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[ { "body": "I'm sure others can pipe in and discuss more, but you could turn to oral history. There's a whole methodology associated with doing oral history correctly. It's unfortunately not as simple as just interviewing people. A good place to start with methodology may be Zembrzycki (ed.), Oral History Off the Record. There's also ethics concerns involved, so you may need to seek ethics training in that regard. Depending on the period you're researching, this may be a good option for you. ", "created_utc": 1512884981, "distinguished": null, "id": "dr10zdz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7irwnh/how_do_historians_overcome_lack_of_primary/dr10zdz/", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Not a proper historian yet, but I do have a BA and MA in Modern History. While I focused on modern history (1700s-) I did take some modules in earlier history, such as Medieval and Early Modern. When historians lack a wealth of primary sources, such as government records, personal diaries, etc., they will often turn to other resources such as oral histories (which are technically a primary source). **Sometimes, however, a lack of primary sources simply means making the best estimates with the resources available.** A lot of history is just that, making the best of what you can find and contributing as best you can to the historiography. When this happens, in the case of a lack of/incomplete primary sources, an historian will try to make their best educated guess or estimate as to what happened.\n\nWhen it comes to more recent history (my specialism is the Cold War, specifically US foreign policy), **historians can face the opposite problem; too many sources**. Some archives hold so much information that no one historian can possibly look over all of the archival material. This means that **historians have to be selective** in what they choose to use in regard to source material. **One historian may prioritise some material while others may prioritise other material, or even disregard it.** This means that **there is an inherent and inevitable selection bias in all historiographies**, which is why reading other historians' reviews of historical works is always beneficial. **Controversy in the historiography is not uncommon as historians are constantly debating each other and challenging previous works** as new material is researched or old material revisited. One of the more well known controversies of the last couple of decades was the controversy surrounding Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's *Hitler's Willing Executioners* which caused some debate in the historiography of the Holocaust and prompted Chrisopher Browning to write *Ordinary Men* largely in response.\n\nIn regard to your area of research, I may refer you to an interesting article I used in an essay a while back by Roland McConnell in 1949:\n\n'*The History of the Negro in the United States of America remains yet untold. Moreover, it will remain untold until the mountain of records in the National Archives are effectively utilized as an historical source. This is not only true of the history of the Negro but of American history in general, since the National Archives, the federal repository of raw record materials and original source materials of an official type in the United States of America, is virtually untapped as a source for research in history and the social sciences.*'^1\n\nI understand that you have trouble in travelling to national or state archives at the moment, but if you do get the opportunity then they will have some of the best available material. Staff at Archives can be very helpful and amenable to those with a genuine interest in the material that they handle, so even if you can't make it in person to the archives, it is worth contacting them via phone or email and they may be willing to help out (e.g. photocopying some materials for you). Just make sure you can tell them exactly the kind of thing you are looking for.\n\n*Sources*\n\n1. McConnell, Roland C., ‘Importance of Records in the National Archives on the History of the Negro’, in The Journal of Negro History, April 1949, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 135-152 (p. 135).\n\n*Recommended further research for how history is written and studied:*\n\nBeck, Peter J., *Presenting History: Past & Present*, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2012)\n\nHughes-Warrington, Marnie, *Fifty Key Thinkers on History*, (Oxford: Routledge, 2008)\n\n", "created_utc": 1512993853, "distinguished": null, "id": "dr2ykvc", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7irwnh/how_do_historians_overcome_lack_of_primary/dr2ykvc/", "score": 2 }, { "body": "As someone who worked in a local museum for about 5 summers and getting to work with the records or what little records of indigenous and the black community there are a few things you can do. \n \nSo, from what you've told us there are a few places to start. I think the first piece of advice I'd give is to recognize areas where you have research and where you don't. Then ask yourself why? Why do certain documents exist, but not others? Right here is a knowledge gap, your job is to fill it. The answer doesn't have to be long, it can be a simple sentence to something worth writing it's own book about. \n \nThe next thing you might need to consider are those in the community who have been holding on to material in their attics or basements. \n \nFrom what I gather you work in a small local museum which is heavily reliant on the community for things. Mine had a small basement archive where we were gifted with complete and incomplete genealogies which was neat but you could see things come up that raised their own set of questions. \n \nPrimary sources are important, but even with the primary sources you have you need to be skeptical of everything you read regardless of who it came from. \n \nFor instance Olaudah Equiano's tale is a really interesting one but should not be held up as 100% accurate. Take the context it was written in and for whom it was written. So considering the circumstances and some content of any primary source is important, not just for accuracy sake but for the other bunch of questions that'll come about. ", "created_utc": 1513003303, "distinguished": null, "id": "dr349ya", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7irwnh/how_do_historians_overcome_lack_of_primary/dr349ya/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "The British slave trade (which brought over most of the ancestors of today's African Americans) was concentrated along the coast of what is now Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria to the extent that this became known as the \"Slave Coast\". The Portuguese also got a lot of slaves from the Kongo Kingdom (now in Congo and Angola) and southeastern Africa (Mozambique, southeastern SA), but these slaves mostly went to Portuguese colonies.\n\nBefore the Atlantic slave trade really picked up, the Slave Coast was home to a number of kingdoms, states, and cities- let's put this \"primitive tribal Africans\" thing to rest right now. These states were just as rich and powerful as European states at the time; they only lacked things like gunpowder and writing because unlike Europe that part of West Africa was somewhat disconnected from the larger exchange of ideas and technology in Eurasia.\n\nWhile West Africans had native forms of slavery and bonded labor, they were much more humane (more accurately, much less inhumane) and practiced to a much lesser extent than plantation slavery in the Americas. However, Slave Coast states were eager to trade with Europeans, and as the Europeans were colonizing the Americas what they needed most was labor. The Slave Coast states provided slaves to fulfill that need. Demand was enormous and far outstripped supply so these states changed to accommodate it. They developed full-blown slave cultures and increased militarism (to capture slaves).\n\n(I think this is an important point because often you'll see people trying to excuse European powers because it was native Africans who sold them the slaves while, in reality, Europeans were essentially paying them to fight wars and enslave people. It doesn't excuse the African leaders who participated, but it's necessary to have perspective.)\n\nSo, long answer short: African Americans are largely descended from people living in the southern part of West Africa because of the presence of states that participated in the slave trade.", "created_utc": 1412622781, "distinguished": null, "id": "cl2430v", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2igqe5/what_specific_regions_of_africa_did_the_ancestors/cl2430v/", "score": 20 } ]

[ { "body": "The Mind of the South by WJ Cash. It's a bit dated but is pretty good. Also Honor and Violence in the Old South by Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Intellectual Life and the American South 1810-1860 by Michael OBrien is another good one. It's an abridgment of Conjectures of Order", "created_utc": 1429731236, "distinguished": null, "id": "cql5eei", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/33hzk2/are_there_any_good_books_or_other_resources_that/cql5eei/", "score": 2 }, { "body": "I'd recommend Away Down South. It's got a great timeline of how southern culture has evolved and covers a lot of different facets.", "created_utc": 1429746044, "distinguished": null, "id": "cqlessn", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/33hzk2/are_there_any_good_books_or_other_resources_that/cqlessn/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "Just for curiosity, what is the other book you are reading? Thanks!", "created_utc": 1495237974, "distinguished": null, "id": "dhsg89c", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6c3o9o/a_1944_automotive_history_book_mentions_two/dhsg89c/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "According to this 1997 NYT article elements of libation rituals were occurring amongst black populations in the Southern States for many decades but the formal ritual elements and meaning had been lost \n\n//For generations, blacks in the South might pour the first sip of their liquor onto the ground, Mr. Olayinka (A Yoruba priest in Brooklyn, NY) said. They didn't know why they were doing it. They were merely acting out a cultural ritual passed down over the years with little explanation.// - \n\nIt was black colleges and the black power movement which reconnected it with its African roots and created or restored formal rituals around it and actively promoted it. \n\nI am not sure how much I believe the article though, libations to the dead or the god/gods or even absent friends and family are so cross-culturally ubiquitous that it could have come from numerous sources. I am sceptical as to whether black colleges etc. would have played a bigger role than the melting pot effect where people from Africa (or elsewhere) were bringing tribal rituals to America. \n\nhttp://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/05/style/an-old-ritual-goes-black-tie.html?src=pm\n\nBy the way, if you have ever put out a glass of whisky for Santa and Rudolph (or Woden and Sleipnir) that is a libation. \n\nI am surprised to find out this is considered a 'black' thing in America, it is very normal in the UK across cultures to have a glass of wine etc on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. \n", "created_utc": 1385077113, "distinguished": null, "id": "cdk1h1j", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1r5sro/can_the_modern_practice_of_pouring_one_out_for_a/cdk1h1j/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm not 100% sure I'm reading your question correctly so shout if I missed the mark! There are few different things going on in the history of American public education that can help contextualize what I think you're asking. The first - and this was as true then as it is now - is that there is functionally no such thing as an American education system. Second, No Child Left Behind.\n\nTo the first point: it seems fairly counter-intuitive to suggest there's no such as American education where there are so many touchstones that are the same at most American high schools. These touchstones - such as afterschool sports, a liberal arts focus, early start times, etc. etc. - are more a function of social changes and adoption and less than of policy and laws at the federal level. Courts and lawmakers interpretations of the 10th Amendment has been that the things that happen in schools are a matter left to the states. Federal involvement is fairly minimal and most limited to matters of funding and students' civil rights. What this means for your question is that the nature of what happened in Social Studies classes in the 1950s, 90s, and today could vary between states and in some states, between towns or districts. So, when we talk about how classes were taught at a particular moment in time, we have to talk to fairly broad strokes and generalities. \n\nOne thing to know about history class in 1993 is that was a fairly self-contained island in students' days. That is, unlike math and science teachers who felt the pressure from the launching of Sputnik and the Cold War and English teachers who have almost always had to deal with community responses to particular texts, history teachers were often - not always - left alone. The changes they experienced were, as Loewen identifies, in their textbooks. History class has always been taught with primary texts but efforts to shift the course delivery from readings and lectures to more active learning by students hit its strides in the 1990s with the emergence of \"cooperative learning\" (group activities) and an increased focus on \"living\" history. This meant a slow shift away from textbooks as the primary source for content and included the increased popularity of debates, re-enactments, and guest speakers. What this also meant was the inclusion of more current event discussion in class. This wasn't new - there are questions on 1960s high school exit exams that ask about the Soviet Union that are written in the present tense and ask about a sitting politician - but what shifted was the young person as an active agent in that history. \n\nBetween 1993 and 2003 or so, students as active participants in history and politics became normalized, even expected. Whereas in the 1960s, young people could get in trouble from engaging in politics in history class, some states mandated it through things like mandatory public service or political volunteering. So, with each of the things you list, the thing that would change the most is that young people were encouraged to see themselves as active agents in the politics and history as well as those who would experience the consequences of such actions. One could make the argument that these two decades mark almost golden era of Social Studies class in American schools - teachers were expected to teach history, politics, economics, geography, and civics and do so in a way that engaged students as future (or current) voters. The pedagogy of teaching history was a popular topic and there were several historical teaching organizations teachers could join. \n\nThe passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 effectively sucked all the air out of that. The basic gist of the law was that all states needed to assess students in grades 3-8 and HS once a year in math and English Language Arts. This, by itself, wasn't new. Several states already had such testing programs in place. What was new were the accountability measures. If schools didn't demonstrate growth or hit particular targets, the state could fire the entire staff, close the school, or otherwise penalize the school. Practically speaking, this made math and ELA class the most important class in a student's day. Science was protected a bit as it was identified as a third assessment measure in NCLB but not history class. If schools were worried about student scores and needed to increase math and literacy instruction, history class was right there for the cannibalizing.\n\nMeanwhile, many states that had history testing programs in place, or high school exit exams around history heard from the public there was too much testing in schools and as such, pulled back on history tests as they were no accountability measures attached to them. However, the passage of NCLB did force states to develop history standards - an actual list of topics, people, places, dates, etc. - that students needed to learn before graduating. One of the things we know by looking at those standards is there is a fair amount of consistency across states. Students in the modern era learn state history, American history, and world history. They generally learn about Greece, Rome, and Egypt, the World Wars, and The Civil Rights Movement. The things you list are generally seems as part of those timelines but can be dramatically different, depending on the teacher's pedagogy approach. So, for example, 9/11 is situated - depending on the state or teacher's approach - as part of the long project of American imperialism and/or conflicts in the Middle East. The election of Obama is the latest contribution to the idea of \"we the people\" and/or taught as inseparable from Trump's election and the concept of \"whitelash.\" Generally speaking, though, there are no accountability measures to speak of that shape or restrict how a given high school history department approaches the teaching of history outside those set by their building administrators. \n\nThe gist: what happens in America's history classrooms is shaped by a rise of student-centered pedagogical strategies in the 80s and 90s, the narrowing of the school curriculum as a result of No Child Left Behind in the 2000s, and individual teachers' curriculum decisions.", "created_utc": 1682347749, "distinguished": null, "id": "jhix7id", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12p1zkp/history_text_books_prior_to_the_civil_rights/jhix7id/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "So first, a clarification: Native enslavement coexisted with African slavery, and persisted for a *very* long time in some areas. Mexico, for instance, still had issues with indigenous enslavement into the 20th century. Indigenous slavery was also deeply embedded in the Mexican culture of the territories annexed by the United States after the Mexican-American War, and it was adopted by many of the American settlers of the region, and was not officially abolished until after the American Civil War. I do not know as much about Latin American countries other than Mexico, so I cannot speak to when indigenous enslavement ended there, but I can say that it was a deeply-rooted institution for most of the Spanish colonial period.\n\nBut while it doesn't exactly fit the criteria you describe, I think the Yamasee War of 1715-1718 is a useful illustration of how indigenous communities responded to and resisted enslavement, as well as the complex interactions between black and indigenous slavery. \n\nFor a bit of background: the first permanent English settlement in the modern United States was established at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Black slavery began fairly early on (1619), but some Virginians also stepped into the indigenous slave trade. They found a willing partner in the Westos, a group that had been forced south from the Great Lakes by Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) expansionism. When the Carolina Colony was settled at Charleston in 1670, the Westos had been raiding other indigenous communities to capture slaves for a while; but Carolina would take the business to a whole new level. In the process they would decimate the indigenous communities of the American southeast. \n\nAfter tiring of the Westos, the Carolinians hired a group of Shawnees to eliminate the tribe. They made new alliances across the southeast. The result was a bloodbath. It was raid or be raided; no one was safe. Florida, under Spanish control, was completely devastated by a series of joint Mvskoke-Carolinian raids, with the entire peninsula being almost entirely depopulated outside of St. Augustine. During this period, one of Carolina's allies were the Yamasees, who lived close to the colony in what is today South Carolina. \n\nIn 1696, a massive smallpox epidemic struck the region. Indigenous people perished in droves. Already facing a crisis due to slave raiding (which especially targeted women), many indigenous communities were now essentially in demographic freefall. The diseases did not stop. Critical to stopping the worst of this was adoption of captives, which was a norm for indigenous societies dating back to pre-Columbian times. The English did not understand this and protested communities being unwilling to sell captives. Tensions began to mount.\n\nNew coalescent societies formed; the strongest groups, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek (Mvskoke) took in vast amounts of refugees and quickly became the largest and most powerful tribes in the region. Smaller tribes like the Yamasee grew nervous. They feared that the English, already aligned with most of the largest groups except the Choctaw (who were French allies) would have no use for the Yamasee and enslave them en masse. Abuses by English traders had also provoked plenty of resentment anong the largest indigenous groups. And so, in 1715, a mass revolt broke out - almost every Native society across the southeast came together, killed any English traders residing in their villages, and began to advance on the Carolina Colony. \n\nHad the English not managed to win over the Cherokee and Catawba to their side, the Yamasee very well could have won. They achieved dramatic victories in the early phases of the war and the Carolinian death toll is, percentage-wise, one of the highest of *any* war fought by the United States or its colonial predecessors. Though the English won, the war had shown them the dangers caused by the indigenous slave trade. Native slavery in Carolina plummeted from over 1/4 of households to almost nothing. Some of this decline was because Carolina, terrified that their black slaves might band together with the Yamasee and overwhelm the colony, began to enforce a new racial boundary: the child of a black and indigenous person was, legally, fully black. \n\nUnfortunately for the Yamasee, the damage was already done. The surviving tribal members integrated into other tribes, and southeastern indigenous societies would never be the same as they were before the slave trade had arrived. Anglo-American slavery would eventually become synonymous with African slavery. \n\nSources:\n\n*The Other Slavery* by Andrés Reséndez\n\n*Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone* ed. by Robbie Ethridge and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall\n\n*The Yamasee War* by William Ramsey", "created_utc": 1678269663, "distinguished": null, "id": "jbdw1qz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/11lebh6/before_there_were_african_slaves_in_the_new_world/jbdw1qz/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "To the second part of your question first, I want to direct your attention to [Jean Allman's keynote address at 2018 African Studies Association conference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSb_N2Ly8VY&feature=youtu.be). In it, she lays out how the field of African Studies systematically ignored or forgot the foundational work of African American scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and promoted the idea of the White Male scholar as the ideal \"objective observer\" of African society and phenomena. The result of that was that federal Area Studies funding (useful in the context of the Cold War for understanding and engaging in diplomacy with the Third World) went to predominately white institutions rather than HBCUs. \n\nThe situation in African history in the United States follows broadly the same outlines. Graduate programs that are considered the \"best\" in African history or African archaeology in the US tend to be at places like Boston University, Wisconsin, Northwestern University, Michigan State, Michigan, UC Berkley and UCLA. \n\nThe other major concentration of \"world class\" graduate programs for African History and African Archaeology has traditionally been in Europe. Programs like University College London, Oxford School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Free University of Brussels, University of Ghent, Leiden, Sorbonne, Freiburg.\n\nThe fact that \"world class\" programs are located at those schools means that African History and Archaeology conferences tend to meet at those universities. \n\nSo, up until pretty recently, that has meant that who produces history (professors, authors) of Africa has historically been very White. \n\nPeople who were born in Africa or who live in Africa have not been listened to or cited enough, and have experienced major hurdles in going to conferences in Europe or North America (visa issues, cost, being the rare African scholar in a very White space).\n\nThere *have been* some excellent programs in African history on the continent. Places like University of Ibadan, Makerere University, Dar es Salaam, University of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Addis Ababa, University of Cheikh Anta Diop. \n\nUnhappily, because of the severe budget crises basically every African country faced in the late 1970s, and the protracted economic downturn on the continent during the era of Structural Adjustment, lots of countries were forced to reduce spending on education, which meant reduction in funding for history departments. \n\nBut, the damage to African scholarship has been out-of-proportion to the level of funding cuts. There is a widespread perception among scholars both in Africa and Europe/North America that the intellectual output of scholars from Africa has systematically been overlooked and not included in Western academic journals. Western academics have also engaged in \"parachute research\", dropping into a country, relying on scholars from local universities to facilitate study, and then neglecting to acknowledge that support with co-authorship credit.\n\nNow, let's turn the gaze on the [Askhistorians Book List](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/africa). The vast majority of authors on that list are Europeans or Americans from European or North American institutions. There are a handful of names there like Chinua Achebe, Mahmood Mamdani, Moses Ochonu, Toyin Falola, Sundiata Djata. But, more work is needed to include scholarship from African and Black Diaspora scholars. (I must accept the blame for this, because I have added most of the books on that list)\n\nNow, there are white North American scholars who write about and try to embody the ideal of truly co-operative scholarship. For instance Peter Schmidt has written numerous articles and edited books about [Community Archaeology in Africa](https://www.academia.edu/42975756/Community_Archaeology_and_Heritage_in_Africa_Decolonizing_Practice_edited_by_Peter_R_Schmidt_and_Innocent_Pikirayi) about how research **must** include the local community in designing and conducting the project.\n\n>How do I decolonize my understanding of the history of Africa?\n\nFolks advocating for decolonizing African history have called for greater representation of African scholars and scholarship in classroom curricula.\n\nFrom the field of political science, [here is an example of a decolonial african politics reading list](http://democracyinafrica.org/decolonizing-the-university-the-african-politics-reading-list/)\n\nSpecifically for African history and Archaeology, some good places to broaden your horizons and learn about African scholars are:\n\n[New Books in African studies podcast](https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/african-studies/)\n\n[The Archaeology and Anthropology Podcast](https://archandanth.com/) has interviewed African archaeologists like Josh Kumbani, Babatunde Babalola, Akin Ogundiran\n\n[Africa Past and Present podcast](http://afripod.aodl.org/) has done interviews with people like Didier Gondola, Cherif Keita, Alois Mlambo, etc.\n\nToyin Falola is an eminent historian of Nigeria and he frequently gets tabbed to be lead editor for books or book series about African history. He is very conscientious about including contributions from African scholars. If you check out his stuff like _Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History_, you should find some names to follow.\n\nEdit- also, there is [Codesria](http://www.codesria.org/) which is an association for African studies based in Dakar, Senegal which promotes a great deal of research.\n\nAdditionally, reviewing my post, I notice a few glaring omissions. I mentioned ten male African scholars but zero African women scholars. I *should have* mentioned scholars like Tabitha Kanong'o, Msia Kibona Clark, Nwando Achebe.\n\nAlso, there is the whole dimension of contributions from Black scholars from the diaspora. In Jean Allman's address video that I linked, she made clear that a major demand of Black Caucus/AHSA at ASA conference at Los Angeles 1968 and Montreal 1969 was recognition of the inter-relatedness of African studies with African-American Studies and with scholarship from the diaspora. \n\nSo, an important part of decolonizing knowledge about African history must be paying attention to and acknowledging the contributions from scholars from the diaspora, both men and women.", "created_utc": 1597267328, "distinguished": null, "id": "g19bkaf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/i88t68/coming_from_a_white_american_perspective_how_do_i/g19bkaf/", "score": 18 } ]

[ { "body": "Good post. I think there are two points, however, that deserve more discussion:\n\n1. I think you underestimate popular acceptance of the idea that ancient Egyptians were black, and modern Egyptians are colonizers. In your academic circles, I'm sure no one takes it seriously. But outside of academics, this type of revisionist history is growing in acceptance, and increasingly supported by celebrities. This documentary is not occurring in a vacuum, but part of a trend toward specific ahistorical narratives being advanced in the mainstream. \n\n2. Netflix also gave Graham Hancock a platform for his Ancient Apocalypse stuff. I've personally spoken to people who watched it and took it seriously. Again, this is not happening in a vacuum, but part of a trend where \"Every expert has conspired to lie to you. Here's the REAL story\" is being advanced as a narrative across many disciplines, history and archeology among them. People are hearing these ideas and taking them seriously. \n\nI have no doubt that within the academic world, these are not major issues. But when it comes to the popular understanding of history, they very much are. And ultimately, that's what this entire controversy is about.", "created_utc": 1683586508, "distinguished": null, "id": "jjecuc2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/was_cleopatra_black_and_what_it_means_to_talk/jjecuc2/", "score": 941 }, { "body": "Thank you for this excellent summary, I've saved it for future reference.\n\nSomething which I'm still unclear on is the extent to which the Ptolemaic dynasty thought of themselves as \"Macedonian\" or \"Egyptian\"; it may have been a non- racist Empire but my impression was that it saw itself very firmly as a *Greek* dynasty ruling over a multi-ethnic Empire; for example, I have seen it claimed Cleopatra was unusual in speaking Egyptian as well as Greek.", "created_utc": 1683559878, "distinguished": null, "id": "jjci2jh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/was_cleopatra_black_and_what_it_means_to_talk/jjci2jh/", "score": 769 }, { "body": "> There are many African queens and other prominent female figures whose stories would interest modern audiences.\n\nCan you give us some examples and the things that make them interesting figures?", "created_utc": 1683574354, "distinguished": null, "id": "jjdj4vz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/13bv06n/was_cleopatra_black_and_what_it_means_to_talk/jjdj4vz/", "score": 184 } ]

[ { "body": "So excited to get see this question! (Sorry it's a little late, I haven't been on Reddit for a couple of days!)\n\nMy area of expertise is wealthy people of color in the antebellum South. My master's thesis was on a free-born black man in Tuscaloosa, AL named Solomon Perteet. His mother was a wealthy white woman, and his father was an enslaved black man. He began his career as a master plaster worker, but made his fortune in real estate and money lending. (He was born around 1789 and died in 1863.)\n\nI'm not super familiar with people of color in the North during this period, but I'll speak to the South. \n\nBefore the Civil War, there were no widely enforced laws regarding property ownership by people of color. After the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831, there were many laws passed that restricted the rights of free people of color, but they were very selectively enforced. \n\nTo get into specifics, let me give you a couple of sources that pertain to your question. #1 and #4 are great sources of quantitative data, while #2 and #3 are specific, divergent examples of the prosperous black experience in the antebellum South. \n\n1. Despite its age, Ira Berlin's Slaves Without Masters is still the best quantitative look at free people of color in the antebellum South. The data it contains is solid. I can't find my copy of it right now, but it is easy to find, and it pertains pretty directly to your question. \n\nBerlin argues that chronology and regional specificity matter to the study of free people of color, tracing the shifts in the free black experience from the American Revolution to the Civil War, and across a region that he identifies as the Lower South. Berlin argues that the free black population of the Lower South was less numerous, more skilled, and more likely to have close personal ties with the local white population than those living in the Upper South; therefore, they were more accepted into white society, though still not completely free from the effects of racism. \n\nI only have two minor qualms with the work, that I would suggest you keep in mind as you read it. Most pertinent to your question, is the matter of regional differences. Berlin divides the South into Upper and Lower. The Lower South consists of Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. He defines the Upper South as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. \n\nBased on my own research, Berlin would have been more accurate to divide the South into three regions-- Upper, Deep, and Coastal. I would define the Coastal South as containing the South Carolina low country, coastal Georgia, former Spanish Florida, South Alabama, South Mississippi, and Louisiana. The social and (in some areas) legal systems of the Coastal South were much more willing to accept black prosperity than similar communities in the Deep and Upper South.\n\nMy second qualm is that Berlin's broad claims that “Southern whites almost uniformly feared and despised free Negroes” and that “all white Southerners shared the desire to subordinate” them are not backed up by the circumstances of Perteet’s life (my own research), nor by some of Berlin’s own evidence.\n\n2. If you're interested in what a prosperous black family looks like in the Coastal South, I'd recommend Black Masters, by Matthew Johnson and James Roark. It's a study of the William Ellison, the freed son of a white man and enslaved black woman, and his family. \n\n3. Another work that may be of interest to you is William Johnson's Natchez. It's the unedited diary of a free, biracial barber, William Johnson. He was born in 1809, emancipated in 1820, and murdered in 1851. The diary is fascinating, and it's heavily footnoted by William Hogan and Edwin Davis. \n\n4. Last one, I promise. Howard Bodenhorn's The Color Factor takes a quantitative approach to color in the antebellum South, as opposed to race. That is, how the black and biracial experience differed, as opposed to the black and white experiences. It's quite recent, from 2016, and is a really novel approach to Southern race historiography.\n\n\nI hope this is a coherent answer. My dogs got a new soccer ball and are currently playing keep away, with me as home base. I'd be more than happy to clarify or answer any further questions you may have!", "created_utc": 1572926373, "distinguished": null, "id": "f6l1mnl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/dqpa2r/can_anyone_discuss_the_history_of_african/f6l1mnl/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "There may be some confusion here about the Buffalo Soldiers and their role in regards to National Parks. To put it most simply, they weren't \"rangers\" in any official capacity, but in their role as United States soldiers, they were considered stewards and officers of the parks. And it wasn't just Buffalo soldiers; those men just happened to be the soldiers closest to the particular parks they patrolled. White soldiers would do it, too, at need. Though Yellowstone was the first national park in the United States, the second (lesser known) was Mackinac Island, Michigan. During its twenty years as a national park, it was patrolled and maintained by white soldiers of the US Infantry.\n\nThe first ranger, *still* unofficially, was Harry Yount, appointed in 1880 as the gamekeeper at Yellowstone. He worked alongside soldiers, but it was his job to prevent poaching, and to protect the wildlife and scenery of the park as he could. \n\nSoldiers were never meant to be a long term solution to the problem of maintaining the parks. A Fort Mackinac commandant, improbably named Greenleaf Goodale, complained in letters that he had no authority, as a soldier, to arrest rule-breakers or punish them, he could only send letters asking, for instance, for farmers on the island to stop letting their livestock graze on park property. Their capacity as agents and stewards of the park were limited, and it took men like Yount or civilian law enforcement agents to work with them to prevent or punish minor rule-breaking.\n\nThe National Park Service wasn't established with full-time rangers acting in that capacity until 1916, and the new rangers assumed the maintenance, conservation, and law enforcement duties that the soldiers had done previously.\n______\n\nI worked as a historical interpreter at Fort Mackinac for a few years, and information about Goodale and his struggles with locals are mostly there in the archives.\n\nHorace Albright, the second director of the NPS, wrote a number of books and articles about the founding of the service and parks. You can read [this one](https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/albright2/pdf/intro.pdf) straight from the NPS website.", "created_utc": 1563910657, "distinguished": null, "id": "eum32xt", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/cguzh5/how_were_african_american_men_the_buffalo/eum32xt/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "I don't think anyone can give you a firm answer. It's a complicated and subjective issue from the start. Then if you write about slavery at any length you seen find that you need at least a couple of alternative terms so you don't sound completely monotonous and redundant.\n\nFor the most part, people of African descent would be called \"black\" or \"negro\" at the time, in print and in formal situations. There's also the other word, but that appears to have been much more often spoken than written down. Histories written up into the 1970s still used Negro -the routine capitalization is a newer usage from the mid-twentieth century- and then it rapidly falls off. This has entirely to do with prevailing mores at the time of writing, though you do still see historians sometimes characterize or paraphrase period ideas using period terms. Doing this well is difficult because one is using words that are visceral punches for many readers and recapitulate historical and recent injustices.\n\nYou can use African from context when speaking of enslaved people in the era, many of whom were genuinely born on the continent and endured the Middle Passage. When it's necessary to distinguish between Africans in the New World, who are almost all enslaved, and those in Africa who may or may not be, historians tend to say something like \"enslaved Africans\" or \"African\\black slaves\". (Not literally with the slash, but as distinct options.) When speaking people in a specific locale, they might be black X, with X being the location as in \"black Virginians\". African-American sees some use too, particularly by historians integrating the black experience and highlighting black contributions to American history. It's not ideal, but we also disambiguate between whites in the metropole and in the colonies roughly the same way.\n\nSimply calling them \"slaves\" also *usually* does the trick. There are also enslaved Native Americans, who share space and time with colonial slavery, but they're badly understudied and American slavery studies usually ignore them so they don't need to distinguish. This is something slavery studies ought to be better about, but we're not there yet. :( More recent historians also tend to prefer \"enslaved people\" or \"enslaved\" to \"slave\" because it shifts the emphasis from putting slavery on as a quality of the victim to highlighting that their status was a choice imposed on them by others, who we then call enslavers. I think that in a generation that will probably be the going thing but right now it's still the new trend.\n\nMost of this would not be technically correct or period-accurate, especially the last part, but as I said a few paragraphs ago we write in our own times and for readers in them and after. It's nice if the terms we use can neatly fit into the era, but period terminology can obscure and mislead as well as any academic jargon. Our purpose as historians is to understand, empathize, and educate so even if the words used back then aren't heinous to us it can be best to set them aside. \n\nI don't write about colonial era slavery often, but in the nineteenth century I tend to use \"black Americans\" and \"black people\" as general terms. Those who are enslaved are mostly \"the enslaved\" or \"enslaved people\", occasionally slaves. I also make an effort where it makes sense to also pair them up with similar descriptions of whites. If I say \"black people\" and I need to refer to whites soon after, I'll say \"white people\" for them, etc. That's roughly in line with what I read in recent works.", "created_utc": 1508984998, "distinguished": null, "id": "dowd92o", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/78ryaa/when_reading_about_colonial_history_what_should/dowd92o/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "I posted a bit about [contemporary witchcraft in Africa](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6r5q62/the_2006_unicef_report_on_children_accused_of/) before, and I'm going to reproduce part of that here:\n\n> 'Invented tradition' is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.\n\n- [The Invention of Tradition](http://www.worldcat.org/title/invention-of-tradition/oclc/969043534)\n\nThere have emerged practices and beliefs designated as \"witchcraft\" in parts of Africa which are not actually continuations of historical practices, but are new traditions which are derived or made or presented as being part of the continuous tradition of native African folk beliefs. You might draw a direct parallel to the changing concept of \"witchcraft\" in the United Kingdom and United States with relation to the founding of Gardnerian Wicca in the late 1950s/early 60s and the quick promulgation, acceptance, adoption, and mutation of its various concepts: people began accepting certain terminology, beliefs, and behaviors as traditional because they were being presented as part of a living tradition, even though in fact many parts of it (covens, the Book of Shadows, etc.) were in fact inventions, parts of it were ahistorical (most of the mythological trappings, the purported history of witchcraft), and other bits (derivations from Freemasonry, Hermetic occultism, etc.) were historical but used out of context.\n\nTerence Ranger in a discussion of the invention of traditions in colonial Africa in *The Invention of Tradition* notes:\n\n> However, another path had also been open to the young in the colonial period and before the rise of the nationalist parties. This had been to outflank the reified 'custom' of the elders by appeals to more dynamic and transformative aspects of the traditional. Recent commentators have increasingly seen the very widespread witchcraft eradtication movements of the colonial period, with their promise of a society freed from evil, in this sort of way. MacGaffey describes how in his Bakongo village the management of witchcraft accusation by the elders caused great discontent, and led to the arrival of a 'prophet' who undertook to eliminate witchcraft, an achievement which would deprive the elders of a potent form of social control. The result was 'the temporary paralysis of the elders'. Roy Willis has shown how in rural south-western Tanganyika in the 1950s young men tried to break the control exercised by elders over land and local 'routine public affairs', by making use of a series of witchcraft eradication movements, which outflanked invented custom by an appeal to the pre-social Golden Age.\n\nWhich is a long way to say: witchcraft has historically been a part of many African cultures, with its own accepted methods of being dealt with; but those traditions are smacking into the changing syntax of African life, and people are adapting those beliefs to their new circumstances. You might draw a comparison between how historically, horoscopes were drawn out and calculated carefully for the individual based on personal data - and then newspapers came along, and in 1930 began newspaper horoscopes, the idea of which soon spread.\n\nThe \"child witch\" phenomena that they are specifically concerned with is \"new\" in the sense that it doesn't have a strong historical precedent in African tradition; it is primarily an urban one, and is fed by the mass media; it occurs primarily in countries that \"have also suffered from political instability, endless conflicts and civil wars, and the recruitment of child soldiers\" and in areas with a strong presence of Christian churches \"belonging to the Pentecostal and prophetic movement\" - bringing \"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live\" [Exodus 22:18](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+22%3A18&version=KJV) rhetoric to bear. Any and all of these factors are likely to be responsible for the formation and spread of new beliefs which are cast in the mold of traditional beliefs.\n\nNow, having said all that: did some slaves in the Americas retain some superstitions and religious traditions from Africa? Absolutely. While many of these slaves were forced to convert to Christianity, they still retained aspects of their native beliefs, some of which were syncretized with Christian mythos, and others of which developed naturally in the different populations. u/grantmatter has a great answer about that in [Why didn't African Americans, unlike other large black populations in the Americas (like in Haiti, Cuba and Brazil), develop a syncretic religion like them (like Voodoo, Santería, Candomblé)?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/34uwxj/why_didnt_african_americans_unlike_other_large/); u/firedrops also talks a bit about communities that retained \"Africanisms\" in terms of language, tradition, and folktales in [Apart from voodoo in Louisiana, did other elements of African culture, language, and religion survive with African descendants in the Americas?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28pds5/apart_from_voodoo_in_louisiana_did_other_elements/). These elements of native African religions, filtered through the context of slavery, absolutely became a part of African-American culture, and became a staple of American culture in general. Popular occultism has that tendency for a high degree of crossover. For example, in a description of Harlem in 1934, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft noted:\n\n> All the drug stores carry rabbit’s-foot luck charms, dream books, anti-kink fluid & pomade for the wool of dusky sheiks & sirens, & (also for the rites of Congolese coiffure) devices called “straightening-irons.”\n\n- H. P. Lovecraft to F. Lee Baldwin, 27 Mar 1934, *Letters to F. Lee Baldwin &c.* 67\n\n\"Dream books\" and lucky rabbits' feet (well, lucky for everyone except the rabbit!) aren't traditional aspects of native African religions; they're European and American traditions which enjoyed broad popularity among a heterogenous population - white, black, Hispanic, etc. Dream-books and charms were offered in the books section of the [Sears and Roebuck Catalogs](https://archive.org/stream/catalogueno11200sear#page/128/mode/2up/) for example included dream-books and grimoires around the turn of the century.\n\nAll that being said... yes, there is some influence from African religious traditions on African-American culture (and American culture in general); that said, it is difficult to say if they were any more or less superstitious than any of the other distinct American sub-cultures at the time. The particular aspects of modern African witch-craze are generally distinct from contemporary beliefs centered on Voudoun or the like, simply because while they have the *character* of a traditional belief, they're really quite a recent phenomenon.", "created_utc": 1504047471, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmaya1w", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6wurn9/what_is_the_history_of_west_african_black/dmaya1w/", "score": 12 }, { "body": "You might be interested in Yvonne Chireau's [*Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition*](http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520249882).", "created_utc": 1504052052, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmb1vcd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6wurn9/what_is_the_history_of_west_african_black/dmb1vcd/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "For this I'll use Chapter 9 of McKay et. al's \"A History of World Societies\", the 8th edition as my primary source. It ain't the most detailed of books, but if you want a general idea I recommend it. \n\nAlso, I'm going to narrow down the question a lot: I'm concentrating on West Africa, the area where most African-Americans have their ancestry. I'm also going to concentrate on the slave trade, since it relates to Malcolm X's quote.\n\nAfrica's history is very multifaceted - like Europe, it depends on where and when you look. To begin with Malcolm X's comment: he is right in one sense and wrong in another. Yes, the African continent had several notable states and empires (that I'll detail below), but they were no strangers to the slave trade either before the Atlantic slave trade that Malcolm X probably refers to. \n\nThe magnitude of the Trans-Saharan slave trade (connecting West Africa with the Mediterranean), in fact, was a big business involving all partners: African as well as Muslim and Christian states, as the slave trade was second only to gold in terms of profitability. It peaked in the period between 900-1100, with nearly 9000 slaves traded anually. It shrunk by roughly half by 1400-1500, but still remained a major trade. [1]\n\nRace had very little to do with the trade: wealthy Muslims in Cordoba and Alexandria owned Christian as well as African slaves. Likewise, West African lords and kings not only sold poor Africans to slavery - they also owned white slaves from as varied backgrounds as Britain, the Balkans and Turkey. [2]\n\nThe slave trade is important to African history not only because of the usually-cited circumstances, but also because West African urban centers grew as the trade grew. African rich families congregated in the border zones between the Sahel and the Sahara. By being middlemen between the miners in the south and the Muslim merchants to the north, they could get rich quickly. That's how cities like Timbuktu, Jenne and Gao grew, and other cities likewise became important in the slave trade and other trades. Also, Islam spread to West Africa via the trade, so the lords and kings alongside the population became mostly Muslim quickly.\n\nAs the cities grew, empires and kingdoms themselves emerged in West Africa: Ghana (900 - 1100) and Mali (1200-1450) were two of the most prominent, although the Dahomey and the Songhai were also important West African policies. In other parts of Africa, although I'm sidetracking, we have Ethiopia and Great Zimbabwe as prominent civilizations around the same time.\n\nHow powerful were the West African empires in their prime? Well, the famous Hajj that Mansa Musa (sultan of Mali) made is a prime example, but they were respected by outsiders as well. Ibn Battuta, a traveler visiting Musa's successor, remarks (excerpt):\n\n\"the Negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country.\"\n\nThis could be pretty surprising to someone used to the \"Darkest Africa\" trope today: it indicates that Mali's society was a relatively secure one with a functioning justice system. In fact, Ibn Battusa further remarks that \"They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites.\"\n\nNow, I should end on an important note: by the time the Atlantic slave trade had started, the principal West African states had lost at least some of their former power. No state had managed to (re)gain unitary and solid control over Western Africa by the time the Atlantic trade began. But the African lords were fine still, even if they were not united - as they now had an extra avenue for selling slaves - until the mid-19th century, when colonialism took hold and slavery lost a lot of its former importance.\n\nSo, the answer to Malcolm X is \"Yes... and no.\". West African states were powerful, but not all of the population were free either. This was not something limited to West Africa - it was normal everywhere at some point, really.\n\n[1] R.A. Austen: \"The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: A tentative census\" in \"The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Gemery / Hogendorn: Academic Press 1979)\n\n[2] R. N. July: \"Precolonial African Economic and Social History\" (Scribner, 1975) pp. 124-129\n\n**Edit**: Too many edits to count.", "created_utc": 1417021464, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmdoq9f", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nhg6l/malcom_x_was_known_to_say_to_african_americans/cmdoq9f/", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Well... that's a question too broad to answer, but if you'd like to learn more about African history, you can start with the somewhat limited [section in our FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/africa) or you can check out some of the books in [the book list](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/africa). \n\nOther than that, you'll have to narrow down your question, I'm afraid. ", "created_utc": 1417019475, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmdnq2z", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nhg6l/malcom_x_was_known_to_say_to_african_americans/cmdnq2z/", "score": 10 }, { "body": "This is an incredibly broad question. How are you defining \"Africa\" and how are you defining \"European involvement\"?", "created_utc": 1417018830, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmdndqd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2nhg6l/malcom_x_was_known_to_say_to_african_americans/cmdndqd/", "score": 0 } ]

[ { "body": "You'll probably find examples of this in the early Reconstruction period, but I couldn't provide specific examples as that's not my field of expertise.\n\nHowever, former slaves did at times find themselves in unique situations that allowed them to subvert the standard order.\n\nIn 1768, the 29th Regiment of Foot was dispatched by the Crown to occupy Boston. The 29th had a tradition of using slaves or former slaves as drummers. In the British army of the eighteenth century, it was the drummers who delievered corporal punishment. Much to the chagrin of the Bostonians, whenever a white soldier was convicted of a crime, he would be stripped to his waist, tied to crossed halberds, and publicly whipped by a black man.", "created_utc": 1352739598, "distinguished": null, "id": "c708guq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/132hfa/is_there_any_other_point_in_history_where_former/c708guq/", "score": 9 }, { "body": "The Haitian Revolution of the late 18th and Early 19th Century. Took Santo Domingo from a French Slave Colony to the Independent country of Haiti. Wasn't quite as simple as that of course but I believe it fits your criteria. \n\nsource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution (and my undergraduate Atlantic World class this semester. Yay for education)", "created_utc": 1352740964, "distinguished": null, "id": "c708u5d", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/132hfa/is_there_any_other_point_in_history_where_former/c708u5d/", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Slavery in many premodern societies in the Islamic world was practiced differently, such that slaves were very, very often situated automatically at the pinnacle of society by virtue of their ownership by important people, ie, the monarch. They or their heirs were not only equal to everybody else, but superior.\n\nThere are hundreds of examples. Sebuktekin, slave-soldier for the Samanid dynasty of eastern Iran, revolted to become the founder of his own even more important dynasty, the Ghaznavids. The Mamluks, a population of slave soldiers for the Ayyubids in Egypt, took control of the reins of government to begin their own regime -- which continued to draw its manpower from newly-purchased or captured slaves, never becoming hereditary. The elite of the Ottoman Empire, during its classical period, was staffed almost entirely by enslaved individuals captured from the Balkans. Much of the personnel of the Safavid state of Iran were slaves of the shah. \n\nIn all of these cases, the slaves were in a real sense the ones in control. When they were freed, they remained in the social elite. And their children were automatically free.\n\nA story I mentioned here before is that of Sultan Barquq, who was born somewhere in the Caucasus, was captured by raiders as a child and sold in to slavery in Egypt, where he quickly rose among the ranks of Mamluk slave-soldiers and was eventually became next Mamluk sultan. Sultan Barquq, after taking office in one of the world's richest lands, invited his biological father from the Caucasus to Egypt to see what his son had become. He held a massive festival for his poor shepherd dad, who had never known wealth and didn't of course speak Arabic. ", "created_utc": 1352768872, "distinguished": null, "id": "c70gmte", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/132hfa/is_there_any_other_point_in_history_where_former/c70gmte/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Well for Latin America, I would recommend you start with *1491* and *Born in Blood and Fire*. Both are good, readable, and affordable introductory texts. But really, you can't go wrong at the beginning of learning about a place as big and diverse as Latin America by going to your local library and seeing what they have and what catches your eye. Probably early on in learning about a place, you won't want to read heavy monographs. There are lots of interesting popular history books on Latin America available at your local book store or as ebooks. If you get bored and feel like you've gotten the gist of the book, put it down and find another; many history books aren't written to be read cover-to-cover. Maybe as you read, you'll find a geographic area, time period, or theme that you want to read more about. Then just follow down that worm hole like I did!", "created_utc": 1502893438, "distinguished": null, "id": "dlpbu6y", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6s6gh4/looking_for_help_to_start_studying_latin_american/dlpbu6y/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Although still a work in progress, [this section of the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/africanamerican) and [this one as well](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/us_history#wiki_american_civil_rights) would likely be good strarting places for you, although others will hopefully be able to add more.", "created_utc": 1513181188, "distinguished": null, "id": "dr6xz25", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7jh7r3/were_african_americans_treated_as_poorly_in_20th/dr6xz25/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "Early on there were attempts, but there were a few key factors that made Native-American slavery never take on in the English Colonies/United States. \n \nFirst among these was disease. European diseases had been introduced to many parts of Africa earlier on as part of the extensive trade network between Europe/Asia/Africa. African mortality was thus lower than Native-Americans who had never been exposed. \n \nTo give an idea of how devastating this was, between 1616 and 1619 the Native population of coastal Massachusetts is estimated to have dropped from approximately 23,000 to a few hundred. This trend repeated itself heavily across the colonies. \n \nNext, it was near impossible to keep them from running away. If a Native American decided to flee your field and head into the woods, they could very likely communicate with others in the area and meld into another community. Chances of recovery were slim. \n \nAfrican slaves greatly changed this. They generally would not know the language, could not hide in Native American populations, and were unfamiliar with the local terrain outside of their specific areas. \n\nFinally, and a point worth mentioning, is that Native Americans would be taken as slaves from time to time. In the case of the ship Desire, the first recording slaves being brought to New England, some of these Native American slaves were shipped to the West Indies and traded for African Slaves. \n\nFinally there was the economic impact. In order to enslave Native Americans would require conflict on a massive scale that would quickly drive up the cost of colonial defense. On the other hand, African slaves were a market commodity that was already established, and cost less for upkeep in the long term.", "created_utc": 1469938483, "distinguished": null, "id": "d5xywl3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ven7x/during_early_us_history_why_werent_native/d5xywl3/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said, but [this biographical sketch](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/o452qh/new_snoo_sunday_introducing_viola_snoomond_snoose/h2fav8h/) of Viola Desmond, by /u/sarahagilbert , might be of interest for you.", "created_utc": 1664131231, "distinguished": null, "id": "ipver2s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/xm77bv/before_the_1960s_how_were_black_canadians_treated/ipver2s/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "More can always be said but [this older answer ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fxwcbd/if_someone_who_was_enslaved_grew_old_or_was/fmxzx8v/) touches on some of this so might be of interest.", "created_utc": 1683394722, "distinguished": null, "id": "jj41whe", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/139r5pe/henry_louis_gates_jr_states_in_not_uncommon_cases/jj41whe/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "ሰላም! At least I remember being taught the brief facts as you outlined in school, so I'm not sure it's entirely forgotten. But ultimately that's a discussion of perceptions of reality based on personal experience. Although I would agree it rarely makes any appearance in media.\n\nThis isn't simply an issue of Ethiopia, but broader as African history as a whole. Historically African history had been neglected. To repeat an oft-used quote: Africa has not history. Now, as with much of Hegel, this doesn't exactly mean what you think it means, but you can get the gist of the line of thinking. When the history of Africa is brought up in media it is almost always in an Atlantic-centric, often African-American (but Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, etc. exist too) perspective -- almost never is it actually *African* history. Ethiopia isn't the only place which gets ignored in this, all of Africa except very select coastal sites are obscured in this narrative.\n\nThere is a pretty substantial historiographical division between African-American/Atlanticist/Black Diaspora History and African History. Black History of depends on the practitioner, but in practice it is almost always closer to the former than the latter. The two groups don't always talk much, and when they do they take such different starting points (and have different training) they tend not to agree. The African-American/Atlanticist historians are a much larger and better funded group than the African historians. Whilst it is comparatively easily to 'sell' African-American/Atlanticist history as bringing the history of a substantial component of the population to light -- and therefore important part of diversity -- convincing people they should learn about long-gone African polities which spoke languages most will never hear in locations most will never visit and whose impact on the wider world is hardly self-evident is a much more difficult proposition.\n\nEthiopia, as does basically all of Africa, gets shortchanged in this trade-off. Because Ethiopia was the only one to avoid European colonization it actually gets mentioned far more than other African polities like Sokoto, Segou, Wassoulou, Kongo, Zanzibar, etc., but it cannot be fitted into an Atlanticist perspective except in an intellectual history of Pan-Africanism, and even then it was very much a one-way connection in contrast to more famous Pan-Africanism in colonial Senegal and Ghana. Its global ties do not end in the Western world in the Black Diaspora (although Ethiopia exported slaves too, just not to the West). It can be fit as an aside into Middle Eastern History and Indian Ocean History, constitutes a major part of African History, but just doesn't fit into the Atlanticist History through which all media of Africa is understood in US.", "created_utc": 1683282455, "distinguished": null, "id": "jiy1x9d", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1386p3r/why_is_that_despite_its_importance_to_to_both/jiy1x9d/", "score": 13 }, { "body": "Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. **Please [Read Our Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) before you comment in this community**. Understand that [rule breaking comments get removed](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/h8aefx/rules_roundtable_xviii_removed_curation_and_why/).\n\n#Please consider **[Clicking Here for RemindMeBot](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1386p3r/why_is_that_despite_its_importance_to_to_both/%5D%0A%0ARemindMe!%202%20days)** as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, **[Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=AHMessengerBot&subject=Subscribe&message=!subscribe)**.\n\nWe thank you for your interest in this *question*, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to RemindMeBot, consider [using our Browser Extension](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6dzi7/tired_of_clicking_to_find_only_removed_comments/), or getting the [Weekly Roundup](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=subredditsummarybot&subject=askhistorians+weekly&message=x). In the meantime our [Twitter](https://twitter.com/askhistorians), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/askhistorians/), and [Sunday Digest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) feature excellent content that has already been written!\n\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskHistorians) if you have any questions or concerns.*", "created_utc": 1683250562, "distinguished": "moderator", "id": "jiwqw3j", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1386p3r/why_is_that_despite_its_importance_to_to_both/jiwqw3j/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "You're making a couple of assumptions, so let's get these out of the way first.\n\n1. Assumption one: \"Flatbreads are unleavened.\" Not the case – not all flatbreads are unleavened (in fact, most *are* leavened). Some are unleavened, with the dough being cooked immediately after it's made, and others are leavened with sourdough starter (or today with commercial yeast), left to ferment and rise, and only then cooked or baked.\n2. Tortillas are not traditionally made from wheat. \"Flour tortillas\" date to the early 1800s (after the introduction of wheat to Mesoamerica and Central America by European colonizers) but corn tortillas are much older, on the order of thousands of years. But tortillas are unleavened. They instead going through a different type of chemical processing (nixtamalization), which renders certain vitamins in the corn possible for the human body to absorb. \n\nFlatbreads cook more quickly than other types of bread, because they're thinner. This makes them easier to churn out when you've got a lot of people to feed. The first breads known to archaeologists date from between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago in the Levant. They were flatbreads cooked on a griddle-like surface. However, we also see evidence of conical bread from 10,000 years ago which was baked in Egypt, not in a griddle. These breads generally were leavened using a form of sourdough start, or yeast that naturally occurs during the process of fermentation. All doughs will ferment if given time before cooking.\n\nWhile the earliest breads were made in griddles, eventually we start to see ovens (like this [portable oven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oven#/media/File:MuseAcrotiriItem160-6648-1.jpg) from the 17th century BCE, or the Roman furnus/fornax, which was probably [beehive-shaped](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/88/35/83/8835837dddee28f45b6574dafef9f37a.jpg)).\n\nA lot of flatbreads are cooked on the griddle (like tortillas), rather than being baked in an oven. (Some, like flatbreads in the pita family, can be made either in an [oven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pita#/media/File:PikiWiki_Israel_30304_Events_in_Israel.jpg), or [griddled](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gyros_pita_making.jpg) on a [heated surface](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pita.jpg).)\n\nMany flatbreads are also baked in ovens like the [tandoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandoor), an urn-shaped oven where the bread is [slapped on the inside wall to cook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonis_puri#/media/File:Traditional_georgian_bread_(tonis_puri).jpg), found all over Southwest Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia, as well as into Europe and the Caucasus. \n\nFurther, you do actually find lots of flatbreads across Europe, including in northern Europe. For example:\n\n* [Bannock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannock_(food)) in Scotland – a griddled unleavened bread made from oat flour\n* [Lefse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefse) in Norway – a griddled leavened bread made from wheat flour\n* [Rieska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_bread#Rieska) in Finland – a griddled unleavened bread made from barley flour\n* [Crispbread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispbread) throughout Scandinavia – leavened flatbread made from rye, barley, wheat and/or oat flour, baked in an oven\n\nUltimately, it's question of what people are used to, what technology they had available to them (what types of oven, specifically), and what preferences developed. But everyone initially made flatbreads, and many cultures throughout the world ended up baking inside ovens, in addition to cooking bread on griddles or hot surfaces. (And that's not even getting into steamed breads, which are primarily seen in China.)", "created_utc": 1674600950, "distinguished": null, "id": "j5qwhs3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ka086/why_did_most_civilizations_in_history_with_access/j5qwhs3/", "score": 265 } ]

[ { "body": "Hi there!\n\nThanks to the mods for tagging me in this but your question isn't actually a Titanic question, it's a religious question or at least an etymological one. The phrase \"lost souls\" has no special or unique ties to Titanic, that is, it's used pretty much every time there is unnecessary death or disaster. I'd wager if you googled \"famous event lost souls\", you'd get hundreds of books, films, articles, etc etc about it. If anything, it's just how western society refers to a mass of dead and at worst- it's maybe just a generic title :)\n\nSo the word \"souls\" and \"lost souls\" pretty much appeared instantly with Titanic because it's just a common expression. It's all over the early newspapers, following memorials and masses, and literature/media since. Countless articles are available from the proceeding days, all searchable, and many using the term. I'd direct this question to someone more knowledgeable on religions and language. I'd bet it's a lot older than 1912 :)", "created_utc": 1650581509, "distinguished": null, "id": "i5ofd0m", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/u8u792/why_are_the_victims_of_the_rms_titanic_so_often/i5ofd0m/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "You were trolled by an exceedingly smart and interesting troll in this case. Kriss' essay is a clever fiction. That's all. There's nothing else to say.", "created_utc": 1678248599, "distinguished": null, "id": "jbd2wam", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/11k4jvj/did_frantz_fanon_ever_comment_on_the_wakandan/jbd2wam/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "While it may not be entirely what you're looking for, I can recommend S.C.M. Paine's *The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949*. This book envisions the Chinese Warlord Era, the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the continuation of the Chinese Civil War culminating in a communist victory as a series of inherently interlinked conflicts, with a civil war expanding into a regional war expanding into a global war, and the aftermath of all of these. While decidedly more focused on political and military history given its focus on conflict, it does do a good job of highlighting how interconnected political and military developments in China, Japan, and Korea were.", "created_utc": 1678719844, "distinguished": null, "id": "jc2apss", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/11ptb3c/books_on_regional_east_asian_history_in_the_20th/jc2apss/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "Your school would certainly have other options for textbooks, though it is hard to say whether others will editorialize more or less than the examples you provide. \n\nThis is not exactly the criticism you're looking for, but this study, a survey of history class syllabi, has a listing of some of the most popular U.S. history textbooks between 1995 and 2004. *The American Pageant* appears toward the end of the list in Table 2. \n[https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/91/4/1405/710164](https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/91/4/1405/710164) \n\n\nThe textbook also has a brief mention in this article, which reviewed many textbooks' treatment of the history of labor in the U.S.: \n[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2080215](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2080215) \n(For this one, you might be able to get full text access by searching for the article and using Google's \"full view\" tool, which will attempt take you to a site available in your location.)", "created_utc": 1673642403, "distinguished": null, "id": "j483me8", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ayj1b/published_criticism_of_the_american_pageant/j483me8/", "score": 24 }, { "body": "/u/EdHistory101 has previously answered [Who decides what goes in a history textbook?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b0rzl1/who_decides_what_goes_into_history_textbooks_and/) and [How much misinformation was in my textbooks?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rr13de/comment/hqeudnp/?context=999)", "created_utc": 1673661800, "distinguished": null, "id": "j49emnz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ayj1b/published_criticism_of_the_american_pageant/j49emnz/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "One question for me as a history student outside of the US is in how far this \"US-centric\" discussion is replayed outside the US and what other controversies (similar or not) exist all over the world. Surely different countries/regions/continents either grapple with similar topics but also have their very own, specific contemporary politics that influence how history (as a field of study) is taught and researched. IT'd be great to learn more about those as well.", "created_utc": 1661193730, "distinguished": null, "id": "ilct7pl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/wuwoum/monday_methods_politics_presentism_and_responding/ilct7pl/", "score": 71 }, { "body": "My first thought on reading Sweet lament the loss of focus on premodern history was that it probably has more to do with changes in the structure and economy of higher ed than it does with any other political or cultural concerns. Let’s be honest, American higher ed has embraced its role as the producer of an educated workforce in the context of neoliberal global economics. I teach at a small college, and I can not imagine us hiring a historian who could not offer classes that had a broad contemporary appeal with a catchy title. We are lucky to still have historians at all.", "created_utc": 1661194060, "distinguished": null, "id": "ilcu1qs", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/wuwoum/monday_methods_politics_presentism_and_responding/ilcu1qs/", "score": 101 }, { "body": "How does this compare to either Hunt's \"Against Presentism\" which Sweet cites or Degler's \"In Pursuit of American History\" as an argument against history becoming too narrowly focused?", "created_utc": 1661203480, "distinguished": null, "id": "ildhn0k", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/wuwoum/monday_methods_politics_presentism_and_responding/ildhn0k/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "Political Scientist (who reads a lot of history for my work) here. I’ll try to address some of the issues you raised and I hope its a helpful response. But I can’t attest to the specific cases you mentioned but I hope previous (and future) responses get to them.\n\nFirst I think we need to be careful with how we are defining state and stateless. In PS we often go with Max Weber’s definition as a “compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory.” I think this might be a helpful way to think about it in this case (Charles Tilly also has a popular definition, but I don’t find it contradictory to this one just slightly different… in this particular case it boils down to the same thing). In contrast a stateless society is one that does not match all of those characteristics. In this sense we can think of Feudal Europe (Some historian specializing in this time (600-1500s ish) can correct me if I am miss characterizing anything, and I also understand there was lots of variation in time and place here) as a stateless society as often multiple political organizations had legitimate use of force in a territory (eg: Church, local lord, higher lord, and king another king who also has some right such as French kings in English ruled France). The point I am trying to make here is that there many different types of stateless societies not just tribal societies as it seems the focus of the discussion was on. \n\nAlso as a side note I want to be clear that the examples of tribal societies given by OP are in no way really anarchical in the technical sense, all these societies had institutions that governed societal life. I’ll get to what I mean by institutions a little further down, but anarchy implies a lack of any governing institutions. Some anarchist ideologies define it more loosely as lack involuntary institutions but even those societies often had many involuntary practices. \n\nNext I think it’s important to address the statement about the lack of enforcement mechanisms in starless societies. Every type of society (stateless and states) has enforcement mechanisms to enforce their institutions (here I use institution as it’s often used in PS to mean any law, organization, or customary practice) some mechanisms use force (or the threat of force) and others do not, some societies have more capacity to enforce those mechanisms while others have less. It is extremely hard to have a causal link between statelessness and capacity of enforcement. In one hand we can point to modern states like the US and European states as examples of state societies that have very high capacity to enforce their laws in many cases. However that is not always the case across countries, look at weaker states in modern Africa or even early European states in the 16-18th century where the state was weak. Further there is high variance in capacity to enforce different institutions. For example the US has high capacity to enforce tax laws, but in many ways low capacity to enforce domestic abuse laws as the state often does not have information to know those laws are being broken or to prove that they were. (Just to be clear I also recognize that the judiciary sometimes is also just unwilling to enforce these things because of ideological reasons). The point here is that the link between capacity and state (or lack of) is not clear.\n\nNow to the main point. Do stateless societies also have institutions that are seen as morally incorrect to modern (usually western) observers? The clear answer is yes. Look at Feudal Europe as mentioned above for plenty of examples. More specifically are primitive or tribal societies (which is what the argument was really about it seems) free of such morally bad institutions? I find that hard to believe… and I can point to some examples such as cannibalism (and I know there’s lots of historical disagreement here but my understanding is that I did exist in one way or another in a few societies). And are such societies less likely to have these institutions? I think this is a better question without an answer that I could give… I think it’s possible but also that there is no link… I am not aware of any studies on this particular question that are convincing in one direction or the other.", "created_utc": 1670347987, "distinguished": null, "id": "iz5m03r", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/zdu8he/was_there_systemic_violence_and_barbaric_cultural/iz5m03r/", "score": 13 }, { "body": "Regarding your second question - though there's always more to be said, I've answered it before, in [Was rape really non-existent in the Pre-Columbian Americas?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gqzx2h/was_rape_really_nonexistent_in_the_precolumbian/frw3o9g/) The short version is that the claim has its own history.", "created_utc": 1670337017, "distinguished": null, "id": "iz4vd68", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/zdu8he/was_there_systemic_violence_and_barbaric_cultural/iz4vd68/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "Google has some old newspapers digitized and available for free:\n\nThe Afro-American Ledger [here](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=ztWeZN2wRXQC) and [here](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=UBnQDr5gPskC) (I don't know why they're separate)\n\n[The Atlanta Independent](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=0KrOiVmbFBYC)\n\n[The Baltimore Afro-American](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=JkxM1axsR-IC)\n\n[The Freeman](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=FIkAGs9z2eEC)\n\n[The Voice of the Fugitive](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=GO5CT2y9xrEC&dat=18520212&printsec=frontpage&hl=en), not actually a US newpaper, but a Canadian one founded by someone who escaped to Canada\n\n[The Washington Afro-American](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC)\n\nThere may be more there (edit: There definitely are more there but I'm not going add them all to the list). I also found various compilations or individual issues from Black-owned magazines and papers on Google Books eg. [here](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Voice_of_the_Negro/2KUTAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_5qH08tLuAhV0Ap0JHR0CCowQiqUDMA96BAgdEAI), [here](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Pennsylvania_Freedmen_s_Bulletin.html?id=K_9UHyFQvFEC&hl=en) and on [archive.org](https://archive.org) [here](https://archive.org/details/voiceofnegro191900kerl/page/n5/mode/2up), [here](https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22American+freedman+%28New+York%2C+N.Y.+%3A+1866%29%22), [here](https://archive.org/search.php?query=Pennsylvania%20Freedmen%27s%20Bulletin). This method works best when a) you know what you're looking for and have a title and b) when the papers are old, out of print, and in the public domain. It's not very consistent over time and some issues may be missing, but it's also free and doesn't require any subscription service", "created_utc": 1612535024, "distinguished": null, "id": "gm48e01", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lcg00w/are_there_archives_for_black_newspapers/gm48e01/", "score": 4 }, { "body": "The best way to access these archives is through ProQuest ([https://about.proquest.com/products-services/news-newspapers/pq-hist-news.html](https://about.proquest.com/products-services/news-newspapers/pq-hist-news.html)) This is a subscription service, but many libraries provide access to this service. If you scroll down the list, you will see listings for \"Black Newspapers\". The \"Chicago Defender\" was probably the most prominent as it played a leading role in providing information to Black Americans during The Great Migration.", "created_utc": 1612447879, "distinguished": null, "id": "glzlhnk", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lcg00w/are_there_archives_for_black_newspapers/glzlhnk/", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Beyond ProQuest, Accessible Archives also has a variety of these papers: http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/african-american-newspapers/ (this has personal subscriptions available.) I do not know if the large newspapers.com system from Ancestry includes any such papers--the large ones I know, of which the *Defender* is as /u/ttobaben indicates a key bellwether, aren't represented.\n\nFor magazines, these are also often subscription; EBSCO holds the rights to *Ebony*, for example, and I've not known them to do personal subscriptions that are at all affordable.\n\nFor comics, I'm not exactly sure; that's a great question, and I think we do have a comics historian floating around among the flairs, but I can't find them from a cursory search.\n\nThese of course all pale in comparison to the large microfilm collections that exist in a number of university libraries and in the USA at the Library of Congress (in hardcopy and film)--but those aren't exactly usable at present. Often by appealing to that fact, you can get temporary access to more expensive institutional resources especially at public universities or state libraries (if in the USA).", "created_utc": 1612458331, "distinguished": null, "id": "gm0ajk5", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lcg00w/are_there_archives_for_black_newspapers/gm0ajk5/", "score": 6 } ]

[ { "body": "Mom i did a thing!", "created_utc": 1588881151, "distinguished": null, "id": "fpsx885", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gf83d3/announcing_the_best_of_april_award_winners/fpsx885/", "score": 8 }, { "body": "Haha wow, thanks! And congrats to the other winners!", "created_utc": 1588872479, "distinguished": null, "id": "fpsf942", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gf83d3/announcing_the_best_of_april_award_winners/fpsf942/", "score": 6 }, { "body": "Some incredible answers and fantastic writing. Well done to /u/J-Force, /u/WelfOnTheShelf, /u/wilymaker", "created_utc": 1588877393, "distinguished": null, "id": "fpspgsz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gf83d3/announcing_the_best_of_april_award_winners/fpspgsz/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "A kind of methodological question, do you think culture is \"real\" or is it created by observation? Given that \"culture\" imposes a uniformity on the lifeworlds of innumerable diverse individuals, can you actually talk about, for example, French culture independent if talking about French culture?", "created_utc": 1436808346, "distinguished": null, "id": "ct1wi45", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/ct1wi45/", "score": 16 }, { "body": "For everyone: why the resurgence of interest in material culture on the part of historians as of late? From the History of the World in a 100 Objects to Jane Bennet's *Vital Matter*, 'things' are pretty hot in the academy. Is it a desire to sidestep some of the messiness of texts, which were so thoroughly problematized by three decades of theory? Is it a move to make our methods and ambit more interdiscplinary? A simple matter of pragmatically working with a broader array of sources without unduly privileging text?", "created_utc": 1436802127, "distinguished": null, "id": "ct1sh0n", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/ct1sh0n/", "score": 13 }, { "body": "/u/itsallfolklore How do you work with oral histories and orality in folklore? I understand there has been a great deal of critique of early pioneers in the field such as the Grimm Brothers for writing down, well, essentially their own stories (middle class) dressed up in peasant clothes. How do folklorists deal with alternate or different folktales.\n\nAlso, I've been reading into erotic folk stories lately, any pointers you might have for me there?", "created_utc": 1436800231, "distinguished": null, "id": "ct1rc5x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d4shs/get_cultured_massive_cultural_history_panel_ama/ct1rc5x/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "I don't know anything regarding STDs, but the incest prevalence question has been raised in other contexts as well. One of the most controversial was Jeffrey Masson's _The Assault on Truth_, in which he argued that Freud suppressed theories about childhood sexual abuse as being the cause of certain types of mental illness, because Freud couldn't accept (or was pressured not to accept) that child abuse was prevalent amongst the wealthy Viennese clients he tended to. (Janet Malcolm wrote a book about this entire controversy, _In the Freud Archives_, which is itself very interesting.) The conclusions are controversial, and played strongly into the \"recovered memory\" fad of the 1980s, but, anyway, it seemed germane to this very interesting conversation. The Masson affair highlights in particular how politicized _both_ sides of this kind of question can be. ", "created_utc": 1370362465, "distinguished": null, "id": "cac09r2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fnkzw/i_heard_that_the_misconception_of_being_able_to/cac09r2/", "score": 239 }, { "body": "In her book [The Gospel of Germs](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Gospel-Germs-Microbe-American/dp/0674357086/ref=pd_sim_b_32), Nancy Tomes gives an excellent some excellent food for thought about the relationship between the public, public health efforts, ongoing scientific research, and social stigmas in the context of the early 20th US. She focuses most on tuberculosis, but infectious epidemic disease in general interests her for this period.\n\nFirst, a bit of background. Microbiology in the early 20th century, had a [unique relationship to the public through the media](http://www.amazon.ca/Picturing-Medical-Progress-Pasteur-Polio/dp/0813545765/ref=pd_sim_b_44) for a couple reasons. First, the showy self-aggrandizement of Louis Pasteur and the drama of his rivalry with Robert Koch fascinated the reading public around the world for pretty much all of the previous half-century (if you start the beginning of that from Pasteur's discovery about why some wines spoiled and others did not, I believe in the 1860s). Second, the discoveries of microbiology in this period fit a sort of narrative pattern that non-specialists can appreciate. Rather than 30 years of research building into a conclusion that most people in a given field suspected, microbiology had \"breakthroughs\": sudden shifts in understanding which fundamentally reorganize inquiry in the field while simultaneously offering concrete solutions to long-term problems. Third, these breakthroughs occurred during the Progressive Era, which (to sum up briefly and poorly) had a lot of activists willing and able to publicize scientific findings for the betterment of society - and, even outside the formal realm of public health, \"hygiene\" was a broad interest among reformers of the period. Moreover, the interests of the Progressive reformers grew out of a period of sanitarians interested in civil engineering and clean water/sewer systems, in part responding to the cholera outbreaks of the 19th century (and John Snow's convincing hypothesis in the 1850s that cholera was spread through drinking water which mixed with feces, which Koch verified in the 1880s). \n\nCircling back around the Tomes and sexually transmitted diseases: One of the things that Tomes does really well is show how scientific research was interpreted in its greater cultural context, and also how quickly certain discoveries stuck in the public's mind but not others. Science was showing at every turn new and unexpected methods of transmission. Previously uncontroversial events, like flies landing on surfaces that touches food, were suddenly extremely dangerous. What else, then, might be shown to be dangerous? \n\nFor example, the discovery that tubercules could exist in dust motivated anxiety about women keeping homes properly clean. Subsequent discoveries that those tubercules were not particularly effective at spreading tuberculosis (the virus becomes weak when outside the body for too long) did not get translated into public health rhetoric or \"common sense\" knowledge about disease prevention. Why? Well, one reason is that advancements (and debates) in knowledge took place at a dizzying pace, and it was difficult for scientists (much less those who did not read scientific publications) to be fully aware of which position most matched the evidence at a given time. Another reason is that microbiological research seemed to verify every anxieties people had about modern living: the danger of living closely with strangers in urban areas (especially immigrants with their non-American hygienic habits), and anxieties about changing responsibilities of women/mothers for keeping their families safe from disease. \n\nSexually transmitted diseases had a special place in the study of epidemic disease (and, I would argue, still does) because the modes of transmission invited moral condemnation. Tomes has an excellent example where a respectable woman with symptoms of syphilis in her mouth goes to a doctor, who diagnosed her as getting syphilis from putting pins in her mouth at her job as a clerk in a clothing store. Now, we know now that syphilis is extremely unlikely to be transmitted this way; in fact, this woman most likely was performing oral sex. But it was too awkward and discomfiting for her doctor to say that this was a possibility. Given the ongoing discussions about what was possible for disease transmission, and the constantly shifting scientific conclusions on disease etiology, it was simply easier not to challenge the patient's claim to respectability and say \"well, it is possible it was transmitted in this other way.\"\n\nFinally, OP, I believe the article which originally spurred your interest in the topic is based upon a dissertation. For other discussions of early 20th century microbiology, culture, and immigration, I strongly recommend reading Judith Walzer Leavitt's [excellent book on Typhoid Mary](http://books.google.ca/books?id=Fow5cxqJxukC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) to get a sense of science, society, gender, and discussions of personal responsibility. You have cited cultural history sources too, so Priscilla Wald's [study of contagion in the 20th century](http://books.google.ca/books?id=O8F6JAZAImIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false), which also discusses Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary), might prove helpful for getting at some of the issues related to the interplay of culture and science.", "created_utc": 1370394255, "distinguished": null, "id": "cacc0tl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fnkzw/i_heard_that_the_misconception_of_being_able_to/cacc0tl/", "score": 62 }, { "body": "Halfway through reading your question I forgot I was reading a question and thought I was reading a particularly comprehensive and well-sourced answer. Thank you for your interesting post!", "created_utc": 1370451516, "distinguished": null, "id": "cacqcdh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fnkzw/i_heard_that_the_misconception_of_being_able_to/cacqcdh/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Reposting an earlier comment of mine:\n\n>It seems most historians (at least on this subreddit) consider the Transatlantic slave trade to be different from other forms of slavery, due to the ideology of racism and the negative effects it had on Africa. In [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/44a46l/are_there_any_records_of_white_people_being/) answer, which might be the closest to your question, u/sunagainstgold and others compare the Transatlantic and the Barbary slave trades. For comparisons with the Arab/Transsaharan slave trade, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gv0ug/it_is_estimated_that_a_minimum_of_18_million/) u/Iguana_on_a_stick and others link to yet more earlier answers and discuss the question. And in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0te5p/how_did_the_ottoman_system_of_slavery_work/) thread u/Zooasaurus explains how the Ottoman system of slavery worked.", "created_utc": 1669050539, "distinguished": null, "id": "ix8trap", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/z0j6u1/why_does_slavery_of_africansamerican_slave_trade/ix8trap/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Discrimination against Hispanics existed, but the racism was never identical to the de jure discrimination that African Americans endured. Prior to the civil rights era, it was more beneficial for Hispanics to seek integration and legal recognition as whites than to pursue protection as a separate racial group. Unlike African Americans, Hispanics in the U.S. had a notable history of fighting for their civil liberties by fighting for their legal status as Whites within the racist American social structure, rather than fighting for racial equality between all races. \n\nIn 1942, for example, an Indiana Appellate Court analyzed the whiteness of Mexicans in Inland Steel Co. v. Barcena. 39 N.E. 2d 800 (Ind. 1942). The Court cited the Encyclopedia Britannica as a source claiming 20% of Mexicans were white, 40% were Indian, and the rest were of mixed race. The Court’s observation reflects a key problem of race categorization of Hispanics, in that Hispanics could not be categorized racially based on national origin any more than Americans in Mexico could have been categorized as black or white based on their last name or country of origin. \n\nLatin Americans, like Americans, were racially diverse. A unifying Latino identity among Hispanics of all colors did not supersede the white racial identity of many Hispanics until the civil rights era brought real benefits to the recognition of a person’s minority status. Moreover, Hispanics possessed an advantage on an international level that African-Americans lacked. Namely, they had relevant foreign countries advocating for Hispanics in the United States and pressuring Federal Government to recognize Hispanics as White.\n\nIn In re Rodriguez, a Federal Court analyzed the legal whiteness of a Mexican immigrant seeking naturalization. 81. F. 337 (W.D. Tex. 1887). At the time, naturalization was limited to blacks and whites. The Rodriguez Court observed that the petitioner was likely not white by an anthropologist’s scientific criteria. However, the Rodriguez Court went on to note a number of treaties entered into between the United States and Mexico in which the right of Mexicans to become U.S. citizens was clearly established. This persuaded the Rodriguez Court that Mexicans were White as a matter of law, at least insofar as immigration was concerned.\n\nIn 1929, a group of urban, middle-class Latinos in Corpus Christi founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to further the civil rights and assimilation of Mexican Americans. The group restricted membership to U.S. Citizens and stressed knowledge of the English language. A 1932 article published in the organization’s newspaper bore the title “Are Texas-Mexicans ‘Americans’?” and bore obvious racial prejudice favoring the idea of whiteness. The article claimed Mexicans were “the first white race to inhabit this vast empire of ours.” \n\nEarly LULAC members saw themselves as part of the white race and fought the insult of being associated with or segregated like blacks. However, the impetus of the organization was not originally for the advancement of all colored peoples, but for the identification of Latinos as constituent members of the dominant racial group in America. This agenda was pursued with mixed success throughout the first half of the 20th century.\n\nIn Independent School District v. Salvatierra, the Texas Court of Appeals established as a matter of law that Mexicans could not be segregated in schools from “other White races, merely or solely because they are Mexicans.” 33 S.W.2d 790 (Texas Civ. App. 1930). However, the Court also ruled that segregation was permissible based on language difficulties, drawing a line for practical purposes between assimilated Hispanics and those who still spoke Spanish at home.\n\nRecognition of the legal whiteness of Hispanics certainly imbued them with certain rights denied blacks. This legal white status encouraged assimilation and the abandonment of their linguistic and cultural heritage. However, whiteness as a matter of law did not protect against private, cultural discrimination, much in the same way that the First Amendment did not protect against private religious discrimination against American Jews and Catholics. \n\nDespite the aspirations of self-identified white Hispanics, discrimination against Hispanics was very real, although localized and varying greatly between regions. In 1951, the Texas Supreme Court held that the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries was not a violation of the 14th Amendment based on the precedent that Mexicans were white people of Spanish descent, and that Anglo-only juries were therefore composed of their peers. Sanchez v. State, 243 S.W.2d 700 (1951). This precedent was eventually overturned three years later when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the issue in Hernandez v. Texas. 347 U.S. 475 (1954).\n\nIn 1954, the Warren Court recognized that Hispanics could be a minority in practice despite legal recognition as Whites. The decision was based on overwhelming evidence that Hispanic last names had been systematically avoided in the random jury selection in the subject judicial district for as long as records had been kept. This recognized that local prejudice and cultural, private discrimination was actionable and overturned the monochromatic interpretation of the 14th Amendment. The fight to be white was thereafter greatly diminished, and the Latin American community’s fight for civil rights became parallel and complimentary to African-Americans’ fight.\n\nAn aside about Cubans and Puerto Ricans:\n\nAside from the Mexican-American experience, America also has experienced large influxes of Hispanics from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Those countries had slave-based plantation economies and did not formally abolish slavery until 1886 and 1873, respectively. Neither Cuba nor Puerto Rico developed the de jure Jim Crow segregation of the U.S., largely due to the universality of the Roman Catholic Church's and its recognition of interracial marriages as valid. But when Plessy v. Ferguson established “separate but equal” as the law of the land, both islands were still made up of white plantation-owning elites, their former slaves, and the diverse groups in between. Neither society was an egalitarian paradise free from native forms of racism, despite the abundance of intermixing between whites, blacks, and the Taino natives who bore children to the conquistadors.\n\nDue to the racial similarity of those countries to the American South, the racial classification of Cubans in segregated Florida would have matched the treatment of other native Floridian's of the same skin color. The racial classification of Cuban immigrants was never litigated because the naturalization acts of the era allowed for the naturalization of whites and those of African heritage, and Cubans would have qualified as one or the other.\n\nPuerto Ricans received citizenship through the Jones Act during World War I and were likewise racially characterized based on their physical appearance. Hair and skin color would have determined racial perception rather than national origin.\n\nSources: \nFoley, Neil. \"Becoming Hispanic: Mexican Americans and Whiteness.\" White Privilege (2002): 49-57.\nThe Legal Construction of Race: Mexican-Americans and Whiteness, October 2000\n\n", "created_utc": 1485565832, "distinguished": null, "id": "dd02y2g", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qhndf/what_was_life_like_for_hispanicslatinos_in/dd02y2g/", "score": 34 }, { "body": "Did people before the 20th century really see 'hispanics' as non whites? Spaniards and Portugues are seen as white here in Europe, when did the distinction start in NA?", "created_utc": 1485545505, "distinguished": null, "id": "dczmwfd", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qhndf/what_was_life_like_for_hispanicslatinos_in/dczmwfd/", "score": 16 }, { "body": "As a follow up question, how did Japanese-Americans fare during segregation?", "created_utc": 1485590532, "distinguished": null, "id": "dd0g90g", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qhndf/what_was_life_like_for_hispanicslatinos_in/dd0g90g/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "I'd recommend everyone take a moment on days like today where you can feel history classes of the future studying the events we watch to take time to just record some thoughts you have and your reactions as events unfold. The one thing I have learned since starting my own exploration of my ancestry is that I would love to know how my ancestors reacted to the events of their time. As an archaeologist I can tell you there is nothing quite like a first hand account, even if it is biased it still is a great glimpse into the past. But above all, be safe and let's hope further historic moments are ones we all can take pride in as an end to this turbulent chapter in our history.", "created_utc": 1609988337, "distinguished": null, "id": "gids0tm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ks082p/meta_todays_sedition_at_the_united_states_capitol/gids0tm/", "score": 252 }, { "body": "Argentina endured through six different coup d’etats in the span of the twentieth century. I’ve spoken about the last military dictatorship [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f5t8rn/how_was_state_terrorism_perpetrated_in_argentina/fi11pis/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), a brutal dictatorship that disappeared, tortured and murdered over thirty thousand people. As soon as the democratically elected president Estela Martínez de Perón was removed from office, the military junta eliminated the National Constitution and Congress, effectively erasing every single human right and constitutional guarantee in a single, swift action.\n\nToday however, I’d like to talk about the first coup of the century: the 1930 one. On the morning of September 6th, a group of military officers, opposition civil servants and businessmen led by general José Uriburi seized power, removing president Hipólito Yrigoyen from office four years before his term was due to be over. With Uriburu’s self-proclamation as provisional president, came a period of fraudulent presidencies that we’ve come to know as the Infamous Decade. \n\nUriburu’s government was marked by an attempt to construct a corporatist State framework that would attempt to mitigate the effects of the 1930 global economic crisis, by transferring all political power and policy-making authority to corporations favourable to the ruling oligarchical class, to which Uriburu answered. Their aim? To restore said ruling class to its former glory, to the final decades of the nineteenth century, when the oligarchy led the country by means of electoral fraud, voter suppression and intimidation, in a period known as the 80s Generation. Following the profoundly positivistic and social darwinistic ideological structure of the 80s Generation, the new oligarchy believed firmly in controlling the population through fear and repression, in order to restore what they understood to be the primary bedrock of “order and progress”: a profoundly strict and suffocating social hierarchy through which the popular masses would exist under a constant state of subalternity, ignorance and illiteracy, allowing the ruling elite, the proverbial chosen ones, only people righteous and rational enough to rule, to enrich themselves while commanding every aspect of the political and economical structure of the country. And so, Uriburu started rounding up militants and affiliated members of the Civic Radical Union, Yrigoyen’s party, and incarcerating them, attempting to change the Constitution in the process in order to eliminate the individual, secret and universal suffrage instituted by Law 8871 of 1912, also known as Law Sáenz Peña, and replace it with an electoral system controlled by corporations. However, his corporatist attempt failed, and the economic crisis worsened to the point where he was forced to resign in 1932, even after having suppressed and cancelled several provincial elections.\n\nEven if the corporatist project had failed miserably, the oligarchy hadn’t given up. All through Uriburu’s de facto presidency, they had prepared a new alliance of right wing parties (including a dissenting faction of Yrigoyen’s Radical Civic Union called the Anti-personalist Radical Civic Union), called La Concordancia, The Concordance. Through the following decade, the Concordance ruled the country through fraud and voter suppression, bankrupting Argentina in the process of enriching themselves. Arguably the most notable example of this was the Roca-Runcimann pact, signed during Agustín Justo’s de facto presidency. The treaty secured a minimum export quota of three hundred and ninety thousand tons of frozen meat to the United Kingdom, in exchange for 85% of said meat to be exclusively processed in British-owned frigorifics installed in different parts of Argentina, and also in exchange of Argentina committing to only buying the entirety of its coal requirements directly from Britain. As a result, Argentina developed a long lasting dependency relationship with the UK, which impacted heavily on the country’s ability to industrialize and advance technologically in one of its main productive sectors, husbandry.\n\nI could go on forever about the Infamous Decade, but I’d like to point out one more thing. During the de facto presidency of Robert Ortiz, who ruled from 1938 to 1940, a secret law was issued, Circular N°11, which stated that Argentine consuls ought to\n\n>negar la visa aún a título de turista o pasajero de tránsito a toda persona que fundadamente se considere que abandona o ha abandonado su país de origen como indeseable o expulsado, cualquiera sea el motivo de su expulsión.\n\nMeaning\n\n>deny visas, even if asked for under tourism or passenger in transit to any and all persons who can be considered to have abandoned their country of origin after having been branded as an undesirable or expelled, whichever the reason for said branding.\n\nGee, I seem to remember a certain country that in 1938 was very much into branding certain ethnicities as undesirables, many of whom tried their very best to escape and seek refuge in other, more tolerant countries. But alas, the Infamous Decade was as ideologically fascist as the Nazis. They just didn’t get the chance to enact a genocide on any people. Lucky me I guess, my native ancestors probably wouldn’t have been able to survive *two* genocides in one generation. My Jewish ancestors barely survived their genocides. Anyhow.\n\nInterestingly enough, the Infamous Decade was ended abruptly by yet another coup, which deposed de facto president Ramón Castillo and instituted a provisional military government led first by Pedro Ramírez (1943-1944) and then by Edelmiro Farrell (1944-1946). Farrell called for elections to be organized in 1945, the first free, democratic elections since Yrigoyen won in 1928. And along came president Juan Domingo Perón, who had been part of the military coup of 43, and had worked as Secretary of Labour and Social Security, Minister of War and Vice President under Farrell.\n\nPerón was overthrown in 1955, three years before his second presidential term was over. And so another dictatorship came along, which lasted until 1958. And then, democratically elect Frondizi was removed by yet another military coup, led by a civilian this time, José María Guido, in 1962. That one lasted a whole year! And then, barely three years later, yet another democratically elected president, Arturo Illia, was also removed by yet another coup. These officers called themselves the Argentine Revolution, and they created a Statute that was positioned alongside the Constitution in hierarchical legal terms, but in reality effectively replaced the Constitution for all intents and purposes. During this period, the three de facto presidents, Onganía, Levingston and Lanusse, did their very best to erase Perón’s Justicialist Party from the face of the country, persecuting, arresting, torturing and forcing into exile any and all sympathizers of the movement. And yet, this dictatorship was also over eventually. Their authoritarianism became too much for the country to stand. Amidst several armed insurrections by peronist armed organizations, the military was forced to call for elections, in which Héctor Cámpora, a long time ally of Perón, won the presidency. Cámpora then stepped down after his inauguration, calling for new elections in which Perón, newly returned from his exile in Spain, was elected president for a third time, with his third wife, Estela Martínez de Perón, as his Vice President.\n\nAnd we come full circle. Perón died soon after, in 1974, and his Vice President succeeded him. With a politically neophyte president, perceived as weak and lacking enough charisma to garner the level of support her husband had had, the military and the ruling oligarchy saw yet another opportunity to seize power. See the pattern yet? And so, on March 24th, 1976, Jorge Rafael Videla communicated to the country that the armed forces were now in control of the government. And they remained in control until popular unrest and economic debacle forced them to call for elections in 1983.\n\nSo here we are. I was born after democracy had already been restored, but my family lived through it, and survived. My grandfather was kidnapped, tortured and held prisoner by the military in 1977. He bore the marks of the torture by electrocution they inflicted on his body until his death a few weeks ago, and I tell his story with pride. My country lived through more turmoil in less than a century than others live in several generations. And we have survived all of it. We are still standing. \n\nAre there those who would deny the crimes of the dictatorships? Of course. As a historian I face them every day, even here, each and every time I speak about these issues I get attacked by those who would downplay, justify and deny the atrocities committed by de facto governments. But I will continue to share these historical events, because it is my duty to every one of you, and every one of mine. \n\nWhere there is power, there is resistance.", "created_utc": 1609977942, "distinguished": null, "id": "gid5g5h", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ks082p/meta_todays_sedition_at_the_united_states_capitol/gid5g5h/", "score": 1498 }, { "body": "To all the residents of the District of Columbia and surrounding states, please stay safe tonight.", "created_utc": 1609976677, "distinguished": null, "id": "gid2oxy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ks082p/meta_todays_sedition_at_the_united_states_capitol/gid2oxy/", "score": 4321 } ]

[ { "body": "The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland describe an expedition undertaken by several important figures in the Great Heathen Army (possibly some of Ragnar Lothbrok's sons) after their conquest of York around the year 867. Almost immediately after their victory, these vikings sailed south from Britain and Ireland and wound up raiding and plundering the Spanish coast until, at some point, they had reached Africa (the annals are sort of unclear where exactly in Africa this is; you have to keep in mind that in the medieval Irish imagination, the geography of the Atlantic world was laid out pretty differently than our own conception of it).\n\nUpon reaching the African coast, the vikings engage a local force in battle before making off with a bounty of African slaves:\n\n\n>While he was saying that, they saw the Mauritanian forces coming towards them, and when the son who spoke the above words saw that, he leaped suddenly into the battle, and attacked the king of the Mauritanians, and gave [him] a blow with a great sword and cut off his hand. There was hard fighting on both sides in this battle, and neither of them won the victory from the other in that battle. But all returned to camp, after many among them had been slain. However, they challenged each other to come to battle the next day.\n\n>The king of the Mauritanians escaped from the camp and fled in the night after his hand had been cut off. When the morning came, the Norwegians seized their weapons and readied themselves firmly and bravely for the battle. The Mauritanians, however, when they noticed that their king had departed, fled after they had been terribly slain. **Thereupon the Norwegians swept across the country, and they devastated and burned the whole land. Then they brought a great host of them captive with them to Ireland, i.e. those are the black men. For Mauri is the same as nigri; 'Mauritania' is the same as nigritudo**. Hardly one in three of the Norwegians escaped, between those who were slain, and those who drowned in the Gaditanian Straits. **Now those black men remained in Ireland for a long time.** Mauritania is located across from the Balearic Islands.\n\nWhat was the fate of these \"black men\" in Ireland? They may have been sold from the slave market in Dublin to Irish lords or wealthy commoners in the interior where they would have performed pastoral labour such as shepherding flocks. This kind of prolific plundering and slave-taking made Dublin one of the most important trading towns (with the largest slave market) in all of Western Europe during the Viking Age, which means that the Africans captured by those vikings could have been sold to a buyer anywhere in Northern Europe. It's quite possible that those Africans could have ended up in York, Scotland, Scandinavia or even Iceland!", "created_utc": 1502816308, "distinguished": null, "id": "dlnsc96", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6tu1lt/tuesday_trivia_in_1773_king_louis_xv_gave_his/dlnsc96/", "score": 52 }, { "body": "OP and only comment so far are about people forcibly captured and brought to Europe. While I embrace the spirit of the topic, is it intellectually honest to refer to slaves and captives as \"Europeans of color\"?", "created_utc": 1502848905, "distinguished": null, "id": "dlomftk", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6tu1lt/tuesday_trivia_in_1773_king_louis_xv_gave_his/dlomftk/", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Showing up late to the party to show off [England's Immigrants!](https://www.englandsimmigrants.com/) This little database is the University of York's medievalists' baby, and it's a spread of every tax taken from persons of foreign birth from 1330 to 1550. Besides being a wealth of information on the demographics of immigrants in the later middle ages, it shows off a number of Europeans of color who settled in England long enough to be taxed! Here are a few of the highlights:\n\n* Jacobus Black, 1484, 'Indian'\n* Benedictus and Antonia Calaman, 1483, 'Indian'\n* Luke de la Ark, 1541, from Turkey\n\n'Indian' here is a general term for anyone living in what we now call the Middle East, and everything east of that. A few more are not PoC in the strict sense, but Jewish people living in England after the expulsion, such as Simon Jude, 1441. The university gave a presentation on this exact subject with a lot more examples than I could find in just a cursory search of a few keywords, including a large number of other Jews and people identified as Saracens.", "created_utc": 1502877790, "distinguished": null, "id": "dlp2amj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6tu1lt/tuesday_trivia_in_1773_king_louis_xv_gave_his/dlp2amj/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "Hello! Well, I know literally nothing about Native American history apart from the names of some cultures like, I don't know, poverty point. So how did the earthquake affect the local Native Americans? Where did the Cherokees move to and did they move immediately afterwards or try to live there around the swamps for a while until it inevitably failed? Do we have any recorded description of the earthquakes told by a Native American, especially a Cherokee person?\n\nHow did the earthquakes affect the local economy?", "created_utc": 1439296710, "distinguished": null, "id": "ctz2huz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gl2pp/ama_lost_history_of_the_new_madrid_earthquakes/ctz2huz/", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Historically-minded Redditers, it has been a pleasure to talk with you all today! Thanks much for reminding me why I love what I do! \nyours - Conevery Valencius ", "created_utc": 1439339001, "distinguished": null, "id": "ctzt366", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gl2pp/ama_lost_history_of_the_new_madrid_earthquakes/ctzt366/", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Hello, and thank you for doing this AMA! To kick things off, a few people posted questions in the announcement thread rather than here, so I'm going to duplicate them here:\n\nFrom /u/TheAlmightySnark:\n\n>How devastating would the 1811/12 earthquake be if it happened today? Is there any idea on what the frequency of this quake is?\n\nFrom /u/joshburns97:\n\n>Did people know what caused earthquakes/ what did they think caused them?\n\nFrom /u/OakheartIX:\n\n>Wikipedia page for the earthquakes mentions that the governor, William Clark asked the federal government for help in 1814. What was the answer and what was done to help the populations that suffered ?", "created_utc": 1439299165, "distinguished": null, "id": "ctz3jvl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/3gl2pp/ama_lost_history_of_the_new_madrid_earthquakes/ctz3jvl/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "Thanks for putting all this together, Zhukov. The response rate for top 50 threads hitting 100 percent twice is pretty great. ", "created_utc": 1516635498, "distinguished": null, "id": "dt2b961", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7s66yf/a_statistical_look_at_askhistorians_in_2017_part_i/dt2b961/", "score": 20 }, { "body": "That's very in-depth Moderator Zhukov, is statistics part of a historians usual arsenal? \n\nHow did you select your list of questions that didn't get any valid response? \n\nDo you have a feel for why some questions don't get answers? I always wonder if posting at a particular time that lines up with USA academic coffee breaks or something changes the chances a lot (I've heard that karma-orientated reddit people know exactly when to post for max karma on reddit in general).\n\nPersonally I'm amazed at some of the strange little questions people ask, and suddenly amazing things you never would have thought would interest you pour forth.\n\nIt's the best place on the internet I reckon. ", "created_utc": 1516671112, "distinguished": null, "id": "dt3bl8e", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7s66yf/a_statistical_look_at_askhistorians_in_2017_part_i/dt3bl8e/", "score": 4 }, { "body": "So [people keep complaining](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/804plz/what_might_happen_if_during_segregation_a_white/duu2olj/) about long response times and the lack of comments in threads, and while it doesn't visually seem to affect this sub's subscriber base, I'd like to point out that it DOES frustrate people and it MIGHT be a \"soft cap\" which reduces growth for this sub. There is no easy way to prove or disprove that but it's worth considering.\n\nSo my question to you is, how can the sub continue its legacy of high quality posts without suffering the immense frustration caused by checking a post (not your own post), finding only moderator comments, and waiting from one hour to multiple days even on a popular post?\n\nMy suggestion is a subscription bot. You get one \"clutter\" comment (which you usually have anyway when you do a moderator reply) prompting people to follow a link to PM a bot which will may either notify for any moderator-allowed reply or notify in a certain time frame.\n\nIn exchange, you may find people to be more patient in waiting, less low-quality engagement, and fewer voicings of frustration and dumb reports. For a short-term investment of time you may potentially reduce the workload of the mod staff, and probably have a slightly nicer emotional environment for mods, readers, \"askers,\" and historians alike.", "created_utc": 1519662100, "distinguished": null, "id": "duuuttf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/7s66yf/a_statistical_look_at_askhistorians_in_2017_part_i/duuuttf/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "One vital precondition for the success of the US civil rights movement was money; a second was votes. Black Americans amassed both by moving to northern and western states where they met less systematic (note, not “no”) discrimination. \n\nThe more black Americans lived in the north and west, the more educational and economic opportunities they got, and the more they accumulated money. The accumulation of education and money made the NAACP LDF, the organization dedicated to bringing test cases in court, possible; see the discussion of its 1925 origins in Boyle, ARC OF JUSTICE. \n\nLikewise, the more black Americans lived in the north and west, the more important they were to politicians and specifically to Democratic politicians. Black migrants tended to move to cities, vital constituencies for Democratic representatives and presidential candidates. Beginning with 1932, Democratic presidential campaigns understood the importance of winning over black voters.\n\nSo: migration meant opportunity and political influence essential to the civil rights movement. Political importance led to the establishment of the Civil Rights Section in the Justice Department in 1939, which brought an important case to the Supreme Court, US v Classic, in 1941, to establish that federal civil rights law covered primary elections. The NAACP LDF brought a further case, Smith v Allwright, establishing in 1944 that all-white primaries were unconstitutional. This was a critical step, because throughout the South the Democratic primary was the election that really counted, and black people, to this point, were legally excluded. But no more. \n\n*That* meant that now it was valuable to register black voters in the South. It’s pretty much a straight line from there to Freedom Summer, ie peak civil rights movement. \n\nSo: migration yielded opportunity and influence, which eroded segregationist law, which opened the door for movement organizing to really matter. And it was the world wars that enabled the largest migrations of black folks out of the South.", "created_utc": 1559063762, "distinguished": null, "id": "ep62bl2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/btwo2k/why_did_the_civil_rights_movement_happen_after/ep62bl2/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Slavery and its abolition in the United States provided the context for the rise of Jim Crow, which was a bunch of government and social forces that prevented blacks from experiencing the same economic or educational opportunities as white people did until it was formally abolished in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.\n\nAs an example, housing policy encouraged homeownership with government policies that were effectively only available to white people. In Chicago, neighborhoods were segregated into white and black neighborhoods, and the segregation was enforced by contracts and covenants (if an owner in a white neighborhood tried to sell or lease to a black family, the neighbors could sue). At the same time, banks, insurers, and government lenders refused to deal with homes in black neighborhoods, so those owners couldn't get mortgages or insurance and therefore could never buy homes. The neighborhoods excluded from access to financial support therefore could not take part in the U.S.'s post-war investment and prosperity. This was made even worse by the fact that rent in black neighborhoods was actually more expensive than white neighborhoods, despite the horrible conditions, because of the artificially constrained supply.\n\nSimilarly, black Americans didn't have access to the same schools or the same jobs, so they didn't have the opportunity to build wealth through earning wages, either.\n\nSo between getting shut out of investment and getting shut out of wage earnings, black Americans were unable to participate as fully in wealth creation until fairly recently. And because they started as chattel property, and marriage/inheritance are important property law institutions for transferring wealth intergenerationally, American black poverty traces a lot of its roots to the starting conditions at emancipation.", "created_utc": 1484323819, "distinguished": null, "id": "dcdowd7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5nq3po/why_is_slavery_so_important_in_north_america/dcdowd7/", "score": 56 }, { "body": "In the early development of the United States there was a very common view of slavery. There were a handful of slaves around that generally did household things, and a fair mix of them were European Indentured Servants (temporary slaves).\n\nBut then the plantation system kicked in. The plantation system really didn't make all that much sense in the north where certain cash crops didn't grow nearly as well. It made a lot of sense when it came to things like sugar, cotton, indigo, and similar crops. So, a ton of slaves were imported into the Caribbean and American South. Those that ended it up the Caribbean generally ended up on sugar plantations and died at much higher rates, those that ended up in the American South generally wound up on Indigo or Cotton plantations which were hard work but less immediately fatal. This meant that the slave population in the United States grew while the slave population in the Caribbean and Latin America was beholden to the slave trade.\n\nIn the United States you saw two rival political economies begin to develop. In the Northern States the cities were the basic economic unit, they developed factories early and went deep into maritime trade. The elites of the north were generally industrialists and merchants. In the Southern States the plantation was the basic economic unit in an export-oriented economy. The elites were land-owning aristocrats, who modeled themselves on European nobility.\n\nSo you had an industrial economy in the north that depended upon some tariffs to protect developing industry from more developed English competition, a strong currency, and cultivating a large internal economy. You had an export economy in the south that benefitted from no barriers to trade (which was only possible when you got rid of your own), a weak currency, and positive relations with foreign industrial bases. The two sets of interests were not diametrically opposed but they certainly didn't mesh. So there were tons of practical policy fights triggered by having slavery in only some part of the country.\n\nThen you have the two distinct kinds of elites. The southern *gentry* defined their power by being descended from greatness, as their center of power came from inheriting land that was worked by slaves. The northern *plutocrats* were defined less by inheriting wealth and more by status-generating pursuits that also generated fortunes, in those circles money was hugely legitimizing. Both sides would look at each other and see little justifying their rival's status as elite. This precipitated a ton of fights, including the famous incident were a South Carolina Senator broke a cane over the head of a Congressman from Massachusetts for \"reasons of honor\" on the floor of Congress. That year's graduating class from the University of Georgia bought the senator a bigger cane.\n\nThen there's the hypocrisy of rhetoric. When you are coming out with statements like \"All men are created equal\" and also holding slaves that can never not be slaves and their children are also automatically slaves because they aren't created equal there's some kind of serious disconnect. The \"particular institution\" (particular meaning \"strange\" or \"weird\") in the South was seen as a dying thing for much of the early United States, as through much of the Western World the economics of slavery had changed to the point it was being outlawed. The more labor-saving machines are used the less need there is to forcibly extract labor from others via slavery, after all. So, it was assumed by many in the American South that slavery was on the way out, but they couldn't jump the gun as freeing slaves would have eliminated more household wealth in the South than was destroyed by the Great Depression. Willing going through a Great Depression was too tough of a sell to overcome, so people kept on punting the issue.\n\nOnly, it didn't go away. New inventions kept slavery competitive, as new machines eliminated the need for slaves in the house other new machines increased the value of slaves in the fields. So, instead of this thing that made the North and South very, very different places that didn't get along going away, it just festered and got worse until it ripped the country apart.\n\nThe Civil War wasn't fought because southerners were all \"grr... black people\". The Civil War was fought because the slave economy led by a landed gentry was increasingly incompatible with an industrial economy led by merchants and industrialists. The Civil War was really hard on the US. Between 2% and 2.5% of all Americans died. For perspective 700,000 Americans died in the Civil War whereas only 419,000 (0.32% of the population) died in World War II. The Civil War had a huge and lasting impact on America, and the Civil War happened because of slavery.\n\nSo, good guys win, right? Everyone is happily ever after, right?\n\nWell, no really. There were attempts to remake the American South in the image of the American North, but these efforts failed badly. Attempts to ship all the former African Slaves back to wherever they came from also failed (but not without creating Liberia). So, what happened? The American South tried to split itself into two along racial lines. It didn't go so well, but no one could stop it, so it happened.\n\nIt wasn't until very recently that overt attempts to suppress the black population of the South stopped, and even now we're dealing with tons of baggage from both slavery and the ultimately self-defeating ways that the north attempted to impose a different political economy on the south and the south took it out on the former slaves.\n\nSo, now there's a huge mess. It's an elephant in the room. It can't be undone, and it really can't be ignored. There's also no easy solution. So, slavery and its legacy is literally the most divisive thing in American history, it's caused more death and destruction in the nation than just about anything else. And despite it all it clearly profoundly shapes how Americans see themselves and other Americans.", "created_utc": 1484328092, "distinguished": null, "id": "dcdsnsx", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5nq3po/why_is_slavery_so_important_in_north_america/dcdsnsx/", "score": 24 } ]

[ { "body": "The Texas KKK routinely targeted police officers for recruitment as a way to insulate themselves from prosecution. Many were unmasked when they committed a mass shooting in downtown Austin leading to sweeping arrests at their clubhouse. \n\n~~\n\n Brown, Norman D. *Hood, bonnet, and little brown jug : Texas politics, 1921-1928*. Texas A & M University Press, c. 1984", "created_utc": 1591195676, "distinguished": null, "id": "fsr2mpj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gvu38i/george_floyd_was_murdered_by_america_a_historians/fsr2mpj/", "score": 1345 }, { "body": ">That pattern exists because despite every act of police brutality, and even despite protests following individual acts, white America’s preference for an \"orderly\" society has been a higher priority.\n\nCan expand a little more on the meaning of the phrase, '\"orderly\" society' and specifically what it might be in contrast to?", "created_utc": 1591201622, "distinguished": null, "id": "fsrf3c0", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gvu38i/george_floyd_was_murdered_by_america_a_historians/fsrf3c0/", "score": 189 }, { "body": "Kudos for your willingness to combine the historiographies of policing and lynching. While it may be obvious, historians often compartmentalize, as when labor historians omit or skirt the historiography of forced labor -- enslaved or prison.\n\nFor those outside the field, this ability to think in plastic categories is more unusual than you may imagine.", "created_utc": 1591196311, "distinguished": null, "id": "fsr3w97", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gvu38i/george_floyd_was_murdered_by_america_a_historians/fsr3w97/", "score": 1038 } ]

[ { "body": "Thank you for the post. As a second generation Korean American, I'm always trying to learn more about the history of Asian Americans - this is something my parents knew little about and schools only taught in passing.\n\nThere were two issues I personally had with this post.\n\nFirst - this is definitely not unique to this post, but anti-Asian American racism and xenophobia are often used interchangeably. Xenophobia is fear of foreigners. In my feeling, conflating the two adds to the \"perpetual foreigner\" stereotype. Rather than it being a racist attack against fellow Americans, it is being framed as a xenophobic attack against foreigners.\n\nSecond - the post (especially the last paragraph) portray Asian Americans as passive victims with limited or no moral agency. If Asian Americans are silent, this post claims, that is because they have internalized this model minority myth...from white people. If Asian Americans are \"polite, submissive, and self-sufficient,\" that's because they have been socialized...by white people. If Asian Americans decide to \"accept what gets thrown at them,\" that's because they've been convinced that it's good to do so...by white people.\n\nIn other words, this is arguing that the mindsets that Asian Americans have and the decisions that we make are not fully our own - rather, they are something imposed upon us by white people. So even though Korean culture discourages speaking up, a Korean American not speaking up is due to white people. Even though Korean culture encourages patience and stoicism in the face of adversity, a Korean American not speaking up is due to white people. Even though Korean culture is quite hierarchical and emphasizes deference to authority, a Korean American being \"submissive\" is due to white people.\n\nBy depriving Asian Americans of moral agency and placing white people at the center of this, this perpetuates the narrative that only white people are capable of making moral decisions, while everyone else is just passively dealing with the consequences of said decisions. The implication is that even if white people made *bad* decisions that led to discrimination and inequality, they are still *capable* of making decisions and are therefore *fully human*, unlike other people.", "created_utc": 1616304588, "distinguished": null, "id": "gro931v", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/m9bmbq/the_atlantaarea_murders_were_racially_motivated_a/gro931v/", "score": 354 }, { "body": "Since Mexico is part of North America too, I'm adapting a part of an [older answer of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b4ti11/how_interconnected_was_the_world_of_16th_17th/eja6x9m/) on forced migration of Asians (especially from the Philippines) to colonial Mexico. While much removed in time, I hope it's still relevant to show how anti-Asian sentiments and policies in the Americas go back to the late 16th century. \n\n\nFor the global Spanish economy, Mexico provided a major trading centre. It was the connecting point between the Peruvian and Mexican silver; the goods traded from China via the Philippines (silk, porcelain…); and Spain. This meant also an often forced movement of people. \n\nWith the huge native American demographic catastrophe, Africans were increasingly brought over to work in households but also in the important mines. Intermixing between native and African people often living in similar conditions became regular. At the same time, from the late 17th c. smaller groups of Asian people came to New Spain from the Spanish Philippines. In both cases they worked in harsh conditions of slavery or forced labor.\n\n\nWhat about the **Asian populations in colonial Mexico**? Filipino communities developed in some major cities; and Japanese came to live there. \n\n The Philippines had been conquered by the Spanish in 1571 and since then formed an important trade link with New Spain. According to Serge Gruzinski\n\n> Ever Since the Jesuits had set food in the archipelago, Japan had attracted numerous Iberian missionaries and merchants. The establishment of the Spanish in the Philippines had brought Asia closer to Mexico, and made Japan a focal point for royal officials, merchants and monks, all of whom saw it as a providential springboard for the fabulous land of China.\n\nAsians above all from the Philippines started to be brought esp. to Mexico to work under slavelike conditions – so there were people from regions like China, Japan and even India in Mexico, but most Asians came actually from the Spanish Philippines. Usually their categorization was not clear then, so they have only been investigated more in recent years. From van Deusen’s “Global Indios”:\n\n> After 1565, as Spaniards learned to navigate the Pacific currents, and as the Iberian Union (1580–1640) enhanced commercial links between Portuguese and Spanish merchants in South and East Asia, countless numbers of slaves from South and East Asia (and, most notably, from the Spanish and Muslim Philippines) who were categorized as “chinos” began arriving in Mexico and elsewhere.\n\n> They mainly served as domestic laborers and artisans. Although many had originated from the Spanish domains of the Philippines, authorities in Mexico purposefully avoided labeling these “chino” slaves as indios for more than one hundred years so that they could not petition for their freedom as Spanish vassals protected by the New Laws. In fact, it was not until 1672 when a Spanish royal decree declared them to be free indios.\n\nThis was a tactic to keep Asian slave labor going decades after most enslavement of indigenous American people had ended. \n\nAt the turn of the century, growing Asian communities existed in West and central Mexico, with an important one in Guadalajara. The comparatively large community in Mexico City was probably in the indigenous San Juan quarter. Quite a few Asian merchants worked daily in the central Parían market. Asians actually dominated the barber trade in the city centre due to their expertise and prices. Even official complaints of the city’s barbers could not break their influence.\n\nAs I said, most of the “chinos” in Mexico were actually Filipinos, although there were also Chinese merchants from the Philippines, and a small Japanese presence, which I’ll briefly turn to.\n\n---\n\nThe execution of six Franciscan “martyrs” in Japan 1597 became quickly known in Mexico and came as a shock. This event in tandem with Jesuit reports that the highly developed Japanese were the “Spaniards of China” led to an increasing fascination with the region, not only in Europe but also in New Spain. This was affected by other events – including the first two **Japanese diplomatic missions** traveling to Mexico, and the second one from there to Spain and Italy. They made stops in Mexico City in 1610 and 1614 before Japan’s increasing policy of seclusion from the 1620s onwards. \n\nWhile not much resulted from these missions in terms of economic or diplomatic exchange, they did further raise interest in Japan. We also know that some members of the missions stayed on in or near Mexico City. The major Nahua (Aztec) historian Domingo de Chimalpahin, living at that time and place, tells us how some members were baptized and stayed on for a few years to work as merchants. \n\nMost Japanese seems to have returned to Japan by the 1620s due to the mentioned changing Japanese policies; but contact had been made. After Japan was opened up economically centuries later, from the later 19th c. economic exchange with Mexico was taken up again in a different form. \n\nFinally, both *pardos* (descendants of Africans) and Asians would in the 17th form an important part of the militias, which guarded the important Spanish silver shipments from pirates on Mexico’s west coast. These militias existed, a different and fascinating story. However, according to Slack most of its Asian members were probably Filipinos, then marked as Chinos.\n\nCharles Mann has hypothesized that Japanese samurai might have come over from the Philippines - where they had aided the Spaniards to quell Chinese uprising in Manila in the early 17th c. ; and that these samurai may have aided in the Mexican militias too, but there’s little evidence for this. At least though, Slack finds that one samurai settled in Guadalajara’s Asian community, Diego de la Barranca. He was not destitute but rather must have come from an influential Japanese family, lived in Mexico for the rest of his days, even being granted the prestigious Don title. \n\nTo sum up: While Asian communities were relatively small in colonial Mexico, it's important to underline here slave labor of especially Filipinos continued until the late 17th. century - being outlawed much later than the enslavement of native people by the Spanish Crown, as a \"loophole\" for discrimination and unfree labor. \n\n**Some further reading**\n\n- E.R. Slack Jr.: The Chinos in New Spain: A Corrective Lens for a Distorted Image. In: Journal of World History 20-1 (2009): 35-67.\n\n- S. Sanabrais, “The Spaniards of Asia”: The Japanese Presence in Colonial Mexico. In: Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies 18-19, 2009, 223–251.\n\n*Edit: added some context*", "created_utc": 1616278207, "distinguished": null, "id": "grmxpni", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/m9bmbq/the_atlantaarea_murders_were_racially_motivated_a/grmxpni/", "score": 157 }, { "body": ">On 3 November 1885, the Chinese population of Tacoma, Washington was forcefully expelled from the city by city authorities and a mob of white supporters. \n\nTacoma now has the [Chinese Reconciliation Park](https://www.tacomachinesepark.org/about-the-tacoma-chinese-garden-and-reconciliation-park/), which is an educational park that is built visually around a Chinese garden, but has educational material about the Chinese expulsion and what happened. If you are local or visit the area, it's a great educational tool.", "created_utc": 1616269831, "distinguished": null, "id": "grmeimn", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/m9bmbq/the_atlantaarea_murders_were_racially_motivated_a/grmeimn/", "score": 216 } ]

[ { "body": "There are probably two reasons for this. Firstly, he served his term during a time where much \"larger\" events were happening, in terms of the Civil War recently ending and Reconstruction beginning. During events like this, relatively minor figures, even if they were a first, tend to get forgotten by the general public. \n\nSecondly, he wasn't particularly successful. He served only a single year before resigning and never accomplished anything particularly noteworthy during his term. He successfully advocated for black workers at the Washington Naval Yard and supported successful bills, but was too junior and served too short a term to have much effect on wider US politics. On a minor but still important point, he was too moderate during a time of political extremes to be noteworthy. He's overshadowed by both conservatives and from within his own party by the Radical Republicans. It's a bit difficult to talk about a person, especially a politician when these facts are considered. If during black history month I tell museum visitors \"Hiram Revels was the first black US Senator\" some are bound to ask \"what did he accomplish?\" The only real answer is \"nothing really, and he quit after a year\". To put it simply, his life and legacy are overshadowed by other black leaders and historical figures who had more of an impact on history at large. ", "created_utc": 1393344587, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfoc7dy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yw8se/why_is_hiram_revels_first_black_us_senator_so/cfoc7dy/", "score": 36 } ]

[ { "body": "I think the contention that feudalism was a heavy contributor to socialism is a pretty weak one. What is Lipset's evidence for that assertion? I think the rise of socialism is a heck of a lot more complex than \"the struggle against feudalism and the ravages of industrialization took on a class conscious character in a relatively homogeneous population\".\n\n\nIf we don't accept that as true, we have to look for other reasons that African-Americans didn't turn to socialism as an answer. On the other hand, it must also be remembered that the socialist movement in the United States was heavily involved in the civil rights struggle (and one of the justifications of the heavy handed FBI surveillance and infiltration of those civil rights movements).\n\n", "created_utc": 1392491244, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfg48ce", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xzirz/the_lack_of_a_strong_socialist_party_in_the_us/cfg48ce/", "score": 25 }, { "body": "Please do not ignore population density. It is such a huge factor that I don't understand how it always gets ignored.\n\nThe whole concept of social mobility or lack of a class system in the US rested or maybe still does on cheap land or homesteading, meaning theat people did not feel they are \"condemned\" to a life of being working-class employees and never starting their own business. I can't quote directly but I have heard Lincoln saying something like that the absence of a permanent working class makes American democracy possible, because after a few years of being a wage-earner people pack up and go on the frontier and become independent. What he may have meant with it, that democracy tends towards socialism in the sense that the poor will often vote to confiscating the property of the rich, but when they can just homestead land for themselves then not.\n\nEurope was basically... \"full\" for a long, long time. Sometimes wars depopulated a territory, e.g. the Ottomans parts of Hungary which means the Habsburgs brought in German settlers to repopulate those regions, but in general there was more of the indeed semi-feudal attitude that class barriers are fixed and born into because land was taken, so if your family had no property what could you do? No wealth, hardly any education meant you are working class forever. If you look at the British comedy You Rang Milord, you get the impression that it is somehow the same thing to be a Lord and own a factory. And it suggests that a working class person could not develop an own workshop into a factory because he would not have that style and dress and taste to be considered a classy gentleman, so it would be inappropriate for him to be a businessman. Working-class American millionaries who did not have gentlemanly styles and tastes and upbringing were often ridiculed in Europe up to say first decades of the 20th century, there was this stereotype of the crass Californian soap king who has money yet he talks like a working class person . So yes European capitalism was at least partially based on aristocratic elements at least in style and taste being gentlemanly.\n\nThe point I am making is simply that the lack of rigid classes in the US largely comes from low population density and thus free or cheap land, because anyone who did not want to work for others could as well become an independent farmer, a mini-agrobusinessman. In Europe if you are born working class, pretty much all the arable land is already taken, population density is so high that you could not walk 10km in a German forest without hitting a village, so you are probably staying working class.\n\nI was asking the same question as yourself from the exactly opposite angle: how is it possible that one simply cannot sell a right-libertarian, pro-capitalist political philosophy in Europe? And my answer was that due to high population densities, people do not feel independent enough, it is hard to own land, to own a house, they often feel they are stuck as employees and renters, thus the whole sense of independence needed for libertarian thinking does not appear, they think they are stuck with the boss and the landlord forever so they want them to be regulated.\n\nConsider the following. Victor David Hanson wrote a nice elegy about how his California Swedish ancestors were the perfect libertarians who always worked hard and never asked for government handouts. He just missed one, **crucially** important detail: they worked on their own land which they got back when it wa free or almost so. Why did those guys even have to move from Sweden to California and why did their relatives who stayed home probably became social democrats? In my opinion the evidence is very clear that it was population density, so free or cheap land that did the trick. They were condemned to be perpetual wage laborers in Sweden because all the good land was taken, which predisposes one towards socialism, they could find cheap or free land in California so basically they could work their own land, farm it and become middle-class, independent agri-businessmen, so for them accepting libertarian values was easy.", "created_utc": 1392639340, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfhex0e", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xzirz/the_lack_of_a_strong_socialist_party_in_the_us/cfhex0e/", "score": 4 }, { "body": "You might be interested in the account from \"Americanism and Fordism\" in Antonio Gramsci's [Prison Notebooks](http://courses.justice.eku.edu/PLS330_Louis/docs/gramsci-prison-notebooks-vol1.pdf). Gramsci discusses at length how the old established socioeconomic strata carried over from feudal Europe provide a pivotal obstacle to the easy development of \"rationalised\" industrial production as seen in the US, and how the US working classes by comparison are much more easily molded according to capitalists' blueprints for social engineering and \"scientific management\" a la Frederick Taylor. Of course Gramsci as a Communist Party leader (at the time, imprisoned by the fascist regime of Mussolini) is quite clear as to which side his bread is buttered on, but it's an interesting analysis nonetheless.", "created_utc": 1392519090, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfgeq3n", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xzirz/the_lack_of_a_strong_socialist_party_in_the_us/cfgeq3n/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Thank you greatly to everyone who worked on this. Its been an incredibly tough and brutal subject to talk about here in Canada, and news like this just shows both how long and how *recent* this history is. My heart goes out to everyone who suffered through the brutality of the residential schools, and all the other terrible things that were done. This is stuff that needs to be confronted and talked about.", "created_utc": 1622485070, "distinguished": null, "id": "h03ufsl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/np9lez/who_is_this_child_an_indigenous_history_of_the/h03ufsl/", "score": 480 }, { "body": "I know this is really terrible for people to read, but this is just the beginning of a reckoning.\n\nThe existence of mass graves is no surprise to people in Indigenous Studies in Canada. The recent news is only the confirmation of the number of bodies in this one site through radar. [This inquiry in 2008](http://archives.algomau.ca/main/sites/default/files/2010-061_015_024.pdf) identified 28 suspected child mass grave sites across Canada that needed to be investigated (including the Kamloops site).\n\nThe recent news is only really \"new\" in the sense that they were able identify the number of children at the site for the first time and found a higher than expected number of children in the mass grave, and surprisingly young skeletons.\n\n(Sorry, this gets indelicate.) In places with as high rates of sexual abuse such as these religious and government institutions subjected the children to, there are pregnancies. The report that children as young as 3 were found at the Kamloops site is surprising (to the wider public) because that is younger than expected. As noted above, legally children only had to go to school from 7-16. Unfortunately, there are many accounts of baby and infant graveyards at residential schools. Kamloops is no different in this regard, and there are many accounts of pregnancies and abortions. This one is from Kuper Island in B.C.:\n\n*\"We regularly hear stories from our people about all the children who were killed at Kuper Island. I mean killed, not just died. A graveyard of these kids is just south of the old school building. The priests dug up part of it when they closed the school down in 1973. There are not only children but fetuses in there, aborted by the nuns themselves whenever a girl got pregnant by staff or the priests. Often the young mother would die too and get buried right next to their child.\"*\n\nThis account can be found [Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust (3rd edition)](https://caid.ca/NoLonHid2010.pdf) by Kevin Annett which is free online if anyone wants nightmares, or to reckon with the true past and ongoing struggles of Indian Residential Schools.\n\n(edit: I added the Kevin Annett link because it is free online, but I understand he is a controversial figure due to his past connection to the church.\n\n*Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential Schoo*l by the Secwpemec Cultural Education Society is a great resource. When I was in school we watched [Kuper Island: Return to the Healing Circle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UW8gojr2HM&ab_channel=ResidentialSchoolMagazine) by Christine Welsh which is available on youtube. So is [Death at Residential School](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FydzIzkndA&ab_channel=CBCNews%3ATheNational) by the CBC: *\"The numbers \\[of deaths\\] are much higher, perhaps 5 - 10x. It's because the records are so poor. They just didn't bother keeping track of children who died.\"*)\n\nThat's all I wanted to say. As someone who studied this stuff in school, it grinds my gears wrong how everyone in power in my province/country are all \"This news is shocking!\"\n\nThere was always a mass child grave there. It's just no one wanted to deal with digging it up until now.\n\nEdit: Resources in Canada/BC\n\nA National Indian Residential School Crisis Line set up to provide support for former students and those affected. Access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866 925-4419.Within B.C., the KUU-US Crisis Line Society provides a First Nations and Indigenous-specific crisis line available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's toll-free and can be reached at 1-800-588-8717 or online at [kuu-uscrisisline.com](https://kuu-uscrisisline.com).", "created_utc": 1622494799, "distinguished": null, "id": "h04dvjs", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/np9lez/who_is_this_child_an_indigenous_history_of_the/h04dvjs/", "score": 381 }, { "body": "Wow, my stomach twisted with the detail about the schools cutting the childrens’ hair and the association of cutting hair with mourning. Thank you for sharing.", "created_utc": 1622506469, "distinguished": null, "id": "h04zjiq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/np9lez/who_is_this_child_an_indigenous_history_of_the/h04zjiq/", "score": 37 } ]

[ { "body": "I would have agreed with you and not your professor. While the fact that the descendants of Mamelukes, like African-Americans, are indisputably regarded as members of their respective nations, that does not change the fact that: A: we are dealing with a pre-nationalistic identity in which your professor's multiple choices don't actually make any sense, B: the Mamelukes intentionally ruled as a separate and distinct class from their local Egyptian subjects, refusing to speak Arabic and thus completely inverting the power structure involved in the African-American comparison your professor made, C: that while we cannot identify where, specifically, they came from does nothing to reduce the fact that NONE of them would have come from Egypt.\n\nMore concerning for me is what I would term point D: if he believes that \"Mamlukes had ruled Egypt until British came and replaced them.\" Then that is laughably incorrect. Muhammad Ali Pasha *slaughtered* the remaining Mamlukes, and his dynasty ruled de facto until British occupation in 1882 and remained nominal rulers until 1952.\n\nedit: typos and a clarification in the last paragraph. ", "created_utc": 1467943098, "distinguished": null, "id": "d53p0qn", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rrrup/were_the_mamlūks_egyptians/d53p0qn/", "score": 8 }, { "body": "His response to mine was the following, from email.\n\n> There is no way to identify their originals. Some of them came as far as from Russia. That is why today some Egyptians have white skins. However, they are Egyptians. Besides, Malmuks had ruled Egypt until British came and replaced them. \n> I am glad your great efforts. However, you are totally entitled to maintain your position, but I have to give the right answer, which you might not agree with. \n> Thanks.", "created_utc": 1467937028, "distinguished": null, "id": "d53l4i6", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rrrup/were_the_mamlūks_egyptians/d53l4i6/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "Really thank you for an very informative as well as stimulating reading, especially on the updated medical research in the last decade. \n\nThe nature of the symptom and how the outbreak got viral in the so-called First and Second Pandemic has a very, very controversial themes, and I'm sure my knowledge of this field of research is nothing comparable with the research-in-depth that your post above is based on. \n\n>There is a recent book that purports to be a drastic improvement - The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347-1500 by John Aberth - but it’s not out in my country until 5 May 2022 (there was apparently a release last year going by reviews, but I can’t find it). I really hope it hasn’t made the same oversights as other, recent books on the Black Death. \n\nJust for the reference (from those who has a copy of Aberth's *The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347-1350*, Oxford: OUP, 2021), I'm afraid that the main argument of the book is in about the same line with Green's and Benedictow's, and I got my copy of the book in question in the fairly early months in 2021 (so that the alleged surge of scholarship on the plague after outbreak of Covid-19 in 2019/2020 did not affect the main argument).\n\nThe main composition of Aberth's new book is basically build on his 2nd edition (2017) of the source book edited by him, [*The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents*](https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/ca/product/The-Black-Death-The-Great-Mortality-of-1348-1350/p/1319048870). As you must know, he has updated the contents (selection of the sources as well) rather drastically since [the 1st edition (2005)](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-10349-9). \n\nThe new addition of *A New History*, titled as \"Appendix: The Great Denial of Plague\" (pp. 237-49), is primarily also an greatly expanded explanation of the part of source book's introduction added in the 2nd edition, based on the recent (then) development of the application of ancient DNA study on the plague study in the 21th century. \n\n>......we only fully confirmed that YP caused the Black Death in the 21st century when in 2011 a group of researchers analysed samples from two victims in a 14th century grave in London. \n\nThere had in fact also been a long historiography of the debates on whether YP was really the (main) pathogen of the Black Death between the current main stream of the scholars specialized in the Black Death like Benedictow, Aberth (and Green) and a few \"revisionist\" denier, such as by Samuel Cohn Jr., since 1970s, and ancient DNA study on the skeletons of mass graves (cited above) may have been the final bullet for this historiographical debate, but not the only one. While the scholars are very, very divided even within the main stream (YP as a culprit) (to give an example, Benedictow and Green on the provenance of YP and its diffusion in the Mongol Empire), they have accumulated the investigation of written as well as non-written evidence that testify the presence not only of the pathogen JP itself, but also of the bubonic plague as a primary contributor (symptom) of YP pandemics in the Black Death. \n\nAberth's \"Appendix\" section in *A New History* is essentially a summary of the consequences of this debate, and it indeed has a small, but dedicated section titled as \"The Black Death was Pneumonic Plague\" (p. 245), [added]: primarily **against** this hypothesis. \n\nAberth mentions Christopher Morris (\"Plague in Britain.\" In: *The Plague Reconsidered: A New Look at its Origins and Effects in the 16th and 17th Centuries England* (Matlock, UK, 1977)) as an example of the advocate of this hypothesis (Aberth 2021: 382, note 64) - so the alleged significance of pneumatic plague is not totally a new hypothesis from a scratch, but is also a hypothesis with some traditions. \n\nIt is true that the biggest counter-argument against the hypothesis (the ineffectivity of droplets to transmit the pathogen between human-human) mentioned by Aberth can be refuted by the latest development of medical research, but the current scholars did not follow the classic authority in the 20th century without any update of the research. Aberth cites [Gani & Leath 2004] as mathematical model of the possible transmission by droplets, together with [Walløe 2008] and [Carniel 2008] as a modern clinical study on YP. These articles have apparent integrated the observation of YP outbreaks at least in the end of the 20th century or the first decade of the 21th century. \n\nAberth's remarks in the section that: \n\n>\"Pneumatic plague, therefore, can have only played a limited role in the overall mortality and the spread of the Black Death, being confined to the isolated outbreaks such as at Avignon in early 1348, as recorded by the papal surgeon Guy [sic] de Chauliac. After 1500, during the Early Modern Period, it seems to have disappeared from Europe entirely (Aberth 2021: 245).\" \n\nHis last sentence is apparently also confirmed by the classical observation of other scholars, such as [Paul Slack, *The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England*, Oxford: OUP, 1990](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-impact-of-plague-in-tudor-and-stuart-england-9780198202134?) (Cf. Aberth 2021: 382, note 71). \n \n>In addition to this, papers like ‘Modeling the Justinianic Plague: Comparing Hypothesized Transmission Routes’, published in 2020, may also offer a way forward. ......It’s worth noting here that the contemporary evidence for the Plague of Justinian shows very little, if any, evidence that pneumonic plague was a major issue..... \n\nAs I briefly mentioned before in: [Kyle Harper and the Justinianic Plague](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mbf7lh/kyle_harper_and_the_justinianic_plague/), the current debate on the plague on the plague of Justinian can be much, much more controversial on that of the Black Death. \n[Bresson 2020] and [Sarris 2022] analyze and criticize the revisionist narratives proposed by a series of Mordechai's articles published in 2010s respectively from a little different points of view, and the latter's point is on Mordechai's relative negligence to the reference to Syriac and Arabic source as well as the possibility of downplaying the possible presence of the bubonic plague (Cf. Sarris 2022: 320, 334). \n\nAdditional References: \n\n* Aberth, John. *The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347-1350*. Oxford: OUP, 2021.\n* Bresson, Alain. “Fates of Romes.” *Journal of Roman Studies* 110 (2020): 233–46. doi:10.1017/S0075435820001203. \n* Carniel, Elisabeth. “6 Plague Today.” *Medical History* 52, no. S27 (2008): 115–22. doi:10.1017/S0025727300072124.\n* Gani, Raymond, and Steve Leach. “Epidemiologic determinants for modeling pneumonic plague outbreaks.” *Emerging infectious diseases* vol. 10,4 (2004): 608-14. doi:10.3201/eid1004.030509\n* Sarris, Peter. \"Viewpoint New Approaches to the ‘Plague of Justinian.\" *Past & Present** 254-1 (2022): 315-46. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtab024 \n* Walløe, Lars. “3 Medieval and Modern Bubonic Plague: Some Clinical Continuities.” *Medical History* 52, no. S27 (2008): 59–73. doi:10.1017/S0025727300072094.", "created_utc": 1649712581, "distinguished": null, "id": "i4cfvle", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/u18kbn/monday_methods_black_death_scholarship_and_the/i4cfvle/", "score": 17 }, { "body": "Very interesting stuff, thanks for the write up!", "created_utc": 1649692105, "distinguished": null, "id": "i4b2a5x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/u18kbn/monday_methods_black_death_scholarship_and_the/i4b2a5x/", "score": 9 }, { "body": "A fascinating and informative read, thank you for doing this and shining a light on the problem", "created_utc": 1649765822, "distinguished": null, "id": "i4f2si1", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/u18kbn/monday_methods_black_death_scholarship_and_the/i4f2si1/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a great question. I am very pleased that when I was chairing the National Historic Landmarks Committee for the National Park Service, we were able to list the [Los Angeles’ civic center, the U.S. Courthouse and Post Office](https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/181703), granting a level of national recognition to the important story of Mendez v. Westminster. See also [this site](https://www.nps.gov/nhl/news/LC/spring2012/LACourthouse.pdf). Besides the differences in the two cases, eloquently addressed by /u/MdDowntown, there are other issues. \n\nMendez v. Westminster was an important building block in the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. It persuaded the African American community to stop its efforts to develop a truly equal formula in a separate world where the \"equal\" was lagging significantly. This important California case shifted the emphasis to challenge the entire separate-but-equal doctrine as intrinsically unconstitutional.\n\nOf course, by framing the discussion of Mendez v. Westminster in the context of the African-American struggle, we shift the reason for the significance of this case away from the Spanish-speaking community to a question about how this case affected African Americans. This yields the same disparity in emphasis that your question asks to be addressed. I argued in the development of this landmark nomination that seeing this case as important to the Latino story should be sufficient for granting the resource National Landmark designation. That said, the entire National Park Service Landmark apparatus tends to see everything through the lens of the Atlantic seaboard. The staff does a heroic effort in trying to make this NOT the case, but they live and work in and near DC, and they are for the most part easterners. \n\nIn addition, African Americans represent the largest and most significant minority for most of the national story, and this is particularly true in the East. So some of the answer to your question is a matter of East v. West. Some of it is in the fact that African Americans were the most significant oppressed minority for most of American history. The Latino story is general both western and late to emerge in significant numbers. \n\nSec. Ken Salazar, the first Secretary of the Interior under President Obama, was wonderful in the way that he directed the Landmarks program to begin an initiative to find resources that spoke to the Latino community and its history. I would expect that the story of cases such as Mendez v. Westminster will increase in importance as we tell and retell the national story - particularly through its historic sites. But the disparity that you question will continue until we all do what we can to correct the imbalance.", "created_utc": 1486766979, "distinguished": null, "id": "ddlcyth", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t9lmx/at_the_risk_of_sounding_horribly_racist_why_is/ddlcyth/", "score": 15 }, { "body": "*Brown* was a sweeping change to long-settled precedent *(Plessy v. Ferguson),* which for 60 years had allowed \"separate but equal\" facilities to satisfy the Equal Protection Clause.\n\nI'm not aware that there was ever *de jure* segregation forbidding attendance by Mexican-American children in any US schools, though local customs and residential patterns often had exactly the same effect. Racial zoning had already been declared unconstitutional in 1917, and residential racial covenants had already been made unenforceable in 1948.", "created_utc": 1486765152, "distinguished": null, "id": "ddlblvl", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t9lmx/at_the_risk_of_sounding_horribly_racist_why_is/ddlblvl/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "AskHistorians has a very good book list, but it's fairly large. These are some of the books I'd recommend you read to get up to speed on general knowledge about East Asian and African history. They're all very good, and should be available at a university library if you have access. You can also get pdfs of them online in some places. \n\n**East Asia** \n\n*The Search For Modern China* - Jonathan D. Spence. \n\n\n*Imperial China 900-1800* - F.W. Mote. \n\n*The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han* - Mark Edward Lewis. \n\n*The Making of Modern Japan* - Marius Jansen\n\nI don't want to inundate you with books until you can't choose, this topic has a wide range of deep scholarship. I'll just come out and give my fullest recommendation to F.W. Mote and Spence's books - they are the best general introductions to Chinese history on the market. \n\n**Africa**\n\nRecent African history - I recommend reading up on this, as this is a particularly complex, fraught and important aspect of world history. Good to make sure you get your facts straight. \n\n*The Scramble for Africa* - Thomas Pakenham \n\n*The Fate of Africa* - Martin Meredith\n\nEarlier African history \n\n*Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World; 1400-1800* - John K. Thornton \n\n*The Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830* - Joseph Miller\n\n*The Great Lakes of Africa* - Jean-Pierre Chretien\n\n*History of Islam in Africa* - Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels\n\n\nIf there's anything more specific you want to read up on, I'm also happy to help. I'm not an American, but I know that their world history classes often cover vast areas (both physically and time-wise), so I imagine teachers have to put work into making sure they can succinctly teach students very complex things in a short space of time. An American I once knew once had a syllabus that covered both the Bantu Migrations, the Babylonian captivity and all of Ancient Egyptian history (with a host of everything else), in the same class. ", "created_utc": 1504564937, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmkfxp3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6y2jlg/resources_for_african_asian_history/dmkfxp3/", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Don't have the resources you asked for - just wanna let you know that what makes you a history teacher isn't your knowledge of histoircal timelines and events, it's the knowledge of methods that give you the skills required to quickly adapt to any subject you need to teach. You don't need to have everything in your head, you just need to know what to look for and how to separate the relevant from the irrelevant, the good from the bad.\n\nHave you checked out what the syllabus is covering? I think it's better for you to research the specifically relevant topics rather than general attempts to cover the history of entire continents. You won't really put the latter into much practice.\n\nAlso, if you haven't already, it's probably worthwhile to purchase alumni database access from your ex-institution.", "created_utc": 1504561784, "distinguished": null, "id": "dmkdl17", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6y2jlg/resources_for_african_asian_history/dmkdl17/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a question that needs two parts to the answer.\n\nThe first part is that question itself is confused.\n\nLet us first set aside the first misconception: the Cromwell was not, in any way, an infantry tank. It was a successful, fast, well-armed cruiser tank of the late war (it first saw action on D Day) whose only failing was that owing to parallel development under the pressures of war had a turret too small to accommodate the large breech of the 77mm high-velocity gun. That forced it to operate in mixed units with Sherman \"Firefly\" tanks equipped with the 17lb AT gun. With a slightly enlarged turret to solve this problem it became the Comet, unarguably one of the best medium tanks of the war.\n\nThe question \"why did the British invest in Matildas when the Sherman was so much better?\" has a simple answer: they didn't. The Matilda II was specified in 1936 and developed from 1937 onwards, when tank doctrine was very much about World War 1 type wars (see below). It was already obsolescent by 1941, when it started being replaced by the faster Valentine which although nominally an \"infantry\" tank was derived from a cruiser tank chassis. By mid-1942 they were mostly all out of use, and there were only a handful still in service by the second Battle of El Alamein (October/November 1942). Which was, not coincidentally, the first combat use of the M4 Sherman, which had only started to be developed in 1940. This is essentially \"why did Britain build all those Hurricanes when the P51D is so much better?\" for tanks: the pace of development in military technology between 1936 and 1942 is simply incredible.\n\nThere were three \"infantry tanks\" which saw substantial service after the fall of France. The Matilda II was reasonably effective in the desert war until its armour was outpaced by developments in artillery, although its speed was an issue. The only other tank available in a similar role prior to the Sherman was the M3 Lee/Grant, which again did not start being developed until 1940 and but was available by late 1941.\n\nIn any event the Matilda had started to be replaced by the Valentine, which was faster (being derived from a cruiser tank) but, like the Matilda, under-gunned. It was developed in a hurry from 1940 onwards, but on an existing platform. The Matilda was out of production by 1943 but the final examples did not serve in theatres where they had to face German tanks, other than the chassis being sometimes used for special-purpose vehicles.\n\nAnd finally there was the Churchill, which served with some distinction throughout the war as, in essence, a heavy tank. Aside from its chassis being the basis for a wide range of specialised vehicles, the later variants were effective in France in late 1944 -- ironically, in some way precisely because they were designed for mobility on difficult French terrain.\n\nSo the first part of the question boils down to \"why did the British have the Matilda II in Africa in 1941, rather than tanks that did not at that point exist?\" I think the answer to that is self-evident: it was the only tank available.\n\nAs to \\_why\\_ the Matilda II was slow, heavy and under-gunned, the answer is as the OP suggests, the mistaken \"infantry tank\" doctrine. Inter-war Britain was still planning for a static war of attrition in the manner of the first world war. But apart from Germany, pretty well everyone's tank doctrine circa 1936 turned out to be wrong. Most designs of 1936 were, with hindsight, simply too light in both armour and armament, and the British infantry tanks were an aberration that although slow were at least sufficiently armoured even if they were not well armed. The American comparator for the Matilda II is not the (later) M3 or the (later) M4 or whatever, it is the American M1 light tank. In that context, the Matilda II looks rather good.\n\nTank doctrine is the thing that Germany, under Guderian, got right. Once it became apparent which way the wind was blowing, everyone followed, and the second world war for the Allies is mostly a story of developing new, good, effective medium tanks (the T34, the M4 and the Cromwell/Comet) while getting as much service as possible out of the design and tooling of such of the earlier designs as could be stretched out.\n\nIntroducing new tanks into service is hard, as the Germans found. It requires large inventories of parts, training both for crews and maintenance units, detail production and reliability engineering, etc. The wartime German designs (Panther and Tiger, largely) were immensely handicapped by this, and never achieved full operational effectiveness. As I have said in other contexts, had the Germans been operating a boutique weapons design consultancy for the cold war to come they would have done very well, but in practical terms it is an open question whether the resources expended on the Panther and Tiger would have been used to produce Panzer IVs. The pragmatic decision by the British was to use the tanks they had, build the tanks they could build, buy the tanks they could buy and make the best of it. Yes, almost certainly, in 1936 German doctrine was right and British doctrine was wrong. But the British pragmatically adopted the aspects of modern tank doctrine that they could: what else could they do?", "created_utc": 1642666478, "distinguished": null, "id": "htfnuco", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/s89fqq/was_the_britains_infantry_tank_doctrine_in_wwii/htfnuco/", "score": 197 }, { "body": ">But why did they keep building and designing new bulky, slow infantry tanks, rather than investing earlier in a medium tank with higher speed and bigger guns?\n\nIt's easy to say that the British went down the wrong path in hindsight, but the development of British armour doctrine is fairly reasonable when you look at it in context of its time.\n\nLet's go back to the early 1920s. The British adopted first the Medium Tank Mk.I then the Medium Tank Mk.II. These tanks could reach a speed of 24 kph, which was more than twice as fast as Renault FT light tanks, and had a 47 mm gun that could penetrate up to 30 mm of armour, enough to defeat any enemy tank at the time. There was also a close support variant with a 3.7\" howitzer. Here we have a high speed medium tank with a big gun!\n\nThe family of tanks continued into the Medium Tank Mk.III, but only three prototypes were built. This tank was supposed to be able to reach speeds of 41.5 kph with a more powerful engine, but a blow was struck to the British armoured force with the disbanding of the Experimental Mechanized Force and cuts to the budget of land forces in 1927. The Mk.III died from this blow, and the medium tank concept with it. This was a very bad move for the British, since the Mk.III inspired the Soviet T-28, arguably the best interbellum medium tank. \n\nExperimental work continued and it quickly turned out that you can't have everything in one tank. In 1934 the army requested a tank with the capabilities of the Medium Tank Mk.III, but lighter (12 tons instead of 16). At the same time, the army was eying the French Renault NC, so they also asked for something similar: a thickly armoured tank armed only with a machine gun.\n\nThese two directions evolved further in the mid-1930s. The British were impressed by the Soviet BT tanks at the Great Kiev Exercise and wanted something like that for themselves, and so the cruiser tanks evolved to be more like the BT (bulletproof armour, Christie suspension, high speed). At the same time, requirements for armour grew too, so you see an increase in armour on both the Cruisers (Cruiser Tank Mk.IV) and the infantry tanks (Infantry Tank Mk.II) although the latter obviously got the brunt of the armour upgrades. The armament was also modernized with the high velocity 40 mm 2-pounder and 3\" howtizer for close support tanks.\n\nLooking at the tank armament at the start of WWII, one would hesitate to state the the British bet wrong. Their \"medium\" tank was superior to the German Pz.Kpfw.III. The armament was the same (remember that there were no 50 mm guns yet), the armour of the Cruiser Tank Mk.IV was thicker (early Panzer IIIs had 14 mm of armour, the same as the Cruiser. Tank Mk.III), the Cruiser tank was faster. The infantry tanks had superior armour that withstood anything up to German AA guns.\n\nIt made sense for the next generation of British tanks to look exactly the same. The Cruiser Tanks Mk.V and [Mk.VI](https://Mk.VI) departed little from the Mk.IV concept and the Infantry Tank Mk.IV was still a slow and thickly armoured tank (although it had a howitzer in the hull, a feature that was quickly dropped). \n\nThe problems with this concept were only realized in the battles in North Africa. The long sight lines meant that fighting was happening at much longer ranges than in France. In this case the smaller and (slightly) faster (but more importantly, much cheaper) Valentine proved superior to the cumbersome Matilda. Also it had superior reliability and no issues with long range driving that plagued the Matilda. The new Churchill also turned out to be pretty okay against 88 mm guns at long range. \n\nThe Cruisers weren't in such good shape though. They could avoid 88 mm gun fire at long ranges due to their speed, but once they had to engage German tanks at closer ranges they couldn't compete. The solution was the \"heavy cruiser\" concept that surfaced at the end of 1941: a tank with the armour of an infantry tank and the speed of a cruiser tank. This was your \"high speed medium tank with a bigger gun\", as it would have the 57 mm 6-pounder gun that allowed it to fight German tanks at long ranges.\n\nThe problem with the heavy cruiser is that there were many ideas about how to build it. Development split into three paths: the A24 Cavalier built using Cruiser Tank [Mk.VI](https://Mk.VI) components, and then two brand new tanks: the A27M Cromwell (using a new Meteor engine) and A27L Centaur (using the old Liberty engine). The plan was to put these tanks into service in 1942, but it took far longer than expected to iron out all the bugs. By the time the tanks saw battle in 1944, it was clear that the concept was already obsolete. The replacements were already in development: a minor upgrade to the Cromwell concept (Comet) that saw battle at the tail end of the war in Europe, and a major redesign that abandoned every tradition in British tank building (the Centurion).The former was just a stopgap, but the latter resulted in a fantastic tank series that served for decades after the war.\n\nAs for the Churchill, while there were competing tank designs that were supposed to replace it, there were no proposals to do away with the concept of an infantry tank in general. If anything, the Churchills only got slower and more thickly armoured as the war went on. Like heavy tanks in other nations, they were still relatively specialized vehicles, the main type of tank in the British army was the heavy cruiser, whether the Sherman or the Cromwell.\n\n​\n\nSources and further reading:\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/03/medium-tank-mki-first-of-maneuver-tanks.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/03/medium-tank-mki-first-of-maneuver-tanks.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/12/medium-tank-mkii-interbellum-long-liver.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/12/medium-tank-mkii-interbellum-long-liver.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/01/medium-tank-mkiii-britains-cerberus.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/01/medium-tank-mkiii-britains-cerberus.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/01/the-first-cruiser.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/01/the-first-cruiser.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/01/cruiser-tank-mkii-with-best-intentions.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2019/01/cruiser-tank-mkii-with-best-intentions.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/04/infantry-tank-mki-first-infantry-tank.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2017/04/infantry-tank-mki-first-infantry-tank.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/05/short-term-queen-of-desert.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/05/short-term-queen-of-desert.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/01/britains-christie.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/01/britains-christie.html)\n\n[http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/05/cruiser-iv-bit-more-armour.html](http://www.tankarchives.ca/2016/05/cruiser-iv-bit-more-armour.html)\n\n[https://warspot.net/246-first-among-equals](https://warspot.net/246-first-among-equals)\n\n[https://warspot.net/382-front-line-prime-minister](https://warspot.net/382-front-line-prime-minister)\n\n[https://warspot.ru/15292-bednye-rodstvenniki-kromvelya](https://warspot.ru/15292-bednye-rodstvenniki-kromvelya) \n\n[https://warspot.ru/13466-kromvel-luchshe-pozdno-chem-nikogda](https://warspot.ru/13466-kromvel-luchshe-pozdno-chem-nikogda)", "created_utc": 1642718011, "distinguished": null, "id": "htipuij", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/s89fqq/was_the_britains_infantry_tank_doctrine_in_wwii/htipuij/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "The native Africans of Liberia and Sierra Leone have arguably had to deal with the brunt of the consequences of this movement. Liberia was established as an American colony to send back ex-slaves from the United States, while Sierra Leone was established for the same reason as a British colony. I can speak to Liberia and hopefully someone else can chime in about Sierra Leone. \n\nThe descendants of ex-slaves in Liberia are generally referred to as Americo-Liberians by Westerners and Congo or Congau by West Africans. \n\nIn the first half of the 19th century, the American Colonization Society (the organization primarily responsible for the ‘Back to Africa’ movement) sent at least 4,500 ex-slaves to Liberia. It is estimated that only about 1,800 survived. Among these was a man named Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who encouraged a movement for Liberian independence and became president of the country when that independence was achieved in 1847. Although independent, Liberia continued to receive a large amount of support and protection from the US government. \n\nFrom 1847 until 1980, the government of Liberia was controlled by Americo-Liberians. To some, this leadership was good. William Tubman, considered the father of modern Liberia and its longest-serving President, served during a period of overwhelming economic growth. He improved the country’s infrastructure and successfully lobbied foreign businesses and politicians to invest in the country. \n\nTheir leadership did not sit well with most indigenous inhabitants of the region. Americo-Liberians made up a very small amount of the population (around 5%), and many of their policies encouraged what was seen by many as the exploitation of indigenous tribes, particularly on rubber plantations. They also didn’t have the right to vote. Americo-Liberians refused to marry with native Liberians, viewing them as ‘racially inferior.’ The economic support granted to Liberia did not extend to them, but only to Americo-Liberians. Because of this, they were much wealthier than the natives, leading to widespread animosity. It is difficult to avoid noting the irony of these policies being promoted by people who themselves had recently been victims of similar policies. Similar to White Americans, many Americo-Liberians argues that the native populations were not beyond redemption—they could become civilized through conversion to Christianity and adoption of Western values. \n\nPresidents since at least the early 20th century had been trying to deal with the increasing divide between Native populations and Americo-Liberians. President Arthur Barclay asked for better relations between the two groups, but very little was actually done to achieve this. Tubman attempted to bridge this gap during his presidency through a policy known as ‘National Unification.’ It is celebrated today on May 14th in Liberia as ‘National Unification’ or ‘Integration Day.’ Tubman extended the right to vote to native populations as well as women. Society became more integrated as native Liberians began to move to Monrovia in search of work and work alongside Americo-Liberians (previously the populations had been mostly separate). This integration also brought increased hostility as the economic disparities between the two groups were put on full display. \n\nTubman is a controversial figure. After an attempted assassination in 1955, he became increasingly authoritarian. Although the policy of National Unification may have seemed to be working during his presidency, after his death in 1971, things began breaking down. William Tolbert succeeded Tubman. \n\nTolbert was in many ways caught between a rock and a hard place. A member of one of the wealthiest Americo-Liberian families in the nation, his ascension did little to appease the still-frustrated native populations, since it highlighted even further the economic disparities between the two groups. Tolbert tried to appease them and further the policy of National Unification by speaking Kpelle, an indigenous language, and bringing in more indigenous people into the government. This in turn, led to extreme anger from the Americo-Liberian population. Tolbert’s own cabinet hated the idea. Tolbert attempted to make the country more democratic and less reliant on the West, a policy which was popular with some indigenous groups, but not with the Americo-Liberians who feared their hold on power would be lost. All this came to a head in 1980, when Tolbert was assassinated in a coup by Samuel Doe, effectively ending nearly 140 years of Americo-Liberian rule. \n\nI don’t really want to go into the Liberian civil war because it would be too lengthy and go too far from the question but suffice it to say to this day there still remains a divide between the population of the descendants of ex-slaves in Liberia and indigenous populations.\n\nThe short answer to your question is—the vast majority of West Africans did not like this movement since it forced a repressive system of government upon them run by people who were seen by West Africans as foreign colonizers.", "created_utc": 1612342636, "distinguished": null, "id": "glucbfz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lb8c9p/what_have_west_africans_historically_had_to_say/glucbfz/", "score": 1682 }, { "body": "In a more recent context, the historian Kevin Gaines's 2006 book on African-Americans returning to Ghana during and after the civil rights movement deals with the reactions of West Africans. Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother and Paulla Ebron's Performing Africa also consider West African responses to African-American heritage tourism and \"return to Africa\" narratives in the last fifty years--and there are other works by anthropologists and historians that do so. (I'll also recommend the novelist George Lamming's Pleasures of Exile, which includes some commentaries on being a West Indian resident for a time in Ghana and his observations about other Black expatriates and exiles.) Additionally, the historian James Campbell's Middle Passages is a great comprehensive history of African-American returns to West and Central Africa and various African reactions to those returns over time. \n\nI think in the recent era, one common summary of West African reactions to returns out of the African diaspora might be that they have been a mix of bemusement, appreciation, bewilderment, gratitude and occasional mild irritation. Since the 19th Century, some African-American returnees have been unsettled or surprised by the fact that they have been read as \"foreigners\", even as \"white foreigners\", rather than kin (Langston Hughes talks about this in his autobiography, and Hartman much more recently struggled to process the same reaction). But that is where all those feelings among West Africans come together--a pleasure that there are these travellers who so intensely desire a feeling of connection and who are often so flattering in the way they express that desire coupled with a modest amusement at how little they often seem to know about the place they've come to--and the irritation that can follow when the new arrivals clumsily elbow local people out of the way or try to tell them what their history and cultures really are or ought to be. (The scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr's first travel program on his African journeys created some modest annoyance for this reason, most potently when he picks a fight with one of his West African hosts about the legacy of the slave trade.) \n\nI think as Black heritage tourism has become more economically important, the sense of mild puzzlement at diasporic returnees has faded and more familiarity with returnees and their interests has developed. More recently, too, I think West African artists, scholars, writers, performers, etc. in Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, etc. have developed more confidence in partnerships with diasporic collaborators, which has brought short-term and long-term returnees a closer sense of belonging and connection.", "created_utc": 1612376557, "distinguished": null, "id": "glw25rj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/lb8c9p/what_have_west_africans_historically_had_to_say/glw25rj/", "score": 145 } ]

[ { "body": "[Oh this is gonna be bad...I'm out.](http://i.imgur.com/y5vqv.gif)\n\n\nActually it has no scientific proof. The time time period involved with length of human age, mortality, introduction of genetic material makes this very incorrect in an evolutionary biology sense.\n\nNow if you want to go down the cultural road...", "created_utc": 1334606041, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4d02ok", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/scudj/a_possibly_racist_interpretation_from_my_father/c4d02ok/", "score": 8 }, { "body": "It's biological racism but this could be better answered by searching r/askscience. Your father is *probably* not racist, because there's not necessarily any negative racial thought in it (although it may be comorbid), just a severe lack of knowledge about evolution and inheritance.\n\n*I have no cites* but one cause for the misbalance is likely to be cultural: beginning in elementary and junior high school athletics programs, black youth are shepherded towards athletics and away from academics. Some schoolteachers/administrators are outright racist, but also there's a residual effect from more of their parents and older friends already being in the programs. For some black youth who are ignored in the classroom, the fieldhouse is the only socially approved place for them to excel.", "created_utc": 1334607951, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4d0j3c", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/scudj/a_possibly_racist_interpretation_from_my_father/c4d0j3c/", "score": 5 }, { "body": "I'm not a historian or a scientist, but in [this Radiolab podcast](http://www.radiolab.org/2011/aug/23/winning-side/), Malcolm Gladwell hypothesizes that less-affluent (frequently black) kids have fewer opportunities to escape poverty, so they may be motivated to work harder in the few areas where they think they could be successful. \"They just wanted it more.\" Gladwell's ideas tend to be nothing more than conventional wisdom gussied up as a stroke of insight, so I think the simple version would be: until very recently, black kids only had athletes and musicians as role models, whereas white kids grow up in a culture where people from astronauts to actors to accountants look like themselves. Just another thing in that [Invisible Knapsack](http://www.nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf).", "created_utc": 1334648583, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4d84wr", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/scudj/a_possibly_racist_interpretation_from_my_father/c4d84wr/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I'll let someone more knowledgeable about slavery than I am answer your question, but I'd like to offer a cautionary note about taking these percentages too seriously.\n\nThe fact that African Americans have 25% of their European ancestry from European female ancestors does not mean that these percentages reflect the frequency of African-European pairings by sex. The genetics of modern people is strongly influenced by successive generations of survivor bias. In other words, not everyone lives long enough to reproduce, not everyone has the same number of children, not all children have an equal chance to survive to adulthood and have children of their own. Any biases in these numbers get amplified over time.\n\nHere's the actual data for African American ancestry [from the paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4289685/):\n\n|Ancestor|Ancestry in Current Population|\n:--|:--|\n|African Male|31.0%|\n|African Female|42.2%|\n|European Male|18.8%|\n|European Female|5.2%|\n|Native American Male|0.2%|\n|Native American Female|0.6%|\n|Unclassified|2.0%|\n|Total|100%|\n\nWhile it's true that European female ancestry is quite high (5.2%, or a bit more than a quarter of total European ancestry), notice that African female ancestry is also higher than African male ancestry (42.2% versus 31%). This shows that either African women reproduced more than African men, or that more of their descendants survived to the present day, or both.\n\nIn fact, there may be reasons for both. Humans all over the world have more ancestry from female ancestors than from male, or to be more specific, we have DNA from a comparatively larger number of women who lived in the past than we have from men. This is because significantly more women than men managed to reproduce during their lifetimes. To put it in other words, the number of children per woman is more evenly distributed, but a relatively fewer number of men fathered a lot of children while other men had none. This can have many causes; polygyny is often cited as one historically. In the context of slavery, it may be that many African men were sent to work in the fields, which is harder work and less safe than being a house-slave, so perhaps fewer of them got the chance to reproduce.\n\nThen there is the difference in survival rates of the children. If the children of some pairings have a better chance to survive than others, over time this will amplify their lineage quite dramatically. If you make the assumption that European mothers had a higher social status than African mothers in a racist society, then it's not surprising that more of their children survived to adulthood than the children of African mothers. Attitudes towards children may also play a role. For example, if the European father sees the pairing as just casual sex with an African slave, he may not feel much responsibility for the welfare of the child.\n\nIn short, while clearly European women had children with African men, how common this was is probably not accurately represented by the numbers you cite. It's quite easy for secondary effects to amplify a lineage or to bring an end to it, so when you look at data several generations later, you see a complicated picture that has several contributory factors.", "created_utc": 1642475936, "distinguished": null, "id": "ht4o2ad", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/s6k49i/what_is_the_history_of_white_women_sexually/ht4o2ad/", "score": 302 }, { "body": "More can always be said, but [this older answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6fy8j4/there_are_lots_of_stories_of_white_slaveowning/dimmofu/) might be of interest for you.", "created_utc": 1642476366, "distinguished": null, "id": "ht4p1n7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/s6k49i/what_is_the_history_of_white_women_sexually/ht4p1n7/", "score": 65 } ]

[ { "body": "You touch here on a wider problem in historical writting, should we use our contemporary terms for groups of people or the term that was used at the time ?\n\nBoth have their benefits and downsides, using a modern term makes it easier to understand. Everyone knows what \"black\" means, a kushite though ? So should I title my book: \"Black people in early Roman Egypte\" or \"Kushites in early Roman Egypt\" ? If I choose the term black my work is instantly recognisable as part of a certain cultural sphere which will attract attention to it, bringing more readers. And isn't that what a historian's job is ? Shouldn't we strive to share the knowledge we find from our research to the widest audience ? But in doing so don't we risk to sacrifice accuracy in the process ?\n\nAnother issue is that the sense of words change with time, and sometimes words that were neutral at the time took a bad connotation later on. When it comes to blacks for example the n-word used to just mean black, even people who were against slavery or racism would use it to describe black people because it would just mean black. On a sidenote if you go back even further the n-word was actually positive ! In Latin they ware two words for black \"ater\" and \"nigrum\", the later of which gave the n-word in english. But where \"ater\" was the bad black, associated with all the negative aspects of the color like darkness and death, \"nigrum\" was the positive aspects like the very hard to obtain black dye on clothing. For more on that subject I would recommend \"Noir: Histoire d'une couleur\" by Michel Pastoureau, though I don't know if it was translated into english sadly.\n\nBack on topic what do historians do to adress the problem. Usually they pick a term based on their work. People working on blackness as a concept will tend to prefer the term of black, so for example when talking about race relations. Historians working on specific people, like for example a book on the Zulu or the Ashanti will prefer to use the actual names of those people. You can also find in betweens, terms like \"west-african\" if the work in question is solely focused on that part of the world. This isn't clear cut rules of course, and many works kind of fall in between categories like for example the fake book title about Kushites I used earlier. One could argue it is both about race relations and a specific african people, at that point the title falls on the author's decision and their thesis, what aspect of the subject they are focusing on.", "created_utc": 1616525123, "distinguished": null, "id": "gryk42f", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mbfsbs/how_do_modern_historians_use_the_term_black_as_in/gryk42f/", "score": 1347 }, { "body": "Side question: Does /r/askhistorians have an Aboriginal history expert? Contemporary Australians claim the word \"black\" to describe modern indigenous Aussies, with the term \"blackfella\" often being used by Indigenous Australians to describe themselves. I'd love to hear an academic answer the Australian use of the world \"black.\"", "created_utc": 1616551306, "distinguished": null, "id": "gs04189", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mbfsbs/how_do_modern_historians_use_the_term_black_as_in/gs04189/", "score": 84 }, { "body": "Hi there u/BananaNutriment, this is a really interesting question of historiography and it also is one that you have to consider from a genre perspective. I hope that I as a historian of low repute can help at least shed some light on your question.\n\nModern Historians are a variable bunch, and people can discuss this kind of matter in lots of different contexts. In some circumstances while talking about “Blackness” or “Black People”, it’s simply not a useful term. When you are talking about say a very specific or zoomed in African story prior to colonial affairs, it’s not really relevant as a useful term simply because everyone in your story is likely Black. In the circumstances where that isn’t like Arab adventures across the Sahara by people like Ibn Battuta or Genoese Merchants they are more extraordinary than regular. That would be like telling a story about WWII and noting every time that someone was a human. It’s kind of implied and not useful. In precolonial history, oftentimes there are other identity factors that are far more useful, like kinship networks, state affiliation, or local home.\n\nWhen we go forward of stories of subsaharan african states and africans interacting with Europeans and/or the broader world, these sorts of things become relevant because that is the period in which blackness fundamentally is born in. In fact, I would argue that really prior to the sixteenth century it’s difficult to make arguments with regard to what it meant to be “Black”. If you are looking for further reading on the evolution of what it meant to be black, I strongly recommend you read Dr. Jennifer Morgan’s Article “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder”: Male Travellers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology 1500-1770.\n\n(You can find this article here)[Here!](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953316)\n\nIt’s really only in an American(the Continent) perspective that Blackness became useful as a term, conjured in opposition to Whiteness. Later, during the colonisation of Africa itself, it is again useful in that similar circumstance. And in the creation of this term, North Africa really isn’t considered part of that world. And so if you as a historian are writing about colonialism and settlement in the Americas, a term like Black is useful and normally is synonymous with People of African Descent for the purposes of your writing.\n\nThat doesn’t mean that historians don’t have use of other terms too. African as a general term is useful when talking about the broad and interconnected movement of decolonisation where Africans of all colours along with Asian of all varieties engaged in mutual action to demand liberty for example. It’s also useful when discussing transcontinental affairs like the African Union or the Pan-African Movement.\n\nAnd no, there never is a perfect term, never. When I was in University, one of my professors offered a class on The African Diaspora, and we used the term Black and African Diaspora pretty interchangeably. So in the literature we were exposed to, that would be the commonality.\n\nUltimately, people don’t really like to use the term subsaharan africa because it’s absolutely enormous and rather useless. It’s a region of around a billion across around 45-46 countries. That’s not particularly useful as a historian. But a term like Black is very useful when talking about historical diaspora, mostly because people were not enabled to keep their specific heritage. Enslaved People sent to the Caribbean, Brazil, or the Continental United States were stripped of their past and simply referred by their skin colour. That’s thusly a term that for that experience: those defined by their skin tone.\n\nAll I can say is that most modern departments at universities have something along the lines of African Studies or African Diasporic Studies as the names of the departments(I was going to cite specific universities, but I found over 60 different departments called something like that).\n\nUltimately as you pursue your studies, you’ll find not many people study “The History of Black People” as that’s a BIG speciality. You might find African Diasporic Studies, West African Studies, East African & Horn Studies, South African Studies and many other divisions. \n\nI hope my answer was useful for you, and if I as a meagre writer can provide any other information or notes about the historiography of the term, please let me know.", "created_utc": 1616527176, "distinguished": null, "id": "gryoybc", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mbfsbs/how_do_modern_historians_use_the_term_black_as_in/gryoybc/", "score": 166 } ]

[ { "body": "Did any of the officers' slaves try to assassinate them? Were there any uprisings?\n\nWho did the slaves belong to? Where they the property of the Confederate Army itself, or were they on loan from wealthy slaveowners?", "created_utc": 1585579234, "distinguished": null, "id": "flxazn5", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/frr6uk/my_name_is_kevin_m_levin_and_i_am_the_author_of/flxazn5/", "score": 197 }, { "body": "Hi! Thank you for answering our questions. This might be out of scope slightly, but you mention that African-American slaves were used as force labor in the Confederate Army, did the Confederate Navy also use slaves for forced labor?", "created_utc": 1585576700, "distinguished": null, "id": "flx71iw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/frr6uk/my_name_is_kevin_m_levin_and_i_am_the_author_of/flx71iw/", "score": 277 }, { "body": "What have you found to be the most outrageous claim you've come across when researching this subject? Something that made you get up from the desk and take a walk just to deal with the sheer audacity of the claim?", "created_utc": 1585580051, "distinguished": null, "id": "flxccck", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/frr6uk/my_name_is_kevin_m_levin_and_i_am_the_author_of/flxccck/", "score": 81 } ]

[ { "body": "The main reason that NASA didn't have any minority astronauts early on was that the military's test pilots were almost all white men at the time. Astronaut groups 1 and 2 were all test pilots, while group 3 could be either test pilots or non-test pilots with advanced degrees. Group 4 was scientist-astronauts who had to have either a PhD or an MD. There simply weren't very many African-Americans who met those criteria back then. \n\nInterestingly, Guion Bluford has gone down in history as the first African-American astronaut to fly but he as *not* the first African-American to be chosen as an astronaut. That honor goes to Major Robert Lawrence who was picked for the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program back in 1967. MOL never flew, but the MOL astronauts under the age of 35 were given the chance to transfer to NASA's astronaut corps when the program was cancelled. Most of the pilots for the early shuttle missions were MOL veterans. Unfortunately for Lawrence he was killed in a flying accident in December 1967. If he hadn't he probably would have transferred to NASA as well and become NASA's first black astronaut back in 1969 (although he wouldn't have gotten to fly until the early 80s.)\n\nMy source for the MOL stuff is *Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her*. Air & Space Magazine also has an [interesting article](https://www.airspacemag.com/space/a-sudden-loss-of-altitude-14456179/?all) on MOL and Maj. Lawrence. ", "created_utc": 1494333844, "distinguished": null, "id": "dhbqqme", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/683uy7/what_kind_of_racial_discrimination_existed_in_us/dhbqqme/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Denmark Vesey is a very interesting case study. On the outside he appears to be an early hero of anti-slavery resistance, even if his methods were going to be a quite brutal. The reality, and one that is apparently glossed over in by this article, is that we really don't know much at all about Denmark Vesey.\n\nThe main primary document we have regarding the trial is the trial report itself, the awkwardly named *An Official Report of the Trials of the Sundry Negroes charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina: Preceded by an Introduction and Narrative; and, in an Appendix, A Report of the Trials of Four White Persons on Indictments or Attempting to Excite the Slaves to Insurrection * which was written the lawyers Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker. The report of course represents a white upper class's view on the conspiracy, and while historians have acknowledged this, the Official Report (as I will refer to it now) was basically accepted as the actual version of events (which is what the article draws on it appears)\n\nIn 2001 however a historian by the name of Michael P. Johnson went back over the Official Report in its original script, and found many glaring inaccuracies between the original text and subsquent future renditions of it used for scholarly research. He has since challenged the view of Vesey as a terrorist/Nat Turner like figure (Michael P. Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators,” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (October 2001): 971.) and even asserted that no such conspiracy actually existed, and that Vesey was simply a convenient scapegoat for nervous slave owners who had seen the devastation wrought in Haiti and desperately feared the same thing happening in their own backyard. \n\nIf you would like more I can point you to some of the scholarly debate on Vesey, who really was an extremely interesting character that not many even know about.", "created_utc": 1393465401, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfpp2vv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1z09kk/charleston_activists_recently_put_up_a_denmark/cfpp2vv/", "score": 5 }, { "body": "Certainly at the time he was hung it is applicable. Vesey was lauded later by Northern Abolitionists and of course villified by southern slave owners. I think a more interesting examination is why people would consider him a terrorist today. Certainly we can recognize that slavery is immoral. \n", "created_utc": 1393455589, "distinguished": null, "id": "cfpknag", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1z09kk/charleston_activists_recently_put_up_a_denmark/cfpknag/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Have you tried looking at genealogy websites like ancestry.com? Those can sometimes get you access to primary census documents and stuff from many years ago.", "created_utc": 1424751330, "distinguished": null, "id": "cov8hy3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wyag6/sources_on_forrest_white_woodard/cov8hy3/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I'll attempt to tackle this question:\n\nFirst, most historians would disagree with Chomsky in regards to the 20th century being the only time that African Americans had a chance of \"entering\" American society (despite the fact that they already inhabit American society, though we will give Chomsky a pass and assume he meant equitable access to meritocracy and large scale integration). For instance, many scholars, such as David Roediger, have written about the period of Reconstruction as one in which a multi-racial and inclusive society was possible, and the failure of this possibility is reflective of the prevailing influence of race, class, and the importance of the \"wages of whiteness\" in perpetuating racism and racial divide. If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend two of Roediger's influential works; [The Wages of Whiteness](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Wages-Whiteness-American-Working/dp/1844671453) and [How Race Survived U.S History](http://www.amazon.ca/How-Race-Survived-History-Settlement/dp/1844674347/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418444290&sr=1-2&keywords=how+race+survived+U.S+history)\n\nIn regards to Chomsky's statements on the Drug War, largely, I would agree. However, I would push them and state that the Drug War is part of a longer history dating back to Reconstruction in which the criminalization and institutionalization of African Americans was a means to control and subvert their population. Some historians have gone as far as to say that mass incarceration of African Americans has come to replace slave labor in the United States, as these prisoners (then and now) were forced to work for little to no wages for certain industries (picking cotton in the South for example). There are many scholarly articles and monographs on the subject, however, if you are interested in the post Civil Rights era I would recommend [The New Jim Crowe](http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mass%20incarceration%20of%20African%20Americans) as an a starting point. \n\nIn regards to the last fact, I suppose the claim is subjective to what one defines as \"freedom\". However, many historians have demonstrated that whatever \"freedom\" blacks have gained throughout their history, it has always been subjected and juxtaposed with the unequal access to particular rights, liberties, and resources available to whites. [George Lipsitz](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Possessive-Investment-Whiteness-Identity/dp/1592134947) has written that public policy and private prejudice has been intertwined throughout American history, leading to tangible benefits for whites in terms of education and employment and an \"investment\" in whiteness against Blackness. Moreover, Du Bois wrote in [Black Reconstruction](http://www.amazon.ca/Black-Reconstruction-America-W-Bois/dp/0689700636/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418444947&sr=1-2&keywords=black+reconstruction) that whiteness provided particular \"psychological and public wages\" that promoted racial prejudice and racial stratification. It is through this paradigm in which Chomsky's statements must be viewed. Largely I agree with his statements, though I wish he would preface them with the scholarly and theoretical underpinnings in which I have attempted to provide you. If you are interested in the subject, I would highly recommend reading Lipsitz's work that I have linked and Roediger's How Race Survived U.S history as an entry point. ", "created_utc": 1418445437, "distinguished": null, "id": "cmthx4i", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2p52v6/how_accurate_are_chomskys_statements_on/cmthx4i/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "Try /r/homeworkhelp.", "created_utc": 1379206555, "distinguished": null, "id": "cc8hbrn", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mensy/ap_us_history_homework_help_colonial_era/cc8hbrn/", "score": 3 }, { "body": "Just saying, I **am** researching for this topic, it's a bit hard for me as it is my first year taking AP US History in High School.", "created_utc": 1379209246, "distinguished": null, "id": "cc8i2r2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mensy/ap_us_history_homework_help_colonial_era/cc8i2r2/", "score": 2 }, { "body": "Contrary to /u/Iamducky's assertion, the rules seem to allow this inquiry.\n\n\n>Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread.](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/y7f8f/meta_schools_in_a_brief_reminder_of_our_homework/)\n\nAs such, I can see no violation of the rules.", "created_utc": 1379208986, "distinguished": null, "id": "cc8i055", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mensy/ap_us_history_homework_help_colonial_era/cc8i055/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "I can't answer your question exactly, because I'm not too familiar with African \"Zionism\", which is a bit of a misnomer. To clarify, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people deserve the right to self-determination in the land of Israel/Palestine. This is a form of nationalism by most definitions, which is concerned with gaining self-governance for a nation of people. So African Zionism is the wrong term. Zionism is Jewish nationalism, and what you're asking about is how Zionism compares to African nationalism.\n\nWith that definitional clarification out of the way, and the admission that I don't know much about African nationalism in place, I can still provide you with some information on half of your question, by describing a bit about Zionism.\n\nFor the first point, it's true that Jewish Zionists typically believed they would be discriminated against. Theodor Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism posited it as a sort of paradox in *Der Judenstaat* (The Jewish State). In the section on \"The Jewish Question\", Herzl differentiated between anti-Judaism, which was religious persecution (think \"Jews killed Jesus\") and \"modern anti-Semitism\", which he claimed was a reaction to the \"emancipation of the Jews\". He wrote, in the \"Introduction\":\n\n>The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis.\n\nHere I think we can draw at least one crucial distinction from what I *am* well-versed in. African-Americans feared discrimination on the basis of skin color and the disgusting attributes of racism and pseudoscience that had plagued them. The Jewish fear was not necessarily of discrimination because they were regarded as \"inferior\", but because they were considered different and dangerous. He notes that when they are poor, they become part of the revolutionary \"proletariat\", and are seen as a threat to leadership. When they attempt to rise, they are targeted as too powerful. The African nationalist movement in the United States at least had no such reason to believe the latter would ever be the case, though there are likely parallels in the former (and I do recall reading the Liberian Declaration of Independence describing the persecution African-Americans faced as a cause for their seeking independence). The similarity you've noted about nativity being discussed is also valid in that regard.\n\nHowever, it's worth noting some things:\n\n1) Israel was created in the wake of the Holocaust. But it was not populated primarily by Holocaust survivors. Indeed, the population of Israel doubled from 1948-1951 not only because of Holocaust survivors, but because of a wave of Mizrahi Jews, who came from Arab states, who would constitute over 800,000 immigrants before the wave was over (Israel had a population near 620,000 Jews at the end of the 1948 war). Israel's creation was something that had been proposed by Jews who arrived well before the Holocaust, and was done by those Jews. It is true that Jews arrived fleeing persecution and pogroms, for example leaving Russia, or Germany in the 1930s, which has some parallels to the African nationalism experience, but the Holocaust survivors were not a majority of the population. In Liberia, the African-American arrivals also had time before independence was achieved, far more time (and intermixing) than there was for Holocaust survivors before independence.\n\n2) African nationalism gained significant support from slaveholders especially initially, just as Zionism gained some support from key anti-Semites. However, African nationalism's creation of a state did not involve the war Israel's did (it involved far more disorganized skirmishes and fights with those from the \"bush\"), and it did not involve nearly so similar a situation in terms of great power involvement at the time.\n\nEven so, I can see compelling parallels from the bit I know. Hopefully the Israeli history I've provided can help an expert on Liberia and other African national movements of this sort speak up.\n\nI will say a few words about why Israel is how it is, and its importance to Jews, and compare it to what I can confidently say about Liberia.\n\nOn the one hand, it seems interesting that Jews take pride in Israel, travel there, etc.. However, this becomes clearer when we discuss the question of being buried there, as you did. That is the case because Jews have a religious connection to the land. Grave space on the Mount of Olives is sparse and sold at a premium, because of the religious belief that when the messiah comes, the dead will awaken there first. There are numerous sites of great importance to the Jewish tradition, such as the Western (Wailing) Wall, the Temple Mount, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, etc.. This may contrast heavily with the experience of Liberia, which doesn't have much connection to most African-Americans in any way besides being a place discussed for black liberation, and one that was not historically easy to reach or economically powerful.\n\nWhich brings me to the second point, of historic power. Israel has benefited in numerous ways from both its position, and the population that made it up. Many Jews who moved to Israel were educated, typically in the West, but fled anti-Semitism. This goes back to the Herzl-ian statement about Jews having the \"terrible power of the purse\", and the persecution of Jews for being \"too\" powerful. This education base was beneficial to the state, and that was compounded by most accounts when over a million Soviet Jews fled the collapsing Soviet empire. Well-educated Jews fled to Israel, which has only added to its economic and human capital. This is coupled with Israel's position as a central region in the Middle East and world, and constant threats on all sides for much of its existence, which provided both motivation and an ability to get involved in great power politics (including thus receiving aid from the United States in more recent decades). Liberia, on the other hand, did not have the same ability to recruit educated African-Americans, because the horrors of the slavery system did not ebb and rise in the way anti-Semitism did. That's not to say no Liberian leaders were educated, or people, as they obviously were, and they established numerous organizations and missions to both religiously and generally educate others. But the situations were, of course different, and Liberia didn't begin to receive as much attention or great power involvement until far later. Jewish Zionists also benefited from European connections; people like Chaim Weizmann were notable Jews from European states with connections to a variety of important political leaders. Indeed, even Theodor Herzl sought meetings with leaders of countries like Germany, and Chaim Weizmann's intervention with Truman may have been the biggest reason why Truman was swayed to push for keeping the Negev desert as part of the proposed Jewish state in the UN partition plan.", "created_utc": 1509383802, "distinguished": null, "id": "dp3of07", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/78w00b/how_did_african_zionism_compare_to_israeli_zionism/dp3of07/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "As you know Detroit was, before the war, a major auto producing city. Well when WWII rolls around the government is in need of large scale production of war materials (planes, tanks, amunition, etc...) Well all the many auto factories in Detroit are converted from auto production to the production of tanks, planes, and so forth. With all of this large scale and widespread production, people were needed to do these jobs. As you probably know before the war the U.S. was in the \"Great Depression\" so any word of job availability was met with a large amount of responses. So people would move, often in large quantities, to the major cities where this type of production was taking place. And yes many of these workers were infact women. As most able bodied men were over seas fighting or preparing to go over they had to leave their jobs, so the positions needed to be filled and the majority of people left were women. ", "created_utc": 1349026859, "distinguished": null, "id": "c6fladq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10pqgm/detroit_during_wwii/c6fladq/", "score": 2 }, { "body": "Race relations have never been good in Detroit. Blacks first moved to the city in large numbers during the Great Migration around WWI. For the most part, they were concentrated in the most menial service jobs. There were some that had work in automobile plants, but they were rare (and while it was a huge step up from being a sharecropper, working in an auto plant pre-1930's was a miserable job). The black upper and middle class were mostly, and this is a generalization, professionals who served the black community, i.e. doctors, lawyers, and undertakers (many white undertakers wouldn't touch black bodies). \n\nThere's a famous example in the case of [Dr. Ossian Sweet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossian_Sweet#Garland_Avenue_bungalow), who moved to a white, working class neighborhood in 1925, which started a riot and resulted in a very famous trial for a murder committed defending the home (Sweet's defender was none other than Clarence Darrow). Poor race relations continued throughout the 1930's and 1940's though, even with he UAW, whose leadership was ostensibly committed to civil rights. There was a major [race riot in 1943](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1943\\)) and there were several examples of white workers walking out when black workers were put on the line with them. ", "created_utc": 1349043912, "distinguished": null, "id": "c6fpdew", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/10pqgm/detroit_during_wwii/c6fpdew/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "What is our best guess in 2019 as to the population size of indigenous peoples of Central America in 1519? \n\nWhat about 50 years before that and 50 years after?\n\nAny hope that any recent scientific advancements might make these numbers more certain?", "created_utc": 1570975832, "distinguished": null, "id": "f3lgwao", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/dha7d3/500_years_later_colonization_of_the_americas/f3lgwao/", "score": 39 }, { "body": "How much of the native social and institutional structures were kept by Spaniards, at least in the aftermath of the conquest? \nCould their relative failure to dominate native peripheries in northern Mexico, southern United States and southern Andine region be partially explained by the lack of strong, diversely centralized states the conquerors could took over and rely on their remaining structure to quickly impose their rule?", "created_utc": 1570973353, "distinguished": null, "id": "f3l7wyf", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/dha7d3/500_years_later_colonization_of_the_americas/f3l7wyf/", "score": 64 }, { "body": "I'm near the Missouri River, not too far from Cahokia Mounds, and there are Indian Burial Mounds on every hilltop overlooking the river. If you owned land with a burial mound, how would you treat the area? I used to own such land, the previous owners had dug half of it up with a bulldozer looking for artifacts.", "created_utc": 1570973958, "distinguished": null, "id": "f3la1li", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/dha7d3/500_years_later_colonization_of_the_americas/f3la1li/", "score": 129 } ]

[ { "body": "So many questions! Some time back I read an article specifically about 'Devil Dogs', and Caesar von Steuben stuck with me in particular, from a picture of him undergoing an X-ray (you probably know the one I mean?). It's been a topic I think is *so* interesting, but criminally undercovered in academic literature, so it is super cool to see it getting is due. \n\nEnough gushing though, and I'll try to keep it to only a few Qs!\n\nFirst off, I know that modern MWDs are bred for the role, but this obviously wasn't the case for WWII. How specifically did training focus on 'militarizing' them? Was there specific methods required to deacclimate them to the norms of civilian life, compared to modern training which simply raises them in that mold?\n\nAdditionally, did DfD remain the main pipeline through the war, or did the military attempt a breeding program by the end of the conflict to supplement it?\n\nAn old friend of my dad's was a handler in Vietnam, and would talk about the bond he had with this dogs and it seemed like a very focused role from what he told, but it was also a generation removed. What sort of specific protocols were made for handlers and their dogs when in the field? Were they soldiers who had a dog along with them as an additional role, or did they mostly have allowances to provide hyperfocus on *that* role?\n\nFinally... I know they were all good puppers, but who is your personal goodest pupper of them all?", "created_utc": 1607106899, "distinguished": null, "id": "gemd68r", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/k6qcbq/my_name_is_hannah_im_a_phd_student_studying_the/gemd68r/", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Hi Hannah, thank you for doing this AMA! \n\nIn every World War 2 film, allied prisoners are guarded by a fearsome German soldier with a submachine gun on his back and an angry German shepherd on a lead. Is this image accurate for the US as well? How were dogs used to guard POW camps?\n\nI'm also curious how this became your speciality!", "created_utc": 1607106247, "distinguished": null, "id": "gembs9x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/k6qcbq/my_name_is_hannah_im_a_phd_student_studying_the/gembs9x/", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Hello Hannah! Was Dogs for Defense inspired by American police canine programs, or did police canine units in the United States take any inspiration from the military use of dogs?", "created_utc": 1607106245, "distinguished": null, "id": "gembs6h", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/k6qcbq/my_name_is_hannah_im_a_phd_student_studying_the/gembs6h/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "There is a wonderful, short book by the black historian Henry Gates titled Colored People : A Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), that speaks to the changing attitudes of African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. Gates spent his childhood in North Carolina, coming of age during the lunch counter sit-ins taking place in his local city. He clearly documents the attitudes of black Americans as violence erupted across the country during the various civil rights demonstrations.\n", "created_utc": 1394577494, "distinguished": null, "id": "cg07i30", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/205mx8/africanamerican_culture_and_identity_in_the_late/cg07i30/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "Incredibly fascinating to read. Thanks Commustar for putting this write up together.", "created_utc": 1619457038, "distinguished": null, "id": "gvy86jo", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mz2efn/monday_methods_the_universal_museum_and_looted/gvy86jo/", "score": 22 }, { "body": "This particular issue does not only apply to art - artefacts, but one of the big problems that African Governments sit with now is how to repatriate the body parts that were removed during colonial times and sit in foreign museums to this day. We are talking here about the practice of mailing home skulls for ‘collections’ that were featured in those ‘cabinets of curiosities’. While it is not the done thing anymore for these human remains to be on display as they once were, museums are at the same time, not willing to send them home for burial. \n\nThe classic example here is the negotiation by the South African government for the return of the remains of Saarah Baartmaan. The deal that the government was forced to sign let them have her body on condition that they give up all potential and future claims to any other bodies and human remains held by this (and I think all other international) museum. When I studied this at university, she had just been returned to South Africa but there were really grotesque out standing questions - like where were her genital organs? We know they were removed preserved and displayed, but were they really subsequently ‘lost’? Or are they still in that French Museum as was the open secret at the time?\n\nMy point - if you are cleaning house, for the love of all things decent, send back the human remains that you aren’t even allowed to display anymore. Send these actual people home for burial. Then let’s talk about art and money....", "created_utc": 1619468162, "distinguished": null, "id": "gvyycu2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mz2efn/monday_methods_the_universal_museum_and_looted/gvyycu2/", "score": 23 }, { "body": "Thank you for this post, albeit I was hoping for a more substantive position on the issue.\n\nFor example, what is your view in regards to the argument that the repatriation of artefacts to less-developed countries poses a risk in terms of preservation (in certain circumstances)? Some common examples of destruction I see brought up in discussion: the National Museum of Brazil in 2018, the Egyptian Museum in 2011, or the Iraq Museum in 2003. \n\nPerhaps a little less compelling, albeit thought-provoking, is there anything to be said about the inadvertent push for \"nationalizing\" the museum experience? That is, might we one day achieve a museum system which is entirely segregated by national origin, in contrast to the museums of \"common humanity\" (at least in principle) as it stands now?", "created_utc": 1619550476, "distinguished": null, "id": "gw31tcm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mz2efn/monday_methods_the_universal_museum_and_looted/gw31tcm/", "score": 7 } ]

[ { "body": "There is always more to say, but you might be interested in [this previous question](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/m0n52f/in_1537_the_pope_banned_the_enslavement_of_native/gqa239a/) featuring responses from myself, and the unparalleled insights of u/400-Rabbits.", "created_utc": 1647136133, "distinguished": null, "id": "i0fx68x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/tcu2kr/why_did_colonial_spaniards_discourage_indigenous/i0fx68x/", "score": 4 } ]

[ { "body": "[According to this] (https://www.iwu.edu/history/constructingthepastvol9/Hill_Klan.pdf) there have been movements by women involved in the Klan to take a more progressive role within the organization. It didn't take off in the early 20th century, but it doesn't seem like it was met with the same violence as Civil Rights. Great question. [More-ish] (http://www.kkkknights.com/klan-women.html)", "created_utc": 1413692767, "distinguished": null, "id": "cldh1ms", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jnxgm/how_did_the_klan_of_the_1960s_react_to_the_womens/cldh1ms/", "score": 2 } ]

[ { "body": "Robert Caro has written the definitive biographies on LBJ. It is a multi-volume set of books, and each one is fairly thick. However, they are well regarded, and volume III \"The Power Broker\" won the Pulitzer Prize. They are fairly easy to read, despite their great length. Volume IV, \"The Passage of Power\" covers LBJ from 1958 to 1964 and has the most relevance to the Civil Rights movement. \n Juan Williams wrote another award winning book, \"Eyes on the Prize\" which is the companion book to the Fourteen hour long PBS documentary on the Civil Rights movement.", "created_utc": 1351555397, "distinguished": null, "id": "c6tluzi", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/12ah26/lf_a_good_biography_on_lbj_or_a_good_general_book/c6tluzi/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Hello Dr. Silkenat, thanks for doing this.\nAs a researcher on desertion and defection during another American conflict, the Vietnam War, I’m very interested to hear about the process of defection during the American Civil War. Defection ostensibly involves surrender followed by integration - how did this process look during the Civil War?", "created_utc": 1585318243, "distinguished": null, "id": "flngqq7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fpxd3n/i_am_dr_david_silkenat_here_to_discuss_my_recent/flngqq7/", "score": 85 }, { "body": "Something that is always fascinating to me is the parole system and its mechanics. How widely was it respected prior to its break-down midway through the war, and how effective was enforcement of it by the opposing sides, lacking the kind of modern tools we would have to check identity?\n\ni.e. if a soldier gave his parole and went home, how likely would it be that he is back in the ranks fighting? How much did that depend on North v. South in respecting it? And if captured a second time, what was the chance it would be recognized he violated his parole?", "created_utc": 1585318796, "distinguished": null, "id": "flnhmw3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fpxd3n/i_am_dr_david_silkenat_here_to_discuss_my_recent/flnhmw3/", "score": 76 }, { "body": "Were soldiers (from either side) who surrendered treated poorly when they returned home? Did that change as the war progressed?", "created_utc": 1585318227, "distinguished": null, "id": "flngprv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fpxd3n/i_am_dr_david_silkenat_here_to_discuss_my_recent/flngprv/", "score": 33 } ]

[ { "body": "It isn't hard to understand how the Lost Cause would appeal and grow in the South, but what do you see as the driving force behind it gaining such penetration into the North? Rebel flags flying proudly in Michigan or Maine, and exhortations of \"Heritage Not Hate\" from Washington or Montana... I know your focus is on North Carolina, but do you have any thoughts on why Confederate apologia it is such a *national* myth?", "created_utc": 1585062622, "distinguished": null, "id": "flde23q", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fo6f43/im_dr_adam_h_domby_author_of_the_false_cause/flde23q/", "score": 83 }, { "body": "Hi there Adam! I'm one of our resident experts on slavery here at AskHistorians, but I'm a labour historian and comparativist whose main research home is the British Caribbean, so the Civil War and all the intricacies of American slavery politics go beyond my wheelhouse.\n\nObviously, it's a popular trope of the Lost Cause narrative that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers and officials couldn't be fighting in defence of slavery because they didn't own slaves, and so must have been motivated by other factors. We know this is simply not true and that the institution of racial slavery helped to provide a sense of racial identity and superiority that transcended class boundaries; that slave ownership was an aspirational goal for many; and that the number of people who benefited directly from slave labour was dramatically higher than the superficial count of *legal* slave owners would imply, to say nothing of the indirect beneficiaries.\n\nBut I'm curious: how early on did this notion that slavery was something only the elite had intimate knowledge of and benefit from take hold, and how quickly did the idea of your average Confederate soldier or Southern citizen being almost completely ignorant of slavery except as \"something that happens on the big plantations of rich folk\" cement itself as a key pillar of the Lost Cause narrative we see today?", "created_utc": 1585065519, "distinguished": null, "id": "fldj1vh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fo6f43/im_dr_adam_h_domby_author_of_the_false_cause/fldj1vh/", "score": 37 }, { "body": "Have recent debates had much of an impact on confederate monuments either being removed or being critically contextualized (like some people have talked about during recent debates)?", "created_utc": 1585061935, "distinguished": null, "id": "fldcxub", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fo6f43/im_dr_adam_h_domby_author_of_the_false_cause/fldcxub/", "score": 34 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm particularly intrigued by something mentioned in your blurb:\n\n> American Jews largely resisted evangelism while at the same time winning converts to Judaism.\n\nWhich sounds fascinating! Who were their converts, and what about Judaism appealed to them? How were converts received by the Jewish community writ large.\n\nIf I may ask an additional question, how were Mormons perceived by mainstream Protestants?", "created_utc": 1588257735, "distinguished": null, "id": "fp29fdg", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gawcy0/im_lincoln_mullen_author_of_the_chance_of/fp29fdg/", "score": 52 }, { "body": "Hi! Thank you for coming to answer our questions. How did religious movements like New Thought and Christian Science proselytize, in comparison to other contemporary sects?", "created_utc": 1588256172, "distinguished": null, "id": "fp26kyb", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gawcy0/im_lincoln_mullen_author_of_the_chance_of/fp26kyb/", "score": 24 }, { "body": "Thanks so much for joining us today.\n\nIn my own studies, I focus a lot on racial politics, such as the KKK. A big part of that is their ideas about Protestantism and \"all-americanism\". How did that view play into wider conversion motivation in the late 19th to early 20th centuries? How much conversion was driven by attempts to conform to nativist ideas of \"Americanism\"?", "created_utc": 1588259106, "distinguished": null, "id": "fp2c14o", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gawcy0/im_lincoln_mullen_author_of_the_chance_of/fp2c14o/", "score": 15 } ]

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[ { "body": "Thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise with us all, Dr Hunt.\n\nMay I ask, as a non-American, are there some civil rights films that you think really got things right? Which ones would you recommend someone who is not American watch to get an a decent look at the different aspects of the movement?\n\nThank you again!", "created_utc": 1582899493, "distinguished": null, "id": "fj0gm9k", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fav2p7/hi_im_dr_megan_hunt_cultural_historian_of_the/fj0gm9k/", "score": 41 }, { "body": "What lies did you find used in most civil rights movies?", "created_utc": 1582901811, "distinguished": null, "id": "fj0k45f", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fav2p7/hi_im_dr_megan_hunt_cultural_historian_of_the/fj0k45f/", "score": 22 }, { "body": "Hi there, Dr. Hunt. Thank you for doing an AMA on this fascinating subject. \nI'm sure generalizing in this manner is difficult, given all the other variable, but have you found civil rights related films to be more or less accurate as time goes on (accounting for prevailing cultural narratives, of course). I'm very curious if we've become more interested in the truth of the times as more are willing to hear about the darkest aspects of the fight for equality, or if we've moved further from the truth in service of something else as we move from depicted events being fresh in the collective memory.", "created_utc": 1582902903, "distinguished": null, "id": "fj0luik", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/fav2p7/hi_im_dr_megan_hunt_cultural_historian_of_the/fj0luik/", "score": 11 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a difficult question to answer with a simple answer as you probably know how vast and complex the system of slavery was across the African continent in various ways. There are differences when you talk about it from both a historical perspective as well as talking about the individual legacy that the Atlantic slave trade left on those individual countries. Additionally, post-colonial scholarly works on slavery in Africa have highlighted the need for exactitude in scholarly interpretation and translation of unfree and dependent relations. There is the danger of \"slavery\" becoming a catch-all phrase for all unfree or dependent relations. \n\nIf you'll allow me the leeway, I'll narrow the question down about the legacy of slavery in Ghana specifically. [Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong](https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/emmanuel-k-akyeampong) wrote in his article, *History, Memory, Slave-Trade and Slavery in Anlo (Ghana)*, that in contrast to African-Americans that remember the history of slavery and celebrate overcoming those struggles, West Africans tend to avoid discussing the history of slavery. There is a certain social stigma for your ancestors to have been slaves. \n\nOne of the main reasons is that slavery was not just an international trade, but was also an internal institution with a living memory. There was not really anything equivalent with chattel slavery like there was in America, but there were forms of slavery that lasted well into the post-colonial history of Ghana. \n\nAdditionally, the role and participation of aiding the Transatlantic slave trade lacks identifiable data on the interior of Africa. Relations of power are thus central to the codification of oral traditions. In contrast, oral data are individually held memories, \"not preserved in any formal way because it is not deliberately structured for legitimation or communication.\"\n\nSo there is not a clear story regarding the role and function of slavery in Ghanaian history, especially in regards to a shared educational identity. To quote Professor Akyeampong, \"a neat conclusion would have been preferred, but there is nothing neat about the history and legacy of slavery, dependency, and the slave-trade.\"\n\nHowever, as we all know, history's relationship with culture constantly changes. One of the culprits in pushing the memory of the Transatlantic slave trade forward may be a surprising one, tourism. In the 1990s, UNESCO named some European built forts and castles that participated in the slave trade as World Heritage Sites have become monuments to those that suffered under slavery. \n\nSources:\n\nMartin Klein, ‘Studying the History of Those Who Would Rather Forget: Oral History and the Experience of Slavery’, *History in Africa*, 16 (1989), pp.209–17. \n\nFrederick Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, *Journal of African History*, 20, 1 (1979), pp.103–25; \n\nEmmanuel Akyeampong, 'History, memory, slave-trade and slavery in Anlo (Ghana),' *Slavery and Abolition* 22.3 (2001): 1-24.", "created_utc": 1601416146, "distinguished": null, "id": "g73yzdm", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/j21ehm/what_do_african_historians_say_about_the_slave/g73yzdm/", "score": 221 }, { "body": "> Do they even discuss it as part of their history?\n\n Yes, absolutely. \n\nSo, /u/LordMayorOfCologne is correct in his characterization of Akyeampong's point that there is a social stigma in being descended from slaves, and a tendency for post-slavery societies to avoid talking about the subject openly.\n\nHowever, at the same time, if we are talking about African historians (including anthropologists, archaeologists and related scholars); scholars from the continent have written numerous books and articles about slavery as an instutution, the Atlantic slave trade, and other forms of slavery as it impacted African societies.\n\n>And how do their histories compare with American histories of the slave trade?\n\nThe work of African academics, generally speaking, exists in conversation with and covers some of the same topics as scholarship from North America or from the Caribbean.\n\nFor example: Walter Rodney was a scholar from Guyana in South America. He wrote in _How Europe Underdeveloped Africa_ that the Atlantic Slave Trade was a process that reduced the capacity of African societies to do capital accumulation and expand their economies. Put simply, having more people means more hands who can be put to productive work, but Rodney argues that the slave trade removed bodies from Africa to be brought to the Americas for labor on plantations which enriched the new world colonial powers.\n\nWell, in _Africa's Development in Historical Perspective_ the Ghanaian economic historian Joseph Inikori examines that argument. Working with historical population estimates, and fragmentary economic data, he comes to a conclusion which essentially agrees with Rodney's argument.\n\n---\n\nAnother example: the book _Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa_ was co-edited by Paul Lovejoy and Toyin Falola. Of the 20 scholars who authored (or co-authored) chapters of the book, 7 of them are African or Africa-based scholars. I'd point to that as an example of African voices existing in conversation in the same book with scholars from Europe/North America.\n\nDitto, the book _Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic_ edited by Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders has 15 scholars, 5 of them from Nigeria and Ghana. The structure of the book has chapters where Ogundiran and Saunders co-author a chapter, Tim Insoll and Benjamin Kankpeyeng co author another. All the chapters are seeking to examine material evidence which can point to continuities in cultural practice across the Atlantic from West Africa to the Americas. All the authors are \"speaking the same language\" as Archaeologists working within a theme.\n\n----\n\nOr, one final example. On the subject of the social and economic consequences for the ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade circa 1815-1850. Robin Law edited a very important and influential book named _From Slavery to 'Legitimate' Commerce, the Commercial Transition in Nineteenth Century West Africa_. Like all the other books mentioned, it has multiple contributing authors.\n\nThe book _Aftermath of Slavery; Transitions and Translations in Southeastern Nigeria_ edited by Chima Korieh and Femi Kolapo examines this \"era of legitimate commerce\" specifically in southeastern Nigeria. Every author who contributed to the book (11 people) is a scholar from Nigeria. But, taking a look at the footnotes in the chapters, they are referencing Robin Law, A.G. Hopkins, Paul Lovejoy **but also* K. O. Dike, Toyin Falola, A.J.A. Esen. \n\nSo, these scholars are engaging in conversation with Western scholars of economic history and historians of slavery. But at the same time, the authors of _Aftermath of Slavery_ are willing to recognize and cite the work of other Nigerian scholars. Western scholars of Africa tend to have the bad habit of not citing African academics (though Robin Law's book does cite Dike and Falola).\n\nOne other difference between _'Legitimate' Commerce_ and _Aftermath of Slavery_ is that Law's book has a broader geographical focus, with 2 chapters giving an overview for entirety of West Africa, one about the Senegambia region, one about the savannah-sahel region, 2 about Dahomey, 2 about Asante/gold coast, one about Lagos, and 2 about Yorubaland.\n\nIn contrast, _Aftermath of Slavery_ is more constrained, specifically about the Niger delta region, and goes into greater specific detail about how the change impacted specific societies like Benin, Calabar, the Aro confederacy, Ife, Nri.\n\n---\n\nThere are also other differences of focus between scholars from the continent and Western scholars. \n\nFor instance, the Western popular imagination is more familiar with the Atlantic Slave Trade and with the plantation complex in the Americas. There has been a corresponding focus in Western academia on the Atlantic Slave Trade and the experience of enslaved persons once they reach the Americas.\n\nThere are exceptions to that general statement. Folks like Bruce Hall, Joe Miller, Gywn Campbell have all written about (respectively) slavery in West African muslim societies, the 'way of death' from inland to coastal Angola, slavery in Madagascar. Paul Lovejoy has written (and collaborated) extensively about pawnship servitude on the continent of Africa, and how that is different from racialized chattel slavery that arose in the Americas.\n\nThose caveats aside, the scholarship from African academics (that I have seen):\n\n1. Tends to focus on a specific society or ethnic group. Akin Ogundiran will write about archaeology of slavery in Yoruba areas.\n\n2. Analyzes and emphasizes how servile labor as it existed with African societies was distinct from racialized chattel slavery.\n\n3. Examines slavery in Islam (see Chouki el Hamel _Black Morocco_) or in Ethiopia (see Getachew Haile \"From the markets of Damot to Barara\" and Habtamu Tegegne \"the Edict of King Galawdewos\") etc.\n\n4. Again, while there are some Western scholars who are prepared to write about the question of reparations for slavery, my sense from books like _the Vile Trade_ is that scholars from Africa and the diaspora feel that it is urgent to make discussion of reparations a topic openly discussed in academia and in society. \n\n----\n\nOne final stray thought. Several of the academics that I mentioned here, like Akin Ogundiran, James Inikori, Toyin Falola; all teach at universities in the United States. \n\nIn the immediate post-independence era, it was not unusual for students from African countries to pursue university education in Europe or the United States. \n\nFurthermore, since the imposition of Structural Adjustment Programmes in the 1980s, there has been a persistent under-funding African universities. That has tended to promote \"brain drain\" and the movement of scholars to universities in Europe or North America.\n\nTo be sure, there are lots of academics doing laudable work at University of Dar Es Salaam or University of Ghana or Ilorin University. And there are academic connections between these African departments and African scholars in the US. Toyin Falola has done major work as executive editor of numerous book series which deliberately include voices of West African scholars about African Studies topics.\n\nSo, in some ways it is not that surprising that scholarship by African historians exists in conversation with Western scholarship when those linkages exist.\n\nAlso, I want to point out that the works I have cited strongly over-represent anglophone West African scholars (folks from Ghana and Nigeria particularly). That is partly because I don't have the language proficiency to confidently say what is going on with Francophone or Lusophone African scholarship. Partly because my reading choices are shaped by who has contributed a chapter to a book edited by Paul Lovejoy, or Toyin Falola and that is shaped by those scholars academic webs.\n\nSo, fair warning, this is a partial answer that doesn't represent Francophone or Lusophone perspectives well, nor even Tanzanian or Kenyan or South African perspectives.", "created_utc": 1601445523, "distinguished": null, "id": "g75c446", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/j21ehm/what_do_african_historians_say_about_the_slave/g75c446/", "score": 73 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm coming at this from a genetics perspective, instead of a historical one. Basically, I'm never quite so sure how much I would trust the percentages of X 'race' you're given via ancestry genetic testing. I'll try and summarise this for a non-scientific understanding, and reference articles written for lay people as scientific articles especially in the field of genetics are heavy with jargon. Basically your results depend on how the genetic testing company 1) examines your DNA and 2) how good their reference data library is. \n\n1) How the company examines your DNA. Your DNA is about 3 billion base pairs long. Obviously, it's uneconomical to fully sequence each person's full genetic background. What these ancestry genetic companies do instead is they take many short sections of your DNA, and look for mutations that are commonly associated with ethnic groups. These mutations are called SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms. 23andme looks at about 900,000 SNPs. That's a lot of SNPs, but a good proportion of them don't give any meaningful data yet. 23andme is simply collecting the data from those SNPs to examine them for new trait associations in the future. For example, genetic traits associated with being a morning person: [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10448](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10448) \n\n2) Their reference data library. There are a lot of fallacies that come with trying to genetically define races and ethnicities, which I'm frankly not qualified enough to get into. What I will say is that the accuracy of the results are only as accurate as the reference library your genetic testing company uses. The question becomes how many indigenous north americans did they use to create a reference population? How many tribes did those people come from, or were they from the same tribe? Did those people have known intermixing with people from outside their ethnic group - highly likely given all the wonders of colonialism? If it was common for indigenous north americans and african americans to intermix, perhaps some of the markers which reported black heritage are actually indigenous american markers which have just been associated with black heritage. \n\nTo combine both of these points, over time, as the company's reference library increases, as more people use ancestry genealogical testing, your results may very well change. The algorithms that determine which percentage of which ethnic group you are descended from will be tweaked over time. \n\nIn some of the articles I've listed, there does seem to be some references to african americans believing that they have native ancestry only to have none linked by their genetic genealogy testing. So it would anecdotally appear to be somewhat common. \n\nSome great articles which point out the fallacies on relying on genetic testing genealogy to estimate heritage and ancestry:\n\n[https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2019-04-16/for-african-americans-dna-tests-reveal-just-a-small-part-of-a-complicated-ancestry](https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2019-04-16/for-african-americans-dna-tests-reveal-just-a-small-part-of-a-complicated-ancestry)\n\n[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/magazine/dna-test-black-family.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/magazine/dna-test-black-family.html)\n\n[https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/28/18194560/ancestry-dna-23-me-myheritage-science-explainer](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/28/18194560/ancestry-dna-23-me-myheritage-science-explainer)\n\n[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/)\n\nThis is a good scientific paper which discusses the fallacies of genetic genealogy testing. It's a little old for the field (2010) but a good summary: \n\n[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2869013/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2869013/)", "created_utc": 1610233352, "distinguished": null, "id": "gipcvkb", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/ktvi9j/african_americans_and_native_ancestry_problem/gipcvkb/", "score": 41 } ]

[ { "body": "1994 was a good year for movies. Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon: The Professional and Lion King came out that year.", "created_utc": 1388608284, "distinguished": null, "id": "ceextn2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u63fo/happy_new_year_as_it_is_now_2014_the_outward/ceextn2/", "score": 538 }, { "body": "1994 was also the year of the Order of the Solar Temple deaths in Quebec and France, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman and subsequent low-speed car chase, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, and the acquittal of Lorena Bobbitt. \n\nIt was also the first year I had even the slightest inkling of current events, living previously in a bubble only punctured by the brief tenure of Kim Campbell as PM the year before.\n\nEDIT: oops, NMW had the Solar Temple. I missed it.", "created_utc": 1388610117, "distinguished": null, "id": "ceeyjba", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u63fo/happy_new_year_as_it_is_now_2014_the_outward/ceeyjba/", "score": 67 }, { "body": "In a related note, the standard wait for opening documents in the Vatican archives to wide(r) audiences is 75 years. So, 75 years ago was 1939, and as a result we will get the last of the (available) documents for the papacy of Pius XI and the beginning of the papacy of Pius XII.\n\nThere will likely be a new glut of books from partisans that feature Pius XII, though I doubt anything much of import will be found. Some minor questions will likely be able to be clarified, though.", "created_utc": 1388609209, "distinguished": null, "id": "ceey6li", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u63fo/happy_new_year_as_it_is_now_2014_the_outward/ceey6li/", "score": 173 } ]

[ { "body": "Piping in to say we do get fairly regular and very interesting questions about Syrian and Iraqi 20th century history. If you're knowledgeable about Baathists, you're going to have a stream of questions to answer!\n\nAnd if you are able to answer the often asked question of why the Middle East is 'lagging behind' in a comprehensive, sensible and groundbreaking way you're going to be in for a lot of karma. And it's all about the karma, innit?", "created_utc": 1458912798, "distinguished": null, "id": "d1cz19h", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bwcb9/meta_raskhistorians_needs_you_apply_for_a_flair/d1cz19h/", "score": 61 }, { "body": "Someone had way too much fun writing up this post.", "created_utc": 1458917511, "distinguished": null, "id": "d1d1oou", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bwcb9/meta_raskhistorians_needs_you_apply_for_a_flair/d1d1oou/", "score": 53 }, { "body": "I wish I knew enough about something to get flaired. :(", "created_utc": 1458918816, "distinguished": null, "id": "d1d2iv7", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bwcb9/meta_raskhistorians_needs_you_apply_for_a_flair/d1d2iv7/", "score": 36 } ]

[ { "body": "Until the mid-1800's or so, the purpose of formal education in these United States was mostly about providing the sons of those with access to power (which is to say white men) the knowledge base common among those with access to power. The curriculum, known as Classical, focused on Greek, Latin, logic, rhetoric, some math, and some sciences. They learned Latin, not because it was useful, but because smart men knew Greek, Latin, etc. Studying history, English literature, and modern languages like French and Spanish were seen as less necessary and usually not a part of formal education. This isn't to say the boys wouldn't learn about history or read literature, rather that, in the hierarchy of what teachers and tutors were responsible for teaching, they were low priority. In effect, history was taught with broad strokes, focusing on Great Men and the things they did. \n\nMeanwhile, their sisters received an education that aligned to the notion of \"Republican Motherhood.\" She learned logic and rhetoric, not because it was important for her future, but for the sons she would inevitably raise up to be good citizens. This, especially in the Northern states, resulted in a system where the children of wealthy men rarely came in contact with the sons of merchants, farmers, and tradesmen. (White and Black children were deliberately and explicitly kept apart. In most Southern states, enslaved people who attended school or were caught with reading materials were beaten or whipped. Free Black children typically attended segregated schools.)\n\nA sea change began in the 1840's. The idea that America would be better off by ensuring all future voters - i.e. white boys - had a shared educational experience began to catch on. In other words, those in power began to see it as a bad thing that poor men and rich men's sons rarely interacted or had a common knowledge base. Wealthy men in towns and cities embraced the idea of school taxes and polls, seeing funded education as a public good. As such, schoolhouses popped up across the country at a steady pace. In order to staff them, public education advocates pushed for the transformation of the teaching profession. The notion of Republican Motherhood expanded and shifted to fall on the schoolteacher.\n\nWhereas for generations, school had been a place where mostly male tutors taught the sons of men with access to means and power meaningless knowledge, by the end of the Civil War school had become a place where mostly young, unmarried women taught the sons and daughters of anyone who showed up useful meaningful knowledge. Granted, they weren't teaching function skills like how to farm or how to make things (industrial education wouldn't come along until the next century), but beyond useful skills like writing, reading, and arithmetic, meaningful knowledge included learning what it meant to be an American. \n\nFor the first half of the 19th century, the content students were taught around what it meant to be American was virtually indistinguishable from what it meant to be a good Protestant. Religious phrases and stories were featured heavily in early primers and readers and many of the rituals of school resembled that of Protestant church services. (One of the reasons mixed gender education was never really an issue in the United States was because during Protestant services, families sit together. There is no separation of the genders for services. Some education historians seen connections between how children are taught to walk in single file lines with their hands to themselves as similar to how people move through church to receive the Eucharist.) However, after the Civil War, many of the Protestant stories and texts were replaced by Americana, big stories about big men who were a part of creating this big great country. Teachers typically only had children for a few months for a few years, and these stories were weave into songs, texts, pubic performances, and routine writing practice. \n\nWhile all of this was happening, politicians and businessmen were trying to figure out how to deal with the problem that nearly every person working in an essential-for-American-cohesion job was a woman. To complicate matters, education is a matter left up to the states - which means every state developed its own system of education and teacher training. Through a number of events and social norms, the teacher profession became entrenched in culture as something for women, mostly white. Teachers began holding national conferences and collaborate around curriculum. They developed new courses and topics, focusing on the more modern, liberal arts subjects. This new curriculum, known as Modern or English, was taught by young, mostly white women and history instruction continued to present big stories and Big Men. \n\nVirtually all of what you listed is, in one way or another, linked to race, which in the United States, is about chattel slavery. (Except the \"world being flat\", which is about how science is taught - which is its own long answer.) Historically, talking about and dealing with issues related to race isn't something most white women are good at. Teaching is described at a career with a 13-year-old apprenticeship - going 13 years without seeing a white teacher talk about race, about the fuller story around American history, leaves the impression that talking about race is something that shouldn't be done. So, it means teachers struggle to find the words to teach children about the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence while being served by an enslaved person that he owned as property. As a result, elementary level history tends to fall back into larger than life versions of people and events that white women are comfortable with. Telling the full story around Ms. Parks means talking about the entire system set up around the boycotts and the careful planning that went into the movement. And that's hard to talk about - it's hard to talk about how the husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons of white teachers were the ones making Ms. Rosa move her seat, or the ones firebombing King's house, or killing members of the Freedom Rides. So, until recently, teachers set aside that hard history.\n\nYou asked about the history being taught again the right way and that often happens when students get to high school. In many schools, students are explicit taught how to see through the elementary version of Big Men in History. However, it's worth noting elementary level has begun to evolved in the modern era as those in power are listening to more and different voices. There have always been teachers of color, feminist teachers, activist teachers, teachers with disabilities pushing for de-centering those with power and centering those denied it. As long as there's been teachers pushing the enslaved people owned by Jefferson back, there's been teachers working to pull them forward. So, it's less that all teachers do it, but rather, the culture of American schools is such that it's more comfortable to tell an easier version than a truer version.", "created_utc": 1570844163, "distinguished": null, "id": "f3dqk0s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/dgkctf/why_do_schools_teach_fake_or_incomplete_versions/f3dqk0s/", "score": 102 } ]

[ { "body": "Not to discourage any future comments but you might be interested in these two previous AskHistorians threads:\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t6htu/was\\_there\\_tobacco\\_in\\_eurasia\\_before\\_the\\_columbian/d5fckte/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t6htu/was_there_tobacco_in_eurasia_before_the_columbian/d5fckte/)\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3alvqx/did\\_africans\\_visit\\_the\\_americas\\_before\\_columbus/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3alvqx/did_africans_visit_the_americas_before_columbus/)", "created_utc": 1616896455, "distinguished": null, "id": "gsjdvbh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mer17o/africa_reached_the_americas_first/gsjdvbh/", "score": 10 }, { "body": "Hi! So we had a productive conversation in a different thread and I just wanted to push one here. Personally, I would be careful with this. I'm not sure if you're on other social media's, but this theory started from an African man who claimed native americans ARE africans, we are just brown from mixing with colonizers and therefore, all of south america belongs to african american descendants and it's their culture to do with. Look up Hoteps and Dr. Umar. \n\nPolynesians likely hit us first before anywhere else. It's not unusual that my southern cousins have larger noses as every race near the border does -- polynesians and south asians included. It's not a black thing - it is a near the equator thing. \n\nAdditionally, we didn't have much metal materials in the Americas like they do in Asia, Europe, and Africa. We used Jade in the south because there was a large abundance of it, same with lead and flint in the north. Researching deposits will help you here. Cave systems were vital for this. \n\nAlso, having darker skin isn't abnormal being in a hot ass climate. There are darker polynesians, indians (india), natives, black individuals, etc. It's normal to have variances in skin color, think Italians versus Irish. \n\nand by black gods, they mean literal like night black, and gods were meant to be different. Researching indigenous religion will help you understand that better. \n\nEvery culture has invented braids. Braiding is a huge part of our culture with furniture, baskets, even decor and how we built offerings. Many of our cultures didn't cut hair, so braiding was a great way to keep the heat out of it. \n\nJust be careful in your research bc this ideology has been proven false and leads down a very dark, twisty rabbit hole.", "created_utc": 1631487948, "distinguished": null, "id": "hcmhpkj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mer17o/africa_reached_the_americas_first/hcmhpkj/", "score": 1 } ]

[ { "body": "Check this excellent answer from /u/sunagainstgold\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5yzqeo/were_africans_generally_aware_of_where_slave/", "created_utc": 1619110894, "distinguished": null, "id": "gvgq73x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/mw6jte/during_the_period_of_the_slave_trade_did_the/gvgq73x/", "score": 5 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a difficult question to answer, so I'm going to try and break it down into two sections and try to address them as best as I can.\n\nQ1- American soldiers didn't shout or give battle cries in contrast to 'X'- I'm sceptical of this. First, combat is a very vocal experience-soldiers struggle to communicate orders set by their section/squad leader who is designating targets, rate of fire and how they are going to attack a particular objective. \n\n'German small unit offensive actions were characterised by incessant talking and shouting...such chatter was, in fact, an effective means of dispelling individual loneliness and heightening group cohesion.'(1) This served to reassure each other during the assault, co-ordinating action at the section/squad level. The Russians were equally noisy in the assault, but for a rather different and more tragic reason. \n\n'Again and again they swept up against the German positions with their Unnerving cries of 'Urra'- companies, battalions, regiments. The picture was one that made German troops' imagination boggle. the soviets were charging on a broad front, in an almost endless-seeming solid line, their arms linked. Behind, them, a second, a third and a forth line abreast.(2)'\n\nAs far as the Brits go, their training emphasised the important of communication during the early stages of battle. \n\n'The section commander assumes control. He asserts his authority, ordering the section to make for suitable cover e.g. 'LINE THAT BANK' or 'FOLLOW ME.'' (Author's emphasis)(3)\n\nAs far as battle cries go, I've a feeling that demonstrating that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his sternum with a bayonet would lead to a certain amount of screaming by both parties. I would imagine that American soldiers would react naturally.\n\nTo conclude, shouting is a key part of combat as it serves to exercise leadership, communicate orders, reassure soldiers on the 'loneliness of the battlefield' as well as basic fear and stress articulation.\n\nQ2- German soldiers were uneasy because of this-German soldiers held a low opinion of American troops for a variety of reasons.\n\n'Sergeant Heinz Hickman of the Luftwaffe parachute division said: 'We had no great respect whatever for the American soldier.' Colonel kauffmann of Panzer Lehr remarked wryly that 'the Americans started not too early in the morning, they liked a bit too much comfort.''(4) \n\nThe Germans were generally depreciative of all allied infantry, though they afforded significant respect-and fear-to both American tactical airpower and British artillery. This opinion should be taken with a pinch of salt however as the Germans were not innocent bystanders in all this, and often encouraged such attitudes in their soldiers, 'German sources worked to a different agenda, either attempting to bolster morale during the war, or rationalise the ultimate defeat of the heer and the SS after the event.'(5) By denigrating enemy infantry capabilities they were able to claim they were only defeated due to the unskilled application of overwhelming material. While this is significant academically, on the battlefield the Germans only expressed contempt.\n\nSummary/ TL;DR Communication is an integral part of battle due to a variety of reasons, and it is improbable that Americans failed to appreciate the opportunities communication afforded. It is equally implausible that German soldiers would be unnevered by silent American infantry when they held little regard for them.\n\n(1) English, J.A. and Gudmundsson, B.I., On infantry, (Westport, Praeger, 1994), p115\n\n(2)Report from German field observers near Zelva, 1941, quoted in Carell, P., Hitler moves east, trans. Ewald Osers, (Boston, Little brown & Co., 1964), p49-50 \n\n(3) War Office, Infantry Field Training, (London, War Office, 1944), p54\n\n(4) Hastings, M., Overlord, (London, Pan books ltd, 1984), p229\n\n(5) Buckley, J., British armour in the Normandy campaign, (London, Frank Cass, 2004), p8 \n\n", "created_utc": 1400103761, "distinguished": null, "id": "chi3gy3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/25k7kd/years_ago_i_either_read_or_heard_that_german/chi3gy3/", "score": 766 }, { "body": "Hey guys, I see there's a lot of interest so I'll do my best to try to remember more context. When I posted initially I couldn't well remember if the French and Russians were mentioned in whatever it was I read, so I threw them in just because they were the other nations whose troops Germans would've been most familiar fighting against, but now that I've had more time to search my brain I don't think they were mentioned. \n\nI'm going back at least 16 years to my undergrad years, as I'm pretty sure this was from a course I took on 20th century conflict. I'm 90% certain it was from a source handout on WW2 about the North African theatre, and it was talking about how, after having gotten used to British pipes/horns/drums the Germans were somewhat unnerved by these strange American troops who fought comparatively quietly. ", "created_utc": 1400101503, "distinguished": null, "id": "chi2csu", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/25k7kd/years_ago_i_either_read_or_heard_that_german/chi2csu/", "score": 45 }, { "body": "I don't know about the army, but the early American Navy made an impression on the Royal Navy. The British gunners were well trained, but noisy. The gundeck was noisy and in close combat could easily be heard from other ships. Everybody was shouting order and responses, crew and officers. The British sailors who fought the first American frigates were unnerved by the eerily silent American gundeck, from which only the solitary voice of the officer giving the firing orders could be heard. \n\nIf the Royal Navy took naval discipline and training to a new level, the Americans did it again. This Yankee naval discipline came in the form of dry ship (no grog) and silent gun crews. \n\nSee Whipple, A.B.C 'The Frigates', *The Seafarers*, Time-Life Books (New Jersey, 1978). It is part of a series, and in 'The Frigates' (pretty sure it isn't 'The Cutters' ... my Dad has the books) Whipple has quite a few interesting things to say about the early American Navy. Along with their silence, the Brits were astonished and dismayed by the savageness of the American cannons. The Americans had inferior iron and foundries, producing inferior cannons ... so they made them BIG instead. The British weren't initially worried because they thought their cannons' accuracy would make up for lower firepower, plus they didn't really think the large cannon balls would make a significant difference in damage. However, they were wrong. In some of the early confrontations between the first US frigates and their British counterparts, the Brits got decisively thumped. Serious casualties. It was NOT what the Brits were expecting. (It kind of sounded like the Brits thought they would only need to LOOK at the US frigates and they'd fall apart.)\n\nHow did the Americans beat the Brits at naval discipline? Whereas the Brits dragooned people into the Navy, the Americans actually paid quite a handsome wage.\n\nPS As a solid product of the Commonwealth and with many maritime ancestors, it pains me to admit this about the Yankees, but the fact is: they kicked ass. (With their *three* (count them: *three*) frigates ...) Anyway, that's the Navy ... whether this 'silent discipline' made it to the Army in WWII, I don't know, but there are obvious parallels in this unusual warring behaviour. ", "created_utc": 1400108964, "distinguished": null, "id": "chi5wgq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/25k7kd/years_ago_i_either_read_or_heard_that_german/chi5wgq/", "score": 108 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a laundry list of bad history tropes that usually pass through this sub in ones and twos. This is like playing 'bad history bingo' and hitting all the squares at once. \n\nI'll take a crack at responding to this comment in a thread whose title begins with 'shitlibs' (stay classy).\n\nFirst, the 'is history being rewritten' part of your question. Yes. History is always being rewritten. Science has also changed; that's why we have chemists instead of alchemists. The issue isn't that history changes, it is whether what is being written is true. Historians in 19th century Europe who thought that racism was science and colonialism was totally fine have a perspective which, while understandable in their historical context, is different from the conclusions we reach now, especially when taking into account the impact on those being colonized.\n\nThe saying 'history is written by the victors' has kind of turned into a trope/joke in this sub due to how often it is posted, but it is still very true. \n\nSince traditional histories have tried to either silence uncomfortable topics or make them seem like ‘it wasn’t so bad’, attempts to give a full (and sometimes painful) accounting of history comes across as ‘revisionist’ to some people. Revising history is not the problem; letting bad history stand is.\n\n>I don't mean to try and start a mud slinging contest or to attack OP. I've seen these claims A LOT from a lot of different sources and people, enough so that I feel the need to ask the experts.\n\nFor future reference, I’d suggest the following: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that which is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If their claims are true it shouldn't be hard to prove. Facebook memes do not historical evidence make.\n\nThe user in that post doesn’t even hint at their sources. They’re not trying to present an argument with evidence, they’re going on a diatribe to preach to the converted.\n\nAlso, as a general rule on Reddit, long, single paragraph, walls of text should always be suspect.\n\n>1) The claim that white Europeans weren't really as involved in slavery as people are led to believe because a) Africans were largely responsible for the African slave trade and/or b) Islamic nations were much worse about it than Europeans.\n\nAfricans who engaged in the slave trade were *complicit*, but complicity is different from having much of the responsibility shoved off onto them. \n\nSlavery was a business. Europeans did not conquer most of inland Africa until the late 19th century (1880s onwards), by which time the Atlantic slave trade was basically over. What European states had were 'factories'; military trade outposts along the coasts and on important islands. From here, Europeans traded with African states. The latter would go to war with their neighbors and sell many of those they conquered. This is not unlike how ancient Rome paired war with slavery.\n\nAfrican states would sell slaves for weapons such as guns (fueling further expansion), alcohol (because it tastes good), and textiles (such as Indian fine cloths), among other goods. \n\nEuropeans bought the slaves, brought the goods which they traded for the slaves, took the slaves across the ocean, forced them to work, often raped and otherwise physically abused them, and enriched themselves greatly with the trade.\n\nDoes this wash the hands of Africans who participated in the trade? Of course not. However, how this can be characterized as Africans being 'largely responsible for the African slave trade' escapes me, aside from the author creating/accepting this myth (ironically) out of white guilt. \n\nI'm less well versed in slavery in the Islamic world, so I'll point you towards [this](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/41jgha/in_diarmaid_maccullochs_the_reformation_he_claims/) post by /u/SunAgainstGold.\n\n>2) The Inquisition and the Crusades were justified by Islam expansionism.\n\nJustified is a very strong word. It had *moral* implications. It isn't the same thing as trying to establish a causal link; it is saying that a given outcome was good. Keep that in mind when someone tries to call them justified.\n\nOn this topic, I’ll link to another post which deals with this trope in more detail, [here]( https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/61n9zb/steven_crowder_the_crusaders_did_nothing_wrong/).\n\n\n>3) Islamic countries have committed more and worse genocides than anyone else.\n\nBased on what? The Armenian genocide? OP says that it killed 2 million. Let’s take that figure. \n\nHitler killed over 6 million Jews, gypsies, and other minority groups as a part of an ethnic extermination program.\n\nThe Belgian Congo was the site of millions more deaths, going on to inspire the novel *Heart of Darkness*, by Joseph Conrad.\n\nHonestly, this entire argument is distasteful because the point isn’t to talk about the real suffering that was caused by human rights abuses done by Muslims. The point is to take the corpses from those massacres and shield American and European atrocities with their bodies.\n\n>4) The Native Americans exterminated themselves via natural disease vectors and cannibalism. Also they sacrificed children.\n\nThis does not stand up to even basic scrutiny. The bubonic plague killed off a major part of the European population in modern times. Yet the population bounced back. So, why didn't it? \n\nLet's look at the case of Cuba. The pre-Columbian popuation is estimated at a little over 100,000, as seen [here](https://books.google.com/books?id=sri6BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=estimate+pre+columbian+population+cuba&source=bl&ots=CIrSIAuXC5&sig=7ZmRse1YN7FHdFvK5u0N9vk8NtI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk_ar0m4nTAhUK-GMKHQ3IBx4Q6AEIPzAG#v=onepage&q=estimate%20pre%20columbian%20population%20cuba&f=false). First, disease massacred them in numbers often estimated to be about 90% their pre-contact populations. Second, survivors were organized in oppressive labor systems such as the *encomineda* (commendation) system, which 'commended' Amerindians to white colonists who were supposed to take care of and Christianize their charges in exchange for labor. They were brutally worked to the point that many hung themselves or ran away. So many died that in less than a century, Spaniards were already raiding Yucatan and other mainland regions for new sources of labor. This is partly why African slavery started picking up; they were working their indigenous laborers to death and needed new sources of labor.\n\nOnce the *encomienda* system was abolished, what happened? Well, in the case of Havana, to pick one well studied example, many indigenous peoples were segregated off into the neighboring town of Guanabacoa. White property owners then bought all the land around Guanabacoa. Meaning that they had to work, under brutal conditions, for whites despite their abuse under *encomienda* being officially over. Disease, overwork, and suicide combined to cull the population to low levels. Poverty and a society which treated non-Spaniards as inferior also encouraged them to breed whiter every generation. The Recio family, one of the richer Havana families, seems to have had some indigenous ancestry, possibly due to a bastard between one of the rich male heads of the family and a local indigenous woman. They then made sure that child married socially inferior, but whiter, partners from back home in order to whiten themselves as much as possible.\n\n*Mejorando la raza*, 'bettering the race', is still used as a saying in many parts of Latin America.\n\nSo, devastated by diseases, crushed by poverty and exploitation, unable to get assistance in preserving their culture, and encouraged to whiten their kids to save them from the pain of discrimination, the Taino passed into memory in Cuba. \n\nIn what became the United States, disease hit hard, but so did laws like the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly uprooted indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, including forced marches in which many died. Combine this policy with them often being 'given' rocky, unfertile, poorly irrigated lands, so as to make it seem like a fair trade for the land they had lost. Land that was often respected by treaties which the US government honored or ignored as it saw fit. Then, if oil or gold was discovered, new reasons would be found to further restrict their holdings or move them altogether.\n\nAs /u/Snapshot52/ pointed out in our recent podcast, the US government also took kids away from their families to forcibly teach them to be like white people. [Here](http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/28600/28668v.jpg) is a late 19th century cartoon which explicitly makes the point that 'consent' for this 'education' was not necessary and is obviously indebted to Kipling's idea of the 'White Man's burden' to raise up non-whites. \n\nNow, with that said, indigenous peoples did bounce back. Where does he think Mexicans come from? Or Bolivians? They're largely people of indigenous descent, some more obviously so than others. Many have preserved their language and culture. \n\nThe Spanish on the mainland sought to conquer and culturally assimilate the indigenous peoples as subjects. The United States simply pushed natives out, moved settlers and slaves in, rinse and repeat. \n\nWhile it is true that disease did cause a great deal of damage on its own, as Snapshot52 points out, overstating the role of disease is often a part of attempts to push the guilt for the deaths of Amerindians onto fate or nature and off of the hands of those who kicked them off their lands, killed them, reduced them to small enclaves or wholly assimilated them. So, again, an ironic dose of 'white guilt' from the anti-white guilt crowd.\n", "created_utc": 1491258943, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfsgtme", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/637rb9/is_americaneuropean_history_being_rewritten_to/dfsgtme/", "score": 445 }, { "body": "I am not going to touch on the subject of \"white guilt\" in this comment. However, I will address claims 4 and 5 to demonstrate there is a factual basis for these claims.\n\n>**4) The Native Americans exterminated themselves via natural disease vectors and cannibalism. Also they sacrificed children.**\n\nThe idea (and the statement) that Native Americans exterminated themselves \"via natural disease vectors\" is absolutely ridiculous. This statement insinuates they purposefully did so or were too ignorant to realize what was killing them, which both are equally untrue. Native American populations responded to disease outbreaks just like any other population on earth, both prior to and after colonization. Contrary to the \"Virgin Soil\" theory, the Americas were not some disease-free paradise that allowed for these foreign European disease to rip through unchallenged. Native Americans had to combat diseases native to their continent and, after colonization, had hundreds of years of reoccurring epidemics from these newly introduced pathogens.\n\nGranted, the majority of the Native American population did die because of these disease. [But it is important to note disease was not the only contributing factor that lead to the extremely high population loss. Here is sourced information about the genocide(s) committed by the United States.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5b0xzk/i_am_in_a_class_with_a_student_who_is_adamant/d9kyj0l/) And here is further information from [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5vfok/askhistorians_podcast_080_death_by_erasure/de63xzb/) I made about diseases. As for the cannibalism and child sacrifices, everyone else has touched on them enough to give an accurate answer.\n\nWith regards to the Virgin Soil hypothesis, the primary issue I have with it is that it is used as a scapegoat. Doing this begins to exaggerate the real impacts of disease and mitigate the impacts from other sources.\n\nI usually refrain from getting into numbers regarding population when speaking about the Americas because it is still a widely debated topic. However, the general consensus, even among Native scholars, is that 85-95% of the Indigenous populations accounting for the entirety of the Americas died around the time colonization began.\n\nThat is a bit broad, though. It is important to realize that some places through North and South America did rebound. Native Americans had diseases of their own and reacted just like any other population to waves of disease. The thing to understand, though, is that when European diseases came, some places suffered major declines, but they have circumstances that accompany those declines. Mexico, for example, had Indigenous civilizations with highly populated urban centers. These places were hit hard by disease, along with famine, warfare, displacement, and essentially total destruction. And because Mexico/South America were among the first to be colonized, reports of the destruction came out of these circumstances. This led to the belief that 95% of the population died - because it essentially did in that limited geographic area - and this belief was applied to the Americas as a whole, but with disease being the main culprit in the narrative.\n\nSome Native villages experienced disease, but bounced right back. Some did not experience the high mortality rates. Some were completely devastated that they might as well be considered extinct. We might be able to get some exact numbers, but it pretty difficult to get even appropriate measurements. [This post](https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2u4d53/myths_of_conquest_part_seven_death_by_disease/) but /u/anthropology_nerd describes it pretty well with some further reading. If you want me to come up with some, though, I can get back to you with it. It'll take a little bit of research.\n\nWe would not have seen the kinds of population declines that we did if it was purely disease that was introduced. A population will grow and be healthy if they have access to a steady and clean supply of water, an abundance of food, and sustainable social structures. If these things are maintained even with the introduction of disease, a society can withstand the effects. But if you throw in what the Indigenous peoples of the Americas experienced - all out war, enslavement, razing of their cities, *and* disease, you disrupt all of the necessary components for survival.\n\n>**5) The U.S. incorporated some Iriquois traditional into the U.S. Constitution.**\n\nThis claim is still debated nowadays, but there is clear evidence that the most likely influence on the U.S. Constitution from the Iroquois would've been from Benjamin Franklin. He spent a significant amount of time with the Iroquois and commented on it in several of his writings that demonstrate the impression he had on his mind regarding it. [This thread links to several comments made on it by other users that are quiet relevant to the claim.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ssxhf/my_comparative_constitutional_law_textbook/)\n\nAdditionally, here is my presentation the research I've conducted into it [from a previous thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/58rt3y/what_native_american_tribes_was_the_most_powerful/d93h8i5/)\n\nVine Delora, Jr. speaks about it in *Tribes, Treaties, & Constitutional Tribulations.* Chapter 2, page 10 describes that in April of 1754, hostilities between England and France broke out and George Washington was dispatched to counter the French. In mid-June, the British officials advised the colonies to make a treaty with the Iroquois. Delegates were sent and met in Albany, New York. The delegates adopted a \"Plan of Union\" which included a governing structure for the Atlantic seaboard. According to Deloria:\n\n>It was at this conference that Benjamin Franklin pointed out the smooth functioning of the Iroquois Confederacy and urged his fellow delegates to adopt similar policies.\n\nThe British rejected the Plan of Union, but it is noted that a paradigm was established that patterned all subsequent discussions of a similar matter, including the formation of the Articles of Confederation that was adopted in 1777, apparently reflecting the Albany proposal.\n\n[Deloria cites Grinde and Johansen (1991)](https://ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/EoL/chp2.html) and Jose Barreiro, \"Indian Roots of American Democracy,\" *Northeast Indian Quarterly,* vol. 4-5; and Gregory Schaaf, \"Frome the Great Law of Peace to the Constitution of the United States: A Revision of America's Democractic Roots,\" *American Indian Law Review,* vol. 14.\n\nAdditionally, this [Congress Concurrent Resolution](http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf) acknowledges the contributions from the Iroquois Confederacy with [this Indian Country Today article](http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/18/american-history-myths-debunked-no-native-influence-founding-fathers-113702) explaining it.\n___\nAdditional References:\n\n* *American Holocaust* (1992) by David E. Stannard.\n\n* *Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America* (2015) by Catherine M. Cameron, Paul Kelton, Alan C. Swedlund.\n\n* *Rights of Indians and Tribes* (2012) by Stephen L. Pevar.", "created_utc": 1491259745, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfshh95", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/637rb9/is_americaneuropean_history_being_rewritten_to/dfshh95/", "score": 87 }, { "body": ">5) The U.S. incorporated some Iriquois traditional into the U.S. Constitution.\n\nThis is generally true. Ben Franklin, among others, had studied the Iroquois Confederacy's governing model, where the Six Nations of upstate New York each kept their own governments, and sent representatives to the Grand Council to present a united front. Franklin supported such a model for the American colonies [as early as 1751.] (http://www.smithsoniansource.org/display/primarysource/viewdetails.aspx?PrimarySourceId=1198) The reason for this is, there was no central government for the colonies pre-independence. Rather, all of them answered to London in one form or another in totally different ways. \n\nIn 1776, Delaware and Pennsylvania were property of the Penn family and Lord Baltimore's family owned Maryland outright. Massachusetts was under direct royal control, thanks to the Intolerable Acts. Virginia was ruled by the de facto aristocracy of second and third sons who had recreated the English social system in the New World. And Georgia, recently settled, was under the competent administration of its royal governor and assembly. \n\nThis contribution was later recognized by the U.S. Congress by [H.R. 331 in 1988](https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf).\n\nFor good further reading on this, Mann's books, 1491, and 1493, provide a good overview, as well as a fascinating, readable look into pre-contact and post-contact Indian society. For something a little denser and more academic, check out Miller, American Indian Constitutions, 159 Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 33 (2015).", "created_utc": 1491253164, "distinguished": null, "id": "dfsbw4d", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/637rb9/is_americaneuropean_history_being_rewritten_to/dfsbw4d/", "score": 56 } ]

[ { "body": "So there seems to be only one in depth look at the life of Allicocke, an article written by Donald A. Grinde, Jr. Several other sources make brief mention of him, which I've also tracked down for corroboration, but they are mostly little more than a paragraph of little detail. Grinde put in the real leg work, and is the main source I'm relying on, although I'll mention a few others.\n\nAllicocke first seems to have gained notice in the early 1760s, while working as a clerk in New York City, and there are records of him working as a supplier for the British military in that period - the French and Indian Wars - and specifically of wine shipments. His politicization seems to have come in the wake of the Stamp Act of 1765, and he quickly rose to be one of the leaders of the \"New York Liberty Boys\", aka \"Sons of Liberty\". With the repeal of the Stamp Act a year later, his role was honored with a 21 Gun Salute, and the honorific of \"General\".\n\nI would make an aside here, and shoutout to /u/sunagainstgold as we were looking into this in tandem. [Based on poor number of sources, there was question as to whether Allicocke was even black](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tqfxf/joseph_allicock_is_the_only_founder_of_the_sons/d5jp2e6?context=999). SAG was able to track down Grinde's footnote, to John Montresor's journals which is perhaps the most solid primary source on the matter, clearly establishing Allicocke was of African ancestry, while further digging I found reference to his presence in New York and commercial activities in \"Hugh Hughes, A Study in Revolutionary Idealism\" by Bernard Friedman, noting his status as a merchant and Bergher of the city. \n\nI digress though. Over the next decade he returned to business, and in 1774 as tensions were again on the rise, he seemed to be a logical choice for New York's Committee of Correspondence, of which he was appointed secretary. This was a brief position however, and he resigned very soon after. There seem to be no writings of his to survive, and only a few records, but the inference of what info we do have indicates that he simply didn't support Revolution. He remained in New York even following British occupation and continued to conduct business in the city. An 1780 notice in the Royal Gazette implies commerce with Britain, and in 1781 his daughter married \"Capt. James Bonchier of the Raynham Hall, Indiaman.\" By 1783 though, it seems he left had New York, as \"James Griffith\" moved into his \"former residence\". \n\nThis all fits the model of a Loyalist. Grinde suggests that it \"may have reflected the fact that the British Empire had made steps in the late 18th Century to eliminate slavery while the American Revolutionaries, in order to forge an alliance with the Southern colonies, turned their back on the issue of slavery in spite of all the rhetoric of \"liberty.\"\" However, Friedman also notes that at that in 1765 Allicocke's business was doing poorly, and while he considered himself a \"Gentleman\" he was \"desperately clinging to illusions of gentility\". When involved with the Liberty Boys, Allicocke was doing poorly in business, and likely blamed this on the Stamp Act. Business seems to have been better for him by the 1770s, and it may have been business interests which at least played a part in his choice of loyalty, although in the end, there really isn't much to go on evidence wise, nor are those mutually exclusive interests anyways. As already stated, we don't have his writings, just small snapshots of an imperfect picture.\n\nWhatever his reasoning though, the simple answer is that he isn't ~~remembered~~ commemorated for the same reason Benedict Arnold isn't... we don't celebrate people who were Loyalists, even if they might have been on the \"American\" side originally. His decision to not join the Revolution is what consigned him to the footnotes of history, not his race (although as Grinde notes, the decision might have been about race itself).\n\n--------\n\nGrinde, Donald A.,Jr. 1990. Joseph Allicocke: African-American Leader of the Sons of Liberty. *Afro - Americans in New York Life and History* 14, (2) (Jul 31): 61\n\nEgerton, Douglas R.. Death or Liberty. Cary, GB: Oxford University Press, USA, 2009.\n\nFRIEDMAN, BERNARD. \"Hugh Hughes, A Study in Revolutionary Idealism.\" New York History 64, no. 3 (1983): 229-59.\n\nMcAnear, Beverly. \"THE PLACE OF THE FREEMAN IN OLD NEW YORK.\" New York History 21, no. 4 (1940): 418-30.\n\nGold, SunAgainst. [\"Answer on /r/Askhistorians\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tqfxf/joseph_allicock_is_the_only_founder_of_the_sons/d5jp2e6), July 7/20/2016\n\n------\n\nEdit: No, I didn't plagiarize this from Wikipedia. Inspired by OP's premise, I went and [created the page for him](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Allicocke).", "created_utc": 1469033217, "distinguished": null, "id": "d5jqnr9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tqfxf/joseph_allicock_is_the_only_founder_of_the_sons/d5jqnr9/", "score": 788 }, { "body": "Follow-up question: I did a little research, and while I can find several sources quoting each other, nowhere can I find a single mention of Allicock being black other than Donald Grinde Jr's book, which is not available anywhere online. There also seems to be some confusion of documents naming one Joseph Allicocke of New York, an Irish wine merchant who apparently declared for the Loyalists, and Joseph Allicock of the New York Liberty Boys- who may or may not be the same gentleman we are attempting to research. However, judging by his associations, I take leave to doubt whether Allicock of New York is African. \n\nDoes anyone have access to the Grinde book, or contemporary documentation that Allicock was actually black?", "created_utc": 1469028896, "distinguished": null, "id": "d5jndls", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tqfxf/joseph_allicock_is_the_only_founder_of_the_sons/d5jndls/", "score": 86 }, { "body": "Hello everyone, \n\nIn this thread, there have been a large number of rules-breaking disallowed comments, including several asking about the deleted comments, which merely compounds the issue. As such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. \n\nThis thread is trending high in the subreddit, but those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and it can often take time for a good answer to be written. We know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your front page and see only *[removed]* and this post, but we ask for your patience and understanding. If you are looking for some interesting content in the mean time, we hope you will check out our [Twitter](http://twitter.com/askhistorians), the [Sunday Digest](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all), or the [Monthly \"Best Of\"](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/bestof) feature.\n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskHistorians&subject=Question%20Regarding%20Rules), or a [META thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/submit?selftext=true&title=[META]). Thank you!", "created_utc": 1469027030, "distinguished": "moderator", "id": "d5jm02s", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tqfxf/joseph_allicock_is_the_only_founder_of_the_sons/d5jm02s/", "score": 77 } ]

[ { "body": "ELI5 is a bit tough, since it's such a huge topic, but I'll do my best to keep it simple.\n\nAt the end of the Second Opium war, there was a treaty signed between China and foreign powers. It was called the Treaty of Tientsin. It's important, but the more important part or your question is actually an amendment to the treaty. This amendment was the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, signed between China and the US. The Burlingame Treaty allowed for free migration between the two countries. It was short lived, but it was the first thing that really allowed large-scale movement of Chinese citizens into the US.\n\nOne of the reasons it didn't last long is that it quickly resulted in large-scale migrations of migrant-workers (not immigrants) into the US, particularly in places like California. Given the disparity of how much a dollar could buy in the US vs in China, especially in places like the Pearl River Delta where the majority of Chinese migrants were coming from, Chinese workers were willing to work for far less than others in in the western US. This led to a lot of resentment, as you can imagine. Not just in terms of railway work as is well know, but restaurants and other industries as well. \n\nBecause of this, in California there was a growing sense of anti-Chinese sentiment. In California this was strongest, and quickly was written into law. One early piece of legislation was the so-called Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 which put a tax on Chinese doing business in the state, and before that another tax in 1852, and then an anti-immigration law in 1855.\n\nThere were so many more small steps in push working toward total banishment. A few of them are as follows, again trying to keep this simple: \n\nThe 1875's Page Act, pushed by the largely-white labour unions, meant to be a means of protecting the American labour force from wages that other people couldn't compete with. This was done because the non-Asian population in the US at the time felt that these foreigners were coming and taking their jobs, a sentiment that may sound familiar to Californians today.\n\nBut importantly, the Page Act did not outright stop Chinese migration. Instead it was primarily worded to prevent people from being brought against their will. But also it applied to \"any subject of China, Japan, or any Oriental country\". It was a lose definition of who it applied to. China and Japan are clear enough, but \"any Oriental country\" can be taken pretty broadly.\n\n1875 also saw a Supreme Court case which determined that immigration laws were not the domain of the state, but instead could only be enacted by the federal government. This was in response to California's tendency to limit immigration, but of course taking this decision out of the California government's hands didn't actually do anything to reverse the trend, and California was in no way alone in their attitudes toward the Chinese, and neither was America.\n\nA few years later, things became formally much more restrictive. Leading up to this there were already significant restrictions places on East Asian immigrants such as not allowing them to naturalise, and also limitations on what type of business they could do. 1879 saw the \"Fifteen Passenger Bill\" which only allowed up to 15 Chinese passengers on any ship coming to the United States. President Hayes was also strongly opposed to immigration (which he called invasion) of non-whites (which he called the \"weaker races\"). Still, he ended up vetoing it only based on it conflicting with previous treaties and therefore not actually passable, despite a large majority in the House and Senate supporting the bill.\n\nThen In 1880 the previous treaty between the Qing and the US was modified with the Treaty Regulating Immigration from China, limiting *all* blue collar workers from immigrating, not just prostitutes and forced labourers as has been the case before. Quoting from the treaty:\n\n> the Government of China agrees that the Government of the United States may regulate, limit, or suspend such coming or residence, but may not absolutely prohibit it. \n\nThat's the wording written by the US, not China, in case it wasn't clear.\n\nThen in 1882 things got worse as a law was signed into effect in the United States that effectively limited any immigration from East Asia. This is known as the Chinese Exclusion act, which was in effect until it was repealed in the 1940s. It was originally a temporary move but it was later made permanent. \n\n1892 saw a renewal of the Chinese Exclusion act as the Geary Act, which added that all Chinese arrested will be assumed illegal immigrants unless they can give solid proof that they arrived before the passage of the previous acts. What constituted as proof was a certificate of residency. \n\nThere's way more. But the gist is that the non-Chinese workers were unwilling to be paid as little as Chinese workers were willing to work for, and Chinese restaurateurs were charging less for good food thus seen as a threat by non-Asian restaurateurs, people acted exactly as they pretty much do now about it.\n\nIt's also relevant to your question why Japanese people — also listed in some of the exclusions but not all — were less often the target. The two main factors were that Japan had already begun actively developing starting in the 1850s when forcibly opened to the West, and also there were just so many more Chinese than Japanese at the time, as today. It's not that Americans were more positive to Japan so much as they were just less aware of Japanese people as a unique threat to their situation. Japanese people _also_ endured all of the same crap Chinese people did, and in some times and places, worse. Sugar cane workers in Hawai'i being a good example.\n\nSo yeah. Chinese migrants were treated so badly because people were already xenophobic and then economics became an easy tie-in to their \"economic anxiety\", to use a modern term that often comes up in today's equivalent of the discussion.\n\nI can expand on any of this if you're interested. I've kept it short(ish) just because of the ELI5 request. But feel free to ask if you have more questions.\n\n**See also:**\n\n* Gyory, Andrew (1998) *Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act*\n\n* Lee, Erika (2003) *At America's Gates: The Exclusion Era, 1882-1943* <-- this one is an easy read and quite informative, if you do want to read more.\n\n**Note:** Full disclosure, I've adapted some of this from older answers I've given here.", "created_utc": 1616875519, "distinguished": null, "id": "gsi0wnc", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/meclpq/why_early_chinese_immigrants_were_treated_badly/gsi0wnc/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "/u/textandtrowel\n\nI didn't realise slave raiding and trading was much of a thing under Charlemagne, though I did know of slavery existing in the Empire. How big was raiding and trading on the Empire's behalf? Were the slaves in the Empire mostly captured in Charlemagne's campaigns, or were they purchased from external sources? Could slaves gain their freedom and, if so, what was their status after being freed?\n\nAlso, reading through some sections of the Polyptych of Irminon that have been translated into English, I've noticed that a number of free women were married to slave men. Why would free women marry slave men? What advantages did it gain them? \n\nEdit: A third and final question: what books or articles would you recommend from your area of study?\n\n/u/sunagainstgold\n\nWhat were the main sources of slaves for the late medieval Atlantic slave trade, who traded them, where were they traded to, and what, if anything, were they traded for/what did the slavers use as cargo for the return journey.\n\nWas there any flow of slaves from the Mediterranean back into the Atlantic, or was it only one way?", "created_utc": 1494585070, "distinguished": null, "id": "dhgkvx2", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6aqa2e/panel_ama_slaves_and_slavers/dhgkvx2/", "score": 31 }, { "body": "I've always been curious how the people who were shipped to America ended up as slaves. Were the Europeans attacking/kidnapping Africans, or did they buy slaves from other Africans? Who was the average slave before he/she became a slave? Was it common to have slaves in Africa at the time? How did they look at slavery there?", "created_utc": 1494609604, "distinguished": null, "id": "dhh2h5i", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6aqa2e/panel_ama_slaves_and_slavers/dhh2h5i/", "score": 10 }, { "body": "So. What was Robert E. Lee complicity in the slave raiding that went on during the invasion of Pennsylvania?", "created_utc": 1494593386, "distinguished": null, "id": "dhgoxl9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/6aqa2e/panel_ama_slaves_and_slavers/dhgoxl9/", "score": 9 } ]

[ { "body": "> This past couple of days has flown in the face of all of that, between the mods 'taking a stand' against hate speech on reddit by symbolically shutting down the sub, to the earlier (admittedly well-written and informative) piece from a historian on the history of police brutality visa-vie African-Americans.\n\nI would disagree. The subreddit has always worked for the inclusion of minority voices - from People of Color to LGBTQ+ to religious and ethnic minorities - to cast a light on the forgotten and often ignored histories of people that too often are overlooked and whose roles in shaping our contemporary world are downplayed.\n\nThe mods have actively worked to prevent Holocaust denial from gaining a foothold here, to combat the Lost Cause revisionism of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other sympathizers, and actively and clearly broadcast that this subreddit is to be both inclusive to all voices and that history is still important today, every day, in our lives.\n\nIt is not enough for historians to mindlessly compile heaps of facts and present them to the public. History is a matter of interpretation and presentation, and the need for history shifts with the syntax of the times. The mods have always tuned their efforts to address the needs of the moment - when Covid-19 hit big, they had a pandemic megathread to try and address many questions; when Donald Trump was impeached, they had an impeachment thread.\n\nI do not see the mods as acting inconsistently here. The no-soapboxing rule is there to keep individual users from turning threads into platforms for their views, be they political, theological, or whatever. But the moderators themselves, as a group, have always retained the right and exhibited the will to take an ethical stance on how to present and address historical issues, and to do so in a way that is informative and in keeping with the mission of the subreddit.", "created_utc": 1591235413, "distinguished": null, "id": "fstc46r", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gw7fc6/meta_rule_4_no_soap_boxing_or_events_and_politics/fstc46r/", "score": 60 }, { "body": "[Our public mission statement is that](https://askhistorians.com/):\n\n>AskHistorians exists to break down the artificial barriers among historical professionals, grassroots historians, and the public. **Thus, while we are neither a political organization nor formally affiliated with academia, our mission includes advocacy in both directions.** We promote the benefits of public engagement for professional historians at conferences and through face-to-face and online outreach. We offer suggestions to readers on how they can support the health of the humanities in the public sphere.\n\nBolded for emphasis. We are advocates for good history, and sometimes history gets political. Many people seek to deny the historical injustices that have been perpetuated for hundreds of years, and continue to impact our lives today, and we consider it our *duty as historians* to stand up, and educate people on this history. And to be utterly frank, anyone who disagrees with that hasn't been paying much attention here for years. We've always banned users who try to deny that history. We've always been vocal about it. It isn't any different to be stating what that history is than it is to prevent people from denying it in their posts.", "created_utc": 1591235278, "distinguished": "moderator", "id": "fstbviv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gw7fc6/meta_rule_4_no_soap_boxing_or_events_and_politics/fstbviv/", "score": 41 }, { "body": "I don’t see how the post by /u/sunagainstgold breaks the 20 year rule. It is a post about the history of police brutality, which stretches back more than a hundred years (that’s kind of the point). Just because it was inspired by recent events does not mean that it breaks the 20 year rule, any more than posts about past plagues broke the rule because they were inspired by the current pandemic, or posts about medieval warfare broke the rule because they were inspired by the latest Game of Thrones episode.\n\nGoing “dark” as a protest is a different matter. But it clearly does not break any of the mod-enforced rules either: it is not a post to the sub-reddit but rather a “meta” action. It is a political action, but it is entirely in keeping with all the past political and “meta” actions that the mods have taken.", "created_utc": 1591261874, "distinguished": null, "id": "fsuchvp", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/gw7fc6/meta_rule_4_no_soap_boxing_or_events_and_politics/fsuchvp/", "score": 16 } ]

[ { "body": "This is a really interesting question, one that has been discussed by historians for quite some time, so I'll tackle it from a few directions. I also want to describe what religious culture was like in enslaved/black communities before explaining why they didn't throw off their religion once they found their freedom.\n\n# 18th Century\n\nFirst, you're correct that through the Eighteenth Century, it became common practice to encourage or require slaves to practice Christianity. I'm going to focus on what religion looked like at George Washington's Mount Vernon since we know a considerable amount of what the religious culture was like there, and since it is a fair representation of what the cultures were like on other large plantations.\n\nChristianity amongst Washington's slaves dates back decades before Washington became president. But Washington didn't require his slaves to convert to Christianity. In an 1784 letter, Washington wrote:\n\n>\"If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans \\[Mohammedans/Muslims\\], Jews, or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.\"[1](http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/islam-at-mount-vernon/#note1)\n\nWhile Washington did not require his slaves to convert, we know that many of these slaves, most were second or third generation immigrants, did convert. We know that Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, at least 11 of George Washington's slaves that were christened in the 1760s, and this was just the start of their Christian conversion. Of the over 300 slaves who lived and worked at Washington's Mount Vernon plantation, they belonged to three denominations \\(Baptsists, Methodists, and Quakers\\), [with 23 of slaves being formal members of a church by 1790.](http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/slave-religion/) \\(While this may seem low to some people, I would like to point out that religion during this period was not practiced as much as one might expect. Only about 15 \\- 20&#37; of the American population belonged to a church and attended at least one church service a year, so this falls in line with their contemporary culture. 1\\) Evidence also suggests that Mount Vernon had one enslaved spiritual leader who acted as a Christian preacher. It is quite possible there were more. However, it would be unfair to say that Christianity was the only religion at Mount Vernon at all. [Islam was represented amongst at least two of Washington's slaves during his lifetime](http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/islam-at-mount-vernon/). But the truth is, Islam would have been a harder religion to follow while being enslaved. Workweeks existed from Monday \\- Saturday, meaning they could not respect Friday's as their day of rest, nor would they have been permitted to stop working to pray five times a day. Other cultural issues would have been difficult as well to follow, as historians at Mount Vernon stated:\n\n>On most plantations, pork formed a significant part of the rations provided for slaves, and alcohol was often utilized as a reward or was dispersed during times of especially hard work, in the belief that it was necessary for health. This certainly would have made it difficult for individuals to follow Islamic dietary guidelines. In addition, pilgrimage to Mecca would have been out of the question for anyone with slave status in the Americas. \\[[2](http://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/islam-at-mount-vernon/)\\]\n\nSo while it was a challenge to follow the religion of Islam on plantations, it would be much easier to follow Christianity, since other slaves would have been sharing in that religious culture as well. Religion has the powerful ability to bind people together, and it appears that this bound slaves together, especially as they went through their own tribulations as slaves. What is important to note is that Christianity began to spread amongst the enslaved, and would continue to do so in the 19th century. It's likewise important to realize that this trend of slave owners not forcing Christianity upon their slaves in the 18th century is a trend found throughout America.\n\nCertain branches of Christianity, including Quakers, Methodists, and Evangelicals welcome black Americans into their churches, \"where their emotional responses helped to inspire the relatively staid whites to lose their inhinbitions and feel the Holy Spirit. A Methodist declared, \"In general the dear black people, that profess Religion, are much more engaged than the whites. By 1790 the great majority of Virginia slaves had embraced Christianity Fervently.\"\\[3\\]\n\n# 19th Century\n\nChristianity greatly spread and expanded in America through the first half of the 19th century. In a period often referred to as the [Second Great Awakening](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Great-Awakening), which was a religious revival movement started in New England in the late 1790s but spread to the rest of America through the 1800s. More people found religion and began going to church regularly in waves that America had never seen. For instance, in 1775 America had about 1,800 ministers in all 13 colonies. That numbered swelled to 45,000 by 1845.\\[2\\] Certain religions, like Methodism, their membership grew at over triple the rate of America's population growth in just the first few decades of the 1800s. All of this impacted religion amongst both free blacks and enslaved populations. By the 1850s, Christian religious denominations became focal points within black culture.\n\nBy the 1850s, it became important for slave, especially enslaved women to teach the tenets of the Christian faith to their children. In a letter to John Cocke, a literate enslaved woman wrote:\n\n>We keep up with the family Prayers every morning. I does my best I can teaching the Children but I can never get more than two and sometime three little ones of week days.\\[4\\]\n\nThis letter is representative of enslaved culture through this period, where it became important for slaves to want to educate their children on Christianity \\(and other educational elements, like reading and writing\\).\n\nAlso through this period, slaves began looking at other, more hopeful elements of the Christian religion. For instance, there was a strong movement within slave culture to discussing and preaching about God's deliverance of the Isralites from their enslavement in Egypt, so to did many slaves believe God would do the same for them. One slave in particular, Harriet Tubman, was nicknamed[ \"the Moses of her people,\" by the abolitionist, William Garrison](http://www.harriet-tubman.org/moses-underground-railroad/). This provided hope, so much hope that enslaved people wanted and perhaps needed to hold onto. It's also important to note that enslaved people also created their own culture within Christian circles. They adapted Christian hymns to match their own growing societies and even started creating their own songs throughout the 19th century. The Christian faith, from their perspective, became \"theirs\" and was not simply the religion of their masters.\n\n# Conclusion\n\nEnslaved culture adopted Christianity on their own terms very early on. While the religion was used by their masters to justify their enslavement, enslaved Americans did not see it the same way. Many converted on their own terms, and as Christianity grew and changed in the 19th century, they grew and changed with it. So when emancipation happened in the 1860s, these people had been Christians for many generations and became intertwined into their culture, so much so, that they did not feel compelled to throw off their religion.\n\n1\\). Jon Butler, “Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600\\-1760” *The American Historical Review,* Vol. 84, No. 2 Apr. 1979. 318.\n\n2\\) Nathan Hatch, *The Democratization of American Christianity.* Oxford University Press, 1990. 4.\n\n3\\) Alan Taylor. *The Internal Enemy: Slavery and the War in Virginia.* W. W. Norton & Company. 2013 .36\n\n4\\) Dorothy Sterling. *We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century.* W.W. Norton & Company. 1997. 53\n\nEdited: Added a source.", "created_utc": 1528028114, "distinguished": null, "id": "e01da71", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/8o4jbi/why_didnt_freed_slaves_reject_christianity/e01da71/", "score": 103 }, { "body": "As someone who has studied non\\-Christian black religiosity since the 19th c, I'd like to add a couple of things that may help shed some light on some of the issues mentioned here, as well as on later rejections of Christianity by African Americans, especially by the children, grandchildren, and great\\-grandchildren of slaves.\n\nFirst of all, many people today believe that slaves simply passively accepted an oppressive religion forcibly imposed by the Masters. However, while it is true that there were various waves of whites trying to convert African Americans and that, especially since the 1830s these white proselytizers emphasized the \"Christian\" concept of \"slaves, obey your masters\", many slaves were aware of what was going on and they consciously rejected White Christianity. In fact, there was a very strong belief among enslaved Christians that they were the only true Christians, and that whites were fake christians who did not even live up to the ideals they preached. We have multiple accounts of slaves making that claim, as well as several related assertions, such as the idea that the Bible used by whites was a phony \\(they said a true Bible may exist, but that was not what whites had\\), or that whites had inserted pro\\-slavery verses into it. Some slaves, and many of their descendants for several generations, went as far as completely rejecting the concept of a written Bible, saying instead that their Christianity was a \"religion of the heart\", and their true scriptures were found in spirituals \\(songs\\) and extemporaneous preaching by other slaves. So slave Christianity\\-\\-and after Emancipation, the Christianity of many rural African Americans \\(90&#37; of the black population\\)\\-\\-was understood as completely unique to the African American community and a religion that did not emphasize oppression. \n\nOne of the reasons so many slaves embraced Christianity in the first place was that it was a cultural unifier for the diverse ethnic and religious groups that had been brought to America. Several elements of Christianity were recognized as similar to their African religions by slaves from a variety of regions. Prominent among these elements were a belief in a High God, baptisms and funeral rites\\-\\-so embracing Christianity meant getting a publicly acceptable forum for expressing old religious yearnings. Many slaves also used Christian services to perform African religious rites that were widespread in Africa but had been performed for different gods and ancestors depending on the ethnicity or home region of the slave\\-\\-Christianity served as a publicly acceptable means to find a common ideological/religious ground to bring these different people's practices together. The most obvious example of this is the ring shout. Many African American Christians also believed in Hoodoo, folk magic, which was a mix of old African magical practices and European esotericism, and frequently Christian elements were intermixed as well.\n\nKeep in mind that prior to being brought to America, Africans did not generally look at the world in terms of race. The emphasis was on ethnicity or tribe generally. But in America, race was the defining social factor, so when their Christian identity emerged, race played a prominent role in it\\-\\-as did the notion that \"black\" people \\(as a race\\) were a special holy people, whose trials and tribulations in America could easily be identified with biblical figures, especially the Israelites, unlike white people, who \\(from the slaves' perspectives\\) had their clearest biblical counterparts with the Pharaohs and Romans/gentiles. Some currents in Black American Christianity therefore contained ideas about a coming Judgment Day when whites would be destroyed, just as Joshua destroyed the Canaanites. Jesus was also frequently conflated with Moses and images from Revelation, and depicted as a redeemer of the oppressed. This was very different from the messages preached in white churches.\n\nAs for the overt rejection of Christianity by former Christians\\-\\-the religious borders aren't as clear as they seem at first glance. In the 1880s you get the rise of black Jews, but these people came out of the Holiness movement \\(a Christian sect that had come out of Methodism\\), and basically the only thing they did different was, instead of saying they were \"similar\" to the Israelites of the Bible, they said they were the Israelites' \"literal\" descendants, and that the Israelites \\(and Jesus\\) had been black. These \"converts\" actually retained many of their old Christian practices and beliefs.\n\nThere's a similar story for the rise of black conversion to Islam in the 1920s. In most of the Muslim groups, the same old slave\\-era criticisms of white Christianity were used. The most famous Muslim group, for instance, the Nation of Islam, explicitly said that the Bible used by whites had been altered by whites to oppress black people. Only by converting and listening to the American Muslim prophets and Messengers could a person get a \"true\", \"black\" interpretation of the Bible. To this day, NOI members still quote from the bible to prove their religious points about coming apocalypses, moral principles, and the history of ethnic groups. Other religious concepts in the NOI and other black Muslim groups also clearly came from old slave Christianity \\(and sometimes hoodoo\\). Indeed, in many ways their identification Islam and their ostensible rejection of Christianity was only superficial. This is a testament to the power, influence, and identity with slave Christianity. It is also a testament to the fact that widespread religious change is rarely as dramatic of a transition as it may often seen from an outsider.\n\nSources: Olli Alho, The Religion of the Slaves: A Study of the Religious Tradition and Behaviour of Plantation Slaves in the United States, 1830–1865 \\(Helsinki: Academia Scientarium Fennica, 1976\\); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, updated ed. \\(NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2004\\); George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, 19 vols. \\(Westport, ct: Greenwood Publishing, 1972\\); Fisk University, Social Science Institute, God Struck Me Dead: Religious Conversion Experiences and Autobiographies of Negro Ex\\-Slaves \\(Nashville: Fisk University, 1945\\); Fisk University, Social Science Institute, Unwritten History of Slavery: Autobiographical Account of Negro Ex\\-Slaves \\(Nashville: Fisk University, 1945\\); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made \\(New York: Vintage Books, 1976\\); Savannah Unit Georgia Writers’ Project Work Projects Administration, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among Georgia Coastal Negroes \\(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1940\\); Charles L. Perdue, Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips, Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex\\-Slaves \\(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992\\); Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’ on:The Slave Journey to an Afro\\-Baptist Faith \\(Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1979\\); Ras Michael Brown, African\\-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry \\(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012\\); Yvonne P. Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition \\(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003\\); Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South \\(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998\\); Patrick Bowen, A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Vol. 2 \\(Brill, 2017\\).", "created_utc": 1528045200, "distinguished": null, "id": "e01q8hv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/8o4jbi/why_didnt_freed_slaves_reject_christianity/e01q8hv/", "score": 17 } ]

[ { "body": "I always regretted that the other list passed me by, so to speak. Here we go...\n\n***The Great War: An Introductory Book List***\n\n**Lead-Up and Causes**\n\n- *The Guns of August* by Barbara W. Tuchman (1962): a marvelously accessible narrative history of the early days of the war. It does a good job of situating the conflict within the waning era of the Empires, and its combination of solid research and exhilarating prose has more than accounted for the acclaim it has received.\n\n- *The Proud Tower*, also by Tuchman (1966): gives an account of the world and its tenor in the years immediately prior to the war (1890-1914). It's more of a collection of essays than a sustained narrative, but every last one of them is fascinating and useful.\n\n- *The Origins of World War I* by Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig (2003): a comprehensive analysis of the war's causes and early contours, presented from a thoroughly international perspective. Makes as good a run at being the definitive treatment of this subject as any text has yet achieved.\n\n- *The Marne: 1914*, also by Herwig (2011): an excellent account of the war's astounding opening battles. Provides a sound, easily comprehensible description of why the war was not \"over by Christmas [of 1914]\", and for how the static system of trench warfare at last came to be.\n\n- *Griff nach der Weltmacht*, by Fritz Fischer (1961): an essential -- though controversial -- work which describes the manner in which Germany instigated the war and asserts that her war aims were essentially predatory from the start. The debate over this work is enormous, but Fischer's claims must be contended with by anyone who seriously hopes to understand what the war was about and how it is popularly perceived.\n\n- *The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and Military Documents*, by Annika Mombauer, will come out in March of 2013. There've been a number of similar volumes over the years (which can be consulted in the absence of this one), but if the advance buzz on hers is anything to go by it will easily eclipse them all. In any event, this or something like it will provide a very useful background against which to view the developments of the summer and autumn of 1914.\n\n- *The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began*, by Jack Beatty (2012): an unusual and interesting work tracking all of the massive social contours leading to the conflagration that followed. It's also one of the few works devoted to this subject to offer a thoroughly in-depth account of the development of trench warfare on the Western Front without wallowing in the apparent futility and stupidity of it all. As it was neither futile nor stupid, this is to be welcomed indeed.\n\n**General Histories**\n\n- *The First World War*, by John Keegan (1998): a fine single-volume introduction, and one of the most accessible. Keegan was one of the best popular military historians going, and he was generally believed to be at the height of his game in this particular work. It situates the war in the \"senseless tragedy\" school of cultural memory, but this is hardly a fringe position. Still, very good.\n\n- *The First World War*, by Hew Strachan (2004): offers a remarkably international view of the conflict, and in a compact single volume at that. This was meant as a companion piece to the (also quite good) television documentary series of the same name which he oversaw. Still, if you want more, look to his much larger *The First World War - Vol. I: To Arms* (2003) -- the first of a projected three volumes and absolutely staggering in its depth. This first volume alone runs to 1250 pages.\n\n- *The First World War: A Complete History*, by Martin Gilbert (2nd Ed. 2004): The title is a bit of a lie, but this work from Winston Churchill's official biography is as lucid and sensitive as anything else he's written. Gilbert takes great pains to situate the operations described within the context of their human cost -- not everyone has always found this to be a satisfying tactic when it comes to the critical distance of the scholar, but it's a decision for which good arguments can be made.\n\n**Famous General Histories**\n\nThese volumes have become subjects of study in their own right, but are still well worth reading for the student determined to tackle this conflict in depth:\n\n- *The World Crisis, 1911-1918*, by Winston Churchill (1923-31): a work in 6 volumes that contentiously holds the title of the \"most comprehensive\" history of the war. A modern abridgment (clocking in at around 850 pages) is readily available, and well worth a look. There are significant debates within WWI historiography about Churchill's judgments and biases, so it would be worth looking into them as well before taking everything within the book at face value. I'll have some books that would help with this in the *Debates* section below.\n\n- *Nelson's History of the War*, by John Buchan (1914-1919): a twenty-four-volume series offering a thoroughly lucid, readable account of the war in an international context. Anyone reading it must always keep in mind that most of its volumes were written without knowing what would happen next -- this lends the work a striking degree of immediacy, but also harms its ability to contextualize events in the light of things that would happen later.\n\n- *A History of the Great War, 1914-1918*, by C.R.M.F. Crutwell (1934): has become the subject of historical inquiry in its own right, and the gigantic Strachan volumes I noted above were commissioned as a replacement for it. Crutwell is largely well-regarded as an historian, but it would be hard to call the work an exciting one.\n\n- The *History of the Great War Based on Official Documents* (finally completed in 1948) is the official British history of the war as compiled by Sir James Edmonds with the help of Cyril Falls, F.J. Moberly and others. It runs to twenty-nine volumes and is predicated upon the conveyance of straightforward information rather than any kind of satisfying narrative.\n\n**The British**\n\n- *Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918*, by Richard Holmes (2004): a work I cannot recommend too highly or too often. It is thick, ferociously well-sourced, entertaining and comprehensive. Holmes was one of the best we had until his untimely death in 2011, and *Tommy* finds him firing on all cylinders.\n\n- *Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack, 1916-1918*, by Paddy Griffith (1996): one of the more provocative and influential texts in the \"learning curve\" movement, which maintains that the British army experienced a sharp uptick in the quality of its tactics thanks to the lessons learned on the Somme. Griffith is a somewhat irascible figure well known in the table-top war-gaming world, but this remains an essential work.\n\n- *The British Army on the Western Front 1916*, by Bruce I. Gudmundsson (2007): One of the excellent *Osprey Battle Orders* series, this volume offers a thorough, table-heavy breakdown of the British infantry in the field at the height of the war. \n\n**The French**\n\n- *Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War*, by Robert A. Doughty (2008, I think): Offers a solid, comprehensive account of France's military aims, strategies and achievements. Works of this sort are essential to correcting the general perception of the war, which tends to diminish or even forget the massive role the French played on the Western Front -- it wasn't just Tommy versus Fritz. Anyway, this volume gives a good overview of the \"spirit of the offensive,\" the decisions that lay behind it, and the ways in which the French attempted to adapt to the realities of the field.\n\n- *France and the Great War, 1914-1918*, by Smith, Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker (2003): From the Cambridge *New Approaches to European History* series, this volume provides an overview of France's involvement in the war that's just as much cultural and political as military -- a welcome breadth. I credit /u/CrossyNZ with bringing it to my attention, and thank him for the tip.\n\n- *The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916*, by Alistair Horne (1962): Likely the most famous engagement with the slaughterhouse that was Verdun, Horne's work offers a combination clarity, sympathy and rigour. The second of the two can occlude the others in some parts, unfortunately, but it is understandably hard to write about such events in a key other than that of sorrow. A very significant work all the same.\n\n**The Germans**\n\n- *The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918*, by Holger Herwig (1996): arguably *the* modern text on the subject of how the Central Powers conducted their end of the war and what the cultural impact of it upon them was. A sometimes heartbreaking work, but all the better for it.\n\n- *Through German Eyes: The British & The Somme, 1916*, by Christopher Duffy (2006): a remarkable and necessary work that offers a recontextualization of the Somme Offensive -- so often viewed as a thoroughly British tragedy -- from the perspective of those troops against whom wave after wave of Englishmen advanced in the summer and fall of 1916. Seeing this event from the other side paints a somewhat different view of it than is typically enjoyed, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.\n\n- *The Eastern Front: 1914 - 1917*, by Norman Stone (1975): a very readable account of the German army's efforts against its Russian counterpart. It has also benefited from a recent republication by Penguin, and as such is very readily available.\n\n**The Canadians** \n\nI have to get the oar in for my own people here! \n\n- *At the Sharp End: 1914-1916* (2007) and *Shock Troops: 1917-1918* (2008), both by Tim Cook: jointly offer a comprehensive and fascinating account of what it meant for this country to become involved in such a conflict, both domestically and in the field. These have been winning lots of awards up here, and deservedly so.\n\n- *The Madman and the Butcher*, also by Cook (2010): covers the often quite tense relationship between Sir Sam Hughes (the Canadian Minister of Militia) and Sir Arthur Currie (CIC of the Canadian Corps in France and Flanders). \n\n- *Propaganda and Censorship During Canada's Great War*, by Jeffrey Keshen (1996): has a rather specific focus, as the title suggests, but goes into a great deal of detail about the efforts that were made (both at home and abroad) to leverage a nascent \"Canadian identity\" in the bid to encourage greater recruitment and sway public opinion. An excellent work, and pretty much *the* book on its particular subject. I'll have more to say on WWI propaganda in general in a section below.\n\n- *Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War*, by Jonathan Vance (1999): examines in a specifically Canadian context the many ways in which the war is now remembered. Vance is one of the best cultural historians going, at the moment, and this work has gained a substantial reputation Canadian historical circles.\n\n- *Baptism of Fire: The Second Battle of Ypres and the Forging of Canada, April 1915*, by Nathan M. Greenfield (2007): examines the manner in which this nation is purported to have \"come of age\" during the first gas attack on the Western Front. Greenfield also has a lot to say about subsequent developments, myth-making and national pride.\n\n**Some Specific Engagements**\n\n- Herwig's work on the Battle of the Marne was already mentioned above, as has Greenfield's on Second Ypres.\n\n- *Loos 1915: The Unwanted Battle*, by Gordon Corrigan (2005): A good single-volume account of the Battle of Loos. Something of a prelude to the Somme Offensive of the following year, it is most popularly remembered now (which says a lot, and I don't know if anything good) as the battle that killed Rudyard Kipling's son.\n\n- *Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme*, by William Philpott (2009): commendably combines absurd expansiveness with a novel thesis. A highly necessary (and welcome) antidote to the otherwise all-prevailing \"absolute tragedy thesis\" that seems to mark the rest of the major writings on this campaign.\n\nWith regard to the Ludendorff Offensive in the Spring of 1918:\n\n- *The Kaiser's Battle: 21 March 1918 - The First Day of the German Spring Offensive*, by Martin Middlebrook (1983): Middlebrook has a penchant for taking a single day and using it as the basis for a broader historical inquiry. Just as he did with the First Day on the Somme, so has done in this volume; it focuses primarily on the one day, but has frequent recourse to the campaign as a whole.\n\n- *To Win a War: 1918, the Year of Victory*, by John Terraine (1978): remains a classic account of the war's final year, and has much to say about the circumstances that caused the Spring Offensive to fail and the Hundred Days Offensive to succeed.\n\n- *The German 1918 Offensives. A Case Study in the Operational Level of War*, by David Zabecki (2006): admirably focused but without sacrificing breadth. Much like the Osprey volume about the British that I mentioned above, this is where you go for information without narrative.\n\n**Conscientious Objectors and Pacifists**\n\n- *To End All Wars*, by Adam Hochschild (2011): an admirable attempt to integrate the story of objectors, resisters, pacifists and the like into the already well-established tableau of the war's history. It is a less than objective work, to put it mildly -- the tone is often one of outrage rather than dispassionate provision of facts. Still, the war seems to bring this out in people in a way that others do not, so this is scarcely a surprising feature. It's still a good start, though; broadly focused on Great Britain and British colonies.\n\n- *Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family*, by Louisa Thomas (2011): examines the tensions involved in non-combatant decisions on the American home front, with particular focus upon her great grandfather, Norman Thomas, who refused to fight at a time when two of his brothers had chosen otherwise. More of a meditation than an outright history book, but still quite interesting.\n\n- *The Beauty and the Sorrow*, by Peter Englund (2011): a fascinating narrative history that contains about twenty interwoven accounts of the war from a variety of perspectives, many of them on the home front. It's more determinedly international than the other two books I've mentioned, and is focused on a variety of different cases (not all of them strictly relevant to the title heading above).\n\n**Interesting, Quirky Case Studies**\n\nIt's a coincidence (I think!) that both of the following are set within a naval context, but there it is:\n\n- *Mimi and Toutou Go Forth*, by Giles Foden (2004): tells the absolutely insane story of the Battle of Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa, 1915. A gang of British eccentrics dragged two boats through the jungle to do battle with the German *Graf von Gotzen*, and a more motley band of people has seldom been assembled. Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, their commander, is the kind of man who makes one feel intensely inadequate.\n\n- *The Wolf*, by Richard Guillatt and Peter Hohnen (2005): tells the remarkable tale of how a state-of-the-art German warship was disguised as a merchant freighter and then taken around the world in a multi-year campaign of piracy and destruction that was nevertheless marked by the absolute chivalrous gallantry of its captain and crew. The *Wolf* was forced to survive only on what it could capture from other ships, and by the time it returned to Kiel it carried over 400 passengers from 25 different countries, the bulk of whom had become great friends with one another and with their courteous German captors.\n\n**Propaganda**\n\nI already mentioned Jeffrey Keshen's volume above, which covers the Canadian context, but there's a lot more out there. The following is just a taste:\n\n- *Falsehood in War-Time*, by Arthur Ponsonby (1928): A hugely influential volume outlining what Ponsonby believed to be the pernicious efforts of various actors (both state-based and otherwise) to trick the public into the war. Ponsonby was a socialist and pacifist, and had what is to my mind a somewhat extravagant view of the public's peace-loving innocence. In any event, the book is a seriously important one, as it helped cement (not entirely correctly) the idea among the public that tales of German atrocity France and Belgium were wholly invented, thus helping to inoculate them against similar claims focusing on the Nazis in the 1930s and onwards -- an unfortunate consequence indeed. \n\n- *Propaganda Techniques in the World War*, by Harold Lasswell (1927): Another influential volume, this time from a leading American scholar of \"behavioralism\" and public relations. He and Edward L. Bernays (*Propaganda*, 1928) offer roughly contemporaneous (though very differently focused) theorizations of propaganda and its practice, and the two volumes can be read usefully as companion pieces. \n\n- *The Great War of Words: British, American, and Canadian Propaganda and Fiction, 1914-1933*, by Peter Buitenhuis (1987): currently the standard work on official propaganda operations among the English-speaking powers during the war. Standard, anyway, but not as good as it could be, perhaps; even favourable reviews note its arch, moralizing tone and the manner in which it frequently substitutes moral judgment for mere critical description. I include it for its significance, but hope very much that a better book on this subject will come along soon -- and that mine will be it ;-)\n\n- *British Propaganda During the First World War 1914-18*, by Michael Sanders and Philip M. Taylor (1982): A fine companion piece to the one above, but focused far more on the operational structure of the various British propaganda organizations than upon their actual creative output. Both works provide indispensable accounts of the inner workings of the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, anyway, and the reader who has packed away both volumes will be well-equipped indeed.\n\n- *How We Advertised America*, by George Creel (1920): A frank and enthusiastic memoir of the American Committee for Public Information's propaganda operations during the Great War as presented by the man who ran the show. Modern readers should welcome the opportunity to read about propaganda, from the perspective of a delighted propagandist, as written in a pre-Goebbels age. This is the narrative version, anyway; those looking for a massive collection of data should instead consult the lengthy post-war report Creel prepared for his superiors (1919).\n\n- *Secrets of Crewe House: The Story of a Famous Campaign*, by Sir Campbell Stuart (1920): A sort of corresponding number to the Creel volume above, but this time focused upon the efforts of Lord Northcliffe's staff at Crewe House, who produced reams of propaganda intended for distribution amongst the enemy powers. You can tell the tone of the work by its title, I think -- a very valuable and interesting piece.\n\n- *A Terrible Beauty: British Artists in the First World War*, by Paul Gough (2010): A solid and comprehensive overview of the work being done by the official war artists in Britain during the war. Lavishly illustrated, and has a lot to say on related subjects as well.\n\n- *A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War*, ed. by Troy R. E. Paddock (2004): A remarkable little volume that offers a survey of the press responses to the war's outbreak in Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Austria Hungary. This kind of cross-cultural analysis is hard to come by in a field that so values specialization, so it's certainly worth checking out.\n\n**Debates**\n\nThere are, I would say, five major ongoing historiographical debates.\n\n1. Incompetence vs. a \"learning curve\"\n2. The \"justice\" of sentences of execution for certain soldiers\n3. German guilt and the Fischer school\n4. Westerners vs. the resterners: which front was the most essential?\n5. Cultural memory vs. operational history\n\nI do not find myself well-equipped to discuss the first four at the moment, and I draw attention them now primarily to deflect objections that I'm not acknowledging their importance. Still, I also believe that the fifth debate generally encompasses the preceding four, and it's on that subject that I hope to expand.\n\nThe major tension in the field at present, from my point of view, is between those who hold to the narrative of futility and cultural rupture that was so dominant in the 1960s and those who have tried to step back from such rhetoric. In its place, a newer wave of scholars have tried to offer a more measured view of the war as, well, *a war* -- not a break in history, or a moment of psychic trauma, or a fundamentally ironic enterprise, or a uniquely awful nightmare, or whatever other such label one might wish to apply. There is surely a middle ground to be found, and some of the \"revisionists\" (who wear the label proudly, in some cases) perhaps go a bit far in the other direction. I will admit at once that I find myself more sympathetic with the revisionist camp, but there are merits to the prevailing account as well.\n\nIn any event:\n\n- *Forgotten Victory: The First World War, Myths and Realities*, by Gary Sheffield (2002): Offers a welcome but measured rejoinder to the sort of narratives I noted above, albeit from a primarily operational standpoint. Sheffield is a first-rate historian, and his recent biography of Sir Douglas Haig (*The Chief*, 2011) would also have appeared on this list if I had had the time or inclination to do the twelve-entry section that Sir Douglas warrants. Maybe I'll whip up a post about him in his own right later, but for now... well, look above.\n\n- *The Great War: Myth and Memory*, by Dan Todman (2005): A fine companion piece to Sheffield's, in that it shares many of the same concerns while being willing to work along cultural as well as operational lines in advancing arguments. Todman has done a lot of excellent work on how representations of the war in creative media (see *Blackadder*, *Oh What a Lovely War*, *The Monocled Mutineer* and so on) have shaped the public's \"memory\" of the war itself, and a lot of this work is very much on display here.\n\n- *Mud, Blood and Poppycock*, by Gordon Corrigan (2003): An irascible volume with a title and packaging that are more annoyingly forthright than its contents necessarily warrant (the cover boasts in a blurb that it will \"change everything you thought you knew about the Great War\", or something to that effect, alas). Still, this is probably the best single-volume introduction to the revisionist school currently on the market, and is presented with an unabashedly operational bias: Corrigan is tired of poems and movies and novels, and doesn't care who knows it. Even speaking as an English professor, I can't say I entirely blame him.\n\n- *The First World War and British Military History*, edited by Brian Bond (1991): A really, *really* good collection of essays by some of the best names in the field. It focuses primarily upon the difficult tensions that arise between operational, cultural, memory- and personality-based understandings of the war, and -- unlike some of the works in this line -- attempts to resolve them peaceably. The first three chapters are especially amazing for the evaluation they offer of the early attempts to plot the war's history, taking for its subject many of the works I noted so far above in the \"famous histories\" section as well as as those of now-lesser-known historians like John Fortescue and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.\n\n- *The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History*, by Brian Bond (2002): Based on a series of lectures, this slender volume offers a sort of meditation on much of what has already been described in this section above. Bond pays specific attention to the literary and cinematic spheres, and has some considerably valuable things to say. In fact:\n\n- *Survivors of a Kind: Memoirs of the Western Front*, by Brian Bond (2007): A very welcome volume. Bond evaluates the most popular war memoirs (such as those of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Erich Maria Remarque, and Ernst Jünger) from a primarily military-historical standpoint, which is a more novel approach than one might think. This work is especially valuable in that he goes somewhat beyond the usual canon and brings in lesser-known memoirs, such as those of A.O. Pollard and John Reith, which are marked by a more positive engagement with the war than that of their contemporaries.\n\nI must close by acknowledging some of the prevailing works in support (or enactment) of the cultural memory camp. \n\n- *The Great War and Modern Memory*, by Paul Fussell (1975): the *ne plus ultra* of this school; I have much more to say about it [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12zp30/what_work_has_done_the_most_damage_to_your_field/c6zjwba).\n\n- *A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture*, by Samuel Hynes (1991): A very important literary-critical evaluation of the war not only as seen through literature, but of the war *as* literature. Hynes acknowledges that the general conception of the war as a futile, uniquely terrible, cultural-rifting, etc. enterprise is a myth, but continues to assert the value of that myth over whatever may have really happened from time to time. Very well-written, but possibly infuriating -- I like it all the same.\n\n- *Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age*, by Modris Eksteins (2000): Views the war in terms of aesthetic Modernism -- the war is its crux, cause, and almost pre-emptive culmination. I have never found a book simultaneously so interesting, so predictable, and so annoying, but it is absolutely worth reading.\n\n- The works of Jay Winter are essential if one wishes to examine the war from an American cultural-memory perspective, but I've run out of steam. Will edit them in later\n\n**Literature**\n\nI may return with a list of *all* the most important WWI novels that exist, but I'll add it on as a reply and it will have to happen later. Right now, I have a class to teach.", "created_utc": 1354216045, "distinguished": null, "id": "c78pg65", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1403l7/askhistorians_master_book_list_ii/c78pg65/", "score": 1421 }, { "body": "I've gotten a lot of requests for a North Korean (and more broadly, Cold War and post-Cold War East Asia) book list previously. I hope this helps, but I understand if the subject is considered too narrow to include. \n\nMost of the more immediately relevant scholarship on North Korea in the West has only been written in the last 15-20 years or so, with growing awareness of the country's problems, the flood of refugees post-1994, and the defection of Hwang Jang-Yop (the primary architect of the *juche* philosophy) in 1997. The book list is heavily weighted toward recent works as a result. Relatively little was published in the Western world on North Korea prior to the turn of the century, and what was published in South Korea has often been subject to government control or at least pressure (i.e., the pre-democratic governments didn't like scholarship supportive of the North Korean system, and later governments that implemented the Sunshine Policy didn't like scholarship that it knew would anger the North Koreans).\n\n - *The Aquariums of Pyongyang* by Chol Hwan-Kang and Pierre Rigoulout (2000). A firsthand account of a Japanese-Korean family's experience in North Korea and its time in the Yodok concentration camp. The book's publication is one of the more under-appreciated reasons for the U.S.' (and more broadly, the West's) increasing focus on humanitarian issues in North Korea. A picture of Chol Hwan-Kang's visit to the White House and meeting with Bush was rumored to have found wide circulation in the North Korean government.\n\n - *The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters* by B.R. Myers (2010). An exhaustive examination of the history of postwar North Korean propaganda, and how it's developed and changed to reflect the Kim regime's priorities and politics. An interesting, and to my mind, necessary counter to Bruce Cumings' body of work (see below).\n\n - *North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea* by Andrei Lankov (2007). Lankov saw the last of the \"Soviet years\" in North Korea as an exchange student, and is one of the very rare people to lend the Russian perspective on NK in the Western press. The book is a collection of articles that were initially published for the *Korea Times.* Topics range from matters as large as Soviet-North Korean relations to things as small as the Kim il-Sung pins that the population must wear.\n\n - *A Year in Pyongyang* by Andrew Holloway (written 1988, [published online](http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html) 2002). A firsthand account of life as an expat in North Korea's capital, written by a Brit who was employed for a year as an editor for the government's English-language propaganda and marketing. A strange work, sometimes more valuable for historiographical than historical reasons in its degree of insight into how little Westerners knew of North Korea even while living there, but Holloway still made a number of observations that, with the benefit of later works, we now know to be correct. Lankov's years in North Korea immediately predate Holloway's; both the similarities and differences are instructive.\n\n - *Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform* by Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland (2009). A statistical study written by the editor of the *Journal of East Asian Studies* and economist respectively of how and when the North Korean famine started, its effect on the country's population, and the impact of the private markets that sprang up after the collapse of the country's Public Distribution System. A very interesting comparative read to the accounts given in Barbara Demick and Bradley Martin's books; Haggard and Noland argue that the famine's origins lie in 1988 with the impending collapse of the Soviet Union (and thus North Korea's source of cheap fertilizer, oil, and gas). North Korean defectors in Demick and Martin's accounts all tend to say that was when the Public Distribution System began shortchanging their families.\n\n - *Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea* by Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland (2011). Another statistical study collected among North Korean refugees in both northeastern China and in South Korea. It examines refugees' various reasons for defecting, the ebb and flow in the ease of leaving the country, China's efforts both to repatriate North Koreans and to classify them as \"economic refugees\" to avoid international legal trouble, and refugees' fate once safely in South Korea. A very troubling read, insofar as the authors admit that the number of problems that South Korea has trying to integrate the relatively small population of North Koreans right now is a sign of much worse things to come should the Kim regime ever collapse.\n\n - *Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty* by Bradley K. Martin (2006). An excellent general history of Korea under the Japanese empire, Kim il-Sung's life and rise to power, and how the North Korean government developed the way it did. There's also a lot of insight here into the Western academy's problems assembling a decent body of research on the country during the Cold War, and how the works that do exist are often intensely political.\n\n - *Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea* by Barbara Demick (2010). A National Book Award finalist and deserving of all the accolades it's received. Demick was a *Los Angeles Times* reporter assigned to the Seoul bureau who spent most of her time interviewing a wide variety of North Korean defectors about their lives in the country, and how/why they left. If *Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aids, and Reform* is the macro-level view of post-Cold War North Korean society, this is the micro-level view. Haggard and Noland will tell you decreasing fertilizer imports that killed North Korean agriculture: Demick will tell you about the hungry kid who lined up multiple times to \"mourn\" Kim il-Sung because the authorities were handing out free rice balls to mourners.\n\n - *The Impossible State* by Victor Cha (2012). A very recently published account by Professor Victor Cha, once the National Security Council's director for Asian Affairs and a delegate to the Six Party Talks. This is not necessarily an historical account per se (certainly not by the pre-1992 standards of /r/AskHistorians, not yet), but it is an insightful view into why North Korea behaves the way it does, and the different, and often changing, motivations and relationships of the states participating in the Six Party Talks. Contains a particularly interesting set of observations on why Russia is simultaneously the least predictable and yet most helpful actor within the talks, why international banks matter, and why so many diplomats call North Korea \"the land of lousy options.\"\n\n - *The Korean War: A History* by Bruce Cumings (2010). I'll be blunt: I have mixed feelings about Cumings, and there are many people in the academy (and in South Korea, for that matter) who consider him an apologist for the Kims. He is at least honest about his political bias, but I also find his work to suffer from source bias -- he's heavily reliant on State Department documents that paint the Korean War era in a very different light than how the Pentagon saw it (the latter turned out to be the more correct of the two), and the Pentagon's records have only recently started being declassified. Cumings has written a *lot* more than just this one book, but I think it's fairest to him to include the most comprehensive book he's written with the benefit of post-Cold War information on North Korea. Whether you agree with his overall perspective or not, it's a necessary one to gain, and the portrait he paints of a reluctant U.S. that made many mistakes in its mid-century East Asian policy is certainly an accurate one. *Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History* is his postwar account of the peninsula and both Korean nations.", "created_utc": 1354253975, "distinguished": null, "id": "c78zzl9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1403l7/askhistorians_master_book_list_ii/c78zzl9/", "score": 30 }, { "body": "I'll try to help fill that gap in Chinese History!\n\n***Imperial China***\n\n* **General History**\n\n* [*Cambridge Illustrated History of China* by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (2nd ed. 2010).](http://www.amazon.com/The-Cambridge-Illustrated-History-China/dp/0521196205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354219874&sr=8-1&keywords=cambridge+illustrated+history+of+china) Fantastic general survey of Chinese history, and a standard in college courses. I put this under the \"Imperial\" section because there are better resources dealing strictly with modern China.\n\n* [*Chinese Civilzation: A Sourcebook* edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Civilization-Sourcebook-2nd-Ed/dp/002908752X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354220350&sr=1-1&keywords=patricia+buckley+ebrey). Another standard find in intro Chinese history courses in college. This is a great introduction to \n\n* **Military History**\n\n* [*Soldiers of the Dragon* edited by CJ Peers](http://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Dragon-Chinese-General-Military/dp/1846030986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354220133&sr=1-1&keywords=soldiers+of+the+dragon). Osprey publishers have a wide variety of awesome military histories. You wouldn't be likely to find this in a college classroom, but that can be a plus. It's not a hard read, but extremely informative.\n\n* **Religious History**\n\n* [*Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China*- Edited by James Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski](http://www.amazon.com/Death-Ritual-Imperial-Modern-Studies/dp/0520071298/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354220620&sr=1-1&keywords=death+ritual+in+late+imperial+and+modern+china). A rigorously researched academic treatment of its subject based on both ethnographic fieldwork and collection of primary resources.\n\n* [*Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China*- by Arthur Waley (1939).](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Ways-Thought-Ancient-China/dp/0804711690/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354220868&sr=1-16&keywords=arthur+waley) This book has been criticized and expanded upon with the increased study of the intellectual history of China, and suffers from the traditional failure of historians to take Chinese lay-religion into account when evaluating the broader intellectual trends in China. Nevertheless, it is an excellent introduction to Chinese religious and philosophical thought.\n\nNow, time for\n\n***Post-Imperial and Contemporary China!***\nI've not included Fairbank's book because it was included in the previous list. But it's good.\n\n* **Political History**\n\n* [*China's Rise in Historical Perspective* edited by Brantly Womack](http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Historical-Perspective-Brantly-Womack/dp/0742567222/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354221354&sr=1-1&keywords=china%27s+rise+in+historical+perspective) ***If I had to suggest just one book to read from this list this would be it!*** If anyone is seriously interested in what trends have shaped the current Chinese political landscape, this is the book to read. The perspectives of the contributors are diverse, and so are the topics covered, which include religious cosmology, identity crises in wake of the revolution, ecological issues, and international relations.\n\n* [*Chen Village* by Chan, Madsen and Unger (2nd ed. 2009)](http://www.amazon.com/Chen-Village-Globalization-Anita-Chan/dp/0520259319/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354221537&sr=1-1&keywords=chen+village). This is a beautiful book that traces the life and growth of a village in Southeast China through the entirety of the communist revolution until 2009. Its ambition is incredible, and its execution satisfies its aims. It is effectively an anthropological ethnography written by historians, and the work reflects some of the best of both disciplines. Rarely have I felt as connected to historical characters as I have in learning of the exploits of low-level, unimportant peasant officials in Chen Village. This book communicates the trends in political and social change in China in the last 60 years in a way that is hard to replicate from pure analysis.\n\n* **International Relations of China** This is my current research interest, so my reading suggestions will be a little tilted towards this area.\n\n* [*Taiwan-China: A Most Ticklish Standoff*- edited by Adam W. Clarke](http://www.amazon.com/Taiwan-China-Ticklish-Standoff-Adam-Clarke/dp/1590330072/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354221878&sr=1-1&keywords=china-taiwan+a+most+ticklish+standoff). Besides having the most fantastic name of any academic work on the subject I've seen, this book provides a survey of the triangle of relationships between the US, China and Taiwan through a mixture of excerpts from declassified/public primary sources and academic analysis.\n\n* [*Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis* edited by Michael Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng](http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Sino-American-Crises-Studies-Analysis/dp/0870032283/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354222134&sr=1-1&keywords=managing+sino-american+crises). Pretty much THE book on the issue. By far the most extensive analysis of crisis behavior by China and America during Sino-American crises that I know of. Begins with the pos-WWII period, and continues to 2006.\n\n* [*US Taiwan Strait Policy: The Origins of Strategic Ambiguity* by Dean P. Chen](http://www.amazon.com/Taiwan-Strait-Policy-Strategic-Ambiguity/dp/1935049445/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354222382&sr=1-1&keywords=US+taiwan+strait+policy) This book actually came out this year, and I'm very excited about it. It provides a fantastic summary of the US approach toward China in regards to the Taiwan issue, and is the first major book to do so in regards to the Obama administration's policies. However, certainly not for casual reading. This is an academic analysis of the policy making process, and is making an argument for how to conduct US policy into the future. But in the course of its analysis it provides a fantastic history of the relationship between the US and the Taiwan issue.\n\n* **Religious History**\n\n* [*Religion in China Today* edited by Daniel L. Overmyer](http://www.amazon.com/Religion-China-Quarterly-Special-Issues/dp/0521538238/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354222605&sr=1-1&keywords=religion+in+china+today). A wonderfully informative collection of articles on the resurgence of Chinese religion under communist rule. Academic in nature, but not a terribly difficult read. Anyone interested in how China has attemped (and failed) to repress religious practices in the last 60 years should read this book.\n\nAlright, well, that exhausts my China selection... for now! I can't swear I won't return later with some things I've forgotten!", "created_utc": 1354222704, "distinguished": null, "id": "c78rjsy", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1403l7/askhistorians_master_book_list_ii/c78rjsy/", "score": 20 } ]

[ { "body": "I remember in HS before common core the only mention we ever had of African history was Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and Mansa Musa. It’s great you want to expose your students to more. I’m an archaeologist who works primarily in Africa now. I’m on my phone on my lunch break so forgive me any typos or shortcomings. I’ll return to edit later.\n\nBy “put in context” do you mean more about western Sahelian history or more urban trading states in Africa? If the latter, there were many. Here are a few in chrono order:\n\nMeroe in modern Sudan. Culmination of a series of evolving states which had once ruled over Egypt. Adapted Egyptian royal customs and religion to their own distinct culture. Built more pyramids than Egypt and had many powerful female rulers. Primary source of wealth was their tremendous production of iron. Hills of slag still dot the area and deforestation for charcoal may have contributed to its decline.\n\nAksum in modern Ethiopia. A major state on the global stage. Aksumite coins were minted to the same standard as the Byzantine state and Greek was used in some public monuments to facilitate international trade. Royal tomb goods included Roman wine amphora and Aksumite coins have been found as far away as India. The state was even mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, a 1st century Greek merchant’s guide. It was succeeded by a number of pretty fabulous places like Lalibela with its rock hewn churches and Gondar with its castles combing Jesuit and Indian influence. All three are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Cities aside, Ethiopia also has a great history as a Christian nation since the 300s, a state with a continuous monarch that stretched from Aksum to 1974, and the only state in Africa never successfully colonized.\n\nGreat Zimbabwe in modern Zimbabwe, as well as its preceding and successor cities. GZ is romantically enigmatic due, sadly, to its horrible ransacking by European looters. We know historically though that it was the capital of a vast state that grew wealthy on cattle ranching and the royally-organized mining of gold. Much of the gold was traded to my next entry, the Swahili Coast cities, where it then went into international circulation.\n\nSwahili cities extend across the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. They have their origins in indigenous communities in the 7th or 8th centuries, but become major cosmopolitan trade cities with their own uniquely international culture, language, and architecture by the 12th century and many continued to thrive even through both Portuguese and Omani colonialism. Kilwa Kisiwani is one of the most famous cities and has an amazing palace with a pool/bath overlooking the sea that to this day I am still jealous of. Lol. The Swahili were major maritime merchants and sailors in the Indian ocean. Their cities are distinctive for their use of coral in construction and sculpture. \n\nThere are many more in central and west Africa too. You might look up Benin City and Dahomey for example which flourished largely on European trade.\n\nGraham Connah’s African Civilizations is a great resource you might check out. The third edition gets a little lost in the weeds of detail imho but has more expansive coverage. Kevin Shillington’s History of Africa is a reasonably good college textbook covering this stuff too (stick to the most recent eds though as his earlier eds lagged far behind contemporary scholarship). \n\nMark Horton’s Swahili Corridor article is a little dated but very accessible. \n\nI have a few others but have to run. Jenne Jeno comes to mind. Heterarchical social org.", "created_utc": 1597256153, "distinguished": null, "id": "g18n08d", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/i7yh5z/timbuktu_is_an_important_example_of_an_african/g18n08d/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "A Mayan temple at Noh Mul was disassembled for road gravel. Are there any Mayan historians here familiar enough with the site to discuss what it was and how much damage has been done by its loss? News article: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/05/2013/no-more-noh-mul-contractor-bulldozes-mayan-temple\n\n(question courtesy /u/aescolanus)", "created_utc": 1368635005, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9zan5e", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ee1h9/wednesday_ama_mesoamerica/c9zan5e/", "score": 81 }, { "body": "What was the extent of warfare in Mesoamerica pre-Columbus? Why were wars fought? How were armies raised, supplied and organized across the different nations/cultures? \n\n**edit:** for clarity", "created_utc": 1368635559, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9zau16", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ee1h9/wednesday_ama_mesoamerica/c9zau16/", "score": 29 }, { "body": "How much do we know about Aztec attitudes towards sexuality? Were they \"liberated\", i.e. premarital sex was acceptable. How would they have dealt with premarital pregnancies? And what about homosexuality?", "created_utc": 1368636336, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9zb3ow", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ee1h9/wednesday_ama_mesoamerica/c9zb3ow/", "score": 23 } ]

[ { "body": "Thank you very much!\n\nI should add that it feels a tad undeserved for me to be mentioned alone here however. The revised [WWI book list](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/wwi) is very much the result of a group effort. The award should absolutely be seen as a recognition of the work done by u/IlluminatiRex, u/dandan_noodles, /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov, (list continued below, as per reddit ping limits) as well as everyone else who've put time and effort into formatting the list and writing reviews!\n\n\nps. Although the revised list is certainly an improvement, there are still a fair few holes to fill in. If anyone out there feel they have something to contribute, don't hesitate to get in touch (or get stuck in on your own)!", "created_utc": 1580935779, "distinguished": null, "id": "fgn1auv", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/eyx4gy/announcing_the_best_of_january_award_winners/fgn1auv/", "score": 7 }, { "body": "This very kind and much appreciated! My profound thanks to all.", "created_utc": 1580854027, "distinguished": null, "id": "fgjyr6b", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/eyx4gy/announcing_the_best_of_january_award_winners/fgjyr6b/", "score": 7 }, { "body": "Congrats to all the other winners!\n\nWell deserved! Some really first rate answers this month.", "created_utc": 1580935877, "distinguished": null, "id": "fgn1h4z", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/eyx4gy/announcing_the_best_of_january_award_winners/fgn1h4z/", "score": 3 } ]

[ { "body": "I'm curious if there is a \"natural\" rate of language change. I'll try to frame the question in a couple of ways. 1) Is there a linguistic analog to DNA drift that can act as a metric for how long ago languages diverged? For example, I have read estimated dates of most recent common male or female ancestor based on mutations rates y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA respectively. Can we do the same with languages? Suppose languages A and B are clearly related. They have X amount of phonological differences, Y amount of common vocabulary, etc. From the linguistic comparison, can we estimate the date the two populations split apart? 2) Conversely, how long after two populations split will their languages be so completely different that we can't discern any relationship at all?", "created_utc": 1366787901, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9ljmlo", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1czst3/wednesday_ama_historical_linguistics_panel/c9ljmlo/", "score": 29 }, { "body": "I don't know if this is within the bailiwick of any of the panelists, but its a language question I've had for some time:\n\nEnglish has a particular reputation for 'borrowing' many words from other languages (both today and historically), is there a linguistic reason why this is so 'easy' for English? If so, why did it take so many words from its Norman/French conquerors - who were eventually assimilated - and so few from the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, who were likewise assimilated?", "created_utc": 1366788363, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9ljpeh", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1czst3/wednesday_ama_historical_linguistics_panel/c9ljpeh/", "score": 21 }, { "body": "It is my understanding that a majority of written work in Imperial China was usually written in Classical Chinese, which was very much different from spoken Chinese, much less all the various dialects. How would a historical linguist study such texts to identify regional variations?", "created_utc": 1366785531, "distinguished": null, "id": "c9lj6pw", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/1czst3/wednesday_ama_historical_linguistics_panel/c9lj6pw/", "score": 16 } ]

[ { "body": "I’ve heard the American frontier described as a “release valve” for dissenters and rebels. How true is this?\n\nWas there ever any equivalent in any other large nation/empire (Rome, Ming dynasty unified China, etc.)?", "created_utc": 1536924860, "distinguished": null, "id": "e5yk4sq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/9fqwvo/panel_ama_frontiers_borderlands_and_liminal_spaces/e5yk4sq/", "score": 16 }, { "body": "If my pop history memory serves me right, Qing China eventually took control over the Tarim Basin (today southern Xinjiang) to solidify control over the silk road trade. With the advent of Portugese, Dutch, all in all western European traders and their East India Companies taking over trade and exercising physical control, and in a similar matter Russia and their Cossacks doing the same to the north, did China try to extend their control over the silk route further into central Asia? Was there an attempt to increase the attractivity of the route, or make it easier to trade alongside it?\n\nHow should I imagine the Tarim Basin / Yarkand / Kashgar cultures/political entities during the silk road, when the alternative sea trade routes have been established, and when the Qing took over?", "created_utc": 1536936529, "distinguished": null, "id": "e5yux8o", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/9fqwvo/panel_ama_frontiers_borderlands_and_liminal_spaces/e5yux8o/", "score": 11 }, { "body": "Thanks for doing this! A question for u/CommodoreCoCo:\n\nDuring the early formation of Latin American nations in the 19th century, the Incas (like the Aztecs) were held up as national symbols in many countries. This often went hand in hand with the exclusion of other native groups from the national \"pantheons\" - as e.g. Rebecca Earle has discussed. I'm wondering how this process played out in some Andean nations like Peru and Bolivia? And whether/how less internationally \"famous\" indigenous groups were further marginalized there through this process? (Hopefully this isn't too broad for an AMA)", "created_utc": 1536929476, "distinguished": null, "id": "e5ynp7j", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/9fqwvo/panel_ama_frontiers_borderlands_and_liminal_spaces/e5ynp7j/", "score": 8 } ]

[ { "body": "Thanks so much for participating here! \n\nOne of the things that is commonly pointed to as a horror of slavery is that masters were free to, and often did, split families apart, selling men and women to different owners without regard to their children. It also seems to be the case that slave labor was divided along gender lines, with women generally performing different types of work than men, and men sometimes being rented out to other owners or overseers for large amounts of time. So this leads to a couple of questions: \n\n* On large plantations with many slaves, how did that gendered division of labor play into how slave society constructed itself? \n\n* In smaller-scale slavery, such as the owner who only owned one, two or a few slaves, was labor divided by gender as well? Did those slaves form a community within the context of their farm/village/locality, as they would on larger plantations?", "created_utc": 1464916614, "distinguished": null, "id": "d3tvuhq", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ma553/ama_roots_and_american_slavery/d3tvuhq/", "score": 27 }, { "body": "Thanks for doing this! We really appreciate you taking the time out of your careers to share your expertise on these fascinating subjects.\n\nI wanted to ask a somewhat sensitive question that has been percolating in my mind since I discovered the issue over a year ago. Namely the issue of Alex Haley and the presence of plagiarism in Roots.\n\nAlex Haley was accused of and sued for plagiarism. It is my understanding that he settled at least one case and even admitted incorporating that author's work into his own.\n\n1) To what degree, if at all, was Roots actually plagiarized? (e.g. Just a basic concept, specific ideas, or whole passages?) I found out that he had been accused of this after I looked him up online in regards to another work of his that affected me quite profoundly (The Autobiography of Malcolm X, in which he played a collaborative and editorial role). I do not entirely trust the sources I have come across thus far, as many seem to be very obviously gunning either to exonerate or stamp out Haley's legacy, and would like a more balanced appraisal.\n\n2) How is the issue of Haley's plagiarism handled both now and back when the story first broke? To whatever degree he may have taken from the work of others, I don't think anyone would say that his work was suddenly made irrelevant. It obviously struck an important cord with a lot of people and probably still frames how many non-historians view the issues it portrayed. As such I am curious how academics deal with this issue, which obviously lends itself quite easily to dismissive polemics against the very disturbing history that Haley dwelled on in his work.\n\n3) How does this change (or does this change) Roots significance or cultural value as a work of historical fiction? I guess what I'm trying to get at is how this affects the legacy of Roots both culturally and in terms of what it has meant to many people for whom reading the book was a seminal moment in their personal and intellectual lives.\n\nThanks for the answer(s) and sorry to drop such heavy questions so early on.", "created_utc": 1464923997, "distinguished": null, "id": "d3u0ny1", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ma553/ama_roots_and_american_slavery/d3u0ny1/", "score": 18 }, { "body": "Thank you all for participating in this AMA! Suffice to say, I am *incredibly* excited that you have chosen to take questions here at AskHistorians. There are about a million questions I could ask, but I'm going to be good and restrict myself to two:\n\n* Helen Taylor has argued that *Roots* should in a way be read as a \"black *Gone With the Wind*\", asserting that rather than being a radical departure from existing literary conventions, Alex Haley's work \"adopted and adapted\" the genre of the white plantation novel. For Taylor, this means the novel is fundamentally (though she does not seem to think fatally) compromised because it cannot escape the structure and ideological power of the white narrative. Others like Michael Blayney have accused Haley of writing Kunta Kinte in the tradition of stories of the \"noble savage\", exotic but utterly unchallenging to white audiences. What are your thoughts this kind of critical conception of Haley's account? To what kind of cultural and literary tradition should we say *Roots* belongs to, and what does that mean for how we engage with the story?\n\n* The original *Roots* mini-series adaptation was criticised by some for having its presentation sanitised for a white audience, with deliberate editorial choices trying to balance a desire to capture the essence of the novel without upsetting white viewers too much. How do you feel the new series fares in terms of capturing the experience of slavery and the essence of Haley's work, and how does it substantially from the older adaptation of the novel - if at all?\n\n* We are all very much aware of the character of Kunta Kinte; he has become ingrained in American, even to an extent British culture as an iconic literary and television character. But I was hoping we might be able to talk a little about the women of *Roots*, too. How does the new show - or the old show, or the novel, whichever you'd prefer to discuss - deal with the experience of enslaved women in your view? What stands out to you as having been done well, and what could be done better? Are there any glaring failures or outstanding successes of representation in your mind?\n\nIn the interests of full disclosure: I'm British, so haven't seen the new series, and I don't personally agree with the Taylor/Blayney interpretation of *Roots* (I take a much more positive view of what the novel tries to achieve and how it does that). But I'd be fascinated to hear whatever thoughts and insights you have to offer on these questions!", "created_utc": 1464915498, "distinguished": null, "id": "d3tv5of", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ma553/ama_roots_and_american_slavery/d3tv5of/", "score": 39 } ]

[ { "body": "/u/tenminutehistory -- **How do you perceive Russian continental (in contrast to overseas) colonialism in Asia in comparison to other forms of colonialism?** From the Cossack expeditions in Siberia in the Early Modern Era to the wars fought by Imperial Russia in Central Asia, do you think that there was a particular Russian \"imperial project\" in the east? Was it specifically written out at some point? Or would you say it was more an opportunistic expansionism, unchecked by the lack of a regional rival with comparable military capabilities? (Broadly stated of course!) Considering the huge timespan covered (~1500-1914), maybe it is misleading to speak of a *single* Russian expansion.\n\nIf you do link Russia's eastern expansion to other European colonial projects, how do you think does it compare to the colonization of the Americas (be it of Spanish, British, or French type), the Scramble for Africa, or, most interestingly, to the \"internal\" settler colonialism of the American \"Wild\" West?\n\nI apologize if this is too general of a question, I can try to be more specific if you want to.", "created_utc": 1466861568, "distinguished": null, "id": "d4nh7ck", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4psafl/panel_ama_empire_colonialism_and_postcolonialism/d4nh7ck/", "score": 21 }, { "body": "How much did European states actually benefit from empire? I remember hearing that India was the only holding that ever turned a profit for the British, and that Malaysia was far more valuable to them as an independent trading partner than as a colonial holding. ", "created_utc": 1466858620, "distinguished": null, "id": "d4ng2sj", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4psafl/panel_ama_empire_colonialism_and_postcolonialism/d4ng2sj/", "score": 19 }, { "body": "Two post-colonial African questions:\n\n* How did the communists overthrow the monarchy in Ethiopia in the 1970's? Did they have extensive popular support?\n\n* Did Thomas Sankara improve the conditions of Burkino Fasso after he came to power in Upper Volta? What was his rule like?", "created_utc": 1466865175, "distinguished": null, "id": "d4nivn3", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/4psafl/panel_ama_empire_colonialism_and_postcolonialism/d4nivn3/", "score": 12 } ]

[ { "body": "[And So It Begins](http://i.imgur.com/VaGzW.png)", "created_utc": 1336796075, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4n2x8x", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_askhistorians_master_book_list/c4n2x8x/", "score": 24 }, { "body": "I wonder what you professional historians think of *Guns, Germs and Steel*.", "created_utc": 1336804964, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4n44n6", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_askhistorians_master_book_list/c4n44n6/", "score": 34 }, { "body": "**Historiography**\n\n[The Landscape of History](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Landscape_of_History.html?id=ykz1vUT-CWEC) John Lewis Gaddis .\n\n If you are interested in how History and Historians view the world around them and the world of the past this is for you. You'll often hear references to 'thinking like a lawyer' or some other profession. Gaddis sums up what it means to think like a historian. He also provides a strong line in the sand between historical inquiry and the social sciences and I personally enjoyed him sort of tearing into the objectivity and the 'scientific' approach that social scientists shroud themselves in.\n\n[What is History](http://books.google.com/books?id=eL9JNAAACAAJ&dq=what+is+history+carr&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IM-tT727NKL00gHtt5ClDA&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA) E. H. Carr -\n\n Read this for the same reason you would read Gibbon's decline and fall. Its extremely eloquent and flat out beautiful in its prose at times. E H Carr was a leading man in the historical field in the mid 20th century. He treads a middle line between empiricism and idealism. To quote from a [review](http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/carr1.html) 'Arguably the central ideas in the book constitute today's mainstream thinking on British historical practice'.\n\n\n[History: A very short introduction](http://books.google.com/books?id=_X1WOCq1Y00C&printsec=frontcover&dq=history+a+very+short+introduction&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Oc-tT5z9EqTw0gHJjbGiDA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=history%20a%20very%20short%20introduction&f=false) John H Arnold\n\nIts short. Its less a true 'historiography' in that it doesn't get into method or theory and is more a history of history. Again I will quote a far more able reviewer.\n\n\"This is an extremely engaging book, lively, enthusiastic and highly readable, which presents some of the fundamental problems of historical writing in a lucid and accessible manner. As an invitation to the study of history it should be difficult to resist.\"--Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge\n\n\nEdit: I'd like to add that I don't think that any of these books would be over an average, educated readers head. I have recommended them to friends who studied other areas in college and have gotten positive feedback about all 3.\n", "created_utc": 1336790898, "distinguished": null, "id": "c4n23se", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_askhistorians_master_book_list/c4n23se/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "Others here have provided some good lists for you to consider, OP. So I'd like to address an important issue in your post, namely, that \"accurately reproduce\" is a gradient scale. What you are essentially asking about is the history of musical notation ([here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qvwaf/what_is_the_oldest_known_method_for_writing/dd2jycb) is a link to a collection of posts on the subject). But the thing about notation is that it always only captures some relevant information that performers find useful, while leaving the \"obvious\" stuff out. And so now, when that stuff is no longer obvious to us, that missing information becomes just that, missing, perhaps completely irrecoverable.\n\nSo the question is what is the threshold. At what point does the information we've lost not matter to your sense of being \"an accurate reproduction.\" This is a question whose answer should have soft, not hard boundaries.\n\nOne user below mentioned the Seikilos epitaph. More information about that piece, as well as some additional musical notation that predates it, may be found in [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25cmlr/how_did_the_greeks_notate_music_and_do_any_of/chfwj48) by /u/KennyWhee. Through a lot of careful reconstruction, we can be reasonably sure of the basic pitch structure of the melody (though some debate is certainly still raging). That's good! But is that enough? It's much harder to know if and how it might have been accompanied by instruments (what kind of ensembles, what kind of textures did they play?). Did they sing it straight through, or was there heavy vocal improv that might have radically transformed the piece in performance? These are things that, in the first instance, the notation simply wasn't set up to handle (noting the complex interaction among different musical parts was a much later development), and in the second, is simply outside of the purview of what the notation may have been expected to even do (even today, singers in, say, the Shape Note tradition naturally inflect their singing in idiomatic ways that the notation does not capture, and when asked, these singers believe they are just singing it exactly as notated!). \n\nImagine if, 2000 years from now, someone found the vocal notation of Prince's \"Purple Rain.\" This vocal notation might just give a single musical approximation of the vocal melody of the verses with the words of the multiple verses written beneath it (a very common way of notating strophic music), and then of course both the words and music of the chorus. Would such a person be able to \"accurately reproduce\" Prince's music? In an important sense, yes, at least as well as any of the thousand a capella YouTube covers you can find of the song. But in another important respect, if they can't recover the guitars and 80s synths, if they never hear Prince edging into more strained and embellished singing as the song reaches its climax, and if they can't experience the guitar solo, then there are vast swaths of Purple Rain that this poor future soul will never have the privilege to experience as we do. In that sense, then no, they won't be able to accurately reproduce Purple Rain.\n\nThese problems plague any historical enquiry. We will never truly be able to exactly reproduce what music of the past sounded like. We can only get \"close enough.\" But one person's \"close enough\" is another's \"not even remotely close enough!\"", "created_utc": 1535009610, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4ojnex", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/99i62e/what_do_we_know_about_the_earliest_pieces_of/e4ojnex/", "score": 158 }, { "body": "Is not exactly the answer to your initial question but we know about medieval music.\n\n[here is a ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xf4cc/how_accurate_is_the_music_that_we_hear_in/c5lu3tg) great answer by u/hhawks12 that gives an long list of medieval songs with authors, links to the songs and many references. Some of those songs date to the 12 century.\n", "created_utc": 1535001300, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4oepso", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/99i62e/what_do_we_know_about_the_earliest_pieces_of/e4oepso/", "score": 37 }, { "body": "As a follow up question to this, we all \"know\" what music goes with anything Roman, Hollywood has given us nearly a century of strong trumpeting as a base for anything else\nRoman, but how accurate is that? ", "created_utc": 1535009005, "distinguished": null, "id": "e4ojc6f", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/99i62e/what_do_we_know_about_the_earliest_pieces_of/e4ojc6f/", "score": 13 } ]

[ { "body": "When I moved to the Netherlands one of the first books I read was \"The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century\" ISBN: 0521604605\n\nWhilst it only gave quite a high level overview it then lead me on to know which specific areas I wanted to research further.\n\n> You pick up a biography of Winston Churchill, and it almost completely ignores his role in the Irish or Bengal famines \n\nFWIW, Churchill was born 19 years after the Irish famine so I'm not sure the role he played was too pivotal.", "created_utc": 1596118309, "distinguished": null, "id": "fzqaw3f", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/i0j6vd/book_recommendations_sought_dutch_history_inc/fzqaw3f/", "score": 27 }, { "body": "> The Dutch East India Company\n\nBe forewarned that these are books in the very hard mode but you'll be all the better for it if you read them:\n\n*The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720* by Om Prakash\n\n*The Dutch East India Company and Mysore, 1762–1790* by Jan van Lohuizen.\n\nHappy reading!", "created_utc": 1596126654, "distinguished": null, "id": "fzqs17r", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/i0j6vd/book_recommendations_sought_dutch_history_inc/fzqs17r/", "score": 3 }, { "body": "While I share your distaste for genocide enthusiast Winston Churchill, I must unironically endorse Candice Millard's *Hero of the Empire,* a chronicle of the Boer Wars and specifically the time Churchill spent as a prisoner in Boer custody.\n\nThe book is very sympathetic to the Boers, while also acknowledging the deep racism at the core of the Boer republics.", "created_utc": 1596108036, "distinguished": null, "id": "fzpvp01", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/i0j6vd/book_recommendations_sought_dutch_history_inc/fzpvp01/", "score": -11 } ]

[ { "body": "#Complaints/Concerns: Responses \n\nBelow we've collected a representative comment or two from the many, many comments we got, that are related to some individual topic. Below we've tried to provide some helpful responses/\"why do you do this\" explanations. The format is like so: comments from the survey are \n\n> quoted\n\nand our responses are the plain text. \n\nPlease feel free to ask clarifying or follow up questions below! \n\n##Theme/FAQ/weekly threads/sidebar\n\n> Any chance of a weekly thread where non-experts can chatter happily?\n\n> Really interesting sub-reddit, would love some ''per-day'' events, like random fact friday or something, where a mega thread is open for random discussion, I think it would open up to cool discussions!\n\nWe actually publish a [Friday Free-for-All](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=friday+free+for+all&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) thread, meant for conversation and even banter, with relatively relaxed moderation. \n\n> Perhaps it would be good to make more use of the knowledge available within the sub, by compiling answers within certain fields into some sort of dossiers?\n\n> It's fantastic, but maybe a few more links in the sidebar, aimed at new members, or covering some of the most frequently asked questions would be helpful.\n\nWe actually do maintain a [subreddit FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq), which is constantly being refined, linked on the sidebar. Because it's a sidebar link, many mobile users miss it. \n\n> I wish there were a way to get threads with interesting answers and discussions stickied or to the top, or maybe a weekly/monthly thread with them collected. a lot of the times when I pop in the upvoted threads don't have much except for deleted comments. \n\nWhat you're looking for is the weekly [Sunday Digest](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=title%3A%22Sunday+Digest%22&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) thread and the [Best Of](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/bestof) page in the wiki, where we collect monthly Best Of winners. \n\n##Topic Areas\n\n> Too Euro/US centric\n\n> More prehistory questions please!\n\n> You are awesome! Need more topics on asian history though.\n\n> As much as it would suck to have actual censorship, I feel like there are way too many questions about world war 2. \n\nThe issue of diversity in questions is one that the mod-team does struggle with -- because of what you can see above in our census numbers, the subreddit's user base is overwhelmingly young, male and American, which limits the topics and types of questions that we get asked. We're absolutely open to thoughts on how to improve this while also not making it too hard to ask a question. \n\n> More Indian history experts please. Its rare to see even basic questions abt ancient India answered.\n\nThis is a very common complaint we get here -- the history of the Indian subcontinent is particularly politically polarizing and academic history as a discipline in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and related nations is very much involved in national narrative-building. The field is not particularly mature at this point, and it's hard to find qualified historians who don't use history as politics right now. \n\n##Moderation and Removals \n\n> Always demanding sources may stifle conversation since researching for answers may take too long for people to do on their free time. Historians confirmed by flair ought to be able to give answers with less sources, since they might have general knowledge about a subject without remembering specific sources. Great sub!\n\nOur [source rule](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_sources) always seems to account for a great deal of confusion here. While we recommend that all answers be sourced, and require a poster to provide sources on request, the goal of that policy is to ensure that people who know something about the topic are the ones who respond. The goal of the subreddit is *not* to suggest a book and have someone else summarize it. We often find that our answerers with flair actually tend to rely on *more* sources rather than less, as part of understanding the historical method is sorting among sources and understanding how to build a narrative out of competing points of view. \n\n> First hand accounts with some documention/proof should be acceptable. Or at least acceptable with a disclaimer.\n\nThis comment seems to relate to our [anecdotes rule](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_personal_anecdotes), which is also often misunderstood. The goal of \"no personal anecdotes\" is to avoid \"my grandfather said this ...\" or \"in my experience ...\", *not* to mean that no verified, published account of an event can be used here. This topic is covered further in [this Rules Roundtable.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40mle4/rules_roundtable_3_explaining_the_no_personal/) \n\n> Thank you so much. You all do an amazing job. This is far and away my favorite sub.I am not so keen on the new rules regarding speculation. I think that they are a bit too restrictive in that I feel I will be persecuted if I try to make a judgment call or go out on a limb based on historical evidence. It kind of a removes a good amount of the historical process, since there are naturally some things that will never be able to be definitively proven; other historians are not the be all end all of history. Indeed, many incorrect theories, especially in my field, would never have been disproven if people didn't go out on a limb and seek to challenge them. So, I don't see why it is wrong to try and paint a picture if you have the sources to back it up. Ultimately, I think this new rule should be dropped.\n\nRegarding our rule on [speculation](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_no_speculation), we will allow some speculation to stand *if* its' backed up by research and knowledge about the area. Saying \"it stands to reason people did this\" is entirely different from \"these sources say A, these say B, these others say C, based on what I know I think the truth is part A and part B.\" For more on this, please consult this [Rules Roundtable](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kngwh/rules_roundtable_no_11_no_speculation/).\n\n> I don't know how much of the moderation time and energy goes towards newer readers, but I would assume that there aren't many people breaking the rules multiple times over an extended period of time. The atmosphere of /r/askhistorians isn't like most of the rest of reddit, and for a typical reader, the simple act of encountering a \"normal\" comment deleted, quoted by a mod (without the deleted user's name), and a form letter dictating the rule broken, what/why it exists, and a convenient link to the full rules, could cut down on some of the inappropriate comments from well-meaning but ignorant users. \n\nThere certainly aren't people who are multiple rule-breakers, because we ban them. But we do take seriously the idea of clarifying our rules, and we do have some prewritten macros to speed up comment removal/correction. What we try to balance is the difference between dropping in \"here's what you did wrong, go and sin no more\" and leaving that message on every removal -- particularly with large threads with many rule-breaking comments removed, that would clutter the subreddit enormously. \n\n\n##AMAs\n\n> I thoroughly enjoy the AMAs, since they expose me to a lot of topics and perspectives I'd probably otherwise never explore.\n\n> Maybe do AMAs. I've never noticed any.\n\n[I, uh, well.](http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/firefly.gif) But joking aside, we had a dip in number of AMAs over the summer; the moderator who was primarily (but not solely) involved in planning them had Real Life intervene. But we do have some upcoming AMAs (list in sidebar) and you can [read past AMAs here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/amas); we are always happy to entertain suggestions for who to host and especially love it when people have connections to people we might want to talk to. \n\n##Flair\n\n> If there were anything I would like to change, I would like to open up flairs to any users who specialized/had a degree in a subject that was not primarily historical. For instance, a music major might have get a user flair for music because music history degrees are exceedingly uncommon, but most music majors will have taken many classes on music history.\n\n> I'd like it if there were some nontraditional history experts included. I studied international relations and sociology, both which had large historical components, and which could be useful for some questions but because there are no experts allowed from those fields, those answers get missed.\n\nOur [flair application process](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4r1zsc/raskhistorians_wants_you_to_apply_for_flair_today/) has never been linked to academic credentials (we have no way to verify them anyway) -- we just want to see good comments in our subreddit, a familiarity with sources in the topic area and the ability to answer follow-up questions. And we give wide latitude to the flairs individual users pick, so please, apply away!", "created_utc": 1480605307, "distinguished": null, "id": "dannjbt", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fx1xc/census_500k_results/dannjbt/", "score": 19 }, { "body": "#Complaints/Concerns: Comment Graveyards \n\nHere is a sampling of some of the open-ended responses we got from the survey concerning our infamous Comment Graveyards: \n\n>The most frustrating thing is to click on a post with 75 comments and see them all deleted. \n\n>Can you flair questions that have at least one attempted answer? I see an interesting upvoted question with comments, click it, and the thread is empty due to rules issues. \n\n> This is my absolute favorite subreddit. I think the mods do a great job! However, I am always disappointed when I go into a thread and find a graveyard of deleted comments. Maybe when mods delete or respond to comments that are not up to snuff the original comment could remain for context? That's my only suggestion. You guys rule.\n\n> Consider answered/unanswered post flair like /r/tipofthetongue?\n\n>It might be helpful to flair threads that are answered by flared users so that you can decide which threads to open. Sometimes you see a thread with 20 comments and you click on it and it's 20 removed comments. It would be helpful to know before hand which threads have been answered by qualified commenters.\n\n> It would be cool if questions got flaired or something when they had a real answer. Seeing an interesting question with \"50 comments\" only to find they were all removed (which happens pretty frequently) is always disappointing. But I realise that the moderation is already time-consuming enough with no-one reading the rules, so no big deal really. \n\n> There should be something like a [Answered] or [Good Answer] Tag for threads, its often frustrating to see a interesting Question with lots of Replies, buts its all just Follow-Up Questions, [Deleted] and Mod Posts. A [Good Answer] Tag could help here. I know this might stop some posters from giving a second Answer, but it would improve the quality for the readers. \n\n> It'd be great if the number of replies reported on main page took into account those that have been deleted: my main irritation is to see '14 replies' and then go to the page and find none!\n\nSo the census was taken before we had Summer Reddit 2016, which was an unusual spike in the number of participants on Reddit in general and thus on our subreddit, and thus the number of threads that hit r/all, which are usually the ones that result in the Glorious AH Comment Graveyards^TM that are a feature of our subreddit. Since the summer, we've actually had a couple of Rules Roundtables discussions on this: First, this one on \"[Why don't you have an Answered flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4tgy25/rules_roundtable_15_answered_why_dont_you_have_an/);\" second, this one on \"[\\[removed\\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/56s33f/rules_roundtable_20_removed/),\" which may hopefully answer some of the questions about those policies. \n\nWith regard to the issue of the comment count not matching the number of comments that actually show, this actually came up in a discussion with Reddit admins pre-election, though we haven't heard much from them since; there is other drama affecting the admins at the moment. At the time, though, they were receptive to the idea that [removed] shouldn't count in the subreddit comment count that's shown. ", "created_utc": 1480605326, "distinguished": null, "id": "dannjv9", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fx1xc/census_500k_results/dannjv9/", "score": 15 }, { "body": "Interesting to see all the things that are little-known, like the podcast, books and resources, and (a little less surprising) tumblr and twitter accounts. The books and resources and wiki were major efforts when I first started reading here, so they come to mind frequently for me, and the podcast is up my alley.\n\nI wonder what else could be done to raise awareness, particularly around the books and resources - maybe a quarterly sticky (left up for ~2wks) to discuss it in general and suggest revisions? \n\nIs automod configured to post something whenever someone asks about a book or podcast recommendation? That could be another solution to raise awareness within threads (could also argue it adds clutter).\n\nJust spitballing...", "created_utc": 1480621321, "distinguished": null, "id": "dao0zzz", "permalink": "/r/AskHistorians/comments/5fx1xc/census_500k_results/dao0zzz/", "score": 10 } ]