different materials to change the cost structure. And the promise of the industrial market remains that we'll find an even more ingenious allocation of resources, just around the corner." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cnoqytk" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "France had a fairly large, modern navy going into World War II. They had significant overseas colonial interests, and so strong navy was vital to their strategic interests. They were a signatory to the interwar naval treaties (Washington Naval Treaty, London Naval Treaty, Second London Naval Treaty) and were accorded the fourth largest navy in the world (tied for that position with Italy).\n\nOn the eve of war, the French Navy Order of Battle was:\n\n2 *Dunkerque* class fast battleships - these were new (launched in the mid-1930s), interwar production battleships armed with 15\" guns. They are sometimes called battlecruisers as they fulfilled a similar role to the British HMS *Hood* - they could outrun fleet battleships of the day and were intended to deal with commerce raiders (such as the German \"pocket battleships\").\n\n1 *Richelieu* class battleship - this was another modern battleship, launched in 1939. Similar in concept to the *Dunkerques*, it was larger and had heavier armor. It was launched just before the war (Jan 1939) and commissioned in 1940.\n\n1 *Bearn* class aircraft carrier - this was an early, interwar aircraft carrier, built on an incomplete WWI era battleship hull (this was very common post Washington Naval treaty - the US, Britain, and Japan built similar aircraft carriers). It carried 35-40 aircraft.\n\n5 WWI era dreadnaught battleships - these were WWI era ships still in service. They were all dreadnaughts (*Courbet* class) or super-dreadnaughts (*Bretagne* class) that were modernized during the interwar period. This would be similar to *Queen Elizabeth* class super-dreadnaughts that the British were using (updated WWI ships).\n\n1 seaplane carrier/tender - *Commandant Teste*. This was another interwar design. The French didn't have another incomplete battleship hull to build another carrier, so this was built from the ground up to support seaplanes (keep in mind that the concept of aircraft carriers as we know it wasn't fully fleshed out at the time).\n\n7 Heavy cruisers - *Duquesne*, *Suffren*, and *Algerie* classes. These were all interwar ships built in compliance with the Washington and London Naval treaties. Displacement of more than 10,000 tonnes and armed with 8\" guns\n\n11 Light cruisers - a variety of classes, these were all interwar production and armed with 6\" guns. The French sometimes used light cruisers as leaders of flotillas of heavy destroyers, and so these ships were built for speed\n\n32 Heavy destroyers - variety of classes, notably *La Fantasque* class, which were the fastest surface combatants afloat at the time (they could do 45 knots - for reference this is faster than many warships afloat today). These were consider by the French to be \"contre-torpilleur\" (anti torpedo boat) - they were designed to be extremely fast to catch small ships that would threaten the main fleet, and very heavily armed. These were all interwar production.\n\n38 Destroyers - variety of classes. These were smaller, conventional destroyers. Interwar production.\n\n80 submarines - variety of classes. Interwar production (including *Surcouf*.\n\n65 sloops/avisos - these small ships are called sloops in English, though they were \"avisos\" (\"advice boats\" or \"dispatch boats\"). They were for carrying messages and key personnel to the French colonies. Lightly armed and less than 1000 tonnes, they also were used for coastal defense, anti-submarine roles, etc. These would be primarily interwar production as well (*Bougainville*-class as an example).\n\nThe French Navy was a cause for concern in the early war. Before the Fall of France, they operated alongside the Royal Navy against the Germans. When France fell, the disposition of the Navy was a serious concern, as if it fell into German hands it would significantly augment the German Navy overnight (the French Navy was larger at the time). There were also political concerns as some highly placed French naval officers were considered to be sympathetic to fascism. Some French ships escaped to Britain and Egypt, and the British military boarded all French ships in British ports, resulting in some fatalities (*Surcouf* was one such boat boarded with fatalities). A significant portion of the French fleet, based in Toulon, was scuttled (deliberately sunk by their own crews) in order to keep them out of German hands. Another group of French ships was at Mers-el-Kebir. The British sailed a fleet there and demanded the French surrender or be fired upon. Negotiations broke down and the British attacked, destroying one battleship and leaving most of the rest of the fleet in no condition to to fight.\n\nEdit: Correction - *Dunkerque* class had 13\" guns as the main armament.\n\n" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/awesome/comments/2s5t9s/french_wwii_submarine_surcouf_equpipped_with/" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cxg71bv", "cxh4tn2" ], "score": [ 4, 2 ], "text": [ "It was certainly a cultural phenomenon in Cuba (also a territory with a large ex slave population). \"Teatro Bufo\" (roughly analogous to \"buffoon theater\") would often use blackface in its mix of music, comedy, and social satire. Classic character archetypes would include \"El Gallego\" (the Galician, who was a stand in for all recently arrived Spanish immigrants), \"El Negro\" (the Black, who was often a white actor in blackface) and \"El Criollo\" (the native born white Cuban).\n\nPlays would commonly be some form of social satire which would be told through the interaction of these three archetypes. This was an important art form in Cuban popular culture during the late 19th century and throughout the first half of the 20th, because it allowed people to make political statements without fear of repression. Sort of like how Voltaire´s tongue in cheek criticisms of society and particularly of the Church would be placed in the mouths of his own fictional characters in his novels.\n\nIn the reproductions of bufo theater I have seen, the blackface character (who could also be an actual black man at times) would basically play something akin to a cross between trickster Brer Rabbit and the childlike slaves and ex-slaves in Gone with the Wind.\n\nWhile not exactly Teatro Bufo, you can get an idea of what it was like if you look up the recent film El Ojo del Canario (The Eye of the Canary), about the life of José Martí. One of the pivotal moments of his life is when one bufo-like play was disrupted by Spaniards who didn´t like its message, leading to an infamous massacre of theater goers.\n\nEdit: _URL_0_\n\nWhile racism in Cuba is still certainly an issue, bufo became less popular as the 20th century dragged on and it seems to have died out during or before the Cuban revolution. Its racist overtones, and the biting wit of its political satire, probably helped lead to its disappearance under the revolution.\n\nEdit: While I studied it in Cuba with Cuban sources, film, slides, etc., it seems there is a book about it available in the US for those interested: Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895 by Jill Lane.", "It has been a part of British folk customs for several hundred years and is still practised today. See this pic here of UK Prime Minister David Cameron posing with members of a blackface Morris Dancing troupe. _URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_" ] }

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[ [ "https://youtu.be/ff8amV9VWCo?t=3798" ], [ "http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article4431124.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/PAY-David-Cameron.jpg", "http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10777858/Racist-No-our-black-face-dance-is-a-proud-tradition.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f6i075e" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The Spartans were a member of the Dorian group of Hellenes. There were four rough divisions originally: Dorian, Ionian, Achaean, and Aeolian. These divisions were by and large linguistic, with minor but mostly mutually-intelligible variations between the groups. There were some minor cultural and material-cultural differences as well. A useful comparison is the modern United States, with its southern dialects and foods, vs the dialects and foods of Minnesota. \n\nThe ancient Greeks believed that the Dorians had \"invaded\" the Peloponnese in the earliest epochs, and had displaced the non-Dorian Greek population there. From what we can gather from modern study, there does seem to have been a fair amount of movement of these Hellenic subdivisions, both during the Bronze Age and after, in the \"Dark Ages\" of the early Iron Age. The Dorian \"homeland\" (the place where that particular sub-division of the larger Indo-European Greek branch incubated) seems to have been in mountainous northwestern Greece, but by the historical period, there were Dorians distributed from NW Greece to the Peloponnese to Crete and to some select islands in the Aegean ([map](_URL_0_)). It is not at all clear by what processes this distribution came to be, but it seems clear that the ancient Greeks retained some cultural memory of a time of shifting populations. That being said, there is no evidence that a so-called \"Dorian Invasion\" contributed to the collapse of the Mycenaean palace hierarchy.\n\nedit: as to the ultimate origin of the Spartans: they came from the same place as all the other Greeks: vaguely from the north and east, into eastern Europe and the steppes, from which place all the Proto-Indo-European migrations originated. The proto-Greeks came down through the Balkans and into Greece and the Aegean beginning at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. Some scholars believe that the group which would differentiate themselves into the Ionians and Aeolians came first, followed later (about the 11th century) by those who would become Dorians. This would be the \"Dorian Invasion\" model, which does not have a lot of actual evidence to support it, but is powerful as a hypothesis both in the ancient world and in modern thinking." ] }

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[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/AncientGreekDialects_%28Woodard%29_en.svg/1320px-AncientGreekDialects_%28Woodard%29_en.svg.png" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cimm506" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "A great many of them did come from Southern Spain. There have been several studies regarding this issue. (I am actually writing about the demographic makeup of Venezuela today for my dissertation so I have all of these books on hand.) The most famous of them was done by the late James Lockhart in his *The Men of Cajamarca*, which describes the demographic makeup of Pizarro's men and paved the way for biographical sketch studies of the conquest period. According to Lockhart, this is the origin makeup of the Pizarro campaign:\n\nExtremadura - 36 men, Andalusia - 34, Old Castile - 17, New Castile - 15, Leon - 15, Biscay (Basque Spain) - 8, Navarre - 2, Aragon - 2, Greece - 2, Unknown - 37. (pg28)\n\nIn his similar work, Avellaneda Navas's *Los Compañeros de Federman* and later work *Conquerors of the New Kingdom of Granada* sketches the makeup of men coming to New Granada (Bogota) in the mid 1530s. He argues that the makeup was somewhat different since it was so late in the conquest, but overall it is not remarkably different. To help he supplies the stats for the other areas of the New World. For example, in Panama, Chile, and New Granada, Andalucians made up 34.7%, 22.5%, and 15% of the makeup, respectively. Extremadurans in Panama, Chile, and New Granada made up 21.4%, 15.4%, and 2%, respectively. For those same three locations, Old and New Castile made up at least 10% for each campaign save for New Granada where men from Old Castile made up 25% of the entire party. Overall in New Granada, 69 men came from Andalucia, 40 from Old Castile, 32 from Extremadura, 28 from New Castile, and 25 from Leon with a handful of other men from various other parts of Spain. 11 came from Portugal, 4 from France, 3 from Germany, and 2 from both Italy and the Netherlands. (pg395 *Los Compañeros*; pg 59 *New Kingdom*)\n\nHugh Thomas made a collection of biographical sketches for the Mexican conquest in *Who's Who of the Conquistadors*. In Mexico under Cortes, 148 men came from Andalucia, 69 from Extremadura, 54 from Leon, 37 from Old Castile, 22 from New Castile, 16 were Basque, and 12 from Galicia. A handful of others from the rest of Spain were with Cortes but he also brought along 10 from Portugal and 8 foreigners.\n\nNarvaez, who unwittingly reinforced and resupplied Cortes, brought 132 men from Andalucia, 0 from Leon, 56 from Extremadura, 42 from Old Castile, 32 from New Castile, and 11 Basque men and nearly 30 from other parts of Spain. He brought an additional 11 and 17 from Portugal and other foreign areas, respectively. (pgxxi)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ekd9whx" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "I absolutely hope that someone can provide a more thorough answer and don't want to discourage such an endeavor; however, u/commiespaceinvader discusses the historiography of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals in Nazi occupied Europe [here](_URL_0_). It explains some of why there is a lack of sourcing. \n\nI searched for some evidence of this same question a few years ago in [this](_URL_2_) thread, but with little luck. \n\nu/commiespaceinvader was more successful [here](_URL_1_)." ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_Nazi_Germany" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5obs0z/at_what_point_did_historians_begin_to_discuss_the/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5911n4/ww2_holocaust_how_were_homosexual_concentration/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4h399i/how_did_the_allies_care_for_holocaust_survivors/d2o01rp/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjpt3ln" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Citizenship first came about in the ancient Greek polis. Prior to the Greek invention of citizenship people were bound to their family groups as their strongest tie and they didn't really have a firm bond to their place of living. Greek citizenship changed that by establishing an official bond to their city-state. This type of citizenship arose with the development of *nomos*, or rule of law, as the guiding force behind Greek society. Under nomos every man was bound to the law and none were above it, all were equal in regards to the law within the polis. This equality under the law is what established citizenship. Of course, not everyone was equal, slavery existed and women couldn't be citizens, but everyone had to obey the laws. There is some debate on which city-state first conceived of citizenship, but Athens is usually considered the first. Some historians claim it was Sparta, but they're a minority.\n\nCitizenship in Greece had nothing to do with discriminating by ethnicity. Citizenship was acknowledged by other city-states, because they too, had citizenship in their land. There were outsiders that had no concept of it, so if Jason was a citizen of Athens and he went out to meet Jean from Gaul, Jean wouldn't have any idea what Jason meant when he said he was a citizen. Citizenship was accepted by the people of the city-states, because it had to be if they were to be engaged in the political process. \n\nMigration and adopting of a new citizenship did happen. Birthright citizenship was the most common method of obtaining citizenship, but if you were a man who wasn't a barbarian you could move to a different city-state and become a citizen in most cases. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cs6r12z" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "The Second World War did not have such an effect. At the time, human population was in the neighborhood of 3 billion, and growth was accelerating globally. It passed about 2 billion in 1925 and 4 billion around 1980. In the context of such a large number of people, the loss of several tens of millions of lives--even in the short span of six years--was swamped by both the number of births around the world and the increasing life expectancy. After all, the time to double from 2 billion to 4 billion was just fifty years, easily enough to absorb the heavy casualties of the Second World War. Viewed as a [graph](_URL_0_), it makes hardly a dent (that chart's from Wiki, but it uses US government info that is easily verifiable). I got my info from the rather old but I hope still fairly reliable *Atlas of World Population History*, by McEvedy and Jones (Penguin, 1978). \n\nWhether this has ever happened as a result of war is hard to say. I suppose it's possible though, I'm not sure how WWII compares to previous wars in terms of proportion killed. And, there have been times in human history when population was stable or shrinking, so at one of those times the question doesn't really work. " ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World-Population-1800-2100.svg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1rfh3j" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The Japanese flag has not changed since WW2. You are probably thinking of the Japanese Battle Flag which was in use in the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy from the Meiji Restoration until 1945, and is still in use in the Japanese Self-Defense Force in various versions." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpbzan1" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Longships did not have a fin keel like modern yachts, but they did have a keel as can be seen in those that we still have. This was a long keel running the entire length of the ship. This will not provide as much righting moment as a fin keel (the length of the fin keel acts as a lever) but does give a much shallower draft." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ddverr9" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "From an older answer:\n\nIt is difficult to date when exactly the specific myth of Judeo-Bolshevism originated but it experienced wide-spread dissemination during the Russian Revolution and the later stages of World War I.\n\nThe idea of a close proximity of Jew and left-wing ideology predates the specific myth of Judeo-Bolshevism and has a certain historical basis. During the formation of nation states in Europe in the 19th century, the question if Jews can be German, French, Russian etc. arose in the minds of a lot of nationalists and debates were had about the question of Jews as part of the nation. Seeing that liberal and left-wing parties were generally the political forces that advocated Jewish emancipation, a lot of Jews joined these parties, especially the non-religious bourgeois assimilated Jews.\n\nAnother basis for this myth was the nationalists' aversion against anything that was perceived as \"international\". Jews were seen as an interconnected international force whose individual members put their allegiance to \"international Jewry\" before their allegiance to the nation. In the second half of the 19th century, ultra-nationalist right-wingers in Germany and Austria for example ran campaigns against social democrats, Jews, and Catholics; for them the trifecta of internationalist forces.\n\nWith the Russian revolution, a lot of this was projected onto the Bolshevik revolution as the epitome of internationalist threat to the established system of nations and Capitalism. Seeing as how the Bolsheviks rejected traditional nationalist ideology, the idea arose that they were something akin to a foreign occupational force in many formerly Tsarist territories. Given how popular the myth of Jewish conspiracy was in Tsarist Russia (see the Protocolls of the Elders of Zion), the idea that Bolshevism was part of a Jewish conspiracy against the nation, took hold.\n\nThe myth really took off however, with the other attempts at post-war revolution outside of Russia. Especially the Munich Soviet Republic and the violence that accompanied it, convinced many people of the specific threat of Jewish Bolshevism, especially since many of the leaders of the German communist left involved in the project were denounced as Jewish (people like Kurt Eisner came from a Jewish family but him as well as Rosa Luxemburg were not Jews in the sense that they did not practice Judaism).\n\nRecent scholarship has also pointed to the so-far little discussed German occupation of Ukraine and the Baltics in the closing phase of WWI and the associated military action they and Habsburg troops took against the Bolsheviks in the course of the Russian Civil War. Historians such as Joachim Schröder have specifically pointed to returning German soldiers and bureaucrats as a force for the spread of this myth. Another important source for further dissemination were the Freikorps, para-military units of former German soldiers fighting in the Baltics against the Soviets.\n\nSources:\n\n* Gerrits, André (2009). The Myth of Jewish Communism: A Historical Interpretation. \n\n* Kellogg, Michael (2008). The Russian Roots of Nazism. White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945.\n\n* Levin, Nora (1988). The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917. \n\n* Lorna Weddington: Hitler's Crusade. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c70gg9v", "c70nxa3", "c70smz8" ], "score": [ 6, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "A [stone tower in ancient Jericho](_URL_1_) was built around 8000 BCE. Archeologists doubt that it was built for defensive purposes, and suggest instead that it was built for astronomical and/or social purposes -- i.e., to motivate people to take part in a communal lifestyle. Here are some [other famous towers](_URL_0_), many of them hundreds of years old, along with explanations of why they were built. Some are fortifications, but many are not, and are built as monuments or religious structures.", "In the UK there are several towers which are purely decorative. These are known as follies. Follies were basically constructed by the wealthy in the 18th-19th century to appear as things like towers or ruined castles. To quote the definition from wikipedia: \n\n > constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs.\n\nA good example of a folly that might be a more 'fantasy' style tower - _URL_0_", "Up in the borders of Scotland and England, you'll find [Peel towers] (_URL_0_), built as a rudimentary defence and warning network against the Reivers. " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.touropia.com/famous-towers-in-the-world/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Jericho" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Tower" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_tower" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "djt7qp8" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The US had numerous contingency plans for \"continuity of government\" in the case of nuclear exchange over the years. They vary depending on the scenario imagined but most imagine that some remnant of the original government will survive and it will restore order and begin rebuilding fairly shortly. Some of these are very optimistic. It is worth noting that none of them involve staying in underground installations for long periods of time with the exception of the possibility of a \"shadow government\" having that capability (and this was more about it surviving the attack than living under there continuously) at places like Raven Rock. Contrary to popular belief a nuclear war would not require living for decades underground; after a few weeks the levels of radioactivity would decay from \"acutely dangerous\" to \"a chronic threat\" and by \"chronic threat\" you mean an increased long-term cancer risk. (To put it into perspective, the lifetime cancer mortality for Americans is currently 20% or so. Adding, say, 10% to that would certainly be a bummer, but life would still go on.)\n\nCold War estimates predicted that \"only\" some tens of millions of Americans would die in a nuclear exchange with the USSR, and while that is probably very optimistic on behalf of the government, even if we increased that to, say, 100 million, that is still \"only\" 1/3rd of the people. That would be, to be sure, the destruction of whatever had previously been considered the United States, but it is not the total extinction that people tend to imagine. (I am not trying to \"lessen\" this — personally I think trying to imagine every third person you know dead is actually far more disturbing than just imagining _everyone_ being dead.) \n\nNow it should be said that even within the government there were people (often the President) who looked at the \"optimistic\" estimates and said, this is bonkers. To lose 30 million people in one go, even if that is \"only\" 10% of the US population, would unthinkable and would be the end of the nation as it was defined. (Consider how tenuous things were and have been after 9/11, when only 1/10,000th of that many people died, and mostly those of only two cities.) In the 1970s, even the public-consumption versions of these estimates included a somewhat dark acknowledgment that it was possible that, despite any plans and hopes, the result would be a [downward spiral into \"chaos and anarchy\"](_URL_0_).\n\nAs for nuclear winter, the US government never really took it into its calculations because it never had strong confidence that it was real (and took refuge in that uncertainty). Furthermore if the nuclear winter hypothesis is true, it indicates that the survivability is far lower than even the pessimistic estimates would have it, because food shortages would be rampant as a result. \n\nI am generalizing for many things here but if you are interested in these matters, this is essentially the history of civil defense, and there are several books on this subject (e.g. Kenneth Rose, _One Nation Underground_). On the US government response to nuclear winter, see Badash, _A Nuclear Winter's Tale_. There is a recent book out on Raven Rock and contingency plans by Garrett Graff but I have not had an opportunity to look at it yet. " ] }

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[ [ "https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/810517348721557507" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fdpc00k" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ " \n\nThe US Government was a large cog in the coalition of state’s that attempted to sharpen the thorn in the side of the Vietnamese that was represented by the remains of the Khmer Rouge. The role of China is very important here, and naturally the overall context of the latter stages of the Cold War. \n\nThe ’support’ that the US provided the group exiled on the border of Thailand and Cambodia was primarily financial, and also worked through the State Department’s active discouragement of any countries or the world bank providing loans or financial support to Vietnam or the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea. The Vietnamese economy was strangled in order to pile on the pressure on an already weakened system. Aside from these financial measures, the political manoeuvres taken to keep the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia as the only problem worth talking about. This stymied any real efforts to recognise the Khmer Rouge as a group that needed to be stopped and brought to justice. Efforts that while eventually acted upon have suffered from the time it took to do so. \n\nTo answer your question more directly, as it seems you are generally aware of the context around this situation, would be to say yes, there is a consensus that the US did support the Khmer Rouge, and the reasons for this (Vietnam War/Relations with China) are quite clear. \n\nThe *extent*, to my knowledge, is mostly financial but was provided with certain caveats or in often clandestine ways. Most military funding and armaments were provided by China to their Cambodian ally. As you’ve noted, Pilger is one of the journalists that has spent a lot of time digging around this issue and blaming the ‘imperialists’ as much as he would like to. I like his work generally but his bias can be a little on the nose sometimes. He gives the figure of around 85 million dollars which he found from a government source, I’ve not seen that particularly disputed, however the aid was ostensibly not for military uses… but if you are providing aid in order to keep one side of a civil war in action then it is hard to disentangle that money. The last chapter of Elizabeth Becker’s ‘When the War Was Over’ deals with the political situation post ’79, as does Fawthrop and Jarvis’ ‘Getting Away with Genocide?’ but these more or less deal with themes you might already be aware of, namely political and financial support for the Khmer Rouge as part of a US/Chinese political agenda. \n\nTheres that great quote which always gets put out around this subject and you’ve probably no doubt heard it but the acknowledgement of the US about the kind of muck they were dealing in is pretty damning. This of course is Robert Rosenstock’s admission that after Ieng Sary came to shake his hand following the vote to keep the Khmer Rouge in their seat at the UN, the diplomat said that he ‘felt like washing his hands’." ] }

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[ "http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pilgerpolpotnus.pdf" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "ct9sv97", "ct9t4az" ], "score": [ 5, 13 ], "text": [ "There's a good overview of this topic in the first episode of Mary Beard's documentary *[Meet The Romans](_URL_0_)* that discusses not only the demographics of particular neighborhoods, but the mechanism by which an immigrant's original culture would fade away in favor of Roman culture.\n\nThe series is focused mainly on interpreting the inscriptions left by average Roman citizens on tombstones, and it's Beard's conclusion that a given ethnicity did not contribute to where one lived. It's specifically noted that there weren't any neighborhoods analogous to, for instance, a Chinatown. Part of the reasoning behind this is that non-citizen Romans were mostly brought to the city as slaves, and rather than associating with a particular ethnic group, they associated with the particular family who owned them. Adopting Roman culture was a path to citizenship and status, and given the relatively high frequency at which slaves were freed it generally did not benefit them to cling onto their old ways.\n\nThat said, the region of Trastevere (across the Tiber) is singled out as an area in the city known for its immigrant population, having had a significant Jewish population since the Republican era. Jewish communities would have been one of the most notably different cultural groups in the city, largely retaining their own language, customs, and religion across generations.\n\nHopefully this is a decent starting off point, and I hope someone more versed in the subject than I can offer a more robust explanation.", "Around the Aventine there is a fair sized collection of Palmyrene inscriptions, which seems to imply a fairly close knit community of them there. The Palmyrenes are tricky to extrapolate from, as they were unusual in that they assiduously maintained their own language in inscriptions. It is difficult to know whether this means they behaved differently than other ethnicities or simply marked their presence differently. So there was seemingly an \"ethnic community\" of Palmyrenes, and may or may not have been for other groups.\n\nYour other question is a bit trickier. The city of Rome was divided into fourteen *regiones*, and marker inscriptions indicate that they had distinctive characters, with particular rites, festivals, etc. It has been argued that these *regiones* activities correspond to different parts of Italy, but I am not certain how much real evidence is behind that." ] }

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[ [ "https://youtu.be/rggk_H3jEgw" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cc3rtbc", "cc3t8wa" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Hi, I am a junior in high school and I would like to pursue a career in history, however, I do not want to end up poverty stricken and am wondering what I could do with a career in history that could potentially make me a decent amount of money. Thanks!", "The ama is here: \n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/1lwt7a/history_jobs_ama_were_15_people_who_have_jobs/" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/1lwt7a/history_jobs_ama_were_15_people_who_have_jobs/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "clu7fkg" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "While diseases did play a very important part in the conquest of Tenochtitlan (because that is basically what the events refer to, the conquest of a city not of an empire), Maliche did play a relevant role during the Conquest. According to Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Diego Duran, and other accounts, (like the account of Rodriguez de Ocaña, or Cortez for that matter) Malinche was given to Cortéz as part of 20 slave women at the Chontal Maya city of Potonchán (present day Tabasco). Her mayor role was as a translator, since she knew Chontal Maya and Nahuatl. Previous to this, Cortéz had learned of 2 spaniards who lived in the Maya Cah (cazicazgo) of Chetumal. One of them was Gerónimo de Aguilar and the other one was Gonzalo Guerrero. While Cortéz sent for both, only Geronimo de Aguilar joined him in his expedition towards Tenochtitlan (Guerrero would later on, fight against the Spaniards). During his stay at Chetumal, de Aguilar learned Chontal Maya. Therefore, during the early years of the conquest Cortéz used both Malinche and de Aguilar as translators. The way it worked was basically Cortéz talking to de Aguilar in Spanish, de Aguilar talking to Malinche in Chontal, Malinche talking to Aztecs in Nahuatl and back through the same chain. This is why James Lockhart coins the term of a “double misunderstanding”, in which neither party (Aztec or Spanish) really knew what the other was actually saying, because while Malinche spoke Nahuatl, it was not the high poetic Nahuatl used by the ruling body of Tenochtitlan. Later on, Malinche also learned Spanish, making de Aguilar not useful anymore. \n\nOne episode in which Malinche plays a prominent role is during the Spanish attack at Cholula (the so-called Masacre de Cholula). The Cholulan elite at the time was an allied of Tenochtitlan, and Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin trying to prevent the Spaniards from getting closer to Tenochtitlan, persuaded the Cholulans to mount an attack on the Spaniards. Malinche, while supposedly working for the Cholulans, learned about the plot and told Cortez who took action and massacred many Cholulans. Something interesting about her is that in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (an early colonial codex), she is sometimes portrayed by herself, referencing the possibility that she might had conducted events by herself, and not just at the request of Cortez.\n\nI should mention that the conquest of Tenochtitlan was by no means the conquest of the Empire nor the victory of the Spaniards. In his “Maya Conquistador” (1999) and later in “Seven myths about the Spanish conquest” (2003), Mathew Restall does a great job in articulating the idea that in reality indigenous people conquered Tenochtitlan. Ross Hassig in his “Mexico and the Spanish Conquest” (2006) mentions that the final siege to the city was carried out by 200,000 native allies. Even more, during the final attack at Tlatelolco, even the Texcocans (who had played a prominent role in creating the Tenochtitlan nobility through the figure of Ilancueitl, and later on helped in the defeat of Maxtla and the Azcapotzalcas and the formation of the Triple Alliance) were fighting against the Mexica-Tenochca and helped in their defeat as a means of potentially acquiring more power than their previous allies. So, the natives actually defeated Tenochtitlan.\n\nNow, what I mean by saying that it was only the conquest of a city is that, after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the real conquest of the empire began through the various expeditions that pushed outwards into the different provinces, like Pedro de Alvarado’s expeditions to Tututepec and later to Guatemala. Again, Restall (2003) argues convincingly for the importance of indigenous populations during this stage. What is interesting now, is that during these campaigns the Spaniards now used Mexica-Tenochcas to defeat other indigenous populations. This is why there are several places in Guatemala (predominantly ethnically Maya) with Nahua names, rather than Maya ones. It is interesting because, according to Gerardo Gutierrez (personal communication), it is as if the Mexica Tenochcas were taking revenge for what had happened at the siege of Tenochtitlan. In a sense these campaigns were a continuation of Mexica expansionism, as illustrated in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan.\n\nI think it is time we start seeing the Conquest of New Spain as an incomplete process, that did not ended with the conquest of Tenochtitlan but expanded all the way into the Yaqui rebellions during the 19th century, or the Maya Castas war up until the 20th century. Or maybe even into the 21st century and the Zapatistas rebellion. \n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dd88asf", "dd89rkh" ], "score": [ 5, 12 ], "text": [ "Hi,\n\nRudeness is not welcome in AskHistorians. This question is fine, as you were informed it would be. Please edit the expanded text of your question accordingly.", "It was a situation that developed gradually, over nearly 15 years - and was as related to 'terrorism', as to multiple other issues. \n\nActual fundamental issue was Qaddafi's opinion along which Arabs were 'free' to do to the West what the West was doing to the Arab world, particularly through its support for Israel. \n\nIt could be said the story began in 1972, when Libya opened an initiative to establish a union with Egypt and Syria, aiming to create a super-state that could confront Israel on equal terms (through the combination of its total economic- and military power). Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat did not really like this idea, but welcomed Libyan financial support; Syrian President Hafez al-Assad entered closer cooperation with Libya. As a result of this initiative, some of Egyptian military units were put under Libyan control and deployed in Libya, and Qaddafi came to the idea to use them for his designs - many of which were considered 'too radical' foremost by Sadat, not to talk about Western powers. For example, he ordered an Egyptian submarine to sink the liner SS Queen Elisabeth, or delivered four Egyptian Il-28s to the (Soviet- and Cuban-supported) government of South Yemen etc. This caused first tensions. \n\nDuring the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War (also 'Yom Kippur' or 'Ramadan War'), Qaddafi would have loved to have Libyan military involved on the side of Egypt and Syria; but, these kept him out of the loop until the war began, and then the Libyan military proved ill-prepared and too small for that kind of a conflict. Indeed, it proved even unable to intercept US aircraft underway to Israel. Therefore, Qaddafi claimed the entire Gulf of Syrte for Libyan territorial waters. Eventually, he became so incensed over Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat's 'lack of cooperation' with him, that not only the plan for an union was shelved, but Qaddafi began fiercely criticising Sadat, and four years later provoked a short war between Egypt and Libya (which Libya lost). \n\nIn period 1973-1981, and along that claim for the Gulf of Syrte, Libyan armed forces several times attacked various foreign ships and aircraft passing off the Libyan coast - several times even well away from the claimed area. For example, in September 1973, two Mirages attacked an Italian Navy warship with 30mm cannons, killing one of Italian sailors. In period 1979-1980, Libyans repeatedly caused tensions over Maltese independence and Malta's cooperation with Italy; in 1980, Qaddafi attempted to stage a coup in Tunisia etc. On the other hand, Western powers were maintaining a close watch on Libyan military build-up, and some of their reconnaissance aircraft are said to have flown not only along Libyan borders, but deep over Libya too. Correspondingly, Libyan military attempted to intercept these and there were several related incidents. For example, on 16 September 1980, two MiG-25s intercepted an USAF Boeing RC-135 ELINT/SIGINT-reconnaissance aircraft over the Mediterranean. When the US crew ignored their orders to distance, one of them fired an air-to-air missile - which missed. Five days later, five Mirage 5s intercepted another RC-135, and had to be forced away by two F-14 Tomcats of the US Navy. \n\nMeanwhile, in December 1979, Libyan demonstrators chanting pro-Iranian slogans stormed and burned part of the US embassy in Tripoli, and in February 1980, demonstrators sacked the French embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi. After Great Britain expulsed several Libyan diplomats the British embassy in Tripoli was fire-bombed, in June 1980. \n\nEventually, Libya began accusing the USA of planning anti-Qaddafi coups, and began deploying agents to the USA to assassinate various Libyan emigrants. Furthermore, Qaddafi began supporting various militant and terrorist groups around the world, ranging from different Palestinian groups, to the IRA in Great Britain and the Red Army in Japan. Clearly, not only the USA considered this an act of state-sponsored terrorism; other Western governments did the same. But, the administration of President Carter was too preoccupied with the US embassy crisis in Iran but to do anything against Libya, while such governments like those of France and/or Italy tended to ignore Libyan activity because of their economic interests in the country. \n\nOverall, by the time Reagan entered the office, in January 1981, the situation was already quite tense. Unsurprisingly, Regan issued a new set of Rules of Engagement for US aircraft operating off Libya, and then ordered a 'Freedom of Navigation' exercise 'inside' the Gulf of Syrte, in order to challenge Libyan claims, for August 1981. That's how the next direct clash took place, resulting in the famous downing of two Libyan Su-22 fighter-bombers by USN's F-14 Tomcats. \n\nImmediately following that incident, no Libya-related terrorist attacks were observed. But, through 1982 and 1983, Qaddafi began supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and then 'persuasive circumstantial evidence' emerged that Libya was behind the act of mining southern approaches to the Suez Canal, in 1984. \n\nForemost, during 1984 and 1985, a series of hijackings of passenger aircraft took place in the skies over the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This phase culminated in the hijacking of the Italian passenger liner Achille Lauro, and terrorist attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna, in 1985. \n\nNow, while the US intelligence agencies found very little evidence for Libyan involvement in most of these affairs, Qaddafi's public support for terror exposed his country to a military retaliation. Reagan - i.e. US intelligence services - actually knew that it was Syria and Iran that were actually behind most of terrorist attacks in question. But, Libya was isolated on the international plan and its military lacked similar capabilities to those of Syria and Iran. Correspondingly, he picked Libya. Intention was to provide an example: you run campaigns of terror against us, we hit back with military force. \n\nBy early 1986, the US military launched operations of provoking Libyan military over the Gulf of Syrte, and Washington began providing aid to the government of Chad (northern half of which was occupied by Libya since 1981). These two affairs then culminated in a series of US-Libyan clashes in March and April 1986 (Operations Attain Document, Prairie Fire, and El Dorado Canyon), and then Libyan military defeats in Chad (Toyota Wars), in 1987-1988. \n\nFinally, in 1988, Libyans (apparently with some support from Iran and Syria) bombed the Pan Am's Flight 103 (see Lockerbie) and UTA's Flight 772. However, instead of launching a punitive military action, the USA and France decided to find a solution through international diplomacy and courts. Libya was put under massive economic sanctions and embargos, and several of its citizens indicted for involvement in terrorist attacks. \n\nSources of reference: \n\n- [El Dorado Canyon: Reagan's Undeclared War with Qaddafi](_URL_2_), particularly useful for detailed description of Regan's decision-making process in relation to Libya, but also related US military operations; \n\n- [Libyan Air Wars, Volume 1](_URL_1_), [Volume 2](_URL_3_), and [Volume 3](_URL_0_), for the 'full story' - i.e. all of these affairs put within their context (then, the US-Libyan confrontations of the 1980s were very much a part of far more complex affairs, as described above) - and a very detailed description of the Libyan military build-up (including not only the air force, but ballistic missile capability and even WMDs) and US, French, Italian and other military operations against Libya of the 1970s and 1980s. " ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.amazon.com/Libyan-Air-Wars-Part-1986-1989/dp/1910294543/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1910294543&pd_rd_r=B2MSWH9BWMD9SP1Y86Y0&pd_rd_w=95fqA&pd_rd_wg=XR8NA&psc=1&refRID=B2MSWH9BWMD9SP1Y86Y0", "https://www.amazon.com/Libyan-Air-Wars-Part-1973-1985/dp/1909982393/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486027326&sr=1-3&keywords=libyan+air+wars", "https://www.amazon.com/El-Dorado-Canyon-Reagans-Undeclared/dp/1557509832", "https://www.amazon.com/Libyan-Air-Wars-Part-1985-1986/dp/1910294535/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1910294535&pd_rd_r=76DPZ3RZX76JVN2B1FPC&pd_rd_w=hRcm7&pd_rd_wg=fHSS6&psc=1&refRID=76DPZ3RZX76JVN2B1FPC" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dk3fv9f" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Ungh, copyright and residuals and legalities. This is SO not my area of expertise, though it does have a lot to do with music. I'll weigh in where I can, and do some more research to see if I can come back with more. \n\nFirst off, most composers then, as now, worked on a commission basis. That is, someone with money would ask for a sonata/concerto/opera/mass/whatever of X instrumentation for Y length, and they would work out a deadline, and payment, and all that jazz. Now, while the commission was by Baron Lotsofmoney, it's not like the Baron could just go out and sell the copies to anyone, or sell the rights. Often composers would print their own works and sell them, but copyright laws were... fucky. \n\nI'll send you off to a cool legal case: [Bach vs. Longman](_URL_1_). Several of the (ludicrously numerous) sons of the famous J.S. Bach went on to become composers in their own right. One of them, Johann Christian Bach found out that copies of his works were being printed and sold in England, and decided to sue. He claimed that his works were copyright to him, and the English printers said that music didn't count as printed material, but Bach won, and gained rights to his printed works. \n\n_URL_2_\n_URL_0_\n\nSo, yes, composers could print and sell copies of their works. Handel did this extensively, but didn't *really* copyright his work, he just printed it himself in huge quantities for very cheap (side note, Handel was a total whore and would totally rewrite his music for whoever wanted to perform it. Want to do Messiah but don't have a good tenor? Let me rewite all this stuff for soprano, hence the many varied versions of Messiah, which is never performed in entirety).\n\nAs for whether Beethoven paid Schiller, since Schiller died decades before the premiere of the 9th Symphony, it seems pretty unlikely. Now, whether or not copyright in the 18th and 19th centuries extended post mortem, or to the estate, I have no idea. I know Constanze Mozart made a lot of money off of Mozart's compositions, but she had them published herself after his death, so likely she would have owned the copyright. I know the Statute of Anne - the UK copyright law that J.C. Bach was challenging had an expiration term of 14 years, but I don't know if it would end automatically on the death of the copyright holder, or pass on to the estate. I also don't know the copyright laws of all other relevant European nations at this time. \n\nWhich brings up another point, is cross-jurisdictional copyright. If you're a German composer (Beethoven) living in Austria, who wants to publish music in France, how does that work? Europe, then, as now, has many rules governing many regions and those would have to be navigated (and challenged) by composers who want to publish their works, and ensure they're not published against their wishes, or without compensation." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02690403.1995.11828226?journalCode=rrma20", "http://home.telepath.com/~hrothgar/Bach_v_Longman.html", "http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/commentary/uk_1777/uk_1777_com_1072007112559.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5plgwk", "c5pnggm", "c5pp57q", "c5priil", "c5pu3m4", "c5puy5o", "c5pvqcs" ], "score": [ 25, 16, 5, 5, 3, 10, 3 ], "text": [ "Reagan's hard to pin down. His administration did unbelievably terrible things, especially in Central America. He started off the \"cut taxes, up spending\" cycle that's got our backs against the wall. He ran roughshod over the Constitution. \n\nBut he did it all in service of a worthy goal: the end of the Cold War and the existential threat of nuclear annihilation. The thought of nuclear war terrified Reagan. In 1982, he announced \"A nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought.\" But he was also convinced that the Soviets could be beaten. He pushed them hard. \n\nIn 1983, the Soviets were in a leadership crisis. Andropov was sick and absent. The US was threatening to erase its one advantage, numbers of ICBMs, by launching the SDI. Paranoia was so high that when NATO staged annual exercises - dubbed Able Archer - the Soviets believed an attack was imminent. Accounts are contradictory, but some sources state that Soviet commanders actually tried to launch their missiles before being stopped. \n\nBriefings on Able Archer gave Reagan nightmares. He bucked the \"realists\" in his administration, like Weinberger and Bush Sr., and worked directly with Gorbachev to push for disarmament and peace. \n\nIt was Reagan's unique combination of ruthless, damn-the-torpedoes brinksmanship and genuine warmth and honesty that pushed the Soviets to the wall and then offered them a way out. If it hadn't been for Gorbachev, Soviet hardliners might have found a way to cling to power - we might see a limping Soviet Union still today, or worse, the breakup of Yugoslavia over nine million square miles. But Reagan was the catalyst for Gorbachev's reforms. ", "The Gipper was good at delivering speeches, and looking good on camera. However, his actual understanding of political issues was often superficial.\n\nThe reason he was so well liked is that he was very successful at projecting a mythology of America as strong and righteous, that was very appealing to the public after the self-doubt and disillusionment of the 1970s.", "Republicans have a very rosy picture of Reagan because he was both very conservative and was able to deliver huge electoral victories for the GOP. In my opinion, he's more popular in retrospect among conservatives than he was in office.\n\nI'm not sure overall how I feel about him (he's too close to the present day to have an unbiased opinion of) but if you want a very interesting view of him, read [Edmund Morris's amazing obituary of Reagan from 2004](_URL_0_).", "Yes. But note that his reputation among historians is relatively poor. Surveys done by the Organization of American Historians ranking the presidents back in the late 90s put him down in the lower half if I recall correctly. He's no Pierce, I'll grant you, but the main reason he is 'remembered' so well today is that an entire GOP industry devoted to his beatification has been working for a quarter century to make it so, despite the reality of his performance in office.\n", "I have a question regarding Reagan's economic policies and deficit reduction numbers. Under Reagan's administration, the federal deficit dropped from 6% GDP under Carter to 2.9% under Reagan...however, it seems these numbers were very disingenuous, or at best, misleading, given that America borrowed massively to make up the GDP deficit, as we ended up with a debt of about $2 Trillion more than we had prior to Reagan. \n\nWithout this large amount of borrowing, how much would the deficit by GDP have been reduced? Also, and I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but how is it that the deficit dropped by more than 3%, yet the debt increased by $2 Trillion?\n\n\n\n", "Reagan talked tough and may have arguably help bring the USSR to an end sooner rather than later, but when modern politicians use him as a role model, I roll my eyes. To be honest, I find the Reagan presidency as one of the worst in American history, and see many of our current problems as stemming from the ideology and practices of the period. That wouldn't be so bad if it were not regularly cited as one of the best presidencies. \n\nFor instance, on the economic front, Reagan may have cut taxes dramatically at the beginning of his term, but he then raised them multiple times afterwards. Modern politicians who cite the economic growth of the 80s often forget this. They also conveniently elide over all sorts of other factors and completely ignore things like the deregulation of the banking industry under his watch contributing to the S & L crisis. \n\nOn foreign policy, his stern rhetoric on the Soviets was paired with massive deficit spending on the military, and his administration had massive federal outlays. Furthermore, while he did have a confrontational foreign policy, the chief military accomplishments under his tenure were the invasion of Grenada and the withdrawal of troops from Lebanon. Not exactly Rambo material. \n\nDomestically though, it is impossible to see his administration as anything other than a complete trainwreck. Reagan presided over some of the worst domestic crises of modern America and basically did nothing about them, or actively made them worse. For instance, he did nothing to remedy the decay of American cities, and instead aggravated their decline by ramping up the War on Drugs to unprecedented levels while simultaneously off-setting his massive military spending with cuts to social welfare programs and education. This doesn't even bring up his administration's complete silence on the AIDS epidemic or opposition to climate change.\n\nSo basically, Reagan cut taxes (then raised them), spent the US into a huge federal deficit, was soft on terrorism and made secret deals with Iran, dithered while American cities and industries collapsed, and ignored the largest public health crisis of the past hundred years (I could also make a case that Reagan's policies helped lead to MDR-TB, but that's a whole different post). \n\nReagan has benefited from an economy that grew despite his policies (or because of them, if you ask people who favor him), an insurgent culturally conservative political movement that has idolized him, his superb rhetorical ability, and because the 80s were the last gasp of America as a undeniable superpower. The Soviets may have fallen, but the 90s brought all sorts of fin de siecle worries about Japan buying everything, which has now segued into China buying everything and terrorists, instead of Soviets, plotting the downfall of the US.\n\nSo no, Reagan does not deserve his reputation. He really really doesn't.", "Thanks for all the great answers. I really wanted to see if I was right, or if I've just been hearing what I wanted to hear." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628fa_fact1" ], [], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1586sd", "d15usj3" ], "score": [ 15, 8 ], "text": [ "Follow-up question: how much of the advantage was tactical instead of technological? I have read (sorry, no sources) that line organization and volley fire were very powerful tactical innovations.\n\nCan anyone confirm or contradict this?", "A reply to /u/sherlockyagami\n\nThis is a good question, however I believe that asking about \"technology\" misses the point, because technology alone didn't dictate the abilities of states of that era to conduct war and to project their power. To give a sharper response, if we focus on the Ottoman wars in Europe and the Mediterranean, there was very little gap between weapons theoretically available to the belligerents. They all had pikes, matchlock handguns, artillery, horses, etc. What made the difference is that European states evolved in unique ways, and ways different from the Ottomans, and as a result of these changes they gained the edge in military confrontation in eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. \n\nFrom this point, if are to continue the comparative study, we will have to specialize, so let's start by comparing the (Austrian) Habsburgs and the Ottomans in 1500s-1700s, not only in terms of \"technology\", but in terms of their ability to [organize](_URL_5_), [recruit, train](_URL_2_), and deploy their military powers. \n\nArguably, the Ottomans had the early edge, what with their successes in pushing Christian powers out of the eastern Mediterranean (Rhodes, Balkans, large parts of Hungary, etc.). How were they able to do so well in the beginning? In the Mediterranean theater, the answer may surprise you, but it really comes down to control and ownership of the galley fleets. The Ottomans had a large royal fleet while Christian states at the time were fragmented and mostly relied on military contractors (wink wink, /u/anironicusername ... ). The campaigns leading to Lepanto were plagued by simple bad luck and bad timing. The Christians took a long time to combine their forces, and when they did, they kept their resolve only for short periods before either Venice, or Genoa, or the Papal States, either lost interest or ran out of funds. There were no major difference between the two galley fleets, they operated identically. Lepanto was won by the \"west\" only because their commander Don Juan of Austria wisely checked his ego and was able to maintain peace between the various co-commanders. \n\nA similar image could be seen on land, where the early Ottoman advantage was checked during the Long War, and then reversed afterwards. All states evolved, including the Austrian Habsburgs. They established a military border system in Hungary where they build a series of forts and traded space for time, or vice-versa, as appropriate. They weakened the Transylvanian nobles who would not support them. They built upon a centralized system for maintenance and control of their army, instead of relying on nobility. Of course, part of this was improvements in logistics, including building foundries and armories. But this is only one aspect, and to focus on such things will miss other important aspects such as how to build and maintain [a strong officer corp, and soldiers](_URL_7_). Similarly to the military transformation at sea, on land we saw European christian states move away from relying on nobles and military contractors into further state control. This ensures continuity, control, and security. This is all well-studied in the so-called [military revolution debate](_URL_6_).\n\nThe Ottomans had their own internal and external challenges, including the rivalry between the Janissaries and other military factions such as the Sipahi; a succession of succession crises resulting in weak leaders; the rise of Safavid Persia. Over time, the Sipahis in particular weakened the central state and declined to reform. \n\nIt is only when we look at trans-oceanic voyages that we see an advantage of Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and England over the Ottomans, because the latter was very late in developing any kind of vessels and expertise for long range navigation in the Atlantic and beyond. \n\nSimilarly, the Ming (and later the Qing) faced a highly fragmented bureaucracy, weakening of the military, the politicization of all government positions. Weak rulers could not reverse the setbacks and eventually they fell frey to the Qing, and then to European powers projecting themselves in SE Asia and East Asia. This negative situation is that led to various bans on trade and movements of people. As a result, while on land there was little difference in what they could theoretically field, at sea there was a major difference in particular when it comes to oceangoing vessels. And I wrote about this [here](_URL_3_). Further on China, some authors have pointed to lack of siege warfare (Mongols and Manchurians didn't have cities to besiege) and long periods of relative peace without major warfare leading to lack of experience in gunpowder warfare and more importantly the infrastructure needed to supply such wars. At the same time, it has been pointed out that when the Chinese did come into contact with the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch, it didn't take much time at all for production of European-style cannons and matchlock guns to begin, but documents show that it was very desirable to able to hire European cannon crews, trainers, or even to buy European-made weapons. \n\nI tend to agree with Jan Glete's thesis, which that the early-modern transition from \"medieval\" state to a modern one should be examined holistically. This means to look at the various actors (royalties, nobilities, clergy, etc.) and how they are able to align themselves into a coherent state. Especially as nobles and clergy of that period did not even pay tax. In my flair focus, Europe provided a grand showcase of different models that were tried and how they succeeded and failed. The Spanish had an [early start](_URL_0_), while the French suffered through a succession of religious wars. The Habsburgs were on their way to dominate the Holy Roman Empire, but were checked in the Thirty Years' War. \nThe French under Louis XIV, following the two Frondes (I summon /u/DonaldFDraper who is a France expert), decided to significantly curtail the power of nobles and parliaments. This meant that he had to develop his own officer corp, which took a while. It started with the system of *régiments entretenus*, in which officers still had financial investment in his unit, but over time the state took more and more control of military units. As observed by Spanish officers in the 1670s: the French were bad because their officers were bad, they became good because their officers became good. \nIn a previous post I wrote about [the change in the \"mercenary model\" over that period](_URL_1_), which I think addresses your question. It covers the transformation from the condottieri model where the states put up the money and through contracts empowered mercenary captains to being a unit he had recruited himself, and will thus control himself. Then slowly into the Spanish model whereby the state recruits a large part of the army through commission and contracts, but nobles executed operations and put up the cost of maintenance. To the culmination in Wallenstein's model whereby he offered to put up all the cost, control all the logistics, and most importantly set up his own system of taxation and revenue through the territories that he is endowed with. While it is a gross simplification, Wallenstein had set up the modern state system as we know it today. \n\nTo summarize, it is important to look at specific theaters of war. In land warfare, there was little difference between what belligerents could theoretically obtain. \"Technology gaps\" were closed quite quickly. However, when it comes to the means of conducting war and projecting power, there were significant differences. \nAt sea, the picture is very different. There were few large engagements at sea. As a result, there were instances where tactics prevailed, with minor contribution from technology. However, as soon as clear advantages are revealed, all belligerents who could afford an upgrade, did so. We saw this in the decades-long competition between [the Spanish and the English at sea](_URL_4_). Henry VIII copied Spanish ship designs, while the Spanish focused on boarding action due to their experience in the Mediterranean. Mary Tudor and Elizabeth's navy focused on gunnery. Despite the significant loss in the failed Armada of 1588, the Spanish very quickly recovered and re-built their Atlantic navy with upgraded guns, and the English could not press their advantage. \n\nSome reading material:\n\n* Gábor Ágoston, *Empires and warfare in east-central Europe, 1550–1750: the Ottoman– Habsburg rivalry and military transformation*, in European Warfare, 1350–1750; edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim; ISBN 978-0-511-68047-2 eBook; 2010.\n\n* J. Glete, *War and the state in early modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as fiscal-military states, 1500-1600*, ISBN-13: 978-0415226455, 2001.\n\n* D. Parrott, *The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, ISBN 978-0-521-73558-2, 2012.\n\n* K. M. Swope, *The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618–44*, ISBN: 978-0-415-44927-4, 2014." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49zmqf/why_was_the_17th_century_considered_the_century/d0wkydj", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49r3ln/did_arms_dealing_as_private_enterprise_exist_in/d0unxha", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3rezha/how_did_armys_in_the_early_modern_and_modern_age/cwu3291", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/473vqv/how_connected_were_trade_networks_in_the_south/d0s0awz", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/37mpi4/how_did_naval_warfare_look_like_in_the_high_and/croaz5e", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cbfsg/how_were_armies_organized_during_the_thirty_years/cvlr17e", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wsw9h/rise_of_great_powers_ama_part_un_western_europe/cxzorwp", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3veslz/what_role_did_the_private_sector_have_in/cxmx05m" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cghdspe", "cghixcj", "cghk15x", "cghwbci", "cghwgly", "cghxdbo" ], "score": [ 416, 34, 3, 2, 12, 5 ], "text": [ "Well, to start, the sources you refer to here are certainly important. Christopher Bayly is one of the most widely known and respected historians of India in the world. EDIT: Well, I'm an idiot, since I was thinking of Chris Bayly, and not **Susan** Bayly, the scholar who has written more specifically on caste. But, yes, SUSAN Bayly is also a well-known and highly-respected scholar of Indian history. Nicholas Dirks's book *Castes of Mind*, presumably what is cited in your quotes above, is definitely the book to read for this subject. You might also be interested in Bernard Cohn's *Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge*, a book which sort of lays the theoretical groundwork for Dirks; Cohn might have been his adviser, but I'm not sure. As to your specific questions...\n\n > Is this historical revisionism justified? Does this fit into the anti-realist and constructivist camps of historiography? Additionally, is this construction of a supposedly historical and \"exotic\" class stratification (often likened to a curse) an example of Western Orientalizing tendencies?\n\nI'm not sure what you mean by \"justified.\" It's based on evidence; it's not like Dirks just made it all up, and as a professional scholar taking part in academic discourse he's certainly professionally justified in making his argument. \n\nFor your second question, yes, his argument is most definitely constructivist, but I'd take issue with the notion that it's \"anti-realist.\" Things that are constructed can be and are very much \"real,\" and Dirks would not, I think, argue with the idea that caste is not a \"real\" thing right now, since people certainly behave according to the divisions that it creates. I'll explain further below. I'm not exactly sure what your last question means; is caste an \"exotic\" class stratification? What precisely does mean? Exotic to whom? If you mean \"exotic\" in the sense that the British imposed it, then I think you're misreading Dirks's argument slightly. \n\nDirks would argue that it was the century and more of scholarship before his revision that was Orientalizing. He opens his book with a massive and wide-ranging critique of literally generations of European anthropologists, historians, ethnographers, philologists, and so on, many of whom we could certainly say were \"Orientalists,\" who had developed the scholarly ideas of caste going back to the nineteenth, and perhaps even the late eighteenth century. These scholars were Orientalist in the sense that they assumed that the Indian peoples they encountered were basically static, unchanging. They might have had great civilizations once, but that was the distant past, and in the colonial present they saw, they thought they could safely assume that Indians were unchanging. Thus, when they saw caste divisions, they assumed that these had always existed. Dirks's point, following the work of people like Cohn and Bayly, is not merely to critique this Orientalist assumption, but to show how precisely caste has changed. His argument is not so much that British colonialism created or imposed caste unilaterally, but rather that it created the conditions for the construction of a rigid and *apparently* timeless, unchanging, \"Orientalist\" caste system. The passages you supply above note that \n\n > Our goal in this paper is to demonstrate that caste structures – more specifically the type and number of castes within a particular region – are not primordially given. They are a function of political processes. As Bayly (1999) points out, over the centuries, shifts in political control have resulted in shifts in the caste system because of changes in **systems of patronage and allegiance**. Dirks (2002) specifically looking at British colonial rule makes a compelling case that **the British propensity for measurement and administrative control forced standardized categories onto a hitherto fluid system that in turn had important effects on political mobilization** – essentially creating the modern caste system.\n\nThe point that gets missed here is that politics--and therefore caste--is a two-way street. Yes, British and European scholars and administrators looked at Indian people, saw caste relationships, and assumed that these relationships were fixed, rigid, and timeless; yes, their administration put into place governance that operated on those assumptions--but, Indians also had to work within these systems, and adapted to them. I don't have his book to hand, but Dirks identified moments in the late nineteenth century when colonial administrators would come up with some policy that gave preferential treatment to particular castes. As soon as they did that, the people affected would begin to assert their caste identity, going to the administrators and saying, essentially, \"We're in this caste; you've gotten us miscategorized, we're part of this caste, we always have been, and that other group of people from the other side of the village, they've never been part of this caste. So, you should give us this particular preferential treatment, and not them.\" So, it's not as though the British just showed up and declared caste a thing; they showed up, tried to govern according to a radically simplified[1] and Orientalist view of how they thought Indian people lived, and Indian people responded to that governance in ways that maximized their benefits within it. Caste is, therefore, the product of colonialism and Orientalism, but not *only* of those things. It was a long process, involving actors from all parts of Indian and colonial society. \n\nNow, I think your main question is really, \"Do historians agree with Dirks?\" This, I cannot really elaborate on too much, since I haven't done much reading in South Asian history in the past few years. My understanding, though, is that Dirks's work has really shifted the paradigm. I'm absolutely positive that there are counter-arguments to it, in which people say \"Here's an example of a caste relationship that has existed for 1000 years, so Dirks's conclusion that caste (as it exists today) is a recent invention is wrong.\" And this should be expected, because one undeniable fact about South Asia is its diversity. There MUST be caste relationships that are *really* old--but a few counter-examples does not mean that the broad thrust of Dirks's work, that modern ideas of caste as a fairly rigid system of relationships is a relatively recent product of interactions between Indians and European colonizers, is invalid. He is the standard read for that topic.\n\n[1] See James Scott's *Seeing Like a State* for a great elaboration of this same phenomenon, in which states and other large bureaucracies operate in part by rending the immense complexity of nature, human society, and the universe in general MUCH simpler, and so \"legible\" to government and therefore available for intervention. ", "I think /u/agentdcf gave a fantastic answer. I just want to highlight one import puzzle-piece in the formation of the \"contemporary\" caste system. Realistically, castes in South Asia are incredibly complicated endogamous groups (people marry within their castes). There are certainly hierarchical elements and, of course, social repressions accompanying them (just as it has accompanied *class* in every society in the world), but the Western legal minds who dominated Indian rule during the colonial era were unable to see caste as anything BUT an oppressive social form.\n\nNevertheless, the British colonial idea of \"fairness\" sought a \"HINDU LAW\" for Hindus. It found the source of this law in a centuries-old Sanskrit religious text called the **Manu Smriti**, or **Manu Dharma Shastra**, which the original Orientalist, Sir William Jones, translated into English in 1794 as \"The Law Code of the Hindus\" (or something to that effect.)\n\nThe British colonial rule went on to use this text - or rather its translation by Jones - as the basis for a \"Hindu Law code\" established in India.^1 To illustrate the absolute absurdity of this, imagine if Indians took over Europe, decided that the fair thing to do was to establish a separate \"Christian Law,\" and then used a sloppy translation of the Bible as a reference.^2\n\nThe Manu Smriti, among other things, details a very basic model of the caste system (4 castes, VERY rigidly stratified) that is at odds with the complex social organization that actually exists in India. \n\nSo the laws imposed in India during the 1800s, which created very real and legally binding hierarchies, were derived in part from this ancient pseudo-religious esoteric religious text, and of course after 200+ years of British rule, made a deep impact on Indian thinking.\n\n1) Bernard Cohn's book (1996) has more detail about this.\n2) This attitude towards the East - the idea that its culture and society could be understood through ancient texts - is analyzed and systematically torn down in Edward Said's *Orientalism* (1978)", "I would like to add to /u/agentdcf response that designing political systems on simplified local ethnicity/cultural/power customs was a common method by colonial powers, as [Mamdani](_URL_0_) writes,\n > ... indirect rule constituted separate legal universes. In addition to a racial separation in civil law between natives and nonnatives, as under direct rule, indirect rule divided natives into separate groups and governed each through a different set of \"customary\" laws. Every ethnic group was now said to have its own separate set \"customary\" laws, to be enforced by its own separate \"native authority\", administering its own \"home area\". Thereby, the very category \"native\" was legally dismantled as different groups of natives were set apart on the basis of ethnicity. From being only a cultural community, the ethnic community was turned into a political community, too. \n\nThis was a response to the consequences of direct rule - the separation of colonizers and the colonized (considered as a race), the former being the civilized, while the latter yet-to-be-civilized. This simplistic segregation actually strengthened the solidarity of the colonized people. Indirect rule was then implemented, and ethnicities became political units\n > Instead of treating the colonized as a single racialized mass, indirect rule sliced them over, not once but twice. The first division separated the nonindigenous - governed through civil law as nonnatives - from the indigenous, the natives. The second division sliced the natives into so many separate ethnicities. \n\nMamdani further argues that some ethnicities were perceived to be more civilized than other. He provides the example of the Tutsi in Rwanda, which subsequently led to the [Rwandan Genocide](_URL_1_). It's a different topic though, you can read his book *When Victims Become Killers* if you are interested. My point though, is that it's very much plausible that the modern caste system is mainly a result of the intervention of colonial powers. Also, as stated in /u/agentdcf comment, the caste system was more fluid before colonial intervention. Thus the strict current segregation might be analogous to the strict ethnic segregation in Africa. ", "Although how castes were enforced in ancient and medieval India, prior to the arrival of Europeans, is not well known. There are some interesting mentions of it in the scriptures. For in the Mahabharata in the book of Anusasana Parva, where Bhisma instructs the new king Yudhishthira in good statecraft, several questions regarding castes were answered. You can read the entire Anusasana Parva for better insight. I have posted a clipping from Kisan Mohan Ganguli's translation.\n\n > Bhishma said, 'In the beginning, the Lord of all creatures created the four orders and laid down their respective acts or duties, for the sake of sacrifice. The Brahmana may take four wives, one from each of the four orders. In two of them (viz., the wife taken from his own order and that taken from the one next below), he takes birth himself (the children begotten upon them being regarded as invested with the same status as his own). Those sons, however, that are begotten by him on the two spouses that belong to the next two orders (viz., Vaisya and Sudra), are inferior, their status being determined not by that of their father but by that of their mothers. The son that is begotten by a Brahmana upon a Sudra wife is called Parasara, implying one born of a corpse, for the Sudra woman's body is as inauspicious as a corpse. He should serve the persons of his (father's) race. Indeed, it is not proper for him to give up the duty of service that has been laid down for him. Adopting all means in his power, he should uphold the burden of his family. Even if he happens to be elder in age, he should still dutifully serve the other children of his father who may be younger to him in years, and bestow upon them whatever he may succeed in earning. A Kshatriya may take three wives. In two of them (viz., the one taken from his own order and the other that is taken from the order immediately below), he takes birth himself (so that those children are invested with the status of his own order). His third wife being of the Sudra order is regarded as very inferior. The son that he begets upon her comes to be called as an Ugra. The Vaisya may take two spouses. In both of them (viz., the one taken from his own order, and the other from the lowest of the four pure orders), he takes birth himself (so that those children become invested with the status of his own order). The Sudra can take only one wife, viz., she that is taken from his own order. The son begotten by him upon her becomes a Sudra. A son that takes birth under circumstances other than those mentioned above, comes to be looked upon as a very inferior one If a person of a lower order begets a son upon a woman of a superior order, such a son is regarded as outside the pale of the four pure orders. Indeed, such a son becomes on object of censure with the four principal orders. If a Kshatriya begets a son upon a Brahmana woman, such a son, without being included in any of the four pure orders, comes to be regarded as a Suta The duties of a Suta are all connected with the reciting of eulogies and encomiums of kings and other great men. The son begotten by a Vaisya upon a woman of the Brahmana order comes to be regarded as a Vaidehaka. The duties assigned to him are the charge of bars and bolts for protecting the privacy of women of respectable households. Such sons have no cleansing rites laid down for them. If a Sudra unites with a woman belonging to the foremost of the four orders, the son that is begotten is called a Chandala. Endued with a fierce disposition, he must live in the outskirts of cities and towns and the duty assigned to him is that of the public executioner. Such sons are always regarded as wretches of their race. These, O foremost of intelligent persons, are the offspring of intermixed orders. The son begotten by a Vaisya upon a Kshatriya woman becomes a Vandi or Magadha. The duties assigned to him are eloquent recitations of praise. The son begotten through transgression, by a Sudra upon a Kshatriya women, becomes a Nishada and the duties assigned to him have reference to the catching of fish. If a Sudra happens to have intercourse with a Vaisya woman, the son begotten upon her comes to be called Ayogava. The duty assigned to such a person are those of a Takshan (carpenter). They that are Brahmanas should never accept gifts from such a person. They are not entitled to possess any kind of wealth. Persons belonging to the mixed castes beget upon spouses taken from their own castes children invested with the status that is their own. When they beget children in women taken from castes that are inferior to theirs, such children become inferior to their fathers, for they become invested with the status that belongs to their mothers Thus as regards the four pure orders, persons beget children invested with their own status upon spouses taken from their own orders as also upon them that are taken from the orders immediately below their own. When, however, offspring are begotten upon other spouses, they come to be regarded as invested with a status that is, principally, outside the pale of the four pure orders. When such children beget sons in women taken from their own classes, those sons take the status of their sires. It is only when they take spouse from castes other than their own, that the children they beget become invested with inferior status. As an example of this it may be said that a Sudra begets upon a woman belonging to the most superior order a son that is outside the pale of the four orders (for such a son comes to be regarded as a Chandala who is much inferior). The son that is outside the pale of the four orders by uniting with women belonging to the four principal orders, begets offspring that are further degraded in point of status. From those outside the pale of the four orders and those again that are further outside that pale, children multiply in consequence of the union of persons with women of classes superior to their own. In this way, from persons of inferior status classes spring up, altogether fifteen in number, that are equally low or still lower in status. It is only from sexual union of women with persons who should not have such union with them that mixed classes spring up. Among the classes that are thus outside the pale of the four principal or pure orders, children are begotten upon women belonging to the class called Sairindhri by men of the class called Magadha. The occupation of such offspring is the adornment of the bodies of kinds and others. They are well-acquainted with the preparation of unguents, the making of wreaths, and the manufacture of articles used for the decoration of the person. Though free by the status that attaches to them by birth, they should yet lead a life of service. From the union of Magadhas of a certain class with women of the caste called Sairindhri, there springs up another caste called Ayogava. Their occupation consists in the making of nets (for catching fish and fowl and animals of the chase). Vaidehas, by uniting themselves with women of the Sairindhri caste, beget children called Maireyakas whose occupation consists in the manufacture of wines and spirits. From the Nishadas spring a caste called Madgura and another known by the name of Dasas whose occupation consists in plying boats. ", " Indian from Hyderabad here, my region was never directly ruled by British but was a princely state ruled by Nizam. I don't want to argue with tons of research done by the sociologists/Anthropologists/Historians, but just want to point that modern caste system in my region is just like the rest of India. \n \nI have read and watched enough of Indian religious and mythological stuff like Mahabharata and Ramayana, and come across many caste related stories similar to modern day. eg. Karna not allowed to take part in a Archery contest due to his caste.\n\nThe only thing I can think of British influence on caste is how it is used for general classification of population, which is followed till date for various administrative purposes like affirmative action. But to say British colonial system is responsible for modern day caste system is absurd.", "You can argue one way or the other - but the fact remains that we have *very* little knowledge about the society and customs from that time. Written records are few and scattered, and the ones which are present are pretty much impossible to pin-point on timeline. We don't even know how the 'so-called' Indus Valley Civilization ended and the concept of Aryan came to being. (I say 'so-called' because a more sensible name should probably be Saraswati Valley Civilization). Their language is yet to be deciphered. We don't know how the civilization moved east to Ganga/Yamuna basin and when exactly were the *Veda/Puranas* written. Hence, the evolution of present day Hinduism is up for anyone and everyone to theorize and comment. No one has the answer. \n\n**tl:dr - Evolution of present day Hinduism is the MH370 of history. Nobody has true facts, everyone loves of theorize. Believe what you want.**\n\nAdditional reading: India by John Keay" ] }

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[ "http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/bardhan/e271_f07/rao.pdf", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#Historical_views" ]

[ [], [], [ "http://www.sendspace.com/file/3ovqwo", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_genocide" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1pdhge" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "\"The rise and fall of the Roman Empire\" is a **huge** topic and I honestly don't know of any book, academically oriented or otherwise, which adequately covers the entire period. There are some books that can help to give you a sense of the Roman world and which can help to orientate you, so that you can focus in detail on whatever interests you most.\n\n* Robin Lane Fox, *The Classical World; An Epic History of Greece and Rome* - Despite the over-the-top title, this is a decent bird's eye view of Classical history up to Constantine (IIRC). Not the most exciting style in the world, but solid on narrative and information, plus it includes lots on the Greek world, which was the foundation for much of Rome's culture.\n\n* Tom Holland, *Rubicon* - A great, very engaging, introduction to the late Republican period, seen by most as the *key* period in Rome's history. All your favorite Romans are here (Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Sulla, Cicero) plus Holland makes very good use of the primary sources for a popular history.\n\n* Adrian Goldsworthy has numerous books on ancient Rome, including one on the fall of Rome (n.b. which I havn't personally read). He's an engaging writer, if a little stiff at times, but he's a real expert on the military side of things and gets really in-depth on things like tactics and the nitty-gritty of battles and sieges. *The Fall of Carthage*, which is a history of the Punic Wars, is my favorite of his.\n\n* For the fall of Rome, which is often treated separately and studied more by early medievalists/late antiquists than by classicists, try Peter Heather, *The Fall of the Roman Empire*. Although not all historians will agree with his explanations, Heather gives a nice clear narrative and a great introduction to the major issues with the period.\n\nAll of the books suggested also have decent bibliographies, which you can then use to read up on the things which interest you in more detail. They should also all be easy and cheap enough to get a hold of, especially is you buy second-hand online.\n\nOr, alternatively, you could try [the AskHistorians book recommendations list!](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/europe#wiki_ancient_rome" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c7z5msl" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "There were several factors that led to the decline and eventual abolishmen of serfdom in England, notably, there were ways out of serfdom before the royal abolishment 1574. A serf could earn his freedom through valor in combat, buy it himself (Manumission) or, legally escape to a town, stay hidden for 366 days and then be counted as a burgher.\n\nThe Black Death of 1348-1350 further strengthend the position of the serfs, as rural populations declined the supply of labour also dropped, effectively increasing the bargaining power of the serfs. After that came the Great Rising of 1381 in response to the third medieval Poll Tax (which was percieved as very unfair, notably to married women who played a prominent role in the Great Rising). While the rebellion itself did not see serfdom abolished it increased the awareness of the power of the lower classes.\n\nThere is no specific event at which serfdom died, it was officially abolished in 1574 in England (note, not present day Great Britain) by edict of Elizabeth I but at that point, there were very few serfs left, most having been granted their freedom, bought it themselves or having left for the increasingly industrialized cities before that time.\n\nI hope that this was something along the lines of what you were looking for. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cajget6", "cajjvoo", "cajmav1", "cajxww8" ], "score": [ 9, 12, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Often, it's cultural. Alexander the Great was known in Persia as Alexander the Terrible. Suleyman is also known as \"Kanuni\" or 'the Lawgiver'.", " > What about other leaders such as Ivan the Terrible?\n\nOne thing to keep in mind is that the English word *terrible* has gone through a pretty big semantic shift since it was first applied to Ivan IV. These days, it means roughly 'bad, awful', and in the context of a ruler, 'incompetent'. Back in the 16th or 17th century (or whenever we settled on translating Russian *groznyj* as 'terrible'), its primary meaning was 'inspiring terror or dread'--roughly the meaning of the original Russian term.", "9th century king Alfred the Great is the only English monarch to carry such grand title. But it was attached to is name some 700 years after his reign, by writers describing his life and achievements (which were indeed significant).\n\nIn this case it was easy to look back and make a judgement about the significance of the king and his deeds, which were indeed impressive. During his days, Alfred had already commissioned one of his Bishops to write his biography, which inevitably emphasised Alfred's positive aspects and did not dwell on the ruthless aspects that any ninth-century king would have had. Eventually, it was writers of the 16th century who gave Alfred his epithet as ‘the Great’.", "Catherine the Great was named so by her own subjects.\n\nThe story goes like this:\n\nCatherine wanted to completely restructure the chaotic legal code of Russia. This led to her composition of the Nakaz (Instruction), which in the end proved to be a failed effort to bring Enlightenment principles to Eastern Europe. After its publication (1767), she invited delegates from each of the provinces to come to Moscow to form a temporary \"Legislative Commission,\" whose purpose involved proposing new laws based on Catherine's Nakaz. \n\nThe people, including representatives from all social classes except for that of the serf, were overwhelmed at this unprecedented style of leadership, and proceeded to award her the title of \"Catherine the Great.\" (Another contender was \"All Wise Mother of the Fatherland\").\n\n(p.s. I am no expert, I just happened to read this in Robert K. Massie's biography on Catherine the Great.)\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "efpqury" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I can't address this question directly, but I can speak a little about the nature of comedy itself, how it has changed over time. Would what the Romans find funny be still funny to us in the modern day? The short answer is - yes. \n\nI mean probably not everything is a knee-slapper, some stuff is probably so contextual that it'd be meaningless to us today. It was also a crueler time time, as puerile as some of our modern entertainment can be, we'd blanche at watching criminals being fed to animals as the half-time show at a gladiatorial game.\n\nAll those caveats aside, there are comedy plays that survive down to this age that are pretty damn funny. The *Casina* by Plautus has a doddering old master planning to marry a beautiful slave girl to one of his lickspittle slaves so he can have unfettered access to her (without his wife catching on). Another servant who's more loyal to the wife plots to frustrate him. High and low brow comedy ensues and the old codger is humiliated by the wily slave. If you take the foolish master and clever slave trope and port it into the modern day... you get Blackadder III. And Plautus wrote during the time of the Second Punic War down to the Macedonian Wars, what later Romans would lament as 'the good old days'. \n\nAnd this type of comedy was just one type, we know there were other forms such as comedic plays but, as I understand it, they didn't survive to the modern time. There is Terrence, another Roman playwright, but the few plays I've read of his bore me to tears (I find Terrence to be the Family Circus compared to Plautus' Calvin and Hobbes). " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f314yrh" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "I've written about this more extensively [in the past](_URL_1_). But the short version in answer to your specific question would be either the 9th century, the 14th century or the 19th century depending on what exactly you mean.\n\nThe earliest discussion of the early Middle Ages as a period where the light of knowledge was growing dark actually comes from the early Middle Ages itself by Walafrid Strabo:\n\n > [T]he length and breadth of the kingdom committed to him (i.e. Charlemagne) by God, which was clouded and, if I might say this, nearly completely blind, he made - with light given by God - full of light again, and able to see, by a beaming-out of rays of all learning that was new and in part unknown before to this barbarous age. But now, with the pursuit of knowledge declining again into its opposite, the light of wisdom, because it is less cherished, is growing dimmer in many people. (trans. Janet Nelson, 'The Dark Ages', 192.)\n\nPetrarch is often credited with being the first to refer to the entire Middle Ages *up to and including his own era* as an era of darkness:\n\n > And yet had I touched upon illustrious men of our time, I will not say that I should have introduced your name (lest in my present anger I should seem to flatter you, a thing which is not my habit even when well disposed), but most assuredly I should not have passed over in silence either your uncle or your father. I did not wish for the sake of so few famous names, however, to guide my pen so far and through such darkness. (trans. Theodore E. Mommsen, 'Petrarch's Conception of the \"Dark Ages\"', 234)\n\nThis idea gain currency among the humanists from the 15th century, and the division of history solidified in the 17th century, but the particular terminology of 'The Dark Ages' was actually fairly uncommon before the 19th century and is actually largely restricted to the English language. (For example, in German the analogous phrase would be the 'dark Middle Ages' – *das finster Mittelalter*.) \n\nIt is among these late 19th and early 20th century English historians that the idea of the 'Dark Ages' comes to be used for the early Middle Ages alone, since they begin to adopt it as a contrast to the 'Middle Ages' as a way to distinguish the periods before and after the Norman conquest. (See for example, William Paton Ker's, [*The Dark Ages*](_URL_0_) (1904).)" ] }

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[ [ "https://archive.org/details/cu31924027096134/page/n9", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pt42z/what_is_the_origin_of_the_idea_among_historians/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6paj8k" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Use of a musket rest, or forquette, was common in the early days of the hand-held firearm, during the early 17th century. The matchlock musket used in Europe at this time tended to weigh around 6.5kg and be 1.5m long, making it burdensome and awkward to hold up. Added to this was the significant recoil caused upon firing, further necessitating a musket rest.\n\nBy the 1630s, advances in firearm design, such as shortening the barrel and reducing the barrel thickness, saw the decline of musket rest-use on European battlefields. Recoil was still a problem, however, and musket rests were still used often until the arrival of smaller calibre muskets later in the 17th century." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "caw19hn", "caw3tn5" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "The Romans had the *Corona graminea* (\"Grass Crown\") as highest military honor, it was reserved for officers whose actions saved an entire legion or a whole army. It was awarded only to 8 persons, according to Pliny (and to Augustus as a political honor).\n\nThe second highest was the *Corona civica* (Civic crown) made of oak leaves, for those who saved the lives of fellow citizens by slaying an enemy on a spot not further held by the enemy that same day.\n\nBoth were very high honors and accorded immense respect for the person who wore them.", "FYI, there was a similar question the other day, so you'll find more responses here: \n\n[When and how did the tradition of awarding medals to soldiers begin?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hezm6/when_and_how_did_the_tradition_of_awarding_medals/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fkymiu7" ], "score": [ 20 ], "text": [ "**Short answer:**\n\nNope, that's unlikely to be true.\n\n**Discussion:**\n\nMental health is treated substantially differently in Japan than in the West, and things that might be characterized one way here might be called something else, or not spoken of at all in Japan. In particular the Japanese have a social ethos of stoicism, the so-called \"*gaman* spirit\". There are common Japanese phrases that we usually translate into idiomatic English as \"good luck\" ( *gaman site kudasai* or *gambatte* ); translated more literally the words mean \"please endure it\" or \"tough it out\". That tells you something about the approach to adversity in Japanese culture-- speaking up about it isn't encouraged. So they might not have a diagnosis of PTSD where we would and you're unlikely to find a statistic that would let you make direct comparisons of Japanese vs other veterans, but everything we can see suggests a lot of trauma.\n\nJapan had and still has a high suicide rate-- including many suicides of those with military service, though I can't find that broken out in the statistics that I can access. The rate was much higher in the post war years than at present, and many more men than women. Most of the suicides of men in the late 40s and into the 50s and perhaps even the 1960s would have been men with military service. How are you going to disentangle their veteran status from other causes, when veteran status was so ubiquitous in these cohorts?\n\nWe have many Japanese memoirs and films made by veterans that reflect a desperate wartime experience and profound stress. Two examples that come immediately to mind: *Kike wadatsumi no koe (*\"Listen to the voices of the Sea\", from 1950) about the Japanese defeat at Imphal. It's pretty desperate stuff, and was based on the writings of Japanese students conscripted as soldiers. And most recently the 1987 documentary by a veteran of the New Guinea campaign, *Yuki Yukite Shingun* ( in English it was \"The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On\") is a first hand account of trauma that 40 years later was still pretty brutal.\n\nAs to war criminals -- many of the more notorious were unrepentant and unpunished. Prince Asaka, the commander most responsible for the Nanjing Massacre, lived out a seemingly untroubled post war life as a golf course developer (General Yamane, a much more sympathetic figure, but one who didn't have the advantage of being the Emperor's uncle, was hanged). Naito Ryoichi, a physician associated with Unit 731, which carried out medical experiments on Chinese prisoners -- he went on to found a pharmaceutical company. One of the Japanese to openly discuss participation in war crimes was Azuma Shiro, who wrote a memoir of his military service, and traveled to China to apologize. He appeared to be deeply traumatized.\n\nSee:\n\nWilson, Sandra. “Film and Soldier: Japanese War Movies in the 1950s.” *Journal of Contemporary History*, vol. 48, no. 3, 2013, pp. 537–555.\n\nJ.J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii Press: 2001)\n\nAzuma, Shiro. \"The Diary of Azuma Shiro\", \\[2006\\]\n\n[The art of perseverance: How gaman defined Japan](_URL_0_) \\-- not academic, but a good introduction into gaman as a cultural norm.\n\nThe most recent English language sociology/anthropology introduction to Japan that I've read was\n\nSugimoto, Yoshio. \"An Introduction to Japanese Society\", (Cambridge University Press:1997) . . . there's likely something more recent on the subject, but one virtue of being twenty years old is that it's much closer to WW II." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190319-the-art-of-perseverance-how-gaman-defined-japan" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cg2btjy" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "To people answering this question: yes we know the BBC is publicly funded. That's great. But it's not particularly helpful. Why is the BBC publicly funded? What is the difference between the BBC and say, PBS? Was there debate in Britain at the time of the BBC's foundation about the funding model? Have there been significant attempts to privatise it? Please go into more depth than a singe sentence." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cm64uyj" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "(I started answering this then realized how complicated the answer is, so my apologies for any confusion here. I tried to reduce it down to just some of the main events.)\n\nThe US relationship with the Tibetan movement and government in exile goes back several decades and is linked (at least in part) to the dawn of the Cold War. The United States saw the expansion of the Chinese Communist Party west toward Tibet through the lens of global communist expansion generally. Though the CCP would eventually come to control much of historic Tibet, the decade of the 1950s saw numerous negotiations between the Tibetan Kashag government, the Dalai Lama and his immediate advisers, the CCP, the US, the UK, and India. Though I'm glossing over a lot, the general sentiment was the UK thought India should take the lead handling the Tibetan situation, the Nehru government of India initially didn't want to sour a potential relationship with China so avoided most action, the US wanted the Tibetan government to denounce the CCP and set up a government in exile (Sri Lanka, India, and even the US were proposed as places for them to settle, but the US believed settling in India could have the strongest effect because of proximity), and the Tibetans were divided amongst themselves and oscillated between exile and negotiations with China. \n\nAnyway, with this as a backdrop, several Tibetans led by the Dalai Lama's elder brother Thubten Jigme Norbu/Taktse Rimpoche came to the United States to advocate for the Tibetan cause. Skipping some things, after the CCP annexation the Tibetan government in exile and their supporters utilized both the decolonization of the 1960s and the anti-communist sentiments of the Cold War to advocate for the Tibetan cause. This helped put the Tibetans on the radar of a number of governments and international bodies, but little else came of it. \n\nThen in the 1980s, the burgeoning relationship between China and the US coupled with the breakdown of relations between China and India made the US an important power-broker in the region. The Dalai Lama, by this time well-versed in international politics (and probably acting with at least tacit approval if not active encouragement of the Indian government) took this moment to renew the international focus on Tibet. Human rights and the environment were becoming more and more prominent in Western academic discourse, and the Tibetans shifted their narrative to match this sentiment. They emphasized the human rights violations and ecological damage caused by the Chinese and de-emphasized their own demand for independence. The German and the American legislative wings both saw various motions made concerning Tibet. The Dalai Lama visited the US in 1987, met with the President and addressed Congress. China grew alarmed, and mounted their own campaigns to show economic development in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The US saw just how much the issue of Tibet agitated the Chinese and held on to that information for future use. National and international media reported on all this and more, and the majority of Western people came to learn of the Dalai Lama and Tibet.\n\nBeyond stating that human rights and the environment were both becoming hot topics at the time of Tibetan resurgence into the international spotlight, I don't feel qualified to say why Western/US culture so strongly latched onto the movement. I also don't know much about the history of the Uighurs, but extrapolating from the Tibetan experience it seems they lacked at least three things that the Tibetans had: 1) a unifying government in exile established with the help of Western states (and thus the networking that brings), 2) large and distinctive refugee communities in places where they are allowed to speak freely on political matters, 3) a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama who is capable of translating Tibetan beliefs and motivations into concepts understood by and identifiable to Western audiences.\n\nSources:\n\nMelvyn C. Goldtein, \"A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm Before the Storm\" (University of California Press: 2007)\n\nTsering Shakya, \"The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947\" (Penguin: 1999)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9a8kq1" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Just a quick rundown on the three men mentioned in OP; I haven't done a good bit of reading on the Eastern Front for a while because of classwork pulling me in other directions, but I'll give it my best shot.\n\n**Heinz Guderian** was instrumental in the development of the German armoured forces during the initial build-up before the Second World War. In his memoirs, *Panzer Leader*, he describes how he developed, over the course of the late 20s and 30s, the theoretical underpinnings of Blitzkrieg doctrine: a large, well-organized armored force supported by fast-moving infantry and air power, that would achieve a decisive breakthrough at a specific point in a defensive line, creating a gap that could be exploited to flank and surround other enemy units. The classic example of this would be the tank attack at Sedan, during the Battle of France, that allowed Guderian and other tank commanders to surround Allied forces in Belgium. Guderian also served on the Eastern Front, where his 2nd Panzer Group was responsible for the smashing of Soviet divisions on the Central Front. After he captured Smolensk, he argued for an immediate attack on Moscow, in defiance of Hitler who was committed to the Kiev operation. Guderian was dismissed later in the winter of 1941, when he defied Hitler's \"stand fast\" order during the Soviet winter counteroffensive. He was later reinstated as the \"Inspector of Armored Troops\", but this was a mostly meaningless role and he never held a truly important military command until the end of the War, though he did feebly attempt to influence German strategy until the end of the War; he often clashed with Hitler on such matters which led to periodic dismissals.\n\n**Walter Model** is honestly the man about which I know the least, this being a result of him being something of a historical enigma; he burned all of his personal papers when he committed suicide at the end of the War. Most famous for his command in the West during the last year of the war, where he played a prominent role in the Battle of the Bulge, Model was most successful in the East, where he held Army Group Center in position around Rzhev for the years following the Battle of Moscow. He inflicted tremendous losses on Soviet forces during the Rzhev offensive, Operation Mars, during the Winter of 1942-3, however he was obliged to withdraw from the Rzhev salient after the battle. It is worth noting that, although many details of the Rzehv offensive have been lost to history, it is possible that it represented a second offensive on the level of the Stalingrad counterattack, launched at roughly the same time, and had Model not been able to blunt this attack it's likely the entire German front in the East would have collapsed. After leading the Northern Wing of the unsuccessful attack on Kursk in the Summer of 1943, Model's forces were forced to rely on elastic defense against repeated Soviet attacks. Model's use of Germany's assault guns, anti-tank guns, and mobile reserves allowed them to repel Soviet offensives that often greatly outnumbered them; it was not until Operation Bagration during 1944 that vastly superior Soviet forces almost completely destroyed Army Group Center. Model was transferred West during the Autumn of 1944, and after his failure in the Battle of the Bulge, Model fell out of Hitler's good graces, where he had prior been one of Hitler's favorite commanders. In early 1945, the remnants of Germany's forces in the West were surrounded in the Ruhr valley, it was then that Model committed suicide rather than oversee the surrender of his forces.\n\n**Erich von Manstein** was, in my opinion, perhaps the most capable leader of the entire War. He was the mastermind of the Sedan plan which led to the fall of France, but he didn't hold an actual field command until the invasion of Russia. His Panzer Corps, attached to Army Group North, advanced more rapidly than almost any unit in the Axis army. Following the success of his corps there, he was transferred South to oversea the campaign to conquer the strategically vital Crimean peninsula. During the Fall of 1941, he was almost able to completely destroy Soviet forces there, with only the garrison of Sevastopol fortress remaining along with soviet Units on the peninsula's far eastern edge. During the Winter, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack aiming to retake the peninsula, Manstein was able to preserve his forces and over the course of Spring and Summer 1942 destroyed the forces sent against him, leading to the capture of hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Promoted to Field Marshal following the capture of Sevastopol fortress, he was transferred to the siege lines around Leningrad, but recalled during the December of 1942 in an attempt to break through to the surrounded Sixth army in Stalingrad. Though his forces made good progress towards the city, Hitler refused to allow the sixth army to abandon Stalingrad to attempt a link-up with Manstein. A Soviet offensive was then launched against Manstein's flank, which forced him to withdraw, abandoning the Sixth army to its fate. In response to this offensive, Manstein devised one of the most cunning operations of the entire campaign, his \"backhand blow\" surrounded the Soviet spearheads attempting to cut off his forces in February of 1943, pinning them against the sea of Azov and destroying large elements of the Soviets' armored forces. He also launched a counteroffensive to recapture Kharkov, held by numerically superior Soviet forces and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties. Manstein's greatest failure came as commander of the Kursk operation, an ill-advised campaign that only came about as a result of Hitler's insistence, against the advice of Manstein, Guderian and Model. Manstein himself had wanted to launch the attack far earlier than it ultimately began, by the time the Kursk offensive started, Soviet defenses in the area were well-prepared for the German attack. Following Kursk, Manstein oversaw the gradual retreat of German forces throughout the Southern theater. He advocated for using the mobile defensive tactics pioneered by himself and Model on a far larger scale, trading space for time so that the Soviets would outrun their logistical capabilities and allow the Germans to counterattack, but Hitler refused to allow any but the most plainly necessary retreats. His clashes with Hitler ultimately led to Manstein's dismissal in early 1944.\n\nmuch belated edit: some sources, for the sake of posterity,\n\nThe three books that I would most recommend for learning about each of these men are these, two memoirs and one biography after the fact (owing to Model having committed suicide, thus rendering him rather incapable of writing memoirs).\n\n*Panzer Leader* by Heinz Guderian is a record of his military career, paying particular attention to his role during the early months of the War with Russia; it also documents his self-described contributions to the formation of German armored doctrine during the years leading up to the war.\n\n*Lost Victories* by Erich von Mastein is his account of his war service; the Russian campaigns are again much the focus here; Manstein also makes a harshly critical analysis of Hitler's military leadership throughout the war. It's worth mentioning that both of these memoirs have been criticized for their, call it \"failure\" to explore the war in anything but a strictly military sense; an effort, some have said, to exculpate their authors from the atrocities that occurred under their commands, and the genocidal undertones of the war itself.\n\nFor a look at Model's life and service, I recommend *Hitler's Commander: Field Marshal Walther Model* by Steven Newton, who does an excellent job at trying to piece together a portrait of the Field Marshal from what little information we have. For a general look at the war in the East, I highly recommend David Glantz' excellent books about the Eastern Front, such as *When Titans Clashed*. While they primarily offer a look at the war from the Soviet perspective, they are nothing if not thorough in almost every aspect of the Russian front during the Second World War." ] }

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[ "http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bs0yk/til_that_german_gen_erwin_rommel_earned_mutual/c99llr1" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dgyjq5e" ], "score": [ 20 ], "text": [ "The preferred term for the scientists used the root of \"nucleus\" even in the 1940s, but the term \"atomic bomb\" (which dates from the 1910s) was more popularly known already (through science fiction and speculation), so it was used instead. \n\nThe shift towards \"nuclear\" took place in the context of the nuclear power industry. By the late 1950s \"nuclear\" had overtaken \"atomic,\" which was starting to sound quaint. \n\n[You can see this trend with Google Ngrams very nicely](_URL_1_). If you break it into sub-terms, you can see [more specifically how \"nuclear weapons\" and \"nuclear power\" shift things starting in the mid-1950s](_URL_0_). \n\nAs for why it changed — I don't think I'd call it random. By the 1950s \"atomic\" started to sound old-fashioned and, again, was never very scientifically specific (chemical reactions are \"atomic\" reactions as well — only \"nuclear\" specifies exactly what part of the atom is reacting with things like fission or fusion). \n\nTo my knowledge, there was never any moment in which anyone in the US government (or the US Atomic Energy Commission — \"atomic\" again!) specifically said, \"let's stop using 'atomic,'\" but there was a definite shift in the 1950s. " ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=atomic+energy%2Cnuclear+energy%2Catomic+bomb%2Chydrogen+bomb%2Cthermonuclear%2Cnuclear+weapons%2Cnuclear+power%2Catomic+weapons&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Catomic%20energy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cnuclear%20energy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Catomic%20bomb%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chydrogen%20bomb%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cthermonuclear%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cnuclear%20weapons%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cnuclear%20power%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Catomic%20weapons%3B%2Cc0", "https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=atomic%2Cnuclear&year_start=1940&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Catomic%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cnuclear%3B%2Cc0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "crcovsf", "cre1ccg" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "**The telegraph** was popularized and spread around the world long before the electric light became common. The spread of the telegraph allowed electrical experimentation on a large scale ─ often literally as people coped with the behavior of electricity over long wires.", "The 1700s were the great start of electrical experimentation. Benjamin Franklin tamed wild electricity with the lightning rod in 1749, and at the end of the century Allessandro Volta produced domesticated electricity with the Voltaic pile. This made electricity above the level of static available.\n\nBy 1801, the Royal Institution had the most powerful Voltaic pile in the world. Their new professor, Humphry Davy, delivered lectures on galvanism and ran enough power through a strip of platinum to make it incandescent. By 1806, he invented the arc lamp. In 1807, he founded electrochemistry, using it to produce pure elemental potassium and sodium.\n\nBetter use of electricity waited on developing something better than batteries. The first electrical generator, turning motion into electricity, was invented by Sir Humphry's successor at the Institution, Michael Faraday.\n\n > It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. He similarly discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and the laws of electrolysis. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.\n\nThat would be about 1832. Telegraphic systems - there were several at first - start up around 1835 and proliferate by the 1840s. I think /u/The_Alaskan is quite correct that this is the first public, practical, outside the lab use of electricity. Edison bulbs date to 1878 and are the basis for all radio and electronics.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjo38xh" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ "Holger Herwig, in his book *The Marne, 1914* would disagree with the idea that Kluck was responsible for the defeat on the Marne, and I agree with him. First, and most simply, look at a map (like this [one](_URL_0_). Youll notice that Kluck, whose way out on the left, had to completely reorient his forces to meet the attack of Gallieni, who was rushing troops out of Paris. So, while Kluck reorientated to keep *his* army from being flanked, Bulow continued pushing south, hoping to destroy French 5th Army. Thus, we have the legendary gap, where Kluck zigged and Bulow zagged. Yet, had Kluck continued to keep in contact with Bulow, he would have served the French a great victory *anyway*, either by withdrawing in the face of Gallieni's attack, or stretching his army so thin that Gallieni and the BEF would have had no problem piercing it anyway. \n\nSo I think saying that Kluck's attack was merely glory-seeking is a bit harsh. It was unlikely that Paris would have fallen anyway, given it was never conquered in 1871, and I think Kluck would have had no illusions that he was going to march through Paris while Bulow continued to slog it out. \n\nBut I would also not put ultimate blame on Bulow, who forced the retreat to the Asine. Dont get me wrong, he was very timid and extremely cautious, and was terrified of the BEF which had proven itself the most sluggish element of the Entente forces. But Bulow was not in command, and the ultimate decision to abandon the Schlieffen plan was not his to make. I, and Herwig, would place the blame fully on the shoulders of Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, the Chief of Staff of the German Army, and the overall commander of German forces in the field.\n\nMoltke was everything his uncle was not, unsure, timid, and very cautious. He also believed that in the new style of war, commanders were to lead from well behind the front line, plotting out the course of the war from a map and a comfortable leather chair. He was to utilize telegraph and radio communications to keep apprised of every armies situation, and keep every force moving together towards one unified goal. Thus, on the eve of the Marne, Moltke set up a new command HQ in occupied Luxembourg, where he thought he would best control the final battle for France.\n\nBut Moltke was indecisive, and unwilling to issue orders to his subordinate commanders (some of whom were German royalty). Moltke was to act in a role later defined as an \"Army Group Commander\", that is, his job was to keep the multiple armies all on the same track. He was supposed to be the guy with a clear head, who, armed with up-to-date information, would say \"You go here, you stay put, you push now, you pull back\". But this never happened. As early as mid-August, Moltke had repeated allowed his army commanders to fight battles as they pleased. Against his better judgement (and repeated \"requests\" to stay put), he allowed the Armies in the south to push forward, eventually letting them smash themselves against the fortified line between Verdun and Nancy, and the Swiss border. That cost precious lives, stretched those armies out, committed valuable reserves to a hopeless cause, and it pushed the French onto a well developed rail line which allowed them to drain the southern front of troops. It also set the precedent that Moltke would allow his subordinates to do as *they* thought proper, not as the commander wanted.\n\nOn the Marne, Moltke was placed into a similar situation. While Kluck was *technically* subordinate to Bulow, it was never in a formal manner. That meant that Kluck was really only answerable to Moltke and so was Bulow. Moltke had a problem, he had two commanders who were going different directions, and arguing about which way *both* should go. Moltke had to make a decision, but by this point his communications network had been ravaged by one of the greatest acts of sabotage Ive ever read about.\n\n > Here-in lies said act, if you are uninterested, skip the quoted section. Anyway, as the German Army advanced through Belgium they erected telegraph lines to maintain communication with the rear, including Moltke. Telegraph lines were strung from a pole, much resembling a telephone pole, and stretched for miles across occupied Belgium. The occupied Belgians, angry at being occupied, would go out at night, climb the poles, and clip the telegraph wires. That was obviously annoying, and so the Germans changed how they ran their lines. Rather than string them up in the open, the Germans just placed the lines on the ground, and ran them through fields, farms, woods, everywhere they needed to pass through. This new process succeeded in preventing the old form of sabotage, but the lines up to another. While the humans largely stopped cutting the lines, patriotic and loyal Belgian field mice went to work on the wires, proudly giving their lives to defend their homeland. All joking aside, much like today, animals loved to chew on telegraph wires, and mice were responsible for damaging huge sections of the wires.\n\nBetween the clippers and the mice, 1st and 2nd Armies were largely put out of communication with Moltke. The only way he could communicate was by radio, but radios were still new and rare, and only one army had a set in the North: 2nd Army. And the only message that reliably got through from Bulow was the repeated request to retreat, rather than accurate status reports of the condition of both 1st and 2nd Armies. Moltke knew that he needed an accurate picture of events, and that somebody needed to go out and settle this major crisis. But Moltke couldnt go, he had a war to fight!\n\nSo he sent a subordinate, Lt. Colonel Hentsch, which he invested with his full authority. Hentsch was to ascertain the situation of both Armies and settle matters. Rather than make a personal decision, Moltke left the campaign in the hands of a Lt. Colonel. Hentsch isnt a bad guy, or a villian in our story, because he was placed in an impossible situation. Upon arriving at 2nd Armies HQ, he found Bulow on the verge of a breakdown, fretting about the gap and the tremendous pressure all along his front. He was also *sure* that Kluck was losing, and was only hours away from complete collapse. Without meeting with Kluck, Hentsch authorized Bulow to begin withdrawing back to the Aisne river. By completely withdrawing in that manner, Hentsch *forced* Kluck to withdraw as well, rather than meet destruction from three sides. This ended the great Battle of the Marne, and the German's advance into France. \n\nAnd I would place the blame completely on the shoulders of Moltke. He wanted to command the armies from afar, as some kind of angry god who points on the map and destroys armies. He made a dozen mistakes, including the ones outlined above, which sapped his authority, and promoted confusion and indecisiveness amongst his subordinates. And, instead of appointing intermediary commanders, group commanders between the Army and the Chief of Staff, Moltke tried to manage eight armies spreading from the Channel to Switzerland, and in the Prussian heartland in the east. I fully believe, had Moltke been more like his uncle, things would have gone better for the Germans. Even if he had just set up some kind of command hierarchy, which clearly defined who was in command of whom, the confusion of September could have been avoided. Had Moltke been more like Joffre, who was chauffeured by a high-speed racecar driver to and from Army HQs, he could have solved Bulow and Kluck's argument personally. But Moltke was not those men, he was just Moltke. And I feel that that man was completely mismatched for the task set in front of him. " ] }

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[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Battle_of_the_Marne_-_Map.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dxmxdvz" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "I'm going to try and think historically here, because this isn't really a historical question as you've posed it. There are historical components, but they push and change into the 20-year embargo period, not to mention the present day which is off limits here as a subject of analysis.\n\nIt depends on the country, quite honestly--you're talking about a vast area, even without North Africa it is over 800m people and tens of thousands of culture groups. It also isn't an either/or--Ghanaians from the Asante seat of Kumase, for example, held different ideas about where Asante identity and Ghanaian identity 'apply' in civic terms in the postcolonial era. In examples like the Hausa case, there's a third potential issue, which is identification with the precolonial caliphate of Sokoto that legitmated British claims to rule over northern Nigeria as a colony under their idealized 'indirect' rule scheme. That third set of links obviously applies less in Niger. Nigeria in particular has severe issues with religious and ethnic regionalism, which made coalescing behind a particular political party quite difficult, and helped to define both the early challenges of the country (coups and the Biafran War) as well as the federal structure and semi-devolution of certain things. However, in other countries like Tanzania (leaving out Zanzibar, which was basically coerced into union with Tanganyika and retains a separatist strain and identity), this tribalized ethnic marker is much less important because of state-building efforts rooted in the colonial era but that really reached flower with the pan-African ideas of early TANU leaders and especially Julius Nyerere. It is interesting to compare the deep concern with tribalism in Kenya with its neighbor.\n\nSo it's really all over the map, and one can't generalize, as much as educational curricula and media (including world history and related textbooks) like us to. Each example is peculiar in how ideas of ethnicity and various models of citizenship compare in strength, areas of relevance, and compatibility. I'm sorry it's not a catch-all answer, but there just isn't one beyond saying that layered identities are complicated things that sometimes cause these problems of primacy and sometimes do not.\n\nOne final note: the sense that \"African borders were created arbitrarily\" is a bit overblown. It is true that people of common language and culture were divided by colonial boundaries, but the entire basis for the existence of those colonies involved treaties with precolonial political entities, and European powers sometimes put remarkable effort into sussing out exactly what they were 'entitled' to claim as legitimately 'theirs.' The most arbitrary, straight borders involved areas where settled populations were very sparse (and/or colonial powers couldn't agree and so just made a line), but if you look at Hertslet's contemporary editions of *The Map of Africa by Treaty* you'll see this in action. Hargreaves's essay in Asiwaju's *Partitioned Africans* (1985) gets at that as well as some of the more arbitrary (physical feature) divisions, and Katzellenbogen's \"It Didn't Happen in Berlin\" in Asiwaju and Nugent, *African Boundaries* (1996), also complicates this narrative in interesting ways. There are surely more recent discussions of these boundary conundrums but I don't have them to hand at the moment; more focus falls on the creation of tradition, which usually doesn't question the boundary matter quite as strongly as it ought.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7e9kiu" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "/u/CommonSeance\n\nThe VOC and its successor the Dutch colonial government used guile and violence in many instances. It will be great to have some context: when, where? \n\nHere are several instances:\n\n* Banda islands, 1602-1621.\n\nIn 1621, in his attempt to pacify the Banda islands, VOC governor Coen forced local leaders (*orang kaya*) to negotiate with him. At the peace conference, they were captured and held in the holds of his ships. When other native leaders refused to capitulate, he decided to make an example out of those already captured. They were tortured and killed. His own men submitted report of this violence to the VOC managers in Amsterdam. \n\nKeep in mind that in 1609, the native leaders did similarly to the Dutch. They invited the VOC expedition's commander Verhoeff, who was then ambushed and killed.\n\nFollowing Coen's victory, the VOC engaged in a campaign of destruction and murder, as they sought to depopulate the islands to keep control of the production of spices. \n\n* Amboyna massacre, 1623.\n\nThere is a lot of material on this subject. In 1623, VOC officer van Speult was governing the fortified outpost in Amboyna after Coen set sail to Batavia. The English also had an outpost nearby. The two countries were in theory at peace. Van Speult had suspicion that the English were up to no good, and when his soldiers captured a Japanese mercenary employed by the English sneaking around near his fort, they tortured him and obtained confession that the English were indeed up to no good. Van Speult then invited English officers to dinner, at which they were captured, tortured, and murdered. No princes were involved here. \n\n* Capture of Prince Diponegoro, 1830. \n\nFamously shown in Pieneman's painting displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Prince Diponegoro was a major warlord in the Java War, where local Princes fought against what they saw as incursions against their privilege and power. Dutch commander de Kock invited Diponegoro to negotiate, but then seized him. \n\nPieneman's painting showed the Dutch perspective: the bowing Prince asking his followers to disarm. But Raden Saleh painted the Javanese perspective: an angry Prince defying the Dutch commander. \n\nSo, plenty of examples, the question is which. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cqnnhix", "cqo4ti4" ], "score": [ 29, 3 ], "text": [ "This is a brutally complicated question that is the source of lots of debate. There is no one answer, or even much in the way of settled opinion. Three points that I think are possible, partial answers:\n\n1) Roman religion was fairly syncretic, the Romana were willing to assimilate foreign cults in many situations, so the rise of new religions was not an issue, so long as they were willing to nod at Greco-Roman cosmology in some fashion. 'Conversion' to most traditions didn't require rejection of one's former faith (or identity). One of Christianity's major issues, vs the mystery religions, was that it's rejection of other gods was considered atheism, and led to familial and civic rejection.\n\n2) Well before the rise of the religious groups you spoke of there was some awareness among some Romans that there was something... not quite right... with their religious tradition. Many Roman philosophical schools were quite fatalistic, rejecting the invocation/intercession of the traditional gods as being possible or plausible, while some rejected the Greco-Roman mythology entirely over the immorality of the gods as portrayed in narrative.\n\n3) Many of new religious movements offered explicit paths to salvation through ritual, wisdom or divine intercession, something that the Greco-Roman tradition didn't emphasize quite as much. Christianity also offered another form of rescue to many through charity, which some scholars think had significant appeal to both patrons and petitioners. Add to that the sense of community these groups built through ritual, and they provided another sense of security through belonging.\n\nPeople will hopefully add more, but in my studies these seem to have been significant factors.", "I would venture to suggest that they only seem as though they were \"competing\" because you, as a learned person living roughly two thousand years later, know how history played out. We know who \"won,\" and we have some sense of the major religions and cults that died out, but keep in mind that Christianity grew slowly within a period of a couple hundred years before beginning to really take hold in the later empire in the 300s. Assuming that these religious ideas were outwardly competing against one another simplifies the historical situation a little too much-- it excludes the possibility of natural assimilation via family ties (which we know happened), and it also assumes that the ideologies were similar enough to compete with one another. \n\nWhat we refer to as \"traditional Roman religion\" was not a religion in the sense that we think of Christianity as a religion; gods could be tied to the state, the household, the region, etc, and all communication with this god involved a direct action of sacrifice, offerings, or other highly varied rituals. It's difficult to generalize, but the evidence we have for these cults does not suggest any overwhelming personal religious ideology or relationship with the deities beyond this system of offering and appeasement. That is not to say that it isn't just as complex-- in fact, more so, but it doesn't mean that the competition was ideologically based.\n\nThis is really a complex subject and I apologize for my scattered thoughts, but if you'd like to check out something really interesting, read about the city of Dura Europos in Syria and the excavations that have produced evidence of mystery cults (a Mithraeum, for example), a Christian sanctuary, and a synagogue, the followers of which lived side-by-side amongst each other in the city. I'm studying under a historian who's published on Dura and spent lots of time there before it was destroyed, and it's such a fascinating place! " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "fgx6m25" ], "score": [ 32 ], "text": [ "Paisley as we know it today is based on a floral motif called a *boteh*. Originally, this was fairly clear - as in [this example of a strip from an early eighteenth century shawl](_URL_2_), the *boteh* was fat and clearly made up of flowers, with a slight twitch to one side at the top; if you zoom in a bit, you can see a patch of ground beneath it and stems rising up and out. The *boteh* became more and more stylized, with a narrower width and more pronounced lean and swirl at the top, as you can see in [this late eighteenth century example](_URL_1_), [this whiteworked shawl](_URL_4_), and [this yellow shawl](_URL_6_) - though I would hasten to note that there are also counterexamples of plain, straight *boteh*, like [this mid-nineteenth century shawl](_URL_5_). But by the 1840s, it was fairly common to see paisley as we know it today - [a decontextualized swirly shape](_URL_0_).\n\nWhy did this happen? The whole thing is kind of funny.\n\nThe original Kashmir shawls we're talking about that were brocaded with paisley *boteh* were being made by Indian manufacturers, to be purchased by both locals and European import/export merchants. Western tastes soon took a turn for the shawlier - with the fashion for Neoclassical-inspired dress, shawls became hugely important accessories. (Greek and Roman painted vases, statues, and reliefs very often showed women with large enveloping or draped shawls.) As the market became bigger, it was worth the manufacturers' time to change up the patterns for the Western taste, which found larger and attenuated *boteh* more exotic and aesthetically pleasing. ([Here's a shawl that uses a *boteh* for a local audience.](_URL_3_)) Western manufacturers also began to imitate the style in various mill towns ... like Paisley in Scotland, from which the pattern gets its English name. (And the importation of Western examples by Indian manufacturers made it possible for more copying to go back and forth.) The motif became more and more stylized until it had nothing to do with the original.\n\n > A while back, I was told that an old Persian interpretation of the textile pattern was that it represented “the universe moving around you.” Essentially, the point of what I heard was that it celebrated individualism and self-identity.\n\nI can't find a reference to this anywhere, and it seems very unlikely. Individualism and self-identity are not highly celebrated ideals, historically - they're very tied to Western society in and after the twentieth century." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/447848", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/453412", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/453500", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/126893", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/81349", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/81023", "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/102657" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwysk06" ], "score": [ 14 ], "text": [ "This question has been asked before. You might find some of the answers in the [FAQ](_URL_0_) to be interesting. \n\nBut I'll take a stab at reorienting the question in a way that might be of interest that I don't think has been presented here before (or at least not that I could find in my cursory search). \n\nMany folks look at the HRE in comparison to the centralizing proto-nation states to its west, specifically France and England. This, invariably, leads to the question of why the HRE was so decentralized, which *assumes* that centralization was the *goal*. This is teleology in its worst form. Rather, I would argue that the HRE was a highly effective entity that acted to preserve local autonomy and traditions against foreign influence, something the leaders of the principalities that made up the empire put a strong emphasis on. This is in contrast to the states of England and France in which increasingly strong regimes at the center (London and Paris) were able to subdue differing groups on the periphery (e.g. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in the British Isles and/or Brittany, the Vendee, Bordeaux or Languedoc in France) over the course of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. From the perspective of the leaders and peoples of these periphery regions, I would argue that the HRE was the truly optimal state form, rather than the centralizing monarchies of the West. When seen in this light, the answer to your question of *why the HRE didn't end up as a centralized feudal state like France* is easily answered: Because the folks in charge didn't want it that way, and in contrast to their counterparts in France or England, were actually able to enforce their will upon the Empire as a whole. \n\nI should note that this is not a *new* thesis in the field, it's actually pretty old (like from the 70s old). A good review article that explains it pretty well while sourcing the major academic contributors to the argument is: [Gerald Strauss, \"The Holy Roman Empire Revisited,\" *Central European History* 11:3\n(1978): 290-301.](_URL_1_)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_the_holy_roman_empire", "http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2869712" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e4x5x8b" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "\nYou may be interested in[ this older answer of mine](_URL_0_), which goes into Bolivar's political beliefs from a couple of perspectives: I look at Spanish American precursors to the independence wars that influenced Bolívar; then at international influences (incl. the French and U.S.); and lastly at colonial influences carrying into post-colonial times.\n\nProbably the main question of yours I'm not addressing in there would be the one on geographical/climatic differences and Venezuela's economy which I'm less familiar with -- although here I'd argue that the different (international, colonial) influences I describe had a bigger impact on Bolívar's thought than e.g. the geography or economy of one particular Latin American country. In case of follow ups to that post let me know.\n\nAlso adding my conclusion from there as an intro: \n\n > I took Bolívar as an example to show his debts to earlier thinkers and revolutionaries (Rodríguez, Miranda), and his changing ideas regarding governance in the early phase of Liberalism – somewhere between republicanism, aristocracy and monarchy. Local traditions of resistance and the Haitian revolution provided deterrents for elites fearing uprisings by slaves and indigenous people. More generally it's important to keep in mind the creole elites' interest during the independence wars, as they mostly tempered calls for more equality as to hold on to their traditional rights. In the end, looking simply for exterior influences misses Latin America's original contributions in theory and practice.\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4jy8k8/as_south_american_independence_movements/d3c7avr/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d81zlw1" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "It should be noted too that the USA's taking of the former Spanish territories of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico was very much in the vein of European geopolitical horsetrading.\n\nGermany in particular was less than pleased about the new permanent US presence in East Asia and there was a standoff in Manila Bay between each nations fleets. The Royal Navy siding with the USN and helping pressure the Germans to stand down was a major event on the repairing of the US-UK relationship.\n\nGermany had also had a contentious relationship with the US over Samoa. In fact at one point 3 ships of each nation had been in a months long standoff until a storm wrecked all 6 ships. \n\nThe US also went from respecting the native monarchy of Hawaii to supporting the white planter backed coup, to just seizing the islands for their strategic worth. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d7gv9o5" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This is slightly anecdotal, but there's a lot of facts to support the conclusion: many of the Germans deported (about 3 million out of the 31 million) were Prussians, but after that, what happened to them is all over the place. Many of them were evacuated into Germany, but more still chose to be evacuated into other countries: mostly the USA, Argentina, Canada, and to a lesser extent Brazil and Australia. Now, why there aren't any Germans identifying as \"Prussian\" today kind of depends on where you look. Since Prussia hasn't existed for about half a century, many (especially the descendants) of these people prefer to identify instead as just \"Germans\" for simplicities sake, or for the fact that there just weren't a lot of people in Prussia after the war. But obviously, we can't really say for sure.\n\nPersonally, I'd call myself a Prussian, and I don't think I've ever met somebody who'd call themselves one in person, but the cultural idea is still strong in certain German internet groups.\n\nHope this helped, at least a bit." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdq7bom" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "In an address to the Indian nation on the All India Radio on January 18, 1977, Indira Gandhi made the surprise announcement to hold general elections in March of the same year. Between June 26, 1975 and Gandhi's radio announcement in January 1977, India had been in a state of emergency for 21 months. The civil rights of the citizens had been severely curbed, the press was censured and many prominent national leaders who opposed Gandhi's authoritarian rule were put under arrest. \n\nIndira's radio address sought to highlight the economic upsurge and rise in agricultural and industrial productivity brought about by increased governmental control over the affairs of the country. Now she felt, \n > that Parliament and Government must report back to the people and seek sanction from them to carry out programmes and policies for the nation's strength and welfare. \nBecause of this unshakeable faith in the power of the people, I have advised the Preisdent to dissolve the present Lok Sabha and order fresh elections. This he has accepted. We expect polling to take place in March.\n\nEven before Mrs. Gandhi's announcement could be broadcast, the opposition leaders under arrest were being released and the curbs on press freedom were being lifted. Gandhi's decision to hold free elections took the nation by surprise. In the years since political commentators have tried to understand the reasons which prompted this sudden reversal, especially since the Emergency had been extended only the previous month in December.\n\nAt one level, it is fair to assume that Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress saw the improvement in the economic health of the country and the decline in inflation (\"others are studying our anti-inflation strategy\") as a public approval of the measures initiated during the Emergency. The Twenty-Point and Five-Point Programmes seemed to have produced visible results. \n\nPolitically, Indira Gandhi perhaps felt her hold receding over the Congress. The 42nd Constitutional Amendment in 1976 which further strengthened the hold of the Central Government over the state governments was seen unfavorably by many regional leaders, even those from the Congress. At the international level, there were many political observers (including journalists like Fenner Brockway and John Grigg who wrote extensively in the British press) who lamented the fall of democratic ideals in India. As Grigg lamented, \"Nehru's tryst with destiny seems to have been turned into a tryst with despotism\". Perhaps Mrs. Gandhi felt responsible for the country's democratic vision as had been espoused by her father [Nehru] and other leaders of the freedom movement. \n\nThere are some who also point to the rising influence of Indira's elder son Sanjay during the Emergency. Sanjay Gandhi had been at the forefront of revitalizing the youth section of the Congress party and was seen as the natural heir to his mother. The elections, at a time of improved economic health, were perhaps seen as a perfect time to launch Sanjay Gandhi into the national political scene.\n\nThe Elections of 1977, the first time that a non-Congress government was formed at the Centre in India, is widely regarded as a watershed moment in India post-independence politics. It convincingly shattered the Congress stranglehold over the national political imaginary and ushered in a new era of regional politics where a few, regionally-strong leaders across the many states of India rose to national prominence. As such, the events leading up to the 1977 elections have taken a life of its own. Among the more outlandish reasons attributed to Mrs. Gandhi's decision to hold elections include the influence of a particular astrologer who \"told her there would be three generations of Nehrus in power. But he didn't say whether she should start counting from Motilal, her grandfather, or Jawaharlal [her father].\" It depended on whether one counted presidents of the Congress Party or Prime Ministers of India! Obviously Indira assumed the latter and so thought the time apt to usher her son Sanjay as the new national leader!\n\nRegardless of the reasons which led to the 1977 elections, Indira's electoral rout highlighted the massive miscalculation of a blinded authoritarian regime which believed its own propaganda. The Congress assumed that the opposition would be unable to fund such a massive election, especially as many business houses who fund political parties had been put in their place during the Emergency. They also underestimated the level of disenchantment among the general public to the suppression of their civil rights. The elections broke the \"Congress system\" and brought in the era of regional, coalition politics." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8e7dtq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "[Thomas Nast](_URL_0_), who did cartoons for *Harper's Weekly*, which was incredibly popular in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. His most famous cartoons targeted the corrupt regime of Boss William Tweed and Tammany Hall, which had a vice-grip on the politics of New York City. When Tweed fled the United States to Spain, Spanish authorities recognized him from Nast's cartoons and sent him back. Nast was also responsible, not for creating, but for popularizing the characters of Uncle Sam, Columbia, the Democratic donkey, and the Republican elephant. \n\nOn that same note, while more of an illustrator than a cartoonist, Norman Rockwell created many famous and enduring images in the mid 20th century. Probably the most famous would be Rosie the Riveter and then his illustrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt's \"Four Freedoms.\"" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nast" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjyvvwh", "ck07yl2" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "You're touching on a very difficult and controversial debate in the historical community: collapse. The entire notion is fraught with issues and ambiguity. Mayan archaeologist Arthur Demrest phrased it well:\n\n > Recent discussions of the collapse of civilizations have demonstrated that terminological ambiguity creates much of the controversy regarding comparative issues, including differences in the interpretation of specific cultural historical episodes. The meanings of terms such as ‘collapse’ and ‘decline’ are far from obvious. Furthermore, ambiguity about what precisely is ‘collapsing’ (e.g. ‘civilization,’ ‘state,’ ‘kingdoms’, ‘tradition,’ ‘society’) generates more disagreement than do problems of historical or archaeological interpretation.\n\nDepending on who you ask, collapse for any particular period and in any particular region may or may not have occurred. Even the well-known collapses, such as those of the Maya or the western Roman Empire are reasonably controversial to this day. \n\nHowever, the other component of your question has a rather different response. I would personally argue that the conquests of the Americas were fundamentally different from the famous conquests of the old world, but this is not to suggest that old world civilizations are the same as their historical counterparts. The latter view would be very much revisionist. Much of what we consider about cultural continuity are influenced by the records we have of the events. In the case of China, the idea of cultural continuity is a bedrock concept at the core of Chinese identity. Until abolishment of the office after the Chinese Revolution, the Emperors of China all claimed the Mandate of Heaven as their claim to legitimate rule. This concept established the continuity of the Chinese nation from the Qin through the Qing. Even the Mongols claimed the Mandate of Heaven during the Yuan period and continued many of the familiar social institutions of previous dynasties. \n\nSimilarly, the issue of cultural continuity is an intensely political issue in India even today. However, I'd rather defer discussion of continuity in India to someone more familiar with the details of Indian history. Indian cultural continuity is a highly, highly politicized topic that I'm not prepared to address.\n\n\nLet me bring this back to the original point: History is quite fuzzy. You can certainly talk about the Inca Empire ending with the execution of Túpac Amaru and in some sense you'd be right. But it would be ridiculous to pretend that in that instant all the Incans suddenly became Spanish. The process of conquest was more gradual than it might first appear and attaching an end point necessarily requires some statement of precisely *what* is ending. This idea applies to each and every civilization you named. The descendants of the people still exist into the present day. I would not personally say the Inca \"disappeared\". The people that lived in the former empire mostly continued living, albeit under a different power than before. But it's also not fair to pretend that things were the same as before. The Spanish brought sweeping social changes almost everywhere they conquered. Social hierarchies changed, the labor force expanded, and the economy was revamped to suit Spanish needs. Entire societies were shifted and rearranged in the wake of the conquest. So in another sense, it is entirely fair to say that some aspects of the societies were different before and after conquest.\n\n^1 Demarest, Arthur A., and Don S. Rice. *The terminal classic in the Maya lowlands: Collapse, transition, and transformation.* Univ Pr of Colorado, 2005.", "It's not so much that the ebb and flow of cultures in the precontact Americas are unique, but, especially within the United States, but Native cultures are framed in the persistent meta-narrative of the \"Vanishing Indian.\"\n\nIn regards to the Inca Empire, it flourished from 1438 to 1533. Since it was overrun by the Spanish, it a post-contact society as well as precontact. \n\n[Túpac Amaru II](_URL_1_) led a resistance movement against the Spanish and was finally defeated and captured in 1781. The Inca Empire arose from Quechua society, which absolutely did not disappear. There are [7.5 million](_URL_0_) to 11 million Quechua people today. Cuzco still features a great deal of precontact architecture. \n\nCultural continuity and revivals *could* be emphasized, but instead pop culture/mass media tends to reify the \"Vanishing Indian\" meta-narrative." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Quechua.html", "http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/609384/Tupac-Amaru-II" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6v8cva", "c6v8smj", "c6v8v2y" ], "score": [ 7, 3, 7 ], "text": [ "Canada (1982) and South Africa (1996) are two that come to mind. Do you have more to the question or are you just looking for a list?", "You might want to define what a full democracy is. ", "France switched from the Fourth Republic to the Fifth Republic in 1958. It was in the middle of an attempted coup, but for all intents and purposes it was peace time compared to the founding of previous French Republics (notably the First, Second, and Third). The founding of the Fourth Republic would also fit your definition except that it was in 1946. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cswtpe8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The Irish Famine was a useful pretext for Peel to repeal the Corn Laws and historians have debated the real reason why he decided to repeal them. One possible reason was that the Anti-Corn Law League was pursuing a successful campaign of voter registration to enfranchise free trade votes and Peel had his eye on the next election, so this might have scared him into pushing for repeal before the election due in 1848. \n\nAnother possible reason was fear of revolution. This was the time of the 'Hungry Forties' and the rise of Chartism. Peel and his generation grew up in the shadow of the French Revolution and fighting the next election on denying cheap food for the poor Peel considered dangerous. The Duke of Wellington said that \"good Government for the country is more important than Corn Laws or any other consideration\". Britain was the first country to industrialise, with the correspondent growth of cities filled with manufacturing workers who needed abundant cheap food that could only be supplied by untaxed imports. A poor, hungry proletariat they viewed as a ripe bed for the seeds of revolution to grow.\n\nIntellectual opinion by the mid-nineteenth century had moved in favour of free trade. Not only Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ (1776) but also Ricardo's _On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation_ (1817) and other political economists were arguing in favour of free trade. There was no comparable British political economist publishing protectionist works at this time. Intellectual opinion filtered through to the political class and influenced them. For example, Peel said \"I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes\". William Gladstone, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1850s and 60s completed the work begun by Peel in lowering or abolishing tariffs, was Peel's political pupil and was converted to free trade during his time at the Board of Trade in Peel's government.\n\nThe economic arguments for free trade advocated by political economists came to be seen as 'scientific', with protectionism viewed as unenlightened, irrational or motivated by class interests of the landowners at the expense of everyone else. It is no coincidence that radicalism (which emerged in the 1820s) fused Ricardian economics with universal suffrage. Radicals claimed that Parliament would never legislate for free trade whilst the suffrage was limited to the wealthy elite. Enfranchise those who would benefit from free trade, the poor, and free trade legislation would follow. The Radicals went on to form the Liberal Party with the Whigs, and one of the Liberal Party's fundamental, core principles was Free Trade.\n\nAnother reason apart from the economic arguments was also the political arguments for free trade. Cobden and Bright argued that if Britain converted to free trade, the rest of Europe would follow and then everyone would trade freely with each other and the world would enter an era of universal peace and disarmament. The interests opposing this development (so this theory went) were the reactionary landowning aristocrats who also happened to be officers in the Army. As Cobden explained:\n\n > Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood; those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster that lust for conquest and dominion which sends forth your warrior chiefs to scatter devastation through other lands, and then calls them back that they may be enthroned securely in your passions, but only to harass and oppress you at home. \n\nFree trade would not only give you international peace, Cobden is saying, but it would destroy the power of the aristocratic landowners who dominate Parliament and oppress the working class such as the 1819 Peterloo massacre. (Conversely, the leading protectionists Disraeli and Bentinck defended Protection on the grounds that it preserved Britain's territorial constitution based on a landowning aristocracy.)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cskc6ib", "cskcswx" ], "score": [ 14, 3 ], "text": [ "The Bren was not the only gun to have the magazine on top, though it's certainly the most recognizable due to how prominent it is. The Soviet [Degtyaryov](_URL_0_) is another example. \n\nI believe the primary reason was so that the gun could be fired in the prone position easier. Afterall, you don't want this to be restricted by the magazine hitting the ground. Firing prone is incredibly important even today as it improves accuracy while making the shooter a smaller target. With the magazine on-top, soldiers could use the weapon in this fashion even on uneven ground. \n\nAnother use was that gravity would be able to aid in feeding the bullets into the gun. This helped make the Bren an incredibly reliable weapon, that would only jam after very long periods of use. The spent cartridges were also ejected downward, making firing from a concealed location more effective as the enemy wouldn't be able to determine the location of the Bren by spotting cartridges being ejected. \n\nThe drawback to having the magazine on top is that it makes the weapon more difficult to aim. For this reason, the majority of machine gun designs would have the magazine, belt, or drum enter through the side of the weapon. This allowed the weapon to be easily fired prone, while having the accuracy of traditional gun sights (the Bren's were on the side). \n\nHowever despite the Bren's awkward iron sights, it was incredibly accurate. In fact, soldiers often complained that it was **too accurate** and wanted a wider cone of fire for greater suppression. ", "While not directly addressing your question, you may be interested in the replies to an earlier question about the placement of magazines on sub-machine guns.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degtyaryov_machine_gun" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wi9l1/why_do_some_submachine_guns_mp18_sten_sterling/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d6kv2s4" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "He never owned slaves, for one. He was a middle class man more akin to Benjamin Franklin than to Washington or Jefferson. He also took on the presidency and vice presidency as a matter of duty, which put his family under real financial strain. He was also diplomatic enough to rekindle his friendship with Thomas Jefferson after a very nasty political falling out, which is endearing. Plus, he was present and active in most of the crucial events that formed his nation, which only two other presidents can claim, both of whom are much more popular than he is. He was a fine statesman with a modesty that suited the administration of a nascent democracy. Oh, and he had a really remarkable wife who helped direct his energy toward the abolition of slavery." ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cfk8ooc", "cfkdm6p", "cfkdrxr", "cfkf9n7" ], "score": [ 25, 56, 14, 24 ], "text": [ "I could tell you about Austrian textbooks which should be quite the same as german ones. If it wasn't for copyright i could upload some scans :-/\nGenerally I would say WW2 is a huge part of history class in school. Of course they show all the cruel stuff too, holocaust etc. As Austria was a big part in both WWs (started WW1 and Hitler was born in Austria) it gets a lot of attention in media too. In my parents generation tough it wasnt taught at school at all and just left out. Nowadays many school classes visit former KZs, documentarys get shown in class and there is always a neutral view on the topic. If you have further/more specific questions i could look for my textbooks and get back to you!\nSources: went to school in Austria and graduated only a few years ago\n\nEdit: Not only in History Class but also in other school classes WW2 is an important part. In German for example a lot of German literature we read had something to do with WW2 and we learned about the life of the authors (in a \"Gymnasium\" = school for 10-18 year olds) For example Stefan Zweig, Berthold Brecht etc.\nBut that depends a lot on the teacher an what his preferences are. But as a poster above wrote about Germany is similar to Austria: it is much more US focused an not so much about the eastern frontline with the exception of Stalingrad. The war in the Pacific ocean wasn't talked about much if i remember correctly. \n\nIf you are interested what the Ministry of Education demands to be talked about and you are capable of German there is the link to the curriculum for History Class (Austria/AHS School). [Link!](_URL_0_)\n\nWW2 is taught in 7. Year of AHS (~17 year olds) \n\nQuote:\n > \"kollektive Friedenssicherungspolitik nach 1918 und ihr Scheitern; Ursachen und Verlauf des Zweiten \nWeltkrieges (Friedensverträge; Völkerbund; soziale und ökonomische Rahmenbedingungen) \n- demokratische, autoritäre und totalitäre Staatensysteme und ihre Ideologien (Systemvergleiche; \nKommunismus, Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus; Radikalisierung des politischen Lebens in Österreich \n1918-1938) \n- nationalsozialistisches System und Holocaust (Entwicklung; Österreich im Dritten Reich; Widerstands­\nund Freiheitsbewegungen) \n- das bipolare Weltsystem 1945-1990, sein Zusammenbruch und die Transformation des europäischen \nSystems (Folgen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, z.B. Vertreibungen; Ost-West-Konflikt; Bündnissysteme und \ninternationale Organisationen; neuer Imperialismus; Zerfall der Sowjetunion; Entwicklung neuer \nDemokratien)\"\n\nI'll try my best to translate:\n- collective peacekeeping after 1918 and it's failing; causes and course of second world war (Peace-Contracts, league of nations, social and economic framework)\n-democratic, authoritarian an totalitarian state-systems and it's ideologies (Comparison, Communism, Fascism, National-socialism; radicalisation of political Life in Austria 1918-1938)\n- national-socialist system and Holocaust (Development; Austria in the third reich; Resistance and Liberation Movements)\n- the bipolar World-System 1945-1990, it's collapse and the transformation of the european system (consquences of WW2, eg. displacements; East-West Conflict; Alliances and international Organisations; new imperialism; decay of the soviet union; development of new democrcys)\n", "As someone already mentioned, the exact content of history class in German high schools is regulated by each state. Also you should know that there's three different forms of high schools in Baden-Württemberg, the *Gymnasium* being the one that allows its graduates to enter college. Since I went to a *Gymnasium* in Baden-Württemberg, I will take that example. \n\nThe *Lehrplan* is a sort of guideline what teachers have to bring across to students. The first time the Third Reich comes up in this *Lehrplan* is in grade 10. History is taught chronological in Baden-Württemberg, which means you start with prehistorics and Egypt in grade 6, until you arrive at the Weimar Republic and National Socialism in grade 10.\nHere's a rough excerpt I translated from the *Lehrplan* for Baden-Württemberg high schools (*Gymnasium*):\n\n > **1. Weimar Republic and National Socialism**\n > \n > Students can:\n > \n > * explain important burdens of the first democracy in Germany and the reasons for its failure; \n > \n > Facts and terms\n > \n > *1919 Weimar constitution; 1919 Treaty of Versailles; 1930 Presidential Cabinet; Emergency decrees*\n > \n > * explain basic essentials of the National Socialist ideology;\n > * research measures of the \"cooptation\" as well as indicators of totalitarian rule - preferably in local and regional areas - recognize their influence on the everyday lives of people, place it in the higher context of the developments, and present these results;\n > * describe personal fates of victims of ideological as well as racial persecution before and during World War 2, and ascribe them to National Socialist ideology and political rule;\n > * describe and assess forms of acceptance and of resistance in the population;\n > * realize the historical responsibility that derives from the National Socialist past.\n > \n > Facts and terms\n > \n > *30.1.1933 seizure of power; 9.11.1938 Novemberpogrom; 1.9.1939 Invasion of Poland; 20.7.1944 Plot to kill Hitler; 8.5.1945 German Instrument of Surrender; SS-state; Antisemitism; Racial profiling, Holocaust, Führerprinzip; Lebensraumpolitik (living space politics); Concentration camps*\n > \n\n\nSource: [Landesinstitut für Schulentwicklung Baden-Württemberg, Gymnasium Bildungsstandards für Geschichte. Stuttgart. pg. 224.](_URL_0_)\n\nThis is basically a list of things each student has to study and to know, and at the same time it is an orientation for teachers what the content of their class should be. I should highlight that the war itself, tactics etc are not really topics of the classes, but rather the broader range of things that happened, ideology, and consequences.\n\nEdit: I was trying to find old history books of mine, but I just remembered that our teachers were never really using history books. In Baden-Württemberg the schools pay for the books used in class, so the students don't have to purchase expensive textbooks. While this sounds like a good idea, many of the books are dated, because the schools just can't afford new ones. So the teachers work with what they have, mainly by providing copies of their newer own books, or stuff from the Internet. However, if you're interested, I think [this book](_URL_1_) comes close to what we were using.", "I would like to remind everyone writing that personal anecdotes are not allowed in this subreddit. Take user /u/kusch3ln's answer as a good example of how to answer a question such as this.\n\nFor questions regarding our policy on anecdotes, either[ read our rules](_URL_1_) or contact the mods [through here.](_URL_0_)", "Japan has a centralised National curriculum which requires the entire of human history to be taught in one years worth of lessons and all schools use one of 7 books, one of which devotes about 20 pages to 1931 to 1945 and just one sentence for the Nanjing Massacre (another book decided never to use the word \"invaded\" for any of Japan's conquests). There was recently a BBC world service documentary about how this period is thought of and thought in both Japan and China ([Part one was Japan](_URL_1_)) which goes into Japan's History teaching or lack of it at length. \n\nBasically there seems to be a effort to concentrate on the history that Japanese children can be proud of and that obviously means that Japan's darker moments are marginalised as a result. \n\nOf course like every national syllabus, Japan's focuses on it's own internal history only expanding into world events at key points and Japanese history is rich and long going back over 15,000 years to the start of the Jomon period but other nations with long histories still manage to cover the darker aspects of their history. (Also found a BBC essay which covers the same ground as the radio doc if people prefer that - _URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.bmukk.gv.at/medienpool/11857/lp_neu_ahs_05.pdf" ], [ "http://www.bildung-staerkt-menschen.de/service/downloads/Bildungsstandards/Gym/Gym_G_bs.pdf", "http://www.klett.de/produkt/isbn/978-3-12-430001-0" ], [ "http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes" ], [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21226068", "http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ryk62" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eq9qu76" ], "score": [ 7 ], "text": [ " > Why weren't British or American troops ever sent to the Eastern Front to support the Red Army? \n\nGround troops were never sent to the East.\n\nMany senior Soviets, including Stalin, were wary of the Western Allies. They were old enough to remember the last time British and American troops had landed in Russia: it had been 1918 and they'd been trying to suppress the Bolshevik revolution! Stalin certainly didn't want Western troops he couldn't completely control fighting in his backyard.\n\nHowever, there was an effort to temporarily base American bombers on Soviet soil for [\"shuttle bombing\"](_URL_0_) raids. American bombers would leave bases in Western Europe, bomb Axis targets and then land in Soviet-held territory. Then they could reverse the routine and return home, bombing another target on the way back.\n\nThe impetus foe this came entirely from the Americans, not the Soviets. [The official USAAF history explains](_URL_1_):\n\n > Since the early days of the war AAF leaders had been attracted by the idea that shuttle bombing between widely separated bases might pay huge dividends. The experience gained with shuttle operations between British and North African bases, notably in the Regensburg-Schweinfurt mission of 17 August 1943,had introduced a note of caution into AAF planning, but opportunities for shuttle bombing were among the reasons advanced for the establishment of the Fifteenth Air Force in the fall of 1943and by that time the United States was urging upon the U.S.S.R. the use of Russian bases for the same purpose. It was well known that the Germans were relocating many of their plants in the east, and it seemed reasonable to expect that American bombers operating out of Russia could strike targets in eastern Germany which were beyond the reach of aircraft flying from England or Italy. \n\n > It would be helpful, moreover, to compel the Axis to spread out its defenses against air attack and to impress upon the enemy high command at about the time of OVERLORD that Germany was exposed from all directions. Perhaps of even more importance was the desire to demonstrate to the Russians how eager the Americans were to wage war on the German enemy in every possible way and to gain from the Russians a fuller appreciation of the contribution of the strategic air forces to the war effort, for to date they had revealed scant regard for the work of the heavy bombers. And if these shuttle operations proved effective, it might be easier to secure Soviet approval for the use of Siberian bases later on in the war against Japan -- a consideration seldom lost sight of by the American high command. The manifold advantages expected from FRANTIC, as the project came to be called, were considered ample justification for the effort and expense involved.\n\nHowever, the experiment was soon nixed after a few missions in 1944. Soviet leaders had always been reluctant to accommodate the American bombers, for the a variety of reasons (anti-Western sentiment, suspicion of outsiders, bureaucratic turf wars, etc). Soviet commanders wanted the bombers to bomb different targets than the ones the USAAF wanted to hit. The logistical hassle of staging ground crews, bombs, and gas so far away from the bombers' home base further complicated things. That, and the *Luftwaffe* caught the bombers on the ground at Poltava and destroyed dozens of them by launching a massive night bomber raid to plaster the airfield." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2011/March%202011/0311Poltava.aspx", "http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/III/AAF-III-9.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dt27e09" ], "score": [ 30 ], "text": [ "A great deal of the Anglo-Saxon upper parts of society were wiped out in the battle of Hastings. King Harold, two of his brothers, and an unknown, but certainly sizable, amount of the English huscarls and other soldiers were killed in the battle. His remaining male relatives were either imprisoned by the Normans, in the case of his brother Wulfgar, or fled, as his sons seem to have, to Ireland and Wales. In the years after the battle of Hastings, several Anglo-Saxon lords rose up in rebellion, Morcar and Edwin, both northern Earls rose up in rebellion in the years after and were defeated, Edwin died during the rebellion, and Morcar was imprisoned, his ultimate fate however isn't really clear. Eadgar the Ætheling also survived the invasion and an abortive attempt to be crowned king, and ended up with quite an elaborate career or inciting the Scots to attack the Normans, serving in William's court, and according to Oderic Vitalis, participated in First Crusade.\n\nWhile this sums up the nobles on the Anglo-Saxon side what about the others below them? While our sources are usually quite silent on the number and names of the individuals who were left leaderless in the wake of the invasion, sources do paint a rather fascinating picture for at least some of these men.\n\nAccording to disparate sources, a great number of Englishmen during this time frame elected to leave England and seek a new life in the Byzantine Empire. While I am loathe to lean on literary sources such as sagas, this information is also recounted in other sources as well. Anna Komnena indicates that the Varangian Guard took on a decidedly English flavor in the years after the Battle of Hastings, where these men eventually found themselves fighting against Normans once again, as a part of William Guiscard's invasion of the Byzantine Empire. A great many of them perished in the fighting according to the *Alexiad*. \n\nTwo other sources claim that English expeditions reached Constantinople and were given land on the Black Sea by the Emperor Alexios, and founded a new settlement there. While the claim is certainly fanciful, the influx of Englishmen into the Varangian guard following the Norman conquest is not particularly controversial.\n\nThis covers a great deal of the men of means who were involved in the Norman invasion. Its likely that quite a few fell in the rebellions against William or fled England altogether. Many scions of the nobility and aristocracy ended up in Scotland, Ireland, or in the case of Eadgar, across Europe. \n\nThe other part of your question is a little trickier. Military equipment at this time would have been fairly similar across these cultural divides, and there would not have been significant differences between Norman and Anglo-Saxon military gear. A great deal of equipment would have been personalized, but the equipment of an Anglo-Saxon huscarl would not have been outrageously different from the equipment of a well to do Norman soldier either. The only notable difference in equipment would be the two handed axes that the English (and Scandinavians) were famous for wielding, but the swords, shields, and mail of the two groups would have been very similar. This is largely an argument made of speculation though, since very little mail or weaponry survives from this time period, and historians are largely working off of textual and artistic evidence, and not archaeology. \n\nMilitary gear at this time though wasn't made or maintained by large state run armories. While the king and lords would have maintained a sizable contingent of soldiers bearing weapons and armor, this equipment wasn't standardized and able to be recycled among various groups. When an English retainer left for Constantinople, he almost certainly would have taken his weapons and armor with him. While some gear was undoubtedly scavenged from the battle fields, there is no way to extrapolate how much Anglo-Saxon equipment made its way into the hands of men serving and fighting under the Normans. \n\nNow the last part of your question I cannot answer in full because I do not know a great deal about mercenary companies and groups in this time frame in general. Sources are generally silent on the nature of William's army and its composition following the battle of Hastings. What role Englishmen may have played in it is largely obscured at this point. \n\n___\nSources and further reading:\n\nI've used bits of a few primary sources, Oderic Vitalis's *Ecclesiastical History* (Don't let the name fool you, he's an excellent source for this time period), Anne Komnena's *Alexiad*, and there's a few others that i could point you towards if you have more specific questions.\n\nFor secondary sources, \n\nBetty Hale, \"History of Prince Edgar & his Claim to the English Throne\"\n\nDonald Henson, \"The English Elite in 1066: Gone but not Forgotten\"" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c5pm7eb", "c5ptgor", "c5pulr3" ], "score": [ 10, 3, 3 ], "text": [ "There seem to be quite a few actually. This list shows all presidents and their vice presidents: _URL_0_.\n\nThere have been 43 men as presidents and 54 men as vice presidents.", "Lincoln had a different VP for his first term (Hannibal Hamlin) than for his second (Andrew Johnson). I'm not a Lincoln scholar, but IIRC Johnson was mainly chosen because he was from Tennessee, and Lincoln was beginning to try and reconcile with the South, since the war was steadily turning in the Union's favor by the election of 1864. Never heard anything against Hamlin, though, so I don't know of any reason to think he was \"bad\" somehow as VP.", "Jackson chose a different VP for his second term, and for good reason. Calhoun was going behind the government's back encouraging South Carolina during the nullification crisis. His only regrets leaving office were that he didn't shot Calhoun and hang Clay ( may have the backwards). When Jackson says he wants to kill someone I take the man seriously. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dzobfdi" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "First of all, I should note that I can only answer half this question. I can talk about why Jews in the US have the last names they do, but not about why Americans with German ancestry tend to not have names like \\-berg or \\-stein, or if they do why they don't have a large role in surname\\-perception in the US.\n\nAnyway, Jews in the US very often have German or quasi\\-German last names. The reasons for this have to do with Jewish migration demographics and perception of languages. The vast majority of American Jews moved to the US from Eastern or Central Europe, especially between 1881 and 1920. They overwhelmingly spoke some variety of Yiddish.\n\nBecause Yiddish is closely related to High German, a lot of names would naturally be common between the languages. Besides that, a lot of Jews lived in areas where German was the official language \\(not just modern Germany, but East Prussia and Austria\\-Hungary\\), so picking a German name \\(or spelling the name as it would appear in German\\) made a lot of sense. For that reason \\-berg and \\-stein names are fairly common among Jews." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dd5w9mj", "dd6c127" ], "score": [ 6, 2 ], "text": [ "To start off with there are definitional arguments. Not everyone agrees with what genocide means. One can get around that by using specific definitions like provided in the UN *Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide*.\n\n > Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:\n\n > (a) Killing members of the group; \n\n > (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; \n\n > (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; \n\n > (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; \n\n > (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.\n\nThat at least gives us a point to start a discussion. But it also immediately poses several immediate challenges. The genocide of Native Americans (if such a thing exists) was carried out over many generations by a whole array of groups formal and informal. \n\nIntent is a significant part of the UN definition. Simply killing people by itself isn't genocide, one must be killing them with the intent to destroy them as a group. \n\nIt's pretty easy to say that the Pequot War of 1634-1638 was a war of genocide. It was (successfully) engaged in order to eliminate the Pequot as a distinct group. By the end of the war most Pequot were dead and the remanded had their identity erased and were forcibly enrolled in the allied tribes of the English. That is one of dozens to hundreds of smaller instances where most everyone would agree a group of Europeans engaged in genocide.\n\nIt's less easy to say that 17th century English policy on the whole had a genocidal intent. Mostly they were happy to engage in peaceful trade with native peoples. An absolute *ton* of natives still died from English causes, disease in particular, that the English never intended. But under the UN definition, such deaths couldn't be counted as genocide. The death of Tsquanto's people, the Patuxets, before the arrival of the English is an example of deaths that wouldn't count as genocide by this definition.\n\nThere's also no doubt that there were always people among the Europeans who always intended the destruction of all natives. So we can also quickly go into the weeds as to how many people have to have intent before claims of genocide can be issued. The elders in Plymouth were pretty much in agreement over the Pequot, as were the soldiers and most of the populous. But other incidents were done with far less agreement or popular support. \n\nWe're only a sentence into *one* possible definition and I've already identified several potential points of argument. And not everyone uses the same definition as the UN; they may remove the intent element for example, which would make it easier to claim genocide.\n\nIt's pretty easy to make claims of genocide when you look at certain specific instances. It becomes a lot harder when considering the entirety of the Americas across the 15th through 20th centuries and policies of dozens of different countries and governments. European genocide of Native Americans is an incredibly broad claim, which requires a broad definition of genocide. As such it'll be endlessly argued over. Specific claims such as the English in Plymouth committed genocide against the Pequot, are far easier to make and defend. As such that tends to be a much more broadly supported among historians.", "Hi, I'm not personally sure whether it's contentious among *historians*, but you may find this recent thread interesting\n\n* [I am in a class with a student who is adamant that the US Government is not responsible for the death of Native Americans, and has claimed there was no genocide- just unintentionally introduced germs. How correct is he?](_URL_1_) - featuring /u/Snapshot52 \n\nand this one, which contains a collection of earlier threads on the topic, some of which generated substantial discussion \n\n* [If most of the American Indians died from disease, is it fair to say that the Europeans are responsible for their genocide?](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/548kag/if_most_of_the_american_indians_died_from_disease/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5b0xzk/i_am_in_a_class_with_a_student_who_is_adamant/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "de09zkv" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "This is actually quite the funny question, as traditional Chinese history usually depicts the opposite happening. In traditional tellings, the pattern will always be that the founder of the dynasty is a ruthless but pragmatic leader, thus being able to govern the empire more effectively. Over the generations, as the heirs, growing up among the opulence of the palace, lose touch with the people, tyrants and corruption would start appearing. Then finally, the people would've had enough of the corruption and misgovernance, and another great and pragmatic leader would overthrow and install a new dynasty. Rinse and Repeat.\n\nAs quick examples, the Founder of the Han Dynasty, 劉邦, is considered to be a paranoid but overall effective leader. Same with 李渊 and 李世民, the first and second Emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Both were also considered to be very effective Emperors. Similarly 朱元璋, founder of the Ming Dynasty.\n\nNow, to some extent this is a bias caused by the fact that the history of the previous dynasty is usually written by the next, so the next dynasty has a vested interest in delegitimizing the last few Emperors of the last dynasty, and similarly has an interest in recalling the glory days of the previous dynasty in conjunction with his own.\n\nHowever, the ultimate point is that, no, historically speaking in China the common occurrence is for benevolence to deteriorate across the generations, rather than the opposite.\n\nIf you have an interest in a (much) more detailed view, there's an excellent English language podcast called, The History of China Podcast. Here: _URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "https://thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2vljri" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "They did not have an annual war against the helots. What they had was an annual *declaration* of war against the helots, which was made every year when the new council of ephors took office. The five ephors (\"overseers\") were chosen by lot from all citizens to form the executive branch of the Spartan government and to keep an eye on the actions of Sparta's two kings. When they began their year's tenure, they would ritually re-declare war on the helots, to make it clear to all citizens that they were allowed to harm or kill helots without fear of legal consequence or divine retribution.\n\nOur source for this is Plutarch (2nd century AD), which would normally make the anecdote unreliable, but Plutarch helpfully mentions his source - a lost work of Aristotle (4th century BC). The passage goes like this:\n\n > And Aristotle in particular says also that the ephors, as soon as they came into office, made formal declaration of war upon the Helots, in order that there might be no impiety in slaying them.\n\n-- *Life of Lykourgos* 28.4\n\nThe fragment is separately known as Aristotle fr. 538 Rose = fr. 543 Gigon." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9h1m9h" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "You're going to have be quite a bit more specific here. Which women? Where? In the workplace? At home? " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eg8dzx8" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The tl;dr is that it was a calculated move meant to undermine the Dalai Lama's authority. It's been a long time since I've read *The Search for the Panchen Lama* but I suggest you pick up a copy for a much *much* fuller picture than what I'm about to give you. (See the booklist) \n\nThere is no scripture/law in the Gelukpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism that says that the Dalai Lama is a higher authority than the Panchen Lama, or any other lama for that matter. The theological authority of the Gelukpas is the Ganden Tripa, a position that rotates through high ranking Lamas of the Ganden Monastery. The Dalai and Panchen Lamas draw their authority strictly from tradition and historical sources. I.e. the Dalai Lamas were nothing more than spiritual teachers and tantric/shamanic empowerers until Gushri Khaan conquered Lhasa and the rest of Tibet and (quite literally) gave it all to the Fifth Dalai Lama to rule. Not the Panchen Lama. \n\nBut the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama have had a long standing relationship. Famously, when the Dalai Lama dies, the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama's closest students are the ones who go in search for him. And vice versa. This is one of the main structural deficiencies in the Ganden Phodrang (the old Tibetan Government) because well, it leaves *way* too many opportunities for power struggles. In the 19th Century, *no* Dalai Lama made it to adulthood until the 13th (b. 1876) which meant the Panchen Lamas were left to run the country. \n\nThis is more or less where the trouble begins, because once the 13th reached majority, he operated under the assumption and belief that he was going to run Tibet. While this seems like a logical standpoint right now, back then it wasn't so cut-and-dry. If you read *The High Road to China* by Kate Teltscher, it's clear that the Panchen Lama of the late 1700s was clearly the one in charge, and was operating independently for all of Tibet, conducting international relations. And if he had lived longer, it's very possible that Tibet would have ended up with the Panchen Lama on top. \n\nSpeculative history aside, land and power disputes are problematic anywhere in the world, and when the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama ended up in a land dispute over Tashilhunpo Monastery (the Panchen Lama's seat, ironically constructed by the First Dalai Lama Gedun Drub) the Panchen Lama fled to the Republic of China, allegedly for his safety. The 13th Dalai Lama was in the process of reforming his new independent Tibet, which included modernizing and reforming the army which had already been used in a internal dispute against other Gelukpas, and to many (even today) the 13th Dalai Lama appeared like an aggressive state-builder who wasn't afraid to use force. History seems to bear that out, and for those on the other end of that force, well, it takes on a different tone. \n\nAnyway, the 13th Dalai Lama died, and shortly after the Panchen Lama did, too. The 14th (current) Dalai Lama and the next Panchen Lama were born three years apart (1935 and 1938, respectively) and recognized in a similar time frame. The differences from their past lives still needed to be dealt with, but both seemed to think that they could be overcome (albeit more in line towards their favor, it seems). When the People's Liberation Army invaded in 1950, they immediately split the Dalai Lama's U province from the Panchen Lama's Tsang province in an apparent attempt to split their influence and followers (i.e. making them easier to control if they could play them off of each other). I'm skipping over a lot of complexity, but this is the gist. \n\nWhen the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, the Panchen Lama stayed. The Chinese were quick to promote him as the real scion of Geluk Buddhism, not the Dalai Lama (my Chinese-based histories of Tibet are quick to list the Panchen Lamas in the same category of the Dalai Lamas) and Tibet proper. But with the Cultural Revolution and the Hundred Flowers Campaign, things took a turn. The Panchen Lama wrote his 70,000 character petition where he criticised the Beijing government from a socialist stand point, showing how they were not adhering to the principles of socialism and their agreement with the Tibetan people. He wasn't supportive of the Dalai Lama from our current understanding of the \"Free Tibet\" movement, but he was critical that China's socialist policy was a failure by its own standard (this is at least, my reading of his work). \n\nThis immediately put him out of favor with the Beijing government, which arrested him and subjected him to a \"struggle session\" and a long imprisonment. When he emerged from imprisonment, he dove into a modern lifestyle, married, and fathered a daughter. After he died the struggle for his rebirth took place. \n\nTwo things: the Golden Urn and the state of the world upon his rebirth. \n\nThe Golden Urn was, shockingly, a jar made of gold that was given by one of the Qing Emperors to the Lhasa establishment for the purpose of drawing lots to choose an incarnate. The Tibetans received the \"gift\" a bit like a white elephant. They already had their own system (in fact, each lineage has its own traditions and standards for recognition) and didn't need more bells and whistles. But hey, the Emperor gave a gift, so you accept the gift. \n\nAs far as I can remember and am aware, the Golden Urn was used twice to locate a Dalai Lama. Once to placate the emperor, and another time to settle a dispute between competing factions over potential candidates. In both times, allegedly, the choice had apparently already been made by the lead monk in charge of locating and confirming the reincarnate candidate.\n\n*However*, the Urn's significance is that it represents Beijing's authority in the context of Tibet's reincarnated sovereign. Without the Golden Urn, there is *no* connection between Beijing's authority - however tenuous - and Tibetans selecting their own reincarnate. Especially under the traditional model of the intertwined Dalai-Panchen relationship. \n\nAlthough, after the Panchen Lama had died (and here's a *real* short introduction) relations between the Dalai Lama's exile government in Dharamsala and Beijing had thawed a bit. Beijing was trying to entice Taiwan back into the fold, proving that the gifts of socialism were for everyone, and trying to use Tibet as an example. The Dalai Lama's brother and a small delegation were invited to tour Tibet in the hopes that the Dalai Lama and many exiles might return to the Motherland. It'd be a big propaganda victory, but also legitimate proof that it was better to be in socialist paradise than in bougeous exile. \n\nNeedless to say, the event was a complete disaster. Beijing had been buying into its own propaganda of the benefits of a socialist Tibet that they failed to actually ask the locals. The Dalai Lama's brother and the delegation were overrun by worshippers who begged for news from the outside world, and complaints over the hellish social experiments they were made to endure at the hands of the PLA. The delegation was quickly rushed to Hong Kong and told to leave and Taiwan quickly said, \"Yeah... no thanks\" to whatever Beijing was pushing. \n\nThis event aside, the Dalai Lama still believed that gradual compromise and mutual benefit between Chinese and Tibetan could be reached. Through a series of back channels, the issue of the Panchen Lama's reincarnate came up and Beijing *couldn't* be seen to be below the Dalai Lama's authority, but if Beijing and the Dalai Lama cooperated and just *happened* to come to the same conclusion, that might put both the Tibetans and Dharamsala-Beijing relations on a track for recovery. Skipping over most details, the timing to announce simultaneous findings broke down and the Dalai Lama went ahead and announced that Chokyi Nyima was the reincarnate. The Chinese went and used the Golden Urn (unprecendented in the case of the Panchen lineage) and instead of deciding with the Dalai Lama, it's generally agreed that the Chinese had already decided beforehand to go with Chokyi Gyalpo (referred to by his Sinicized \"secular\" name Gyaincain Norbu). Originally the plan was to announce their findings at the same time on the same day, but since the Dalai Lama came out *first* with the \"real\" candidate, Beijing couldn't bee seen to have their authority usurped, so they announced for Chokyi Gyalpo, arrested Chokyi Nyima and his family, and established Chokyi Gyalpo at Tashilhunpo as the rightful heir. \n\nSources: \n\n*Search for the Panchen Lama* by Isabel Hilton\n\n*The Fourteen Dalai Lamas* by Glenn H. Mullin\n\n*The High Road to China* by Kate Teltscher\n\n*Dragon in the Land of Snows* by Tsering Shakya\n\n*Tibetan Nation* by Warren W. Smith \n\n*Highlights of Tibetan History* by Wang Furen and Suo Wenqing" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cirvgip", "cis1upn" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Ancient Greek astronomers believed the moon to be a sphere - here's a relevant post (which ended up largely debating the Earth; you'll have to scroll way down to finally find some discussion on the Moon):\n\n[When people thought the Earth was flat, did they think the moon was a 2D circle in the sky?](_URL_0_)", "Kepler, the 17th century German astronomer, wrote a short novel called Somnium (the Dream) describing a journey to the moon and meeting with its inhabitants.\n\nThe inhabitants of the dark side of the moon are said to be unfortunate because they do not have the vision of the Earth to contemplate in the sky.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ "http://epizodsspace.no-ip.org/bibl/inostr-yazyki/wilkins_the_other_side_of_the_moon_jbis.pdf", "http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007iale.book.....S" ]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mmwdi/when_people_thought_the_earth_was_flat_did_they/" ], [ "http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/8/christianson8art.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cwu1i51" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "To answer this question we have to go back to 1385. Back then Poland suffered a succesion crisis. Casimir III the Great died without a male heir to the throne, as did his brother-in-law Louis I of Hungary, who was a king of Poland between 1370-82. His daughter Jadwiga became a king of Poland. She was promised to Wilhelm Habsburg, but the engagement was broken. Instead Poland and Lithuania formed an Union in Krewo, caused by the danger from mutual enemy of those 2 countries- Teutonic Order which Lithuania struggled to fight against for more than a hundred years. Thanks to this union lithuanian prince Jogaila adn Jadwiga were angaged,Lithuania was baptized, and some historians say it became a province of Poland for a short time and than became polsih feif ( Feliks Koneczny), others say Lithuania became polsih fief at the begging (Oskar Halicki), either way eventually they became two separate countries with personal union (they had one king). \nThe countries were ruled by Jaggielon dynasty for 200 years , but Sigismund II Augustus died without a hear in 1572. Before his death he decided to ensure himself that succesion to the throne after his death is safe. So he decided to change the structres of his realm. Poland and Lithuania became a single country and also became an elective monarchy. \nNow It's more of my opinion than the facts. It lasted so long, because for a long time it made both countries stronger together, they had one currency, but two treasuries, they also had two armies, but in tough times they obviously were helping each other. It's just that the idea of elective monarchy was really bad. Foreign countries started to support candidates, and with time they were doing more and more to make sure their candidate will become a king. That lead to civil wars and humiliating last election of polish king ( basically the place where election took place was completly surrounded by russian troops to make sure who will win the voting). Poles and Lithuanians got their warning with their first elected king Henry III, who ran away from Poland, when the chance of him becoming the king of France became real., and did nothing about it." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg40xxs", "cg42tcq" ], "score": [ 2, 3 ], "text": [ "The first instance of Ukraine appearing on a map as any sort of organized state was in the aftermath of the First World War during the chaos in the area. Prior to this Ukrainians would generally have considered themselves Ruthenians, a word that also stems from the relation to Rus. \n\nYour question about culture is an interesting one, because to answer it we have to recognize that despite the similarities that might have existed before the invasion of the Mongols, the historical events between then and when Russia came to dominate the Eastern European plains meant that the people of Moscow and the people of Lviv were exposed to very different events. Although it is not entirely comparable, consider the differences between Austrians, German Swiss, and Prussians in the 19th century. They are all 'German' and have very closely related languages (mutually intelligible in many respects) but culturally are very different. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the focus was on the similarities for both states, but since then the differences between those states has magnified. You can see a similar process happening in Ukraine. \n\nSo, coming back to your main question, did a seperate culture exist? Certainly. However, the differences between the culture of Muscovy that came to dominate Russia and the culture of Kiev and Lviv that came to dominate Ukraine stems from the historical exposure and separation that occurred, first under the Mongols, then under the various foreign powers that ruled over the Ruthenians/Ukrainians over the proceeding centuries.", " > did the modern day Ukrainian culture exist before the Russian culture or does Ukrainian culture stem from the original Russian culture?\n\nUkrainian and Russian cultures both share the legacy of Kievan Rus'. Neither of them can really lay better claim to it than the other. Much like it doesn't make sense to talk about humans 'evolving from' chimpanzees, we can't really properly talk about Ukraine 'coming from' Russia or vice versa. In terms of language, we can talk about East Slavic-speakers from the tenth or eleventh century. Several centuries later, we can talk about Russian and Ruthenian, and a while longer after that it becomes meaningful to distinguish Ukrainian from Belarusian.\n\n > Is the 'edge (Край)' in relation to Europe proper or Russia? If the latter is presumed it would be supplementary to establishing the fact that Russia (i.e both the formal nation and culture) preceded Ukraine, in my opinion.\n\nOriginally it meant merely 'frontier', and East Slavs used it for a number of regions. As the Tsardom of Russia was getting on its feet, Polish and Russian speakers began to use it for contested land around the Dnepr/Dniepr/Dnipro inhabited by a variety of groups. That is, *Ukraina* was the border region between two fairly powerful states. As Poland waned and Imperial Russia waxed, the term *Ukraina* went out of style in Russia and was replaced by *Malorossija* 'Little Russia'. Early Ukrainian nationalists like Taras Shevchenko began using forms of *Ukraine* in the early 19th century, both in Russian Ukraine and in Galicia." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccf6tt5" ], "score": [ 148 ], "text": [ "Just offhand, remember that it's only in the US that the space race is portrayed as being all about the moon. (Possibly because the moon was the only major milestone the US hit first.) The Soviet space program kept truckin' well into the 1980s, when the space station Mir--the most successful and longest-lived project of its kind until the ISS--went up. In the 1970s, the key space-related event was probably the Soyuz-Apollo docking, which was widely reported as a triumph of détente. I don't think anyone thought the moon landing meant that the space race was over and the US had won; after all, there was plenty of science fiction in the Soviet Union and the horizons for human achievement in space were pretty much infinite. Not like today..." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cwft24p" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The US was part of a UN Police Action in Korea (voted on when the Soviets boycotted the Security Council meeting and thus lost an opportunity to veto) — it was not just the US itself intervening unilaterally. For the Soviets to directly intervene after that point would mean having Soviet troops fighting US troops, which would have been extremely dangerous and carried with it huge risks for escalation. Instead, the Chinese (then still a non-nuclear power) intervened in that way (at not inconsiderable risk to themselves). \n\nBut separately, Stalin was never entirely keen on the Korean War. This is something we only learned once the Cold War ended. Kim Il Sung pushed Stalin to endorse his effort and to give help; Stalin feared it was \"adventurism\" (a risky move) at a point where the Soviets were trying to posture big but in reality were quite vulnerable (the Soviets had only just gotten nuclear arms, but they were very limited in number and had no means of delivering them against the USA, whereas the US had hundreds of nuclear weapons at that point and foreign bomber bases within striking distance of Moscow). Stalin was willing to give some assistance but was not interested in risking anything that might force the US to have a direct confrontation with the USSR. \n\nOn the Stalin/Kim discussions, John Gaddis talks about this in _The Cold War: A New History_, if I recall correctly, and how post-Cold War revelations have shaped our view of this (it was originally thought that Stalin was very keen on the Korean war; archival documentation shows he was not)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ciqpp0g", "ciqy314" ], "score": [ 6, 19 ], "text": [ "It might be worthwhile to crosspost this question to /r/AskAnthropology.", "Possible not quite what you're looking for, but according to St Augustine's Confessions, at age 16 he was in the public baths and experienced an erection. His father \"saw the signs of active virility coming to life in me and this was enough to make him relish the thought of having grandchildren.\"\n\nThis would have been about the year 360. \n\nAugustine's mother wasn't as pleased. She \"became alarmed and apprehensive\" on hearing the news, worrying that he was headed down the path of sin. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ciolxd6", "ciscew6" ], "score": [ 251, 3 ], "text": [ "This is a massive question that can be aptly summed up as *\"It depends.\"*\n\nWhere do you reside? Most specifically, are you from the North or the South? Another question I need to ask is how old are you? What gender are you? Those last two are the most important because, frankly, they determine how likely it is that you live or die. How rich are you, your family? Do you have any royal ties whatsoever? If the answer is yes to the last line this post ends here because you were near guaranteed to be dead flat out as long as you stayed in France. \n\nLet's say you were from the South. The South of France experienced a disproportionately large amount of anti-Revolutionary tendencies and would be considered in \"semi-revolt\" throughout the 1790's. Mayors were extra corrupt and outright ignored calls for conscription. If you were not old enough to be conscripted (unlikely, you'd have to be in your late 30's, 40's, or 50's by this point along with some kind of medical issue to really seal the deal) you would likely be victim at some point or another of a Revolutionary Army -- *sans-culottes*. This would be initially paraded by our friend Maximillien Robespierre -- the architect of what is called \"The Terror\" between '92 and '93. Almost 3/4th's of those killed in 'The Terror' would be people just like you -- regular working class peasants accused of hoarding grain or anti-revolutionary thought. Frankly, these bands were filled with people who felt it safer and more profitable to wage war on defenseless French civilians than to go out and defend the country. It was full of cowards and, I know this is loaded language, terrorists. \n\nYou would be visited by these *sans-culottes* regularly and would see either a family member or a friend in town sent to the guillotine most certainly. You may also have witnessed or fallen victim to *noyades* -- mass drownings -- or mass shootings if your town was deemed as harboring anti-Revolutionary sentiment. Thankfully though if you would survive this period through about 1794 the Terror would end with Robespierre's fall and the rise of the Directory which would dismantle these Revolutionary Armies and scatter them throughout the regular army. Let me reiterate this -- whether you are in the North or South, if you were not in the military, you were subject to seemingly random and completely unregulated murder by Revolutionary forces in the first few years of the revolution. Your chances of surviving this if you had any aristocratic heritage, any anti-revolutionary sentiment or hoarded any food whatsoever was not very high.\n\nIf you were in the North you would experience a life very similar to the South except with slightly less Revolutionary Terror and more death and destruction from war. The North would be subject to constant attacks by the British and Austrians in particular. Remember at this time the area of the Low Countries was held by Austrian nobility and would be a staging area for Austrian offensives into France. Whether it was a British, Austrian, or French army your farm would likely be destroyed entirely. Burned to the ground most likely and all your crops stolen by foraging parties and your soil destroyed by men constantly marching through and fires. I'd also wager it's likely if you have any daughters they would be raped if you were in an area of particular contention. \n\nBasically if you were not drafting into the military your likely options were death, destruction of everything you own, rape and murder of your family, and your town or province being irrevocably destroyed by war or paramilitary Revolutionary forces. It is highly unlikely you would escaped unscathed.\n\nWhat is far more likely (and far more interesting to talk about) however is that you were drafted into the military. All men between the ages of 18 and 25 were to be forcibly conscripted for military service -- all men. Men into their 30's would also regularly volunteer or be called upon as well though. If you were fighting your first few years in the military would be one of utter disorganization and panic. Revolutionary hype would be ripe and you and your comrades would feel it. Any officers living a little too luxuriously? Mob them and send them to the guillotine. Your NCO being a little too harsh on you and your mates? That doesn't sound like liberty or fraternity, I don't like being drilled! You'd probably be part of a mob that killed him or stripped him of his power. It is very likely you would be witness or a participant in the murder of an individual whose only crime was being a bit rich, an aristocratic heritage, or was being a bit too strict with you. \n\nWhere you fought doesn't really matter, your life would be hell. Supply issues were rampant as the Royal Armies rather sophisticated supply system would be sacked entirely for being part of the old system. A new administrative service would be created which had a semi-independent status, its *commissaires-ordonnateurs* only responsible to the Republic itself and not the commanders it served. These men, responsible for collecting, storing, preparing, and issuing foodstuffs and clothing along with disbursing money were filled with endless opportunities of larceny. Supplies and cash would frequently vanish before reaching the troops going into the pockets of Revolutionary leaders in Paris. Vincentius Zahn, a pastor in Hinterzarten, watched a French army pass through in 1796 which would be about when the supply issue began to stabilize. So this is the best case scenario you're about to read:\n\n > One did not see [compared to the Austrian army] so many wagons or so much baggage, such elegant cavalry, or any infantry officers on horseback below the grade of major. [Austrian infantry lieutenants had their own mounts] Everything about these Frenchman was supple and light -- movements, clothing, arms, and baggage, In their ranks marched boys of fourteen and fifteen; the greater part of their infantry was without uniforms, shoes, money, and apparently lacking all organization, if one were to judge by appearances alone. . . These French resembled a savage horde [but] they kept good order, only some marauders who followed the army at a distance . . . terrified the inhabitants.\n\nYou had no shoes most certainly. The Directory in '95 had to pass a special order just to give all the Officers their own shoes and even that wasn't filled out entirely. Your uniform was nonexistent as is mentioned but just a loose collection of tattered blue or white with the French tricolor somewhere on it if you could manage. You had no regular supply of food from the country itself but had to survive off of war. Most early campaigns you would fight in would not be explicit offensives but 'liberating' nearby towns across the Rhine or in North Italy for supplies. Soldiers had no issue foraging on their own French lands as well. If you were a conscript you would most likely abandon your men while marching through familiar land. Many Divisions would lose half their men on extended marches through attrition and desertion alone. \n\nArtillery and cavalry was restricted mostly to pre-war soldiers who had the training and knowledge to perform those duties. If you were conscripted you were almost certainly put into one of two areas -- light infantry or regular infantry. *Tirailleur* and *Fusilier* respectively. Assuming you did not desert after being thrown into one of these two sections you would get two very separate combat experiences. The post-Revolutionary army was very fond of skirmisher forces for some inexplicable reason. I say that mainly because inexperienced troops are very poor skirmishers. They generally aren't crack shots and flee at the slightest sign of trouble. Yet whole battalions were frequently deployed as entirely skirmishers, a tactic dubbed *\"tirailleur en grandes bandes.\"* If you were part of a skirmisher force you would likely not be thrown directly into the fray. You would be sent on small scale raiding 'missions' with a small number of other skirmisher comrades and an officer as a sort of training exercise. You would raid storage caches or small villages so that you would get used to being under fire in a more controlled environment for your officer to control you. As you would go into battle against a formal Austrian, British, Italian or Prussian army your duty would be constant harassment. \n\nIf you were thrown into the fusiliers you would be heavily drilled about formation. The common trope about Napoleonic warfare are two sides standing in line formation staring each other down 50-100 yards apart and shooting at each other. This is a shitty strategy for the French, pardon my French. Line formation is inefficient for untrained conscripts because, like a phalanx, it requires holding formation and firing in concert -- two things conscripts will not be capable of doing on a few weeks of training under heavy fire. The French military doctrine of this time was one of constant attack -- always being on the offensive. It was the only way they would abuse their manpower advantage. You would be organized into a column of just a few men wide and dozens of men deep. You likely would not fire your weapon once or just once in a battle, as you were charging at full sprint into the enemy line. That is what the column provided -- it gave depth to the line, did not require a lot of organization, and was only used as a formality to charge into shattered and notably *thin* lines of the enemy. British, Austrian, Italian and Prussian troops were professional armies and would fight in that line formation. It would not stand up to constant column charges. \n\nHow would a normal battle go? Well, again, it depended on your position in the army. Again you were most certainly in the infantry if you were just a farmer. Let's imagine it from the enemies shoes. Swarms of skirmishers would begin to envelop your tight, strictly dressed formations firing from cover in completely disorderly formations. When I say swarm, we're talking 3:1 ratios here. If you stand still, you will be continuously picked off. If you try to fire on them, you will only hit a few as they were extremely scattered. If you tried to charge them they would drift away, still shooting, and follow you when you try to fall back into your strictly disciplined line. \n\nEventually your line would be in tatters you, a Brit or Austrian alike, would look up across the horizon. Out of the smoke comes a howling, trampling, massive rush of thousands of men with bayonets extended with the weight of 12 men against every yard of your exhausted line (which were only 3 deep when it all began). Your professional, organized, and chivalrous armies would try their best but they would keep running into issues. A French NCO who was completely outnumbered and outmaneuvered that just failed to recognize his hopeless situation and charged anyway, killing thousands in a last stand. Inexperienced French officers who would show a shocking disregard of accepted military strategy and turn every engagement into a mindless, all out slugfest where fancy tactics and strategy of the non-Revolutionary sides meant nothing and would buckle under the weight of thousands of Frenchmen bearing down on them.\n\nBack to the French perspective. Let's say, somehow, you survive all of this. It's not unreasonable, many did. You did not get poked with a bayonet or shot in a charge or desert your men or didn't get caught hoarding anything. You survived the '90's into 1799 when the Directory would fall. A hundred battles would harrow you. You would time and time again throw the English and Austrians back in particular. What many tens of thousands died of combat many more would die of your governments incompetence. The patriotic enthusiasm you held in '91 seemed immature and stupid to the ragged veterans of 1799. The bands would play the patriotic airs of those first years of revolution -- *Chant du Départ*, *Ah ça Ira*, and the *Marseillaise*. \n\nThe bands would play and you would sing, but they would mean nothing to you. You were a professional soldier in a professional army now. You, who fought out of pride and comradeship in '91 had spent the last decade learning to loot and murder to survive and would hold little reverence for any person or any idea and especially for that damn Revolution. Your Generals would be a wolf-breed, disrespectful of authority and independent minded. All of you, officers and men together, were survivors. Men of steel, toughened to all the hardship and conditions of the worst wars in history up to that point, thoroughly fed up with the *gros-ventres* -- big bellies -- of the Revolutionary government in Paris who had used and abused you. You had won dozens of victories and thrown the entirety of Europe onto its backfoot but you had no peace, no shoes, and not a square meal in nearly 10 years. It was this army that would make Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul at the beginning of the 19th century. And this army was comprised of you, dangerous metal which would be forged into the Grand Armée -- the greatest military force the world would ever see.\n\n----\n\nNotes:\n\nElting, John, *Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armée*", "When evaluating the impact of the French Revolution upon France, it’s important to emphasize the Napoleonic period. Napoleon tended to systematize the changes of the Revolution and favored a hybrid of economic modernization and social conservatism. A good book to start with this is *France under Napoleon*by Louis Bergeron. This *Annales*-school historian emphasized that industrial production of crops such as sugar beets and export crops such as wine increased dramatically under the Empire. However, the Napoleonic Code’s stress on equal inheritance led to a greater a much slower rate of population growth than other areas of Europe. The Concordat with Rome created a situation in which local priests were employees of the state and were still vital for education in the provinces throughout the early nineteenth century. The Revolution did do away with the archaic forms of seigniorial dues, but this change was more apparent than real due to the nature of the post-Revolutionary economy. The chaos of the revolution meant that one of Napoleon main goals was to restore order. This meant a firm commitment to metalism and a sound currency. For the countryside, this meant that only some families truly benefitted from the breakup of noble estates (mostly by being in the right place and being of the right social position) and the mass of French peasants now had to pay rents according to a market economy that was very inflexible compared to the ancien regime. In many ways, what we now picture the French countryside (quaint stone farms, small towns, excellent wines and bread) is a byproduct of the Revolution and Empire’s long shadow. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f8f2f6j" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I couldn't resist writing an answer about Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals. Not only because they're the part of the Revolution I'm most interested in right now, but I think most would agree that the Equals were the most radical organized movement of the Revolution. \n\nThe conspiracy only lasted for about a month during the spring of 1796. It was formed out of various surviving parts of the revolutionary left, and its goal was to overthrow the government and abolish private property. They called the system they aspired to establish \"common happiness\". After being betrayed by one of their agents, the members who could be identified by authorities were put on trial. Gracchus Babeuf, a journalist who played a significant role in the conspiracy, was eventually convicted and executed.\n\nAccording to Babeuf's defense speech, the movement's goals were justified because of the terms of the original social contract. Referring to the first article of the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen from 1793, which states that \"the goal of society is common happiness\", Babeuf said that\n\n > That is the whole of the law and its prophets. I challenge you to say to me that men, uniting themselves in an association, would have another goal, another will than that of all being happy. I challenge you to claim that they would have consented to this union if they had been warned that institutions would be formed whose result had to be that soon the greatest number would bear all of the burden of labour, would sweat blood and die of hunger to support the delights and inaction of a handful of privileged citizens. But since this happened, as eternal laws don't expire, I have the right, as a man, to demand at any time the execution of the first pact, which, even if it were true that it were made silently, is found written by nature in ineffaceable letters deep in every heart. Yes, there is a voice that cries out to all: *the goal of society is common happiness.* There is the primitive contract; it didn't need terms to express itself, it is sufficiently extensive, because all institutions must derive from this source, and none can detract from it. \n\nAnother example would be Antoine Saint-Just's speech arguing for the execution of Louis XVI. The trial of the deposed king came with some legal difficulties, since the old constitution gave the king absolute immunity from prosecution. That was a problem the revolutionaries would have to solve if they wanted to punish Louis in a legal way. The idea of a contract as the basis of all law was essential to Saint-Just's solution. \n\nSaint-Just argued that society is created from a pact between citizens. From contract law, he borrowed the principle that you could only be party to a contract if it imposed some obligation on you. For a normal citizen, the obligation is obvious. All citizens are bound by this contract through the law that emanates from it. Louis, however, was not. He had absolute impunity. Since he had no obligation according to the terms of the contract, he wasn't party to it. And if he isn't a part of the contract, the laws based on the contract don't apply. Therefore, Louis can be killed." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbxa7u6" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Well, first off, to many scholars, it's not an either/or thing (that is, either totally interpolated or totally authentic). The 'consensus' used to be - and possibly still is - that there was *some* original core Josephan text here about Jesus (?), to which bits were added by later Christian scribes (for one of the more comprehensive restatements of this view, see [Paget 2001](_URL_1_)). \n\nThat there is, indeed, Christian interpolation is incontestable, though. I can't think of any scholar who's really examined the issue at length and thought otherwise. Even some of the more inventive proposals arguing for authenticity - e.g. that Josephus may be being *sarcastic* in some of his description of Jesus - can't really get around things like ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν (\"he was the Messiah\"), which sticks out like a sore thumb (in several different ways).\n\nHowever, the tide has been turning a little, among scholars of the passage - and in the past few years, several prominent commentators have come out in favor of the *whole thing* being a Christian interpolation. See [this post](_URL_0_) on /r/AcademicBiblical with a link to discussion by one of these scholars." ] }

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[ "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus" ]

[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1kb1ib/ken_olson_on_the_testimonium_flavianum/", "http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/2/539.full.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cyf3f79" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "To deal with the second question first: There was no such thing as midshipmen in the 1300s and 1400s, those would have been much later inventions. \n\nFor the first question: In the English and French navies, dried meat and stockfish, as well as bread (biscuit) and cured or dried vegetables would have been standard fare. Ships would carry fresh water, but also beer and wine, as well as regional foods; N.A.M. Rodger's *The Safeguard of the Sea* has a throwaway reference I've been meaning to look up about the \"astonishing quantities\" of mustard carried on Burgundian ships. \n\nI don't know anything in particular about the Spanish or Portuguese caravels, but the same principle would likely apply: foods that can be dried or cured, with fresh stuff in port. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dfdgel1" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Snow did play a major role in the defeat of the German's in the Battle of Moscow - along with many other things. The German Army was not prepared for snow simply because they didn't think they would be fighting in Russia for that long. \n\n\"Neither Hitler nor the General Staff anticipated a long campaign [Barbarossa] lasting into the winter, and therefore adequate preparations, such as the distribution of warm clothing and winterization of vehicles and lubricants, were not made.\" \n\nHitler said himself \"We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.\" That belief was drilled into everyone's heads, even the front line troops. They believed that the Russians were not a formidable enemy. After Stalin's Military purges the command structure was weak. The Russians failure to achieve victories in the Winter War was further evidence of this. Victory for the Germans would be swift, and hence no preparations were made for winter fighting.\n\nIn the opening Phases of Barbarossa (started on 22 June 1941), German victories were relatively swift. However, Russian forces were fighting much more ferociously than expected. Several Soviet pockets of defense (Minsk-Białystok) had to be eliminated before infantry divisions, which were mostly horse-drawn could catch up to the advancing Panzer armies. By August 1941 the Germans finally captured Smolensk, an important stronghold on the road to Moscow.\n\n \"At this stage, although Moscow was vulnerable, an offensive against the city would have exposed the German flanks. In part to address these risks, in part to attempt to secure Ukraine's food and mineral resources, Hitler ordered the attack to turn north and south and eliminate Soviet forces at Leningrad and Kiev. This delayed the German advance on Moscow. When that advance resumed on 2 October 1941, German forces had been weakened, while the Soviets had raised new forces for the defense of the city.\"\n\nOn October 2nd when the attack on Moscow resumed the Germans had finally realized they had underestimated the Russians ability to produce satisfactory reserve troops. Their first attack objective was to eliminate three Soviet fronts forming a defensive line between the cities of Vyazma and Bryansk, which barred the way to Moscow. Using blitzkrieg and pincer tactics, their attack trapped 4 Soviet armies in a pocket between Vyazma and Bryansk, while the rest of Soviet armies pulled back to set up a better defensive line around Mozhaisk. \n\nIt was around this time on October 7th that the first snows came. However, they quickly melted and turned the roads into muddy impassable quagmires. This was known to the Russians as the rasputitsa. \n\nWith the rasputitsa weather present the German advances began to slow drastically. All the while Russian counter-attacks from the pocket also wore down German fighting strength. When the Germans pressed on to tackle the Mozhaisk defense line on October 13th they found moment quite difficult,and to make the matters worse the German supply lines where severely disrupted by both long distances and the Winter weather. On October 31st all German offensive operations were halted until the weather conditions improved. \n\nHowever, they never did improve and actually got much much worse. \"The German forces were worn out, with only a third of their motor vehicles still functioning, infantry divisions at third- to half-strength, and serious logistics issues preventing the delivery of warm clothing and other winter equipment to the front.\" In November and December the temperature dropped to as low as \n–49 °F. \n\n\"These numbers indicated severely cold conditions, and German troops were freezing with no winter clothing, using equipment that was not designed for such low temperatures. More than 130,000 cases of frostbite were reported among German soldiers. Frozen grease had to be removed from every loaded shell and vehicles had to be heated for hours before use. The same cold weather, typical for the season, hit the Soviet troops, but they were better prepared.\"\n\nWhile the Germans hunkered down for the winter weather, the Soviets which were much more use to and prepared for began a counter attack in an attempt to push the Germans away from Moscow. Which they succeeded in doing, and eventually pushed the Germans 100–250 km (62–155 mi) from Moscow. Nearly surrounding 3 German Armies in the process. The Soviet counter attack eventually ran out of steam on January 5th. \n\nSo all in all, the Germans underestimated the Soviets fighting forces and their ability to replace lost troops. They Soviets also had better winterized equipment and outnumbered the Germans. Although the Germans had made great progress, the lack of paved roads and horrid weather hindered their advance, because supplies could not be brought up from such long distances in time. Also Soviet resistance was much stronger than expected, and Hitler being the armchair General he was did not listen to the advice of his Generals and delayed the capture of the city. Thus the attack started late and Winter weather worked against his unprepared armies. \n\n \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c8f400i" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "This kind of question would be hard to answer even for last year's debate, where we have an abundance of data. Sure, Obama lost a few points after his weak performance in the first debate, but perhaps he would have anyway? It bears repeating: history can only try to answer what actually happened, and usually falls short of even this modest goal. \n\nWhen you say \"the significance\", do you mean the significance for the outcome of that election? The debate had huge significance outside of that. For instance, it vastly increased the importance of television to political campaigns in the United States. But I'll concentrate on the impact on the election itself. \n\nThe main hard evidence we have are the Gallup, Schwerin and Sindlinger polls.\n\nAmong the TV viewers, respondents rated Kennedy's performance significantly higher than Nixon's. However, among the radio listeners they were tied\\*. Thus, you are correct that radio listeners didn't prefer Nixon. They prefered them equally. \n\nHowever, a single study, reported in *Broadcasting* (by Sindlinger) found that Nixon outperformed Kennedy 48.7 to 21 among radio listeners. This study, however, had a very small sample size - only 282 listeners - and is likely an outlier. So it's probably safe to assume that they were tied.\n\nAnother significant thing was that the radio listeners and the TV viewers were different audiences, so you can't compare them directly like many people assume. People who could watch either generally preferred TV, so the radio listeners may have been overrepresented among people from rural areas which didn't have coverage, or among poor people who couldn't afford a television. We don't know for sure, since the sample data was never published.\n\nNow for the main question: what was the impact on the election result?\n\nOn Labor Day (when campaigns started in these days) Nixon led 47-46 in the Gallup poll, and that's essentially were they were by the first debate in late September. After the first debate, Kennedy held a 49-46 percent lead through the last of the four debates. So we're talking about a four-point swing. \n\nCould Kennedy have had a four point swing even without the debates? I would say yes - his messaging, with its emphasis on leadership, was strong, and he was a much better public speaker. It may have taken longer, though.\n\n\\* Windt, T.O. Jr: *The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debates In Rhethorical Studies of National Political Debates*, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston 1990, pp. 1-27. The source on all data in this post." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5wytv4", "d5x1lxv" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "Phillip felt threatened as the other holy orders, the Hospitallers and the Teutons, had got themselves land. The Teutons conquered pagan Lithuania and kept a lot of the land, while the Hospitallers took up residence in Rhodes, and later Malta. Phillip thought the templars would want to take land in France, so he killed them. They were also becoming increasing rich and powerful, so again, Phillip felt threatened.", "The claim that they recovered valuable relics from Jerusalem and returned with them to Europe is false, as far as I'm aware. It seems very close to other popular myths about the Templars with no factual basis (that they became Freemasons, that they survived in secret, that they escaped to Scotland or found the New World, etc.). The Templars wouldn't have gone to Jerusalem, they were founded there. The Templars did not build cathedrals, they sometimes built churches and chapels on their estates in Europe and the Holy Land, but nothing as large as a cathedral.\n\nIt is very unlikely that Philip feared the Temple would start it's own state in France. It simply wouldn't have been possible for the Templars to do so, legally or militarily. They had no legal right to and by 1307 the only military order that had founded its own state was the Teutonic Knights. There lands were frontier territories that they had conquered themselves, rather than the centre of a centuries old kingdom like France. The HC documentary sounds confused about the Templars owing Philip money, it was actually the reverse. Military and other religious orders across Europe were often used as financiers by secular rulers.\n\nPhilip had quite a few reasons to oppose the Templars. Firstly, Philip was in great need of funds by 1307, his wars having put a great strain on his finances. The Templars were very wealthy, the wealthiest of the military orders at that time and so gaining control of their property and income would provide Philip some much needed finance. Also, by suppressing the Order, he could wipe clean his debts to them. The king may have also borne a personal grudge against the Order, as some of their brethren had fought in a rebellion against him in Flanders some years earlier. Another reason for his opposition to the Temple, one that applied to most other rulers, was the independence and special privileges given to them by the Church (and some kings): the Order was exempted from a lot of secular and ecclesiastical taxes and they answered only to the Pope, rather than a bishop. The reason they were charged with heresy specifically was because that was the one charge an ecclesiastical court (which could be run by bishops under Philip's control) was allowed to investigate them for. In short, Philip needed money and targeted a rich order that he owed money to, one that was not fully under his authority yet had a large presence in his country and that had fought against him in the past. In addition to this, the Templars were vulnerable to criticism. Alongside the Knights Hospitaller they had been scapegoated for the loss of the Holy Land in 1291. There had been both ecclesiastical and secular suggestions that the Templars even be dissolved or combined with the Hospitallers and refounded as a new order. Couple with this, there had always been some opposition to the Templars in Europe. To some ecclesiastics their mixture of military and religious life was incompatible, whilst to people they were sometimes seen as 'tainted' by foreign customs during their time in the East. For Philip, they were an easy target to spin against.\n\nAgain, the HC documentary sounds confused on this point. You're right, Bertrand de Got and Clement V are the same person, the latter being his papal name. Philip didn't go behind the pope's back to elect Clement. The previous pope, Benedict, was dead. I'm not sure of Clement's feelings towards Philip, it's not something I've looked into very much yet. Even if Clement had sympathies with the Temple, fear would have overcome this. In 1303 Philip had sent his chief advisor, Guillaume de Nogaret, with a force of mercenaries to try and depose one of Clement's predecessors as pope, Boniface VIII. Boniface was imprisoned, starved, and reportedly beaten. He was released but died a couple of months later, probably of the stress and mistreatment he suffered. Clement won't have forgotten this, he was vulnerable to facing the same treatment. Even if he had sympathy for the Templars, his own self-preservation could have overcome it.\n\nAs a general rule it's a good idea to be skeptical of TV documentaries and popular books about the Templars. They're very often the subject of conspiracy theories and myths without any factual basis, more so than most other aspects of medieval history. If it connects them with Rosslyn Chapel, Columbus, or Bannockburn, then run. \n\nIf you want a source that's a bit easier going than Frale, you could try Helen Nicholson. She's one of the main people working on the military orders right now, written a lot about them in the British Isles specifically, and her general history of the Templars is pretty accessible. Another good source would be Malcolm Barber, who wrote what's still seen as the definitive book on the Templars.\n\nSources: Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar (Sutton, 2001).\nMalcolm Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge, 1994).\nJochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, Helen Nicholson, The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314) (Abingdon, 2010)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c6t2qu7", "c6t60kx" ], "score": [ 77, 76 ], "text": [ "[Full speech](_URL_1_)\n\n[Transcript](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd the relevant bit:\n\n > There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?\n > \nWe choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.\n\nSo, speaking very specifically, the \"other things\" are climbing tall mountains, flying across the Atlantic (he's referring to Lindbergh's flight there), and playing Texas (the speech was given at Rice University).\n\nSpeaking generically, he was talking about doing difficult things for the advancement of mankind. Going to the moon was the next such difficult thing, coming after all those \"other things.\" ", "**\"Why does Rice play Texas?\"**\n\n\"At one time, during the 1920's and 30's there was parity in football in the Southwest Conference; Rice won its share of the championships and on any given Saturday in the fall any team had the potential to beat any other team. But after WWII the University of Texas took off in size and came to dominate football in the region. Rice earned the dubious honor of becoming the smallest school in the nation to play Division I sports. \n \nLogically, mathematically, analytically, Rice should never beat Texas. With a regular period, the Rice University faculty debates giving up football - or all Division I athletics - as a waste of time, money, and effort. \n \nAnd when the historians replay the tape of JFK's speech, they generally clip out the phrase 'WHY DOES RICE PLAY TEXAS?' perhaps because the reference may be obscure to some people, perhaps because it seems less important than Lindbergh flying solo across the Atlantic. But if that phrase is clipped out, I submit you may miss the point. \n \nTexas dominates the series 64-21-1. The conferences have changed and the two teams don't play every year, and when they do, it doesn't count for conference standings. \n \nLogically, mathematically, analytically, there is no point for Rice to play Texas. \n \nBut about once a decade, the illogical happens: the underdog triumphs. Facing the challenge makes a fundamental change in the people who face that challenge.\"\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouRbkBAOGEw" ], [ "http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/posts/post_1243892612843.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ech2e02" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "It has to do with the British war aims. To wit, there was no interest, popular or political, in re-conquering the United States. For the British, the War of 1812 was a defensive action fought in the shadow of the Napoleonic threat. The British were interested in ending the war almost as soon as it began, and in the aftermath of their failed invasion of northern New York at the Battle of Plattsburgh, the British felt like quitting while they were ahead, to make a long story short.\n\nMaine was not the only territory the British controlled at the end of the war, either, but they returned all conquered territory to the United States, preferring to end the war and restore the *status quo antebellum*.\n\nI have [written](_URL_0_) [elsewhere](_URL_1_) about political goals of both sides, and I'm happy to answer follow-ups.\n\nCoincidentally, today is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent! The treaty was also called the \"Peace of Christmas Eve.\"" ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812", "https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/new-ireland-how-maine-almost-became-part-of-canada-at-the-end-of-the-war-of-1812" ]

[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7xzsty/why_didnt_great_britain_invade_america_during_the/duchphe/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9mdy7o/who_won_the_war_of_1812_between_the_united_states/e7egpsx/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ci49sdu", "ci49viz" ], "score": [ 9, 6 ], "text": [ "Answer part 1: This excerpt from my draft Introduction to Folklore addresses your question in generic terms; perhaps it will be of help:\n\nDeath was an opportunity to ensure the eternal wellbeing of a friend or relative. It could also provide the living with a powerful supernatural ally. Burial practices in Western Europe generally reflect positive attitudes towards the dead. The farther to the east in Europe one looks, one finds cultures increasingly concerned with the possibility of the dead walking after death. People regarded the deceased in general as malevolent and dangerous. These generalizations can be easily challenged to contrary examples from various regions; the diversity of humanity is key even though there are general regional trends.\n\nThere is archaeological evidence of feelings towards the dead. In Western Europe, Neolithic societies buried the deceased in collective mounds where the bones accumulated. People made seasonal gifts at the entrances to these chambers apparently to procure continued good will from the otherworld and to ensure that departed loved ones would have a comfortable existence. In the east, prehistoric burials were typically solitary. It is not uncommon to find remains that were tightly bound in a fetal position. Individuals who apparently inspired particular concern had rocks shoved into their mouths and large stones placed above their burials. These were apparently intended to keep the dead from talking and walking from the grave. This sort of archaeological evidence can also be found in burials from historic periods. Again, any effort to see these contrasting traditions as rigidly defined by geography is called to question by exceptions.\n\nThe Eastern European tradition of the walking dead has diffused into North American thanks to the literary and cinematic use of the Nosferatu, the vampire. This said, the idea of walking corpses cannot be regarded as entirely an eastern phenomenon: the animated dead also played an important role in medieval Icelandic sagas. Here, the aptrganga maður – the “after walking man” – was especially troublesome and required the bravery and strength of a great hero to end its reign of terror. Chopping off the head of the corpse and pacing it between the body’s legs was one of the only ways to put these monsters to rest.\n\nThroughout European peasant society, there was also a great deal of concern about determining when a person had “passed over.” In modern society, it may seem obvious that death occurs when the heart stops. Even today, however, the line between life and death can be vague, occasionally requiring a judicially-determined definition. And even this can become the subject of political squabbling. In the modern world, death can be defined as brain-dead, but then there can be a question of whether it is appropriate, ethical, or legal to “pull the plug” to stop the heart from beating when the brain ceases to function. In traditional European society, the line between life and death was far more ambiguous. A person still living by today’s standards could cross over into the domain of death because of a disease, immense old age, or because of a curse. A large catch of fish or some other extraordinary circumstance might also signal the transition even when dealing with a healthy, young person.\n\nIn the Icelandic sagas, these people were known as feigr, or “fated to die.” This is echoed in the archaic English word “fey” as in “he had a fey look about him.” In other words, the person was destined to die, and somehow the shadow of death had already descended over him even though his heart continued to beat. A person who had made this transition withdrew from normal society and activities, preparing to die. Society regarded the person as essentially dead.\n\nIn the same way, the dead could do almost as much as the living. Medieval stories tell of the dead walking, talking, eating, and having sex. Obviously, such occurrences were to be feared and there were many rituals and forms of magic intended to keep the dead in a peaceful quiet of eternal sleep. In contrast, there was also a wide variety of magical practices available for the brave few who would call upon the dead to do their bidding.\n", "Answer part 2: An additional excerpt from my Introduction to Folklore; the point in these excerpts is that various cultural groups tend to see visits from the dead as either corporeal (along the line of your question) or as more ethereal. These traditions have deep roots, and the nature of the visitor can determine a great deal about his/her nature:\n\nPeople tells stories about the dead appearing before the living perhaps in all cultures, but there are several forms they can assume. Some cultures emphasize animated corpses and that the dead can bodily rise from the grave and walk the earth. Others have traditions involving the dead appearing only as disembodied spirits. Most people think of the dead in human form. This is a requirement for animated corpses, but it is also a general assumption about spirits. There are, nevertheless, legends of souls and ghosts appearing as animals.\n\nThe attitude of the dead can be hostile or favorable to the living. The farther east one goes in Europe, the more likely that the dead will be hostile to the living. In general, walking corpses do little good, but the spirits of the dead, while sometimes benevolent, can also be dangerous. Legends about the dead should be considered along these lines. In modern North America, ghosts are generally spirits in human form, and in folk tradition they usually are good-willed toward the living. Films and literature contradict this by often depicting the dead as perilous.\n\nThe Lenore Legend is one of the older and more widespread stories about the dead. It was so well known that Aarne and Thompson include it in their folktale index (Type 365), even though it is more often told as a legend, that is, to be believed. In the story, a young bride waits for the return of her betrothed who has gone off to war. Other soldiers come home, but not the man she loves. One night, he appears before her and asks her to leave with him. Delighted to see him, she climbs up behind him on his horse, and they ride quickly across the moonlit landscape. At one point, his horse jumps over a fence, and he pitched forward, revealing that the skin has been sheared off the back of his head, and his white skull shines bright in the moonlight. In other variants, his bride looks down at a stream they are crossing, and in the moonlight, she sees their reflection, revealing her companion to be a rotting corpse. Just as they reach his open grave, she jumps from the horse, saving herself. Her bridegroom returns to his grave, which supernaturally closes. The woman lives to tell her tale, but in many variants she dies soon after from the shock.\n\nGottfried August Bürger (1747-1794) made this story famous with his 1773 poem, “Lenore.” Within a decade after its publication, the German-language masterwork appeared in English translation, becoming an immediate sensation: it is credited with influencing Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other British poets of the newly-emerging Romantic era. In addition, the fame of Bürger’s poem and the association of the name “Lenore” with all things morbid may have influenced Edgar Allen Poe to write his own poem with this name and to figure the name in some of his other works.\n\nThe story appears to be extremely old as evidenced by the Old Norse story from The Poetic Edda, the “Second Lay of Helgi the Hunding-Slayer/Helgakviđa Hundingsbana II.” This describes how Helgi, a dead hero, returns from the grave on a horse to beckon his beloved, Sigrún, for one last night of conjugal bliss. The document suggests that originally the story may have played out differently: Sigrún willingly enters Helgi’s burial mound to lie with him. The poem subsequently relates that the heroine “lived but a short while longer, for grief and sorrow.” With this, the medieval text returns to the conclusion found in its more recent counterpart. This example suggests that for pre-Christian society, crossing the line into the supernatural – or at least in this case into the realm of the dead – for romance was heroic. Nineteenth-century expressions of the story generally assert that no living person would want to enter the grave, even when it is the last resting place of a lover. In a Christian context, the living must have no greater love than the one reserved for God, and to choose death runs against Christian teaching.\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dk271y4" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "Something that is very particular in that regard is the contemporary European 20th century experience was something most Spaniards experienced in the 19th Century! \n\nWhile many European Empire's had to deal with rebuilding from a significant conflict and losing their possessions abroad in 1945 and beyond, the Spanish had to do so from 1815 onward. The invasions by Napoleon annihilated the Spanish economy and capability to preserve their significant if faltering Empire abroad. Spain was considered a big player at the Congress of Vienna but poor diplomatic performance and an ever weaker hand dealt by circumstances ensured they could not levy any influence on a continental scale again for Europe. \n\nSpain afterwards was then embroiled in a circumstance very foreign to most European Empire's until the 1950's in large scale colonial conflicts against ideologically and nationally organized guerrillas. The Spanish colonies had organized on a much more autonomous level during Napoleon's invasions and had ideological and economic reasons to reject control by Madrid now. \n\n- Many of the ruling class in the Colonies opposed Liberal policies imposed by the Napoleonic invasion and preserved by a weakened Bourbon monarchy which threatened to destabilize their positions of privilege and power gained when Spain itself was occupied. \n\n- The Spanish economy required rebuilding and therefore would place a heavier economic and financial burden in the form of taxes on the colonies. \n\n- The Government in Madrid had failed in providing capable defenses for the Colonies during the Napoleonic wars against stronger and now dominant European powers like the British, who unsuccessfully invaded places like Argentina in 1807. They were repulsed often by entirely local defenses and counterattacks. \n\nAll these factors lead the local ruling classes which often supported the Spanish prior to be much more resistant to their rule and often meant the Spanish had to try restoring rule in the colonies by force. \n\nThese conflicts both on and off dominated the national debate and foundation of Spain from 1815 to 1833 with a severe economic and cultural implications for the Spanish. The forcible severing of the Peninsula and many of it's colonies left a pride and hard grip on the few that remained like Cuba and the Philippines. It would take me several hours to go into proper detail about the underlying causes and effects or battles for each Latin American state's withdrawing from the Empire. But it was universally not on amicable terms between the Spanish and the former colonies.\n\nWhile the Spanish Empire collapsed, the maritime trade trickled to the Americas and Philippines, and Spain's military struggled to keep their colonies, with Mexico getting its independence in 1821. The customary overseas revenue to the metropolis was at a historic low, the royal coffers were empty. Financing (solvency) and recruitment to the military became an overriding concern for the Spanish Crown, with the governments under King Ferdinand VII failing to provide new solutions and stability.\n\nAgainst a backdrop of on-off bankruptcy and solvency issues, towards the end of his life, Ferdinand VII promulgated the Pragmatic Sanction giving hopes for a liberal rule. Ferdinand VII of Spain had no male descendant, but two daughters, Isabella (later known as Isabella II of Spain) and Luisa Fernanda. So he promulgated the above \"Pragmatic Sanction\", to allow Isabella to become Queen after his death, returning to traditional rules of Spanish succession. Without the above Pragmática Sanción, Carlos de Borbón, the king's brother, would have normally become king. He and his followers, such as Secretary of Justice Francisco Tadeo Calomarde, pressed Ferdinand to change his mind. But the agonizing Ferdinand kept his decision and when he died on 29 September 1833, Isabella became the legitimate queen. As she was only a child, a regent was needed, so her mother Queen Consort Maria Christina was appointed.\n\nWith conditions like that established, Spain wandered into a civil war of unseen character with the Carlist war. 2 more would break out over the course of the next 40 years and would prevent Spain form ever reaching the national and ideological unity to allow itself to move forward like the French did following the Napoleonic wars. The 19th century therefore was always one of political unrest and economic decline for the Spanish. They couldn't recover from the invasion by Napoleon because it's residual effects continued to torment individual governments in Spain either financially or politically.\n\nSpain entered the 20th century on the backpedal of a war against the United States who managed to utterly annihilate Spain's armed forces and severed their treasured remaining possessions in the Philippines and Cuba. This defeat encouraged the growth of a new intellectual and political grouping of people called famously the Generation of '98. \n\nThe Generation of '98 intellectuals objected to the meticulously organized structure of the Restoration system of government and the corruption that it fostered. After Spain's bloody and decisive defeat in the Spanish-American War, which resulted in thousands of dead Spaniards and the loss of all of Spain's remaining colonies in the Americas and the Pacific, these writers were prompted to voice their criticism. They agreed on the urgency of finding a means, in areas of thought and activity separate from politics, of rescuing Spain from its catatonic state.\n\nThe writers, poets and playwrights of this generation maintained a strong intellectual unity, opposed the Restoration of the monarchy in Spain, revived Spanish literary myths, and broke with classical schemes of literary genres. They brought back traditional and lost words and always alluded to the old kingdom of Castile, with many supporting the idea of Spanish Regionalism.\n\nThis regionalism and local thinking left the repeatedly weakened and poor Spanish state to be extremely introverted in whatever format it was until the Spanish civil war. \n\nDue to King Alfonso XIII being related to all major Monarchs who's nations fought in the great war and the relative poverty of his state Spain remained predominantly neutral for the First World War. Spain was notorious however for how many arms it exported in the war due to it's byzantine copyright laws that allowed ramshackle and robust arms production of foreign design to pop up and this found a clear market in the armies of WW1. \n\nThe end of the 1st world war for Spain was disastrous to it's black market of arms, but even more so would be the outbreak of the incidentally named Spanish flue. Alfonso became gravely ill during the 1918 flu pandemic. Spain was neutral and thus under no wartime censorship restrictions, so his illness and subsequent recovery were reported to the world, while flu outbreaks in the belligerent countries were concealed. This gave the misleading impression that Spain was the most-affected area and led to the pandemic being dubbed \"the Spanish Flu.\"\n\nSpain thereafter entered the Rif War which was a conflict in northern Morroco which was deeply unpopular with many Spaniards, Alfonso took a lot of blame for failures during the war and whilst it was successful with a French bailout by force it is considered a progenitor of contemporary European decolonization conflicts. \n\nSpain's poverty and political unrest continued to grapple it even after Alfonso abdicated in favor of a new Republic in 1931, the 2nd Spanish Republic was considered an international novelty with no real weight which was compounded by political division and an increasingly large force of reactionaries in Spain. \n\nBy 1936 the Spanish Republic found itself hinging on an election where war was promised if the Government's weakness continued. A new Government formed and attempted to move away powerful reactionaries in the military and bureaucracy to away from the mainland, this partially served to prevent a fascist coup. But the Falange (Phalanx) party and the military still managed a partial coup that lead to the infamous Spanish Civil War. I cannot elaborate too greatly on that due to the long character of this already. But it was won by the Fascists with the aid of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. \n\nSpain's low key in world war 2 was similar to the first. It was recovering from a devastating and divisive conflict that left Spain with little need or will to fight in a worldwide conflict. Dictator Francisco Franco's aloofness allowed his regime to be one of the very view Fascist states to survive the 2nd world war. This came at a cost however as the other European states refused to engage Franco on a diplomatic or allegiance level. Spain until his death remained isolated from European or trans-Atlantic projects like NATO or the EDC. It handed over it's few remaining overseas possessions without much fanfare or controversy bar West Sahara, which is still occupied disputably by Morocco today.\n\nSpain is seldom mentioned outside of modern day discussions in the context of things like the World Wars or the European Union because this exclusion was of the Spanish leaders own design at the time. Spain had unique developments outside of the general European experience because they experienced it well before most of Europe did. When the French bloodily fought in Indochina and Algeria, Spain already had in the Rif War or the Latin American Wars of Independence.\n\nAnyhow, that tries to put roughly 200 years of historical context together in a legible way. Hopefully that answers your question. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eb6asx4" ], "score": [ 12 ], "text": [ "It was not particularly common, but it would depend a lot on the religious beliefs of the parents. I don't know anything about Walt Whitman's brother specifically, but the likely reason for the child not having a name was that the child was not baptized. \n\nBack then, a child \"officially\" received its name, as far as officiality of these things went back then since there was no civil birth registration, by being baptized/christened in the church. A child could *not* be baptized/christened *without* being given a name. The priest/minister recorded the name in the parish baptismal record book, and those books were sent periodically (usually yearly) to the church authorities--to the Vatican in the case of Catholics, to Canterbury or Westminster in the case of Anglicans, to a counsel of bishops who gathered at the annual synod in the Presbyterian and Reformed churches, etc. In Congregationalist churches with no affiliation with a national or international body, they were kept there at the local church, but the records *were* kept.\n\nTypically, people were rather eager to have their children baptized precisely because child mortality was so frequent. The baptism usually took place the next time after the child was born that the mother and child were healthy enough to make the trip to church, so for people who lived in town, it might only be a week or a few days, while for people who lived in the countryside further away from the church it might not be for a month or more, depending on what time of year it was and what had to be done on the family farm before they could take the time off to get to the church.\n\nThere were exceptions to this, of course. Some people didn't attend church regularly, so they might wait until Easter or Christmas to have their child baptized. And there were some people who didn't attend church at all. And then there were some Christian denominations that didn't believe in baptism.\n\nWhich brings us back to Whitman: he was raised in the Quaker tradition (not \"church\" because Quakers don't believe in \"church\" per se). And instead of baptisms or christenings with sacramental rites, Quaker children go through a \"nomination\" process where the child is presented to their Friends with a name, and Friends of the parents \"witness\" the naming and that becomes the child's name, though it's not written down in a book anywhere (because that would be [too pompous](_URL_2_)). There wasn't any real ceremony to it like in other Christian denominations.\n\nAnd due to the theology of Quakerism, there was frequently less social pressure to be a regular meeting-goer, or to have the \"nomination\" be solemnized immediately after birth than there would be with other Christian sects in America. A lot of Quaker society was based around visiting each other at home ([1](_URL_1_), [2](_URL_5_)), rather than being focused on rituals and preaching at the Meeting House. (In smaller Quaker communities, the homes of your friends and neighbors *were* your Meeting Houses, after all.) Quakers don't believe in ministers, or tithes, or sacraments, either. You showed up when you showed up and when you did, you had your kids nominated to be part of your \"society\" of \"friends\".\n\nSo, while I can't speak of Whitman's brother's specific circumstances, this would be one of the primary reasons for the child not being named: the fact that the child wasn't baptized or christened into a church, or nominated into the Society of Friends. It wasn't that the parents didn't call the baby by any specific name for six months, though that *might* be true. It's that they never got around to going to the Meeting House and nominating the child as a member of the Society of Friends, so when the child died, he had never been given a name accepted by the Friends of the family, so his parents didn't feel right burying the child with a name on his tombstone. And nominating the child after death was out of the question (posthumous baptisms were more the purview of Mormons later on). \n\nBecause social life revolved so much around religion in those days, it's important to remember that the child not having a name wasn't an indication that the parents were calling the child \"baby\" and nothing more for six months, though it is possible. It's more likely an indication that whatever they were calling the baby, they hadn't had the chance or hadn't bothered to make that name official with the religious body the parents belonged to. \n\nAll this, of course, is specific to the Christian religious history of America, where Whitman's family lived. This all applies to Christianity in Europe at the time as well, though the denominational mix there was different. As far as other religions in America at the time, such as Judaism, I can't really say, nor can I really say anything about what was happening outside of America and Europe, either.\n\n**TL;DR:** Before the rise of civil birth records in the second half of the 19th Century, any child that died before the child was baptized, christened, or nominated into a religious sect was typically buried without a name on their gravestone. That doesn't mean their parents didn't privately call the child by some name before the child died, but since the child had no baptismal name, it wasn't seen as \"official\" in their eyes, because it hadn't been accepted by the church, and, thereby, it hadn't been accepted by God, so the child died \"nameless\".\n\n[Here](_URL_4_) is an article published around the time of Walt Whitman's youth from the *Friends Intelligencer* explaining why the Friends (Quakers) didn't participate in water baptisms of children, with some details about the nomination process.\n\n[Here](_URL_7_) is a book that talks about the lack of Quaker rituals and record-keeping, including of births and baptisms. \n\nA section in [this book](_URL_0_) about the population history of England singles out the Quakers for being at odds with other Christian sects when keeping track of populations due to their lax approach to birth record keeping. \n\n[This book](_URL_6_) details the history of civil birth registration legislation in England, which at first was just a system of the various churches sending their baptism records to the government, but also [required Quakers to send in a list of children solemnized in their Society](_URL_2_) even though they weren't in the habit of keeping baptismal records. \n\nMore comprehensively, you might want to look through *The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies*. More generally, you may be interested in *Children in Colonial America* ed. by James Marten which includes some details of child baptisms in various American Christian denominations, as well as Quaker social customs, in early America.\n\n**FURTHER READING:**\n\n*Friends and Neighbors: Group Life in America's First Plural Society* by Michael Zuckerman\n\n*The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends* by William J. Frost\n\n*Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley* by Barry Levy\n\nEDIT:\n\nAnd [the article](_URL_3_) that /u/augmentedseventh linked to also has good information:\n\n\"Infant Mortality and Child-Naming: A Genealogical Exploration of American Trends\", *The Journal of Professional and Public Sociology*, by Al McCormack" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=pV9SZS4WpjkC&pg=PA92", "https://www.worldcat.org/title/friends-and-neighbors-group-life-in-americas-first-plural-society/oclc/260124738", "https://books.google.com/books?id=TJIDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA61&dq=Quakers", "https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=jpps", "https://books.google.com/books?id=D0opAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA233", "https://www.worldcat.org/title/children-in-colonial-america/oclc/433390472", "https://books.google.com/books?id=TJIDAAAAQAAJ", "https://books.google.com/books?id=udH4Bv-K_x8C&pg=PA65" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "f4q811h" ], "score": [ 114 ], "text": [ "There are several ways to address apparent similarities. The first is the simplest explanation, namely that while oral traditions may seem similar, that can be deceptive. The human mind is inclined to see patterns. Seeing animals in the clouds or faces in linoleum does not mean that there are actually these entities (or their spirits) in those locations. We arrange the world so it makes sense, and seeing patterns - and similarities - is one way to achieve that. So first, similar-seeming traditions are not necessarily that similar nor are they necessarily connected in some way.\n\nThe second way to explain similarities is to consider the possibility of diffusion. Traditional narratives diffuse, and although they change over time and space, some core motifs can (and do) survive the process. This can explain some similarities: in this case, similarities are part of a historical process that involves diffusion. Descent from a common ancestral body of traditions explains why \"cousins\" have similar oral traditions; diffusion from one culturally-unrelated people to another explains how some similar stories can appear in diverse places.\n\nA third possibility is less difficult to deal with and has yielded some extravagant contemplation. This is, namely, the idea of the common human denominator. Some of this is easy: all people die and experience death, so it is not surprising that all folklore deals with death in some capacity. Because most people historically have preferred to contemplate the idea of survival of death, it is not surprising that most oral traditions deal with ghosts, walking dead, etc. While similarities may not be profound in all cases, the common human denominator causes some similar attributes.\n\nThe same can be said for many other aspects of the human experience: sex, but also the weather, flooding, animals, etc. All people share a great deal in their experiences, so it is not surprising that internationally, oral traditions would be similar.\n\nTaking the idea of the common human denominator a step further, Carl Gustav Jung postulated the idea of a collective unconscious - the idea that there is a shared body of archetypes that is entwined in everyone's consciousness, part of a universal fabric that manifests in our narratives and in our dreams, etc. This idea was transformed for more popular consumption by Joseph Campbell, but regardless of the promoter of the idea, the foundation of this way of thinking is the same. This is next to impossible to evaluate. It is nearly a spiritual explanation and it must be taken on faith - or not - depending on the person." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ckt2uoi", "ckt3jds", "ckt58pq", "ckt904e", "cktbm7h", "cktgb24", "cktizzd" ], "score": [ 43, 10, 25, 28, 2, 6, 2 ], "text": [ "Your question is a little vague in describing \"older times\". Different forms of slavery have existed and morphed over time to suit the dominant populace's needs. For example, the form utilized by the United States during the colonial period is known as \"chattel slavery\" which essentially makes the people themselves property and on par with working tools or animals. This allowed for landowners (plantations especially) to hold large groups of 'non-persons' and treat them accordingly. At the time, Americans would have seen this practice more as a necessary evil, particularly in the South where the economy was heavily dependent on the free labor. Once importation of \"new slaves\" from Africa was implemented in the 1807 Act to ban the importation of slaves was ratified, those existing were more selectively \"bred\" and coveted as a piece of property still but in a way like we would covet something banned from importation today. In Contrast, in the South American colonies, slavery was more intense in that the slave population was more expendable as they worked mostly in mines (which was very dangerous and lacked proper safety). We don't know how slaves during the Hellenistic Age would have perceived their existence (no one really cared enough to write it down) but from pottery and artworks like this: _URL_0_, that they were mostly working force.\n\nInterestingly, (and this goes beyond my ability at work) Greek slaves could sometimes be placed in shops as workers who received a very small amount for their labor and could eventually buy their freedom. The range of services included domestic house workers to the aforementioned mine workers (essentially would be worked to death and see very little sunlight). Even the middle class of the Greeks could afford a simple servant however, meaning that the institution was a socially accepted institution. I'd recommend reading Nicholas Fishers book on the Classical Greek slave keeping for a more in-depth look. \n_URL_1_ \n(_URL_0_)]() ", "Slavery in the US wasn't uniform. The treatment, justification of, and practice of slavery varied dramatically in the US based on region (Deep South, Tidewater, Midlands, Yankeedom, etc) and time period (17th vs 18th vs 19th century).\n\n*American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America* by Colin Woodard covers a lot of these regional differences in the practice of American slavery during the first few chapters (Particularly the introductory chapters on the Tidewater and the Deep South).", "One of the biggest differences to modern eyes is that in the ancient world ANYBODY could be enslaved; it wasn't exclusive to one race. The Norse kept slaves, and these would often be captured during raids, not only on Ireland and other foreign countries, but also in other part of Scandinavia. This meant that a slave in Norse society could be from the next fjord over, and look exactly like his masters. \nIn Roman law, being enslaved was a common punishment. If you accidentally killed someone, you could be sold to the victim's family. Since Roman masters had the right to kill their slaves on a whim, the family could then either put you to work or put you to death, whichever they deemed an appropriate punishment. ", "The shortest answer to your question would be to say that United States slavery and the slavery during the age of exploration onward was far most race based than that of earlier times. Each culture thought itself superior to others, but in the case of the Greeks and Romans this didn't translate into a moral imperative for the barbarians to serve them. In Greece is was considered more appropriate for barbarians to be slaves than Greeks. But Greeks were still enslaved by Greeks and held in service by Greeks. As others have noted, all men could be enslaved in ancient times. A running theme of the Iliad and Odyssey is that any man can become a slave and fate/chance is the true master of men.\n\nBut another big difference would be that the ancient world recognized degrees of slavery. Though much of their literature present freedom and slavery as exact opposites Greek and Roman culture support many degrees in between. The lowest slaves worked in unskilled manual labor. If someone was punished with slavery this is the kind of work they would likely be condemned to. Mines, mills, porters, bearers, etc. These slaves had no rights and few privileges. They were human beasts of burden. These slaves had the smallest chance of gaining their freedom. It's difficult to impress the master when all you do is haul things around and perform one mundane activity over and over again. But has already been pointed out by others there were also privileged slaves. These were the ones who often lived away from the master and rendered a payment (paramone) to the master. They were skilled workers like slave bankers, craftsmen, overseers, and the like. Though everything they earned legally belonged to the master it was customary that the master receive this paramone and not everything that the slave earned. The slave could then save up their earnings to eventually earn their freedom. Because they often lived away from the master or worked along side him, they had better chances of being granted freedom for their good work and were more in control of their own lives. Those that lived away from the master were in control of their own movements and lives with the exception of the payment to the master. These individuals functioned much like subcontractors.\nEven slaves who gained their freedom often lacked all of the freedoms that society could offer. Freedom did not mean citizenship so freedmen could not participate in politics and were excluded from other activities. When a slave bought their freedom it was fairly common that the agreement be sealed with a sort of contract. The slave would agree to render a fixed amount and often agree to perform services for their master at the former master's request. This obligation to provide for the former master could last until the master's death and, rarely, even afterward. If the obligations proved to be too burdensome a freedman could offer suit in Athens and if he won would be given unconditional freedom(not citizenship), but if he lost he would re re-enslaved. The stigma of having been a slave lasted for life and severely limited future opportunities.\n\nSome points about Classical slavery:\nIt was customary in Rome to free a slave after he had reached the age of 30 if he had rendered good service. This practice was far more common with domestic and skilled slaves in the city than with agrarian or unskilled slaves.\nIt was recommended that a master in Athens immediately discuss with a slave what would be required of them to buy their freedom and how they would earn it. The master would try to arrange a marriage with the slave and have him start a family. If a slave knew what was required of him to gain his freedom and his freedom lay before him a a real possibility why risk rebellion or escape, especially if the slave had family also owned by the master. It was to encourage productivity and reduce rebellion or flight.\nIt was recognized that slaves were human beings. It was just also recognized that these people were property. As such, slaves were to be treated with a certain level of decency (not hubris). Now many masters clearly had no compunctions about ruthlessly beating their slaves, but literary evidence from Rome and court records from Athens suggest that there was an expectation (and sometimes law) to treat slaves as people if only to avoid rebellion.", "There was also a recent thread you might find interesting on the size of Roman estates. It looks like the biggest Roman estates were larger than the US plantations, but Roman slaves were more likely to live in small groups of less than 6 on an estate. \n\n* [In which period of time did the average slaveholder have the most amount of slaves? Did a 19th century American slaveholder have more or less slaves than an ancient Greek or Roman slaveholder?](_URL_0_)", "Perhaps not quite the time period, but I can talk to some degree about Moroccan slavery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. \n\nComparing it to American slavery is possible, as there are quite a few similarities. One of the big ones is a religious justification, oftentimes centered around the Hamitic myth. Essentially, Ham saw his father Noah naked, Noah cursed his youngest son Canaan, saying his offspring would be the servants of servants. One Babylonian version of the Talmud claims that his offspring would also be cursed with dark skin. These two Old Testament accounts works be highly influential in both societies' conception of racism. However, it's important to note that both the New Testament and Quran, there was an aversion towards slavery and so these systems were not fully supported by scripture.\n\nSo obviously there was a racial element to both systems, justified by stretchy religious dogma, this racial element was undermined a bit by the social mobility in Morocco. In America, if a child had black ancestry then no matter what they would remain a slave. Even if freed, there were many difficulties with social mobility. However, in Moroccan society if there was any hint of Arab slavery they would become free and have just as much social mobility as any other Arab. \n\nThe desired gender slavers looked for was also reversed. In Morocco, there was, as far as I know, no crops to harvest, factories to work, or much hard labor. As such most slaves were female concubines which was well suited for the merchant class of Arabs. However, Sultan Mawlay Ismail in the early eighteenth century created a slave army of roughly 300,000 black Africans. He was legendary for his cruelty, both towards his slaves and his enemies and like those before him utilised shaky religious reasoning to justify this racialized slavery. \n\nMy sources are centered around George Fredrickson's *A Short History of Racism* and Chouki El Hamel's monograph *Black Morocco: A History of Race, Slavery, and Islam*. ", "A large part of what we think of as the viking age was fueled by capturing slaves from undefended population centers in Europe and selling them in the wealthier Byzantine and Islamic world. While there wasn't a racial element to this it doesn't mean the lives of these slaves were necessarily better than African slavery in the new world. It totally depended on what task they were assigned after enslavement. Castration was common as eunuchs were valued as administrators in the Byzantine Empire and as harem guards in the Islamic. Slaves from Central Asia were often trained as soldiers and even founded their own dynasties in India and Egypt. The Roman Empire was built on the backs of slaves taken as spoils of war. While an educated Greek slave could be a tutor or doctor it was far more common for the slaves to wind up laboring on latifundia plantations or being worked to death in salt mines. The major difference between these forms of slavery and new world slavery was that if you were manumitted, which was especially common among the Roman senatorial class as a way to show their magnanimity, the color of your skin did not stigmatize you or your descendants." ] }

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[ [ "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Mines_1.jpg", "books.google.ca/books?id=NX-4AAAAIAAJ" ], [], [], [], [ "http://redd.it/2hdavj" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cn2b371" ], "score": [ 18 ], "text": [ "This was a complicated issue for radical abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, regardless of race. On the one hand, Uncle Tom's Cabin was an instrumental tool in creating public sympathy for the abolitionist movement and escaped slaves; on the other hand, not only was its portrayal of Black people based on minstrel stereotypes, but the 'solution' to slavery which UTC advocated was colonization in Liberia, a position which Douglass, Garrison, and other abolitionist radicals had long since repudiated.\n\nFaced with this problem, abolitionist newspapermen like Douglass chose to chronicle the public response in the North and South and reluctantly avoid a direct critique of this potent antislavery weapon. Stowe's follow up text, \"A Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin,\" directly utilized and repeated arguments from slave narratives like Douglass' own autobiography and abolitionist newspapers, which made it a more attractive tome for movement abolitionists than her bestseller. That said, after the Civil War was over, they had no compunction about attacking its failings; famously, William Lloyd Garrison was at an abolitionist reunion where Stowe was reading from Uncle Tom's Cabin and when members of the audience asked him to talk about its importance as an antislavery text, Garrison declared that Stowe's book's importance was overrated. \n\nIts worth noting that Stowe's text was used to frame Douglass' public memory after his death, with a statue of Frederick Douglass, \"as Uncle Tom,\" appeared at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair\n\nSources: Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s by Sarah Meer\n\nThe Building of Uncle Tom's Cabin by E. Bruce Kirkham\n\nAbolitionists Remember by Julie Roy Jeffrey" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cimyc5x" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were the consensus \"greatest presidents\" at the time construction began in 1927. Teddy Roosevelt was an old friend of the sculptor. \n\nSource: One Summer - 1927, America, by Bill Bryson:\n\n*For his subjects [Gutzon ]Borglum selected Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and – to widespread consternation – Theodore Roosevelt, who was chosen, it seems, not for his greatness but because he and Borglum had once been chums.*" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3ha5l5", "c3hacxn" ], "score": [ 3, 3 ], "text": [ "I'll kick of this bad boy. This is a deep question on many levels, and there are a couple of things to consider.\n\nFirst, there is a recent trend where phenomena get studied closer to the time where they take place - we probably will not have to wait to 2050 for someone to write a large work on the Arabian spring, for example. The source material available to us at any given moment is larger the closer to the event since less has had time to deteriorate, and at the same time, the rate at which source material is being produced is constantly increasing as well, making it harder to digest.\n\nSecondly, digital source materials survive through sheer mass. More copies means better chance of survival, but if, say, a Blogger data center shuts down, the hosted accounts will be gone forever. There are caching websites/services but they can't catch all of the internet.\n\nThirdly, the hard copies we do produce of things are of diminishing quality. Getting archive grade papers and inks is an ardous process and the life lenght of modern storage media is questionable at best, and also requires a device for reading.\n\nFinally, the \"future of historiography\" is almost impossible to predict. Our society is moving so fast, and in so many different direction, that future historians surely will use different methods, theories and source materials than what we are used to. Attitude studies, like \"what did people so and so during so and so period think of their king\" will be easier because of the sheer amount of approval polls and the likes are performed and stored, but at the same time, even in our day, how valuable is a poll?", "I think the best use of social networking and the internet will be to allow future generations a better understanding of the lower and middle classes of society (specifically in countries such as the US). One of the challenges of history is that the documents have always been written by literate people/classes which at times has been a small minority of the population. If transcripts of twitter or facebook, for example, were to survive well in to the future, historians would have a near limitless amount of data to extrapolate on society.\n\nLook at the man in Islamabad who \"live-tweeted\" the raid on Osama's compound. That was never previously possible. Fogge in another comment mentioned the Arab Spring, they heavily used social networking to shape that movement. Occupy Wallstreet is in the same boat, while not as significant, imagine what would have happened if Twitter had been as widely available during the Civil Rights Movement, or Temperance, or Vietnam. The tweets that would have happened pretty much at any point during the Roman Republic/Empire would have been very interesting, and you can be sure that Nero would have beheaded people for tweeting jokes about him.\n\nIn summary, I think the pure data that will survive will only serve to give future historians a more accurate sense of our daily lives." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dckql5n" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "I wrote this years ago when the Da Vinci code first came out for a religious studies class. Surprisingly, given how much of a phenomenon the book was at the time, I was totally unaware of it until I had to read it for class. My short answer is yes he really is that inaccurate.\n\n > In the space of only five chapters of his book Brown manages to make numerous claims about Jesus, the early beliefs of the Jesus movement, Mary Magdalene, her relationship with Jesus, and the canonization of the bible. His main thesis is that Jesus’ followers believed he was a mortal prophet. One whose teachings were inspirational and who possibly may have had a claim to the throne of Israel. Brown makes several claims to support this thesis, all of which are very problematic. At the heart of Brown’s argument is the question of canonization and the political aims of canonization. Which gospels are we to trust, and not to trust? Constantine “summoned the Council of Nicaea (the First Ecumenical Council) in May 325, to settle what he termed \"a fight over trifling and foolish verbal differences\"” (_URL_0_). Brown sees this council as a politically motivated attempt to secure Imperial power by eliminating the mortal Jesus and replacing him with a divine one...\n\n\n > ...Brown’s most important assertions to support his theme of mortal prophet transformed into divine figure involve the process of canonization. There are two basic assertions Brown makes about this process. The first is that the ecumenical Council of Nicea created the idea of a divine Jesus. According to Brown, “until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet… a great and powerful man but a man nonetheless. A mortal”(233). The second, related, claim is that Constantine had a direct hand in the canonization of scripture. Constantine’s involvement supposedly was politically motivated, an attempt to manipulate religion to enhance his own power base. It is impossible to either support or refute questions about Constantine’s ulterior motives in legitimizing Christianity. Doubtless, Constantine had at least some political motivations in legalizing Christianity, but without proper historical documentation the question cannot be properly answered.\n\tTo say that until the Council of Nicea, followers of Jesus did not believe in his divinity is wrong. While there were factions within the early Jesus movement that did not believe Jesus was divine, most notably Arianism and its predecessor, the theologian Origen, this was by no means a majority position. By 200 C.E. this had already been declared a heresy. Origen was excommunicated from the his church and banished from his school in Alexandria for teaching this doctrine. The question of Christ’s divinity had nothing to do with solidification of Imperial power. Proto-orthodox thought held that since only God could redeem the earth, if Jesus Christ was not divine then his death was meaningless. Without the resurrection, and along with it its implication of Christ’s divinity, then man was still living under the burden of sin. As Paul writes, “if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain, and your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor 15.14). Long before the Council of Nicea, Christ’s resurrection and implicit divinity was considered by many as a necessary part of being a Christian...\n\n > ...The second part of this is Brown’s assertion that the canonization of scripture was something prompted by Constantine for political reasons. In effect, Brown postulates that a political program intended to shore up the hierarchical power of the Church motivated the canonization, and the subsequent dismissal of the non-canonical gospels. With a divine Jesus, supposedly salvation could only come from the Church and consequently the emperor under whose auspices the Church operated. However, there were canonization processes already under way in the late second century C.E. We have numerous accounts of canonical lists extant from the second century. The Muratorian fragment, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and others describe in detail which gospels are worthy of inclusion and reading and which can be regarded as spurious or heretical. Many of these writings are in response to various heresies, such as the Marcionite movement, Origen’s writings, and the Valentinians. It was Origen, who was one of the predecessors to the Arianist movement, who Brown supports.\n\tSince the responses to these heretical movements came almost a hundred years after the death of Jesus, we can assume that these beliefs are a later development than the orthodox position. The vehemence of Irenaeus’s response in his Adversus Haereses, in which he specifically details and refutes the Marcionite assertions lead us to believe that these were matters of great importance to the early church, and not merely acceptable differences of opinion. Orthodox followers saw these heresies as very dangerous to the faith they held. In fact so dangerous that “when those called to martyrdom from the Church for the truth of the faith have met with any of the so-called martyrs of the Phrygian (Montanist) heresy, they have separated from them, and died without any fellowship with them, because they did not wish to give their assent to the spirit of Montanus and the women.” (Eusebius, V, xvi, 27)... \n\n\n > ...Brown’s supposedly “impeccable research” (New York Daily News Review) is often unreliable and at best could be construed as a marketing ploy to sell an otherwise humdrum thriller. The claims he makes are not new, and the “secret” he tells is nothing more than a revisiting of the early Christian heresies of Arianism and Gnosticism. While the information that the current Christian canon was the product of political and theological infighting in the early church may be new to readers unschooled in scriptural study this fact is not a secret to anyone even slightly conversant with early church history... Brown’s research is filled with mistakes that undermines his academic credibility, even apart from those I have discussed in this paper. For example, the Nag Hammadi library, of which the Gospel of Philip was a part, was written in Coptic, an ancient form of Egyptian, rather than Aramaic as Brown states. Also Brown points to the book of Genesis as a “Christian” book, but it predates Christianity by a thousand years and was part of the Jewish tradition long before the advent of Christ and his followers. These are only a few of the assertions Brown makes that cannot even be dignified as speculation. They are just plain wrong. If Brown cannot even get simple facts straight, how reliable is his scholarship on much more complex questions, such as the early church’s canonization process, or the beliefs of the early Jesus movement? \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.ntcanon.org/Arianism.shtml" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dxa52bo", "dxancaf", "dxaqwvb" ], "score": [ 10, 6, 3 ], "text": [ "Can you explain what you mean by \"socially unacceptable?\"\n\nHorse-drawn vehicles are still commonly seen in Amish and Mennonite areas, and were not uncommon throughout the South well into the 1960s. The only highways where they cannot be used, even today, are freeways.", "I think it’s going to be hard to pin down an exact date or date range - as /u/mrdowntown points out, horses are still used on public roads in some communities, and I don’t think there is a definite line where horse use plateaus to its current state. But I will try to sketch out some rough parameters. \n\n\nCertainly, Automobile partisans from the very beginning styled the new technology as a replacement for the horse (as a means of personal transportation, anyways), and by at least 1910 many of those partisans considered horse traction to be obsolete. By the early 1910s, trade journals like *Horseless Age*, *MoToR*, and others were definitely publishing letters and articles casting horse traction as an obsolete (if not extinct) form of transportation - often in the form of complaints about horses’ interference with their ability to operate automobiles as they pleased. \n\nOf course, market penetration of the automobile was far from complete in the early 1910s; sales of automobiles to farmers really only began in earnest in 1906, and prior to that there was considerable (sometimes violent) rural opposition to cars. Once the economic (and social) benefits of automobility became apparent, and once cars came within the financial reach of farmers (through considerable price reduction and later the introduction of payment plans), rural Americans over the course of the 1910s and 1920s quite rapidly adopted the automobile (check my post [here](_URL_0_) for more information and hard figures), led first by “high wheeler” cars and then by the ubiquitous Ford T. Even for those who were not convinced by economic benefits (which were frequently touted in advertisements), once there reached a critical mass of automobility horse traction became more and more marginalized. Road speeds increased (although less significantly in rural areas), horses natural aversion to automobiles created new dangers, and drivers grew less and less patient with horse traffic on their roads. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that by the 1930s at least, anyone regularly using horses on public roads was doing so either out of religious conviction, because they couldn’t afford an auto, or due to personal resistance to the technology.", "While \"socially acceptable\" is a hard thing to pin down from an historical perspective, I think a good case could be made to answer this question with, \"By the end of the 1920s,\" because in the 1930s, the phrase \"horse and buggy days\" began to be used as political fuel.\n\nFirst, a couple milestones: In New York City, the last horse-drawn streetcar (or \"horse-car\") closed down [in 1917](_URL_8_). In Pittsburgh, the last horse-drawn streetcar closed down [in 1923](_URL_1_).\n\nBut the question at hand asked about \"rural roads\". As one might expect, the \"horse and buggy\" era lasted a little longer in the country.\n\nIn 1928, about [4.6 million automobiles were sold in the United States](_URL_9_). The U.S. was industrializing quickly, as exemplified by [an ad from the Peekskill National Bank](_URL_10_) in the local newspaper *The Highland Democrat* that ran on September 1, 1928:\n\n > \"Not So Many Years Ago the Jingling, Jogging Horse Car, Rumbling Along As Far As the City Limits, Was a Great Convenience. Today We Step Into Our 60-Miles-An-Hour Motor Cars For Trips of a Mile—Or a Thousand.\n > \n > \"RADICAL changes have come, too, in the handling of money. In horse car days folks carried most of their money with them, or hid it in supposedly secret places. The modern way is to put money in an account with a financial institution such as this—for safe-keeping, for convenience, for profit, for credit and money—independence building.\n > \n > \"**Which method are you using—\"horse car\" or \"motor car?\"**\"\n\nBut then, the Great Depression hit. And that set industrialization back for a short while. \nGasoline became expensive and unaffordable for many lower class people, which led to something derogatorily called [\"Hoover carts\"](_URL_9_)--a functional automobile being pulled by horses because the owner couldn't afford to put gas in their car anymore. \n\nThe Democrats did not soon let the Republicans forget about this. In 1935, when FDR was trying to push his Supreme Court-packing idea, he gave an impromptu speech where he accused the Republicans of living in the \"horse and buggy days\" ([1](_URL_12_), [2](_URL_11_\")). [A song](_URL_4_) was even written about it.\n\nIn 1948, Harry Truman [gave a campaign speech](_URL_0_) reminding voters how bad things had been under the Republicans and how \"Hoover carts\" had become so prevalent in the early 1930s, and how that had ended under the Democrats.\n\nAnd in 1952, [supporters of Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign](_URL_6_) once again brought back the stark image of the \"Hoover carts\" in a now-industrial age just twenty years removed from Herbert Hoover's presidency.\n\nThe \"horse and buggy age\" finally did seem to come to an end by the end of the 1930s. In 1938, the *New York Times* [reviewed a book called *The Horse and Buggy Doctor*](_URL_5_), a nostalgic memoir written by an aging rural doctor. The review began:\n\n > \"The country doctor of horse and buggy, or saddlebag, days is more or less a vanished figure. The modern medicos drive fast cars, one man can serve an extensive district, and, more important than his own transportation perhaps, an automobile will get the patient to a hospital if necessary.\"\n\nOn June 1, 1939, the rural (or, at least, exurban) Peekskill newspaper *The Highland Democrat* [ran an article](_URL_2_) referencing horse-drawn transportation as a mode that was nearly dead:\n\n > \"'Get a horse,' the populace shouted when one of those hardy pioneers of 'gas buggy' days chugged down the dusty streets of 30 and more summers ago.\n > \n > \"The older heads scoffed at this noisy innovation in travel, cheerfully predicted it would never be more than a toy. Today the automobiles have so crowded the highways that current wisecrack centers around a horse being frightened, not by an automobile, but by the sight of another horse...\"\n\nIn Europe, the era may have gone on a little longer. The *Highland Democrat* ran [a blurb in 1928](_URL_3_) about the town of Bois-le-Duo, Netherlands, where they noted that the horse-car was \"still in fading competition with the Chevrolet bus,\" unlike in the U.S. where public transportation was universally mechanized.\n\nBut by the end of the 1930s, horse transportation seemed to be a thing of the past in Europe, too. The *The Agricultural History Review* ran a 1963 article entitled [\"The Development of Mechanization in English Farming\"](_URL_7_), which gave a list of equipment of a 200-acre farm in Yorkshire in both 1937 and 1939. In 1937, this farm was still using horsepower for much of the work, but the 1939 list shows that the horses had been replaced by tractors, and the farm had entirely mechanized.\n\n**TL;DR:** Depending on how you define \"socially acceptable,\" you could probably say that, by the end of the 1920s, in the United States, the more successful rural families had replaced their animal transportation with automobiles, and those families who hadn't were working toward that goal. The Great Depression set that goal back for a few more years for families hit hard by the Depression, and \"Hoover carts\" were used as a political attack. By the end of the 1930s, the \"horse and buggy days\" were looked at as a thing of the past and having an automobile was the norm. In Europe, this may have gone on a little longer, but by the time World War II broke out, automobiles had largely replaced animal transportation rural areas there, too." ] }

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[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2kbgam/how_common_were_cars_in_major_american_cities_in/" ], [ "https://books.google.com/books?id=bzveAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA825&lpg=PA825&dq=1935+hoover+carts", "https://books.google.com/books?id=qgjFgEDXguUC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=pittsburgh+last+horse+car+1923", "http://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201939%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201939%2520-%25200448.pdf%3Fxml%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D105f999a%26DocId%3D12569940%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D4%26hits%3D331%2B33d%2B36f%2B37c%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201939%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201939%2520-%25200448.pdf&xml=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D105f999a%26DocId%3D12569940%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D4%26hits%3D331%2B33d%2B36f%2B37c%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&openFirstHlPage=false", "http://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2520-%25200258.pdf%3Fxml%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3Dffffffffc60b6aa0%26DocId%3D12567924%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D2%26hits%3D63f%2B640%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2520-%25200258.pdf&xml=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3Dffffffffc60b6aa0%26DocId%3D12567924%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D2%26hits%3D63f%2B640%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&openFirstHlPage=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=2T9jAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1207&lpg=PA1207&dq=%22horse+and+buggy+days%22#v=onepage&q=%22horse%20and%20buggy%20days%22&f=false", "https://www.nytimes.com/1938/07/31/archives/a-country-doctor-in-the-epoch-of-horse-and-buggy-the-horse-and.html", "https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/2014", "http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/11n1a2.pdf", "https://mobile.nytimes.com/1917/07/27/archives/new-york-loses-its-last-horse-car-bleecker-st-and-fulton-ferry-line.html", "https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/back0709.cfm", "http://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2520-%25200362.pdf%3Fxml%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D33f8c042%26DocId%3D12568028%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D6%26hits%3D98f%2B990%2B9bc%2B9bd%2B9f2%2B9f3%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&uri=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FNewspaper%252015%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2FPeekskill%2520NY%2520Highland%2520Democrat%25201928%2520-%25200362.pdf&xml=http%3A%2F%2Ffultonhistory.com%2FdtSearch%2Fdtisapi6.dll%3Fcmd%3Dgetpdfhits%26u%3D33f8c042%26DocId%3D12568028%26Index%3DZ%253a%255cIndex%2520I%252dE%252dV%26HitCount%3D6%26hits%3D98f%2B990%2B9bc%2B9bd%2B9f2%2B9f3%2B%26SearchForm%3D%252fFulton%255fform%252ehtml%26.pdf&openFirstHlPage=false", "https://books.google.com/books?id=oPBjQegx8ZIC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=franklin+roosevelt+\"horse+and+buggy+days", "https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/97780793/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cctscfb" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "Zaire was originally the Belgian Congo, then the Democratic Republic of the Congo post-independence. The name \"Zaire\" was associated with the dictatorial regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, who embarked on a campaign of \"national authenticity\" (see: _URL_0_), renaming the country and cities and forcing Congolese to adopt \"native\" names in place of ones of European origin. The country's name was reverted to the Democratic Republic of the Congo after Mobutu was deposed in 1997 (though some of *authenticité*'s legacies, such as the renaming of the capital from *Léopoldville* to Kinshasa, remained.)\n\nEdit: Formatting." ] }

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[ [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticité_(Zaire)" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "fge7txa" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Well, it depends on what you mean by \"gun\". There are medieval representations of things that look much like guns around the time there are things that look like cannon. But it's not quite enough to have something that is \"gunoid\" in a picture. Small arms we now assume to be aimed, and these were not capable of that. The gunpowder made in the first hundred years or so ( in the 14th.c.) was not very consistent, because they hadn't worked out how to manufacture consistent stuff: they especially hadn't worked out how to refine saltpeter. Without consistent gunpowder, accuracy was impossible: it was hard to predict whether a ball would come out fast, or slow, and so the point of impact varied a lot. For a cannon, that's not as critical: a cannon can shoot at a castle wall, because with a target so big , accuracy is not too important. Thus you find that cannon ( like Mons Meg and Dulle Griet) were big tubes with a small, strong combustion chamber in the back, and their carriages were simple things that couldn't be aimed carefully. Likewise small arms circa 1350 were basically hand cannon: [simple things mounted on poles](_URL_0_) and pointed at a large target, like a mass of soldiers. By sometime early- mid 15th century, however, enough had been discovered about manufacturing gunpowder ( especially refining saltpeter) that there was a point to aiming a gun, because it was possible to predict where the ball would hit. Cannon became stronger, longer thinner tubes with carriages that allowed for better aiming, and hand-cannon tuned into shoulder arms, with stocks and sights for aiming. By the late 15th c. there were guns used for hunting, and even rifles appeared." ] }

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[ [ "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gun_Sweden_Morko.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dr5478b" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Leonardo and Michelangelo worked on commissions that were nearly side-by-side in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. At least a couple sources (including Leo himself, as well as the 16th-century artist biographer Giorgio Vasari) mention their interactions or attitudes towards each other. Vasari claims that Leo and Michelangelo had a \"great disdain\" for each other (_URL_0_). Interestingly, Leonardo was also present at the meeting, in 1504, to determine the placement of Michelangelo's *David* upon that statue's completion (Leonardo favored placement in the Loggia dei Lanzi, against the wall). \n\nI'm less aware of interactions between Raphael and the other two, although Raphael certainly was *aware* of the senior artists (and responded to their work in his own work). There are direct quotations of Leonardo and Michelangelo by Raphael (e.g., the seated female figure at the right of Raphael's *Deposition* is a mirror quote of the Virgin in Michelangelo's *Doni Tondo*; see [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_2_) to compare). \n\nThe most interesting ways these artists \"interacted\" was via their work, which was often very public. The best source for this—and one that is highly readable, even for someone who isn't an art historian—is, in my view, Rona Goffen's book *Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian* (2002).\n\nAnother source probably worth looking at is William Wallace, “Michelangelo in and out of Florence Between 1500 and 1508,” in *Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael in Renaissance Florence from 1500 to 1508*, Washington, D.C. 1992\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://members.efn.org/~acd/vite/VasariLeo3.html", "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Raffaello%2C_pala_baglioni%2C_deposizione.jpg", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doni_Tondo#/media/File:Michelangelo-_Tondo_Doni_-_tone_corrected.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dawf7ly" ], "score": [ 16 ], "text": [ "[A relevant thread](_URL_0_), /u/The_Alaskan" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wp3jw/would_ancient_civilizations_in_equatorial/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1ldvl2" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Oh my we can certainly say it did. If for now other reason that two of the most influential Presidents were ardent Mahan supporters.\n\nTeddy Roosevelt kept a correspondence with him, and they greatly respected each other as naval historians(TR wrote the first comprehensive modern history of the USN in 1812). And TR saw the importance of the USN and a true battle fleet in achieving his goals for the nation on the world stage.\n\nConsequently his deployment of the Great White Fleet as President, and ordering of the Asiatic Squadron to concentrate in 1898 as Ast. SECNAV are both well in line with Mahanian doctrine and paid large dividends. \n\nThe Great White Fleet can be seen as America's first assertion of truly global power projection to any foe. And it is not by accident it took the form of the concentrated battle line of the navy on the cruise. \n\nMeanwhile when he was first entering political life one of FDR's first gifts from TR was a copy of The Influence of Seapower. And perhaps even more so than TR, Ford, Carter, or any of the others FDR was the one who LOVED the navy the most, and cared for it most deeply. And as such he was constantly up to date on what down to individual ships were doing, how they intended to fight, and even frustrated the Navy at times with picking out individual skippers for ships. \n\nHis support for a strong Navy and most importantly one that had a powerful battle line pre 1941 was meant to ensure that it could fight a great battle of decision on its terms after successful advance across the Pacific under War Plan Orange. It is no accident that in the late 1930's the USN was the nation that built the most new Battleships. \n\nWhile other decisions, such as the choice of Pearl Harbor as the new permanent home of the Pacific Fleet, while creating more tension with Japan, were in keeping with Mahanian doctrine of strong secure fleet bases as best positioned as possible. While American possession and retention of locations such as Guam, Wake, and the Philippines were informed by the same. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dunltto" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Any explanation for Japanese war crimes leading up to and during the Second World War is a very complicated and multifaceted affair, with a number of factor all simultaneously contributing. As a nation-state, the Japanese Empire of the late 19th and early 20th century is a fascinating topic, and its evolution toward such a horrific end in equal parts horrifying and intriguing. What could possess an military, a government, and a culture to undertake such rampant inhumanity – especially when couched under the banner of a so-called “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” whose purported aim was to enhance the lives of all East Asians against the ravages of Western colonialism?\n\nThe idea of “War Crimes” is a very broad topic, and it’s going to be helpful to break it down into subsections for ease-of-operations, even though there is a lot of overlap. For our purposes, let’s go with the broad topics as laid out in the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) – Asia’s equivalent to the Nuremburg Trials: unprovoked attacks on neutral states, mass killings (especially of non-combatants), human experimentation and the related charge of use of illegal biological weaponry, illegal chemical warfare, torture and illegal execution of POWs, and forced labor and prostitution. \n\nBut first, some background….\n\nThe Empire of Japan (EoJ) had emerged as the rising star of East Asia following the substantial reforms of the Meiji Era, known as the Meiji Restoration (明治維新\n, 1868-1912). Under the Meiji Emperor government’s reformations, Japan emerged from its isolationist and feudal period hearkening back to the Tokugawa Period beginning in 1600, during which the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and his successors made such decrees as the Sakoku (lit. “closed country” )Edict of 1635, which stipulated that, among other things:\n\n > 1. No Japanese ships may leave for foreign countries. \n2. No Japanese may go abroad secretly. If anybody tries to do this, he will be killed, and the ship and owner/s will be placed under arrest whilst higher authority is informed. \n3. Any Japanese now living abroad who tries to return to Japan will be put to death. \n[…] \n11. If any deportees should try to return or to communicate with Japan by letter or otherwise, they will of course be killed if they are caught, whilst their relatives will be severely dealt with, according to the gravity of the offence. \n\nThe Meiji Restoration did a number of things. It restored *de facto* imperial rule of Japan (as opposed to the Shogunate that had ruled in all but name since the late 12th century after the victory of Minamoto Clan over the Taira Clan in 1185, and later succeeded by the shogun’s wife’s clans, the Hojo.) This was accompanied by a widespread effort toward governmental centralization under the imperial government (as opposed to the regional control of the feudal daimyo (landlord) class, ostensibly under the final command of the shogun)\n\nThe Meiji Restoration also acknowledged that Japan had fallen far behind Western powers in the intervening centuries of isolationist policies – a fact that had been made all-too-clear with the arrival of the American Commodore Matthew Perry and his fleet of gunships that had singlehandedly been able to force open Japanese ports to foreign trade as of 1854. \n\nThis tied directly into the subsequent drive toward near-total military reformation in the Western model, following the 1868 Charter Oath in which the Meiji Emperor proclaimed that “knowledge shall be sought all over the world, and thereby the foundations of imperial rule shall be strengthened.” What this ultimately amounted to was a rejections and phasing out (by force if necessary) of the Edo Era remnants: the shogunate, the daimyo, and the samurai class… in favor of a modern, westernized military and societal organization to better compete with the European and American empires. This culminated in the Satsuma Rebellion (Seinan Senso) of 1877, wherein the samurai army under the leadership of Saigo Takamori was crushed by the newly formed Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) using Western weapons and tactics. The age of the samurai had decisively come to an end.\n\nYet for all that, the class and their ethos (that of *Bushido*, the “Way of the Warrior”) lived on in a romanticized form in popular ideology, both military and civilian – much in the way the idea of the American “cowboy” far outlived its actual heyday and far outgrew its actual roots. This would infuse the military ideology of the IJA well into the 20th century, and unto its final dissolution in 1945, and would prove instrumental in the horrors that were to follow.\n\nThe adoption of Western ideas and military also necessitated a rapid industrialization under the auspices of military necessity (using, for instance the slogan in the early 20th c. 富国強兵 – “Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Military”)\n\nOK, so I hope I’ve laid enough groundwork for how Japan emerged into the 20th century from a backwards feudal power into an up-and-coming regional and global imperial power. Let’s get into the different aspects of what they’d prosecute against Asian and the world over the course of the first half of the 20th century…\n\n#Expansionsism/Unprovoked Attacks Against Neutral Powers\n\nUnfortunately for Japanese ideas of becoming an industrial power, it was remarkably ill-equipped resource-wise for the task. The archipelago is remarkably resource-poor in the things that are essential for industrial and military production suiting early 20th century needs. It had few iron deposits, and those that it did have were often of very poor quality, necessitating extensive and costly refinement in order to render even minimal amounts of usable steel. At least as troubling was the island nation’s lack of fuel to power their modern war machines: coal, and later petroleum.\n\nThe most obvious target from which to seize resources was literally right next door: the Korean Peninsula and the region of Manchuria directly to its north. China had been the suzerain of the Kingdom of Joseon – a policy that had been inherited and continued by its latest (and last) imperial government, the Qing. Korea wad large depositis of both coal and iron, making it an ideal economic target for the resourced-starved island empire, and also served a strategic interest; as the Prussian general and advisor to Japan, Jakob Meckel pointed out to the Meiji court, Korea – situated as it was just 120 miles from the western coasts of Kyushu and Honshu – stood as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan” for any imperial power that seized control of it. Though this hadn’t posed much of an issue in the prior several centuries under Chinese Ming and then Qing rulership – concerned as both had been with pursuing their own largely isolationist ideologies – the threat was still real enough; the two faied invasions of the Japanese home islands under the banners of the Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan in the late 13th century would echo in Japanese ears – even going so far as to name their last and most desperate self-defense strategy toward the end of the Second War War, the *kamikaze* pilots, so named as a reference to the typhoons (“divine winds”) that had twice saved Japan from the Mongol onslaught.\n\nBy this point, and in spite of its own efforts at modernization along the Western standard, the Qing Dynasty of China had stalled out, and fallen well behind their island neighbor (a truly embarrassing state of affairs, as the Chinese had traditionally regarded the archipelago to be little more than a lowly band of pirates and bandits hardly worth notice). But Japanese interest in control over Korea (as stipulated in the 1876 Japan-Korea Treaty that opened Korean ports to unrestricted Japanese trade) greatly infringed on that old state of affairs between the peninsula and the Chinese Empire. Sino-Japanese friction over control of Korea would finally boil over in 1894 with the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War – a conflict that would confirm what the Japanese and the rest of the world had long suspected: the that had utterly outclassed their mainland counterpart, and that Qing China was a [dead empire walking](_URL_0_). The Qing was already laughed at by world powers as the “Sick Man of Asia” following its international embarrassment at the hands of the British during the two Opium Wars, and with the conclusion of the First Sino-Japanese War less than a year after its outbreak and with near total Chinese capitulation under that Treaty of Shimonoseki, resulting in the Joseon Empire being removed from Chinese vassalage (ostensibly to “independence”, but in reality directly into the Japanese orbit), as well as the cession of Formosa (Taiwan), the Penghu archipelago, and the Liaodong Peninsula directly to Japanese Imperial administration. As had been the case with many other up-and-coming world powers (a contemporary would be the US itself in the Spanish-American War in 1898), the relative *ease* of this initial victory would whet the appetite of that nascent empire toward further conquests.\n\nThis is the *modus operandi* that would compel Japanese society – as led by its military – toward the invasion and occupation of Korea and China: that it was, largely by virtue of its ease and accessibility, as well as the obvious Japanese supremacy of both arms and spirit, Japanese right and responsibility to unify the whole of East Asia under its “benevolent” dictatorship.\n\n\n" ] }

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[ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes" ]

[ [ "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/JapanPunch29September1894.jpg/440px-JapanPunch29September1894.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvb1n0o" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "I think 'address' is a very interesting choice of words here. Martin Luther in \"On the jews and their lies\" advocated that jews should be murdered and their communities and institutions burnt to the ground. That's like saying that The Turner Diaries 'addresses' non-white people, when in fact it is a book advocating a violent racial war. I have no information about the Jewish reaction to these events, but given the fact that past bouts of Christian zeal in the recent past (e.g. the inquisition, the crusades) led to massive, organized campaigns of murder against European Jews they probably were terrified of these events...." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chnpp7e" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "It was not peaceful, but also very very far from pure conquest by fire and sword. The first thing to note is that Islam had the great good fortune of erupting out of Arabia shortly after a debilitating, 20+ year war between the Roman (Byzantine) and Persian Empires, which the Romans won. Persia fell rapidly, and the Arabs conquered the Middle East up into Anatolia.\n\nThe second thing is that Egypt and North Africa had significantly different versions of Christianity than the Orthodox version aggressively pushed by Constantinople (they were Monophysite). Relations were not good, with various emperors veering between tolerance, and attempting to force one, Orthodox Christianity on the entire empire.\n\nWhen the Arab armies came along, in some cases they were actually aided by the locals, because they had a very tolerant policy. In terms of religion, they gave the conquered peoples 3 choices: Conversion, Tribute, or the Sword. In other words, conversion was preferred, or if not then you could pay tribute (which was often less than taxes to the Byzantine Empire). They gave their subjects freedom of religion within those constraints, which was a better deal than they got under the empire. However, if you didn't care to do either of those, then you were put to death. Needless to say, the great majority of people chose to pay tribute and keep their religion, which was a better deal than they got before. Over time of course, the majority of the population converted to Islam, but this process took centuries. To this day almost 10% of the population of Egypt is Coptic Christian, which is Monophysite. \n\nIt is my understanding that as word of these practices grew, conquests along North Africa got easier and easier. They got more difficult again in Spain, where orthodox (Catholic) Christianity predominated.\n\nMy main source (Karen Armstrong, A Brief History of Islam) paints a relatively benign picture of the Islamic conquests, perhaps too gentle a picture. However, the Muslims were certainly far more tolerant with their conquered peoples than say the Crusaders. \n\nQuoting Paul Freeman of Yales' lecture:\n\n > And finally, number four, the attitude of the conquerors and the conquered. The attitude of the conquerors was what Peter Brown in the reading for Wednesday will call, \"a garden protected by our spears\". This is a quote from one of the conquerors. The Arab conquerors considered these to be wonderful civilizations that they were not going to pillage or destroy, but rather protect. \"A garden protected by our spears.\" But they were planning on enjoying the garden, not merely standing on the outside defending it for other people to enjoy.\n\n > The conquerors were confident in their religion, so confident that they didn't need for others to recognize it or convert. It also gave them the confidence to accept new ideas from Greek civilization, from Persian civilization, from India\n\n" ] }

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