HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Ghost Dance and precedents
Date: 28 Aug 92 19:30:34 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Aug27.203424.5305@cbfsb.cb.att.com>, kja@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (krista.j.anderson) writes:
> In the original article, there was an additional statement that
> maybe superstition on the part of the Indians caused their
> downfall.  I don't think so.  First of all, superstition is

I don't think I saw such a statement, though it's clear that
the Ghost Dance belief played a part in the final collapse of
resistance by the Indians.  In any case, even if superstition
did play a role, the fact that it was not unique to the Indians
doesn't change the accuracy of such a statement (a statement
I wouldn't make).

> certainly not unique to American Indians.  There were Salem witch
> trials in 1692, for instance.  Second, the Indians were quite open
> to technological change and were quick to seize, buy or trade for
> the best weapons they could get.  There were several reasons for
> the downfall of the Native Americans:  diseases, smaller numbers,
> technology always one step behind and the ruthlessness of their
> enemies.

Perhaps the biggest problem was an inability to form effective
alliances against the whites.  At least before 1700, it would have
been a trivial matter to have driven the whites from North
America.


-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Alcohol prohibition didn't work; drug prohibition doesn't work; gun
prohibition won't work.
From: joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Ghost Dance and precedents
Date: 25 Aug 92 10:18:38 GMT
Organization: McDonald Observatory, University of Texas @ Austin

In article <1992Aug21.125822.6957@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>Try Peter Worsley's "The Trumpet Shall Sound", about cargo cults in Melanesia.
>He argues that there was rather a lot more conscious and rational political
>content to them than the conventional wisdom recognizes; maybe the same goes
>for the Ghost Dance movement?

Two more movements that are Ghost Dance/Cargo Cult like were the
Taiping Rebellion in Central China (in which the leader believed he
was Jesus Christ's younger brother) and the Boxer Rebellion (in which
the members believed that certain exercises could repel bullets.)
From: kutluk@ccl.umist.ac.uk (Kutluk Ozguven)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: An Armenian Response to a Turkish Claim of a "Fake Genocide"
Date: 2 Sep 92 12:13:05 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

In <ZiNPPB1w165w@valpso.hanse.de> tichauer@valpso.hanse.de (Manfredo Tichauer) writes:

>viking@bnr.ca (Harold Henrikson) writes:

>> It is so nice to see some history in this group.  Unfortunately, most of
>> the commentary seems to be a 3-sided Greek vs Turk vs Armenian diatribe
>> with Serb vs Croat rapidly joining in.  Wouldn't it be so nice if these
>> racist clowns moved their war to, for example, a new group "alt.bigots.hate".
>> I admit things have improved a lot since I found out how to put Mutlu in a
>> kill file but there is still too much "in the year XXXX the 
>> Turkish/Armenian/Serbian/Greek bastards killed X people/raped X women/burned 
>> X villages/collaborated with Nazis/Christians/goats".  

>HOW RIGHT YOU ARE, Harold. Isn't there a way to stop this childish war? May be
>having a moderator, in case these brain amputated guys don't do it volontarily.
>They could continue their private war per mail, or they prefer, they could all
>of them fly together to the Balcan area and shoot themselves there.  
> 

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Manfredo Tichauer M.                       EMAIL : tichauer@valpso.hanse.de
>  Opitzstrasse 14                            VOICE :     (++ 49 40)  27.42.27
>  2000 Hamburg 60 - GERMANY                  FAX   :     (++ 49 40) 270.53.09
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------


It seems Germany these days is equally a good place for the racists
to kill Turks and other inferior races. I think when it comes to
brain amputation, etc. you should post from a different site to be taken
seriously.

Kutluk
Xref: sparky soc.history:7808 soc.culture.japan:7394
From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: The Russo-Japanese War (part 2)
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:13:20 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California

slkg9733@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Steven L. Kellmeyer) writes:

>Seems the Japanese
>petitioned the League of Nations to remove a part of their charter which
>referred to Asians as "inferior races".  The League refused.  The Japanese
>left the League shortly thereafter.  For an excellent overview of the 
>Pacific war as a race war, read John Dwyer's "War without Mercy" - it
>changed the way I looked at the whole theatre of operations.  Combine his
>evidence with what we already know about biology-as-destiny in the Third
>Reich, and the whole damn thing gets very scary in a radically new way.


	I believe you may be referring to the meetings which organised
	the League of Nations in 1919.  Japanese suggestions that the
	charter recognise the equality of all races was defeated by the
	US and Australia.  The US later decided not to join the
	League.  The Japanese withdrawal came about on Feb. 24, 1933,
	when the League voted 42-0 (Siam abstained, China's and Japan's
	votes were recorded but not counted as disputing parties) to
	condemn Japan's aggression in Manchuria.  Matsuoka strode out
	of the League hall in the middle of the debate and took the
	Japanese delegation with him.

	I personally agree with the poster who noted that "race" means
	whatever the speaker wants it to mean and is devoid of
	scientific basis.

	I saw a US book about "race" from around 1910 or so.  It had a
	picture of a fat Anglo-Saxon in a 3 piece suit, seated at a
	desk, and another picture of muscular Polish immigrant steel
	worker in a tee shirt.  This proved that the Anglo-Saxon "race"
	was meant to be the managerial class, while the Eastern
	European "race" was inherently stupid but much better suited
	for manual labor.  The book was a text book written by a
	Harvard professor who had to have known the ludicrousness of
	the ideas even by the limited scientific knowledge of the
	time.

	- Michael Goldman
-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
Newsgroups: soc.history
From: izahi@bsc.no (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez)
Subject: Houses in Pompeii
Summary: How were they designed?
Keywords: Architecture, Climate, Pompeii
Organization: Bergen Scientific Centre, Bergen, NORWAY
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 12:04:13 GMT

   In a book that my girlfriend is reading she mentioned that houses in 
Pompeii would have "high and small windows" so that there is little light
coming from the sides, and "Houses in Pompeii would be well lighted from
above", "... there would be an 'Atrium' where most of the activities would
happen", but most rooms were suppossedly very dark. Also it was mentioned
that there was no front door but just a curtain.
   Could somebody paint a better picture of how some typical houses in Pompeii
before the Vesuvius eruption were?
   Also, what clothes would people wear?
   Thanks in advance for your time.

-- 
         -----> All opinions expressed here are my own, not IBM's <-----
Raul Izahi Lopez	Izahi Engineering
izahi@bsc.no		IBM Bergen Environmental Sciences and Solutions Centre
			Thormoehlensgate 55, 5008 Bergen, NORWAY (47-5)54-4653
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.japan
From: cmr@world.std.com (Charles M Richmond)
Subject: Re: The Russo-Japanese War (part 2)
Organization: Integrated International Systems Corp. One Longfellow Place, Suite 3309, Boston, Ma.
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 09:17:53 GMT

jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:

>My conjecture is that adopting a colonialist policy is one more case of
>Japanese imitation of the West.  As a new colonial power, they may
>have been especially imitating Germany.  The racist rationalizations
>were an adaptation to their own circumstances of Western racist
>rationalizations.

>Consider that Japan had isolated itself for 250 years, and during
>that period had too little contact with foreigners of any kind
>for significant racism to survive in any layer of the population.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.


250 years of isolationism is both indicative of and a cause of the 
strongest kind of racism. The fear/hate of outsiders is reinforced
by the lack of contact.

Charlie

-- 
*****************************************************************************
*  Charles Richmond 	Integrated International Systems Corporation        *
*  cmr@world.std.com	(Temporary) cmr@chiechan.mro4.dec.com		    *
*  Specializing in UNIX, X, Image Processing, and Communications.           *
From: fsars@acad3.alaska.edu (Allen R Sparks)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Upcoming problems of naming
Date: 27 Aug 92 20:45:23 GMT
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks

In article <CB.92Aug27133612@tamarack13.timbuk>, cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:
> 
> I've been wondering what names will be assigned to two things that will
> need names soon: the two nations formed from Czechoslovakia, and the
> decade after this one.
> 
> Czechoslovakia: I assume the eastern part will be simply Slovakia.  What
> about the western part?  Czechia?  Czechland?

The Czechs and Slovaks probably have a better idea of what it will be. 
They'll let us know as soon as they figure it out.

> Next decade: We've gotten in the habit of focusing on decades in a big
> way.  I never heard any consciousness of "the fifties" as an era until
> 1966.  Now, we're so breathless about decades that we start talking
> about them before they arrive.  How many things have you heard
> proclaimed as "the ____ for the 90s" (or 80s; this hadn't gotten going
> in 1970).  Unfortunately, just as this construction became formalized,
> we reached the final decade that can be referred to this way, at least
> for a while.  What will we say for the latest big thing near the end of
> the decade?  The Garth Brooks for the Third Millennium?  The Richard
> Simmons for the Zeros?  And what will we call the years?  I heard
> someone refer to the movie 2001 as "twenty-oh-one", which sounded crazy
> until I thought about the need for a consistent convention after all the
> digits turn over.  And who decides these things?  The National Bureau of
> Standards?

Society decides these things.  We'll figure it out when the time
comes.  Even if Bureau of Standards does try to dictate what they
think it should be, they will be roundly ignored.  They tried to
dictate a new (well, more modern anyway) system of measurement to U.S.
society, the metric system, and have been ignored in that also.

By the time this century comes, I suspect that referring to things by
decade will be passe', for no other reason than your original point. 
It will be awkward to refer to it in English.  === Al Sparks
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.nordic
From: olaf@kean.ucs.mun.ca
Subject: Re: ergot (was beserkers and so forth)
Organization: Memorial University. St.John's Nfld, Canada
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 16:59:44 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.144120.22403@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
> In article <l#!n5_r.slf@netcom.com>, slf@netcom.com (Sharon Fisher) writes:
>>rath@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>
>>>In article <1992Aug15.200355.8998@news.eng.convex.com>, cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>>>>In article <16iainINNsli@agate.berkeley.edu> tedrick@whistle.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick) writes:
>>>>....[ about berserkers and 'shrooms]
>>>>>I would agree with the above, based on my own observations. I've long
>>>>>been sceptical about the mushroom theory.
>>
>>>Actually, to give a little balance to the "us & them" mentality, 
>>>Someone plausibly hypothesized in the 60's (Mr. Leary perhaps?) that
>>>a middle eastern cult group used to have ceremonies which
>>>surrounded the eating of bread grown in the area and made a certain
>>>way such that they would actually achieve contact with the other worldly
>>>deities.  The cause was ergot, a wheat fungus indigenous to the area,
>>                                  ^^^^^
>>
>>Rye, actually.  It's also been postulated that the Salem witch
>>hysteria was caused by this.
> 
> actually rye and other cereal grasses--the only place I've ever seen it
> is on corn, and its ugly--does not look like something good to
> eat at all, and its effects include cramps spasms and a form of gangrene,
> and as a hallucinogen it requires massive processing which probably
> would not happen without a lab--but maybe it could ;}--I have
[B[B> never heard the Salem bit before--I have to give a lecture
> this fall on the subject, (Salem--not ergot)
>  and I
 sure would appreciate it if you let me know

The suggestion that Salem witchcraft was caused by ergotic poisoning was suggested by
Linnda R. Caporael in an article entitled "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" that
appeared in the journal "Science", vol. 192(2 April 1976), pp. 21-26. This thesis was
subsequently challenged by two psychologists, Nicholas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb, in
"Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials," which appeared a few months later in
"Science," vol.194 (24 December 1976), pp. 1390-1394. Both essays were reprinted,
together with a number of other essays on the subject of Salem witchcraft, in "Witches &
Historians: Interpretations of Salem," edited by Marc Mappen (Huntington, NY: Robert
Krieger, 1980). If the book is still in print, it makes a useful textbook for a junior
undergraduate course.

Olaf Janzen
Department of History
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Corner Brook, Newfoundland
A2H 6P9

>  where you picked up the information--if there is something I could look up...
>  	thanks, 
> Rich Rath
> :
> :
> :
[A
Newsgroups: soc.history
From: cohen@cumuli.vmsmail.ethz.ch (Mark Cohen)
Subject: Re: Misconceptions similar to Richard III
Originator: mark@agnew
Organization: Dept. Chemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:37:15 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.145608.11624@acuson.com> miklg@acuson.com 
Michael Goldman writes:

>cohen@cumuli.vmsmail.ethz.ch (Mark Cohen) writes:
>
>>Personally I wouldn't be at all surprised if many of Shakespeare's plays
>>were tailored to gain royal approval. At that time and until quite recently
>>censorship of the theater was by the Lord Chancellor and at the turn of the
>>17th century I'd guess the penalty for upsetting the monarch was some what
>>more severe than at present. The Tempest for example can be looked at as a
>>belief in the divine right of kings (rulers) a concept that was beginning
>>to be seriously questioned in England of Shakespear's time and was possibly
>>one of the bones of contention between parliament and Charles I forty years
>>later.
>
>      But then you have Julius Caesar as glorifying Republican virtues,
>      and portraying a "monarch" as a vain and superstitious man.  It
>      follows Plutarch, I believe, but the choice of subject matter is
>      still pretty interesting, given the times.
>
>      - Michael Goldman
>
>
It is a long time since I read Julius Caesar but isn't Caesar brutally
murdered by the republicans who then get their comeuppance when they 
are beaten by Octavius, Anthony and Lepidus. I would have interpreted
that as a message not to kill your king (even if he wasn't actually
king yet).

Mark Cohen

Xref: sparky soc.history:7767 alt.war:1850 soc.culture.canada:6100
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: The Russo-Japanese War (part 2)
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<12116@optilink.UUCP>
Date: 2 Sep 92 22:10:09

I wasn't claiming for the Japanese any special virture as regards
being non-racist, and would expect normal racist attitudes towards the
less developed Ainu.  However, I still conjecture that the subsequent
racist attitudes towards Koreans and Chinese were borrowed from
Western attitudes towards the natives of their colonies.  It would
be interesting to know what books about colonies were translated
into Japanese from the 1860s through the 1890s.

The autobiography of Townshend Harris, the first U.S. ambassador to
Japan in the 1850s, recalls himself, the British and the Dutch all
telling the Japanese that they must modernize if they didn't want
to end up like China - an object of imperial rivalries.

I suspect that racism as a justification of imperialism is mainly
a late development - in spite of Aristotle.  In more primitive
states of morality, there is no need for a justification of
enslaving foreigners.  It was just a case of we won and they lost.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Houses in Pompeii
Keywords: Architecture, Climate, Pompeii
Date: 31 Aug 92 15:20:55 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California

izahi@bsc.no (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes:

>Pompeii would have "high and small windows" so that there is little light
>coming from the sides, and "Houses in Pompeii would be well lighted from
>above", "... there would be an 'Atrium' where most of the activities would
>happen", but most rooms were suppossedly very dark. Also it was mentioned
>that there was no front door but just a curtain.

	I was in Pompeii a few years ago, so my memory isn't perfect, but
	as I recall, there were basically 2 types of buildings.  The rich
	Romans' mansions had a large atrium that let in a lot of light,
	with small bedrooms that had no windows.  Even if it were raining,
	there would have been enough light from the atrium to see by in
	the main living quarters.  The local business establishments had
	such small rooms, that the open front would have illuminated the
	whole space.

	Pompeii was (like Naples - Neopolis = New City) Greek speaking but
	they would still use togas and tunics, I would think.

	- Michael Goldman

-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
Newsgroups: soc.history
From: hernan@cc.gatech.edu (Hernan Astudillo R.)
Subject: Cold Turkey gets hotter
Reply-To: hernan@cc.gatech.edu
Organization: College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 01:05:21 GMT


soc.historians:
	2 weeks ago, one of our (in)famous co-listers was 13-th poster in the
whole net.  Now the sequel...

> Article 301 in news.lists (moderated):
> From: newsstats@uunet.UU.NET
> Subject: Top 25 News Submitters by User by number of articles for the last 2 w
> Date: 23 Aug 92 03:31:47 GMT
>
>          No. of       % of
> Rank Articles KBytes Total   User
> [...]
   7   172     652.3  0.1%   han@anadolu.MICHIGAN.COM  (hasan.b.mutlu)
                              15% soc.culture.greek
                              15% soc.culture.turkish
                              15% talk.politics.mideast
                              15% talk.politics.soviet
                              14% soc.culture.europe
                              13% soc.history


--hernan

--			| "If the misery of our poor be caused not by laws of
Hernan Astudillo R.	|  nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin".
hernan@cc.gatech.edu	|		-- Charles Darwin,"Voyage of the Beagle"
College of Computing, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 / (404) 853-9390
From: rocher@husc8.harvard.edu (Jean-Marc Rocher)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Upcoming problems of naming
Date: 29 Aug 92 20:48:22 GMT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

>>
>>I've been wondering what names will be assigned to two things that will
>>need names soon: the two nations formed from Czechoslovakia, and the
>>decade after this one.
>>

	Wasn't the Czech region of Czechoslovakia once known as Bohemia?

					...Jean-Marc Rocher
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Ghost Dance and precedents
Date: 26 Aug 92 12:30:14 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

Correction to my previous post on this: I misremembered what the Zulu
shaman Credo Vusa'mazulu Mutwa said about the national suicide of the Xhosa
in his book "My People" (Anthony Blond, 1969: Penguin, 1971/77).  In fact
he *does* relate it to colonialism: while the millenium promised in
Nongqawuse's prophecy went beyond simply getting rid of the colonists, it
did include that.

What he also says is that the prophecy itself was probably a colonial hoax.
Nongqawuse's revelation was given her by three "Figures" who he claims were
agents sent by the colonial administrator Sir George Grey to impersonate
traditional deities.  The reasons he gives for suspecting this:

- the colonists stood to gain by exactly what happened (Grey settled the
  area with Germans immediately afterwards);

- the theological and eschatological contents of the prophecy (the sun
  standing still, resurrection, prediction by calendar date) were alien to
  Xhosa tradition, but characteristic of Christian myth;

- Grey's overtly stated administrative policies.

What Mutwa doesn't make enough of is that Grey was one of the very few
people who could have pulled something like that off: he was an extremely
able folklorist who had already written two books on the folklore of the
Australian Aborigines when governor of South Australia.  Grey subsequently
went to New Zealand and wrote on Polynesian mythology; the Maori never
suffered anything quite like the Xhosa, but the later stages of the Maori
Wars did involve a militarist cult (the Hauhau) with a belief in magical
invulnerability.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Newsgroups: soc.history